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Apple App Store Hits 10B App Download Mark
alphadogg writes "The Apple App Store hit the 10 billion app download mark overnight on Friday, marking a milestone involving an awful lot of Doodle Jump, Tap Tap Revenge and Angry Birds playing, not to mention Facebook and Pandora usage. The Apple App Store hit the 1 billion mark in April of 2009, after opening in July of 2008. Apple is rewarding the downloader of the 10 billionth free or paid App Store app with a $10,000 iTunes gift card in a bit of showmanship that Willy Wonka would be proud of. As of 7AM EST, however, Apple hadn't publicly identified the winner, only saying that you'd need to come back later to find out who won. Apple put an iOS app countdown ticker on its Website last week to build buzz around the milestone and generated about 250 million app downloads since. It also revealed a list of all-time most downloaded free and paid iPhone and iPad apps." The winner of the $10k is Gail Davis, a British woman whose children installed an app without her knowledge. She actually thought the phone call from Apple was a prank at first. "My daughters told me they had downloaded it and they knew there was a competition and that we may have won it," she told BBC Radio 5 Live.
I had a similar thing happen with Apple's iTunes a few years ago. One of my kids downloaded a couple hundred dollars worth of stuff using my debit card. Since I didn't (still don't) own an iPod and run Linux on the desktop (no iTunes client) there was no way it was me. I was pretty sure it was an inside job, but there was no phone number to contact Apple. The child vehemently denied any involvement. After going back and forth a few times with iTunes' web support people, they told me it was fraud and I should involve the local police department, ending the matter where they were concerned. I went back on their site, but instead of reporting it as a fraud issue, I took the "I forgot my username and password" route. I entered my credit card info and they gave up the goods, handing over the kid's email account. The iTunes were also discovered on the kid's iPod, as well as receipts in the yahoo mail folder. Busted.
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