Part of my vision for 2013 is the rise of the “second screen” experience for viewers. In a lead-up to CES tomorrow, DISH has unveiled a pretty interesting iPad app for Hopper owners that doesn’t just control the device, but also recommends programming based on reviews and social media.
Doesn’t matter if you take photos with your iPhone, iPad,
point-n-shoot, DSLR, or even your iPad itself, making a good photo into
a great photo is often all in the editing. In the last couple years
I’ve been doing more and more photo editing on my iPad. Maybe because my
Mac is getting a little sluggish or maybe it’s the whole tactile aspect
of editing photos on a tablet, but not only enjoy photo editing on my
iPad, it’s more efficient as well.
Nothing says Christmas morning like the sounds of cartoon birds being
slingshot towards green pigs. Well, at least it did for the over 8
million people who downloaded Angry Birds on Christmas Day alone. While
my son contributed to that number over the holidays, what I want to know
is what you found and downloaded on your devices.
If you got a shiny new iPad during the holiday season, you’ve probably been downloading apps like crazy. You’d be in good company since there was an 87% increase in app downloads this holiday season. Like our iPhone apps list, these are free apps that we think aren’t just “essential”, but also showcase some of things your iPad is just meant for.
On the heels of the very successful launch of Google Maps for iPhone,
Google has started online ads targeted at iOS developers to come work
at Google on the iOS Apps team. With the headline “Do Cool Things That
Matter”, Google is promoting some of its recent apps like Chrome, Gmail, and Search
(Maps might not have been ready in time for the ad) and linking to a
page highlighting the work of the Google Search for iOS team…and a link
to apply for a job a Google.
Apple’s built-in tethering feature
requires the consent of your carrier, and if you’re on a network like
AT&T, you’ll have to purchase a separate tethering plan to share
your 3G/4G connection with your Mac or PC. FlashArmyKnife, a new app by Eric Blase, has a hidden tethering feature that allows you to by pass carrier restrictions and share your iPhone or iPad’s 3G/4G connection.
As we get closer to the WWDC 2012 Keynote,
where Apple is widely expected to give us a preview of iOS 6, more
details about the upcoming major iOS software update seems to be leaking
out.
So far we've heard that iOS 6 will include an all-new Maps app with an incredible 3D-mode and Facebook integration.
9to5Mac now reports that iOS 6 will also feature redesigned iTunes Store, App Store and iBookstore.
According to
sources familiar with Apple’s upcoming iOS 6 mobile software offering,
the company’s three major`digital stores will see design overhauls. The
overhauls are said to be major and they focus on improved interactivity
when making purchases in iTunes, the App Store, and the iBookstore.
Social is a big piece of the store overhauls, and Facebook integration
is being tested in the iTunes Store portion, at least.
But 9to5Mac also notes that the redesigned apps won't offer improved discoverability. You may remember that Apple had acquired Chomp - an app search engine
earlier in the year. We were expecting Apple to use Chomp's technology
to improve App Store search and recommendations. But according to 9to5Mac's
source, it may not happen in iOS 6, which would be a pity as
discoverability of apps is quite a pain with more than 600,000 apps in
the App Store.
During the last earnings conference call, Apple's CEO Tim Cook revealed that Apple had paid out a whopping $700 million to developers in the fourth quarter.
Based on that information, folks at
market intelligence firm Asymco have come up with some interesting
details about the iOS app economy.
Here are some of the highlights:
If Apple gave away $700 million to developers in the last quarter, it means that iOS apps generated $1 billion in revenues, of which Apple retained $300 million.
Apple posted total iTunes income of
$2.027 billion, so it generated a little over $1 billion revenue from
songs, videos and iBooks.
According to Asymco's calculations,
since Apple crossed the milestone of 18 billion apps downloads on
October 4th, 2011 and according to them will cross the milestone of 25
billion app downloads on February 25th, the per day download rate is
approximately 48.6 million apps. This works out to an average price of
23 cents per download.
Apple has sold over 335 million iOS devices, so that works out to approximately 75 apps downloaded per iOS device.
At an average price of 23 cents per download that works out to $17 of iTunes income from Apps.
This means that for each iOS device sold, it results in a minimum payment of $12 to iOS developers.
Note: These numbers
don't include the revenues generated by advertising or subscription for
services (which bypass in-app subscription).
That's amazing when you consider 335
million iOS devices have been sold so far. From Apple's point of view,
though the revenues generated from the App Store may not be a small percentage of the overall revenues (Apple posted revenues of $46.33 billion in the last quarter), apps and the App Store drive more stickiness to the platform and encourage more hardware sales, which is priceless.
What do you think about these stats? Sound off in the comments.
While there are jailbreak tweaks available to kill processes running in the background to free up memory, did you know that there was an app briefly available in the App Store that allowed users to kill processes running in the background or at least that is what it claimed to do.
Apple seems to have removed Process
Killer app developed by Aeonika from the App Store recently. We found
out about the Process Killer app when we came across this article by Digital Inspiration's Agarwal, which talks about "How to close all apps in the background".
Though the app still shows up in the search results on Google, clicking on the link (which is an App Store link) gives you the following error message: "The item you've requested is not currently available in the App Store".
Here're some interesting details about the Process killer app:
As you can see from the screenshot above, the app received quite a lot of favorable reviews in the App Store from users.
This was the description of the app in the App Store (courtesy Appolicious):
Application shows you background processes and memory consumption.The app "kills" with it's simplicity!
You can checkout the screenshot and demo video of the app below:
It looks like the app was available in the App Store since October 2011 and was available for $0.99. According to the Digital Inspiration's article published on 6th January 2012, it was a free app.
We're not sure how the app sneaked into
the App Store, as we're quite sure that the app used unpublished API's
that officially break Apple's iOS Developer agreement. The other issue
is that when you click on the URL for developer's website, you're taken to an under construction page.
If you've seen this video by iOS developer - Fraser Speirs, which gives a demo of how iOS multitasking works then it is also possible that Apple removed the app from the App Store for misleading users.
Whatever the reason, we were quite
surprised to find out that there was an app available to kill background
processes in the App Store so we thought of sharing it with you.
