App Store

The iPad is coming, but it may be a little light upon initial applications.

The guys at Wired noticed that there are some notable exceptions among the announced iPad
apps, including Stocks, Calculator, Clock, Weather and Voice Memos. While these applications could be quickly available for download via the App Store, fury.com's Kevin Fox argued that these applications could arrive in the form of Dashboard widgets to begin with.

In his article, Fox theorized that a five-finger pinch motion could launch Dashboard and give access to these apps while a second motion would return them to the background.

Following Apple's decision to remove a wide swath of sexy/adult-oriented applications from the App Store, the company is also apparently culling "cookie cutter" applications/applications built using templates from one of the many app-building services on the market.

According to TechCrunch, the consensus according to developers interviewed appears that Apple doesn’t appear to be opposed to ‘app generators’ and templates per se, but in the last month or so it has started cracking down on basic applications that are little more than RSS feeds or glorified business cards. Apple apparently doesn’t want people using native applications for things that a basic web app could accomplish.

Unlike the ’sexy’ app ban that took place a few weeks ago, when Apple gave developers no options to keep their apps on the store, over the last month the company has been reaching out to at least a few app building services to suggest what they should be doing.

A strange dialog box that surfaced in a current version of iTunes may foretell that Apple is planning on allowing developers to offer upgrade pricing for iPhone applications. According to Ars Technica, developer Fraser Speirs was warned that the "discounted price is only available to customers who own a previous version" of an item when he tried updating all his apps via iTunes.

Historically, developers of standard desktop software have offered upgrade pricing to owners of previous versions in the event of a major release. With iPhone applications, minor updates have typically been free to all users and the App Store has lacked a mechanism to offer an upgrade price for a new version release.

Apple's been saying for a while now that they don't want Flash on the iPhone or iPad for technical reasons, but it's pretty obvious that that doesn't hold much water. Adobe Chief Executive Shantanu Narayen, while giving a talk at the Goldman Sachs technology conference taking place this week, said what we know to be the obvious reason: keeping the App Store as the only way to get apps.

Apple's decision to ban sexual content from the App Store has brought them some hefty criticism, with many accusing them of being hypocritical by banning sexual content and yet giving favor to a select few big-name developers, like Sports Illustrated and Playboy. Now, a developer says that naughty stuff might make it's way back on, as they have found a new category for apps called "Explicit".

When a developer submits an app, they are asked to chose primary and secondary categories that best categorize their application. One developer says that a new catigory has popped up called Explicit, as you can see below:

When Apple banned sexual content from the App Store, there were a lot of mixed opinoins from people. A lot of apps were banned in the process, and it left a lot of people wondering what Apple's motives were for doing so. Four days after the chance in policy, Apple's Phil Schiller is explaining their decision to make the change.

When we heard that Apple was banning sexual content from the App Store, we knew that we'd see a significant dip in applications, but we didn't think it'd be this significant. According to App Shopper, Apple removed nearly 4,000 apps the day after the policy change.

Prior to the policy change, Apple has generally removed around 100 per day. After the new policy went into effect, Apple removed 932 apps. The next day (Friday, Febuary 18th) they removed roughly 4,000. According to ChiliFresh, Apple says that around 5,000 apps were affected when the policy went into effect. The higher removal rates have continued over the weekend as Apple continues to purge apps.

In a major revision of App Store policy, Apple has effectively banned sexually explicit content from the App Store. According to a letter received by Jon Atherton, developer of an application called Wobble iBoobs (I bet you can't guess what it does...), Apple has removed his app from the App Store because they "have decided to remove any overtly sexual content from the App Store, which includes [his] application."

Since Apple began allowing over the air downloading of applications and iTunes content on the iPhone, they've been capping the size of files you can download over cellualar at 10MB, requiring you to be connected via Wi-Fi for anything larger. However, today Apple is raising the cap, bumping the maximum download size to 20MB. Now users can download up to 20MB over the cellular network from the App Store or from iTunes (including podcasts).