Back in the fall of 2010, we were promised a beta of the new version of Wi-Fi Sync by December. Here we are in 2011, and still the awesome wireless iTunes syncing app is nowhere to be seen.
In a few recent tweets, the developer has announced that the app is still in development and should be available in two to three weeks. He also mentioned what some of these awesome features are, and from what I can tell, it will definitely be worth the wait...
Apple's App Store has had unprecedented success since its release in July of 2008. 2011 marks the App Store's 3rd birthday, and it looks like Apple will celebrate by hitting 10,000,000,000 downloads. The App Store has averaged over 3 billion downloads per year since 2008. As a comparison, it took iTunes 8 years to reach that same level of success.
In fact, just last year, iTunes celebrated in the same fashion with its own 10 billion downloads countdown. The lucky person that downloaded the 10 billionth song received a $10,000 iTunes gift card.
The one billionth App Store app was downloaded in April of 2009, which shows exponential growth for Apple's platform. As the numbers approach 10 billion, another iTunes user will be lucky enough to receive a $10,000 iTunes gift card...
The Global Times recently discovered that over 50,000 illegal iTunes accounts are being offered for purchase in China. Potential buyers are promised access to purchase iTunes content for free; amounting to seven times the amount paid.
Toaboa.com, China's largest consumer auction site, is offering hacked iTunes accounts with stolen credit card and contact information to potential customers. These accounts are registered by real people with real personal information, but this blatant form of organized crime has (so far) gone unpunished.
At prices of 1-200 yuan (about $30 a pop), these hacked accounts are distributed through the iTunes login credentials associated with the account's payment information...
Yesterday, Alex posted an in-depth article explaining the reasons why VLC Media Player was removed from the App Store. As you know, VLC Media Player is the popular video application that allows you to play a variety of video formats on your iPhone.
VLC Media Player is extremely popular on PCs and Macs, so it's wasn't surprising that it was an app that many looked forward to on the iPhone.
Sadly, as you know, the app has been removed, but don't weep too many tears; VLC can still be installed on your iPhone, and this video walkthrough will show you how, step-by-step...
Awhile back, we reported that the popular, open source media player "VLC for iPhone" was released in the App Store. It was a pretty big deal, because the VLC client duplicated a lot of functionality that was already in the native iPod app. (Apple doesn't usually like apps that duplicate the iPhone's native features.)
The biggest pro to VLC for iPhone was its ability to playback file formats that iTunes doesn't support. iTunes has a somewhat limited amount of video formats it can playback. VLC was a simple, free app that allowed more types of videos to be playable on the iPhone.
While it was nice for an app like VLC to be in the App Store, the media player was very buggy. Lots of users reported problems with playback and file format support. However, the bugs were not the reason that the app was pulled. In fact, Apple had nothing to do with the takedown...
One of the biggest cons of jailbreaking has always been how difficult it is to restore a jailbroken iPhone's settings and configuration. If you ever need to restore iOS or upgrade/downgrade to a different iOS version, there is no clear way to easily restore your iPhone's (both jailbreak and general) configuration.
BackBoard is a new jailbreak app that aims to help you save your iPhone's springboard/home screen configuration. There are other apps, like PkgBackup, that help you back up your jailbreak apps and settings; but BackBoard has some different features that make it appealing...
Apple has been allowing ringtone creators on the App Store for several months now, but there has yet to be an app that stands out from the rest. We've talked about creating ringtones for the iPhone before, but there has yet to be a really elegant and simple way to create ringtones straight on the iPhone.
Dring, by Wake Apps, is the newest addition to the ringtone creator catalog. Dring is "cream of the crop" caliber when it comes to quality of design. The app is truly gorgeous. Every pixel is fine-tuned and perfectly placed; everything feels smooth and responsive.
Besides good looks, Dring has all of the features that a good ringtone app should have. Creating ringtones is a beautiful breeze with Dring...
More and more shopping is happening online these days, but plenty of people still prefer brick and mortar stores to buy their jeggings in. On December 30th, 2010, Apple's latest patent was published. This patent hints at a native social networking app that Apple may implement in a future version of iOS. Such an app would merge social networking into a shopping experience.
This Ping-like, social-shopping network would allow users to have an enhanced shopping experience with participating merchants. Apple's patent is titled "Social Networking in Shopping Environments."
There are plenty of industry reports and infographics that give us an idea about the state of Apple's App Store. Apps are being sold at an average price of less than $2.50 each, and there is speculation that app sales could be a $34 billion dollar industry by 2014. In 2010, iOS users spent an average of only $4 each month on apps.
I have a feeling that the user statistic of $4 a month is a product of the way that averaging statistics bend numbers. There is still a huge divide between what most would call "power users," and the "average users" of technologies like the smartphone. (If you read iDB, most likely you're a power user.)
There are people that are really into buying and trying different apps, and those people purchase a lot of apps. Then there is the vast sea of average, mom-and-dad iOS users who may download a free app every now and then, but don't make money purchases in the App Store too often. The good news is, you can easily see how much you're spent in the App Store with a nifty utility for Mac OS X...
The App Store has never been a very quiet place. 2010 was no exception; thousands upon thousands of new apps were submitted to the App Store. Most of them aren't worth mentioning, but there have been some exceptional apps that have risen to the forefront of what the App Store has had to offer throughout the year 2010.
We've covered a lot of App Store apps this year on iDB, with the goal of keeping our readers in the know.
Now, we’d like to take some time to reflect on our favorite App Store apps of 2010. Being included on this list doesn’t necessarily mean the app was released in 2010, it just means that it was amongst our most utilized of this year. Drumroll, please…
Synchronicity is a popular jailbreak mod that allows you to use your iPhone while it's syncing with iTunes. Instead of being stuck with a lock screen while your iPhone is syncing with your computer, Synchronicity allows you to run apps, make calls, etc. Basically anything is fair game, except for the iPod app (to prevent data corruption with iTunes).
This mod has been a favorite of ours since it was released back in August; it even made it pretty far up our "Top 10 Jailbreak Apps for 2010" list. If you don't have Synchronicity, you should.
Synchronicity was recently updated to 2.0 status. The mod was already super lightweight and unobtrusive, but 2.0 makes it even better with a design tweak and some enhancements...
It's that time of year. Christmas music, staff parties, plenty of egg nog, and gifts. As fellow iPhone users, what better gift is there to give each other than what we crave: more apps.
We could all probably name at least a few apps that we would like to have, but haven't bought yet. How nice would it be to wake up on Christmas day and have that new app you've been wanting?
Luckily, Apple allows you to "gift" an app to a friend. If you didn't know about gifting apps, I'm going to walk you through how to gift an app, along with some gift-giving tips...