148Apps is a proud media sponsor of the event. If you'd like to join us there, you can use discount code 148vip to get $100 off the registration fee.
More on the conference, direct from Engage Digital, the creators of App Developers Conference is at 148Apps.biz
Some other interesting stats. Readdle have seen over 3,150,000 people are actively using Readdle apps. 900,000 users of the Readdle Terra Browser, Scanner Pro has seen over 250,000 users on the iPhone.
Check out all of Readdles apps on iTunes.
To get details on the contest for a free iPad, check out the Readdle 4th Anniversary page on their site.
Read the full review at 148Apps.biz.
Apple today announced that the App Store has delivered over 15 billion downloads, up from 14 billion just over a month ago. At the current rate, users are downloading over 32 million apps per day, more than seen in the entire first month of the App Store.
“In just three years, the revolutionary App Store has grown to become the most exciting and successful software marketplace the world has ever seen,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Thank you to all of our amazing developers who have filled it with over 425,000 of the coolest apps and to our over 200 million iOS users for surpassing 15 billion downloads.”
This amazing growth in downloads can be accredited to the acceptance of the iOS platform and speaks to the amazing feat that Apple has accomplished with iOS. While iOS has been called an closed ecosystem, and to some degree it is, the control that Apple has maintained has allowed the whole system to work smoothly as a whole. That in turn has lead to a better application lifecycle for developers and a better way to get new apps for consumers. All while minimizing the issues we see on other platforms with hardware and OS fragmentation leading to app availability issues.
MacRumors has created a graph with data points shown for each announcement Apple have made for download numbers.
Graph credit: MacRumors
As we can see, the growth has kept up a nice pace and fairly closely matches a logarithmic growth scale. Very impressive indeed. With the impending updates to the iPod touch and iPhone lines, we can expect the growth to continue to take off.
A combined MobileBeat and GamesBeat will take place in San Francisco next week. July 12-13 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco will see a group of some of the most interesting minds in the mobile and gaming industries will gather to discuss what's next for mobile.
Great speakers include Nolan Bushnell, the father of video games, Jason Spero, Head of Mobile for Google, David Williams, VP of Mobile Products for AT&T, and many more. There will be plenty of great information shared, new products launched, and as usual, lots of great conversations to be had between sessions.
I'm particularly looking forward to the keynote from Nolan Bushnell and many of the GamesBeat talks.
148Apps readers can get 20% off the registration by using the discount code VB-148
For full details about the event, hit the jump.
This weekend we celebrate Independence day here in the US. And as app developers tend to do, they have put a whole bunch of games and apps on sale this holiday weekend. We'll update this post regularly with the latest, so please check back.
Included below are just about every game that EA makes, a few great ones from Gameloft, a bunch more great ones from Chillingo, Com2US, Nickelodeon and many many more.
And as a reminder, you can always find the latest iOS app and game price drops at our interactive page here, via Twitter price drops, and RSS. Whew!
Update 2 - 7/4 1:30pm: Lots of great stuff including lots of free games. And a huge sale from Firemint.
Update 1 - 7/2 11:00am: Lots of stuff from Konami and a bunch of great free games added. Grab them before the prices go back up!
[appsale: 423593206,0.00,July 4th]
[appsale: 398348506,0.00,July 4th]
[appsale: 318366258,0.99,July 5th]
[appsale: 386568787,4.99,July 5th]
[appsale: 363998989,1.99,July 5th]
[appsale: 414566922,6.99,July 5th]
[appsale: 363727129,0.99,July 5th]
[appsale: 445291985,0.00]
[appsale: 438651813,0.00]
[appsale: 432878907,0.00]
[appsale: 432290484,0.00]
[appsale: 407947726,0.99]
[appsale: 406902586,0.00]
:: REAL FRUSTRATING :: Read Review »As I mentioned in a previous editorial, I believe that AirPlay Mirroring could be the way that Apple enters the home game console market. AirPlay Mirroring was barely mentioned as an iOS 5 feature at the most recent keynote, but it has the potential to make the biggest change in how we think of iOS.
As a quick reminder, AirPlay mirroring will allow your iPad 2 to transmit your iPad screen to your TV via a connected Apple TV, wirelessly. Anything you see on your iPad will be mirrored on your TV. This includes any animations, interactions, apps, movies, photos, and most importantly, games. It's not just for images, it's the full iPad experience mirrored to your TV.
As the video below shows, AirPlay Mirroring just works with current iOS applications that are enabled for tethered HDMI output using the adapter for iPad 2. And it works very well for an early beta. There are some things that need streamlining, but it's very impressive.
A huge thanks for Trevor at Apple'n'Apps for this video. It does a great job of showing the potential. After thinking about AirPlay Mirroring I was concerned that there would be considerable lag as the video was compressed and transmitted to the Apple TV. As we can see from the demo, lag seem to be fairly well mitigated and the responsiveness seems good.
We can also see that if games are developed like Real Racing 2 HD, they can provide full screen output on your TV, not just the 1024x768 window that you will see otherwise. Real Racing 2 HD looks absolutely amazing when output full screen on a TV. And I think this is just the beginning of what we will see. With this system, Apple is in a position to own the home console gaming market. And they are well on their way to owning the mobile market already with 200 million devices out there; this number overshadows even Nintendo with the DS.
And it looks like I'm not the only person to believe Apple is the future for gaming. Phil Harrison, former Sony boss, believes that if current growth levels continue, Apple is in a position to be the entire gaming industry within 10 years. In a recent interview with Edge Phil Harrison states:
At this trajectory, if you extrapolate the market-share gains that they are making, forward for ten years – if they carry on unrestrained in their growth, then there’s a pretty good chance that Apple will be the games industry.In the proliferation of devices – you’ve got iPhones, iPads, iPods, which are all part of the same ecosystem; the speed at which Apple sold 15 million iPads is phenomenal. And the number one activity on an iPad, according to some reports, is games, and I think that will only continue.
Whil the traditional console gaming companies have struggled to adapt to a more casual gaming market as well as electronic delivery, Apple continues set the bar. Apple seems to be hitting every point spot on, putting them in line to lead the gaming industry in the near future. And this upset of the current gaming leaders can not be underestimated - it's a huge shift. The story continues and I'm sure we'll be bringing you more soon.
The update to Flash Builder and Flex that allows developers to create mobile apps for iOS, Android, and even Playbook, has been in beta for a while now. You may remember there was even a bit of a brouhaha over it. But all that is behind us now, and Adobe have officially released the updated application development environments.
What this allows developers to do is use existing code for Flash and Flex applications, traditionally delivered via the web, to create mobile applications. If you develop your Flash/Flex application in the proper way this can be a huge time saving when targeting multiple platforms.
For more information on how to upgrade and what exactly this means for Flash Builder and Flex, take a look at the Adobe Flash Platform Blog for the details, links, and videos.
EA made a fairly big PR push, by EA Mobile standards, when their casual game studio 8 lb. Gorilla launched in July of 2009. The goal of the studio at that time was to produce a casual game every month. Unfortunately, in spite of the fairly good showing with their first game out of the gate, the simple, casual game Zombies and Me, 8 lb. Gorilla disappeared without a trace after just one game.
Over the following nearly 2 years I asked everyone I met from EA Mobile about 8 lb. Gorilla. No one knew what happened to the tiny ape. They seem to have just disappeared. That was until June 16th of this year, nearly 2 years later, when their second release came out.
EA has released Ghost Harvest, from the 8 lb. Gorilla studio. This is the first foray into the freemium space on iOS for EAand 8 lb. Gorilla are now the studio leading that push for EA. Speaking to others in the industry, everyone knew it freemium games were coming form EA, they just didn't know when or how it would appear.
Ghost Harvest is a fairly standard farming type game though told from a very different angle. In this one you harvest ghosts from graves (crops from fields) in your graveyard (farm) while building up XP and buying graves and dead bodies to fill them. It's an oddly morbid game for EA -- where you plant dead bodies and wait for their spirits to mature to the point that you can harvest them. Ghost Harvest is a free ad supported game, just like all the others in the style, with incentivized offerings from Tapjoy thrown in too. The one twist on the standard model is that there is a very simplified Plants vs. Zombies style defense game tacked on.
Overall the game seems rushed. Obviously 8 lb. Gorilla weren't spending two years on it. There's a frighteningly low animation cell count -- everything moves chunkily -- and non-retina level graphics are just below par these days. We know EA can do much better than this, perhaps this is just a feeler in the category. And is it just me or does the 8 lb. Gorilla logo look like a blue Donkey Kong?
[img id="MOAHack_LogoLoc_Lores-284x300.jpg"]If it's one thing I like it's a good hackathon. 148Apps is proud to be a media sponsor of the Muther of All Hackathons coming up next weekend in Mountain View, CA. The goal of this hackathon is quite ambitious, they hope to develop 100 mobile applications in just 24 hours! To help incentivize the developers there are over $100,000 in prizes already lined up. Including Macbooks, iPads, other devices, and even a trip to Mobile World Congress next year.
Head on over to the site for more details on the categories, judging, and prizes.
As a special promotion, we have 10 passes to give away to the Hackathon. The ticket price is a reasonable and geeky $42, but we can save you that $42. Leave a comment on this post on 148Apps.biz and we'll pick 10 lucky winners on Monday.
The Muther! of All Hackathons + DevCon
Friday, June 24 to Saturday, June 25, 2011
Computer History Museum
Mountain View, CA
WIPs Muther! of all Hackathon + DevCon is coming and YOU don’t want to miss it! This will be a real mashup where Hackathon meets DevCon in a fun, informative format! The real world doesn’t focus on a single technology, phone or solution, so neither will the Muther! Over $100k in prizes to be won!
Join hundreds of New developers, Experienced developers, Tool companies and Carriers, Investors and other mobile fanatics for a two day adventure of Master Classes, UnPanels, Coding, New APIs, Prizes, and more.Innovation trumps sleep. Always.
The awards which are chosen by Apple employees, celebrate apps that are great examples of design, innovation, and technical excellence. Whe winners of the ADAs receive a great trophy (pictured to the right) and a nice prize pack of Apple devices including an Air, iPad 2, and iPod touch.This years iOS winners include:
Student Category
iPhone Category
iPad Category
Congratulations to all of the winners!
[via GigaOm ]
Rather than just go down the feature list, we're going to post some thoughts on the new features and point you to places you can see full details on the new stuff.
First, we just posted about what is one of the largest features mentioned, that got very little attention. Apple is now firmly in the game console business by allowing iOS 5 games to be displayed, wirelessly from your device to your TV via the Apple TV. It will be huge.
iOS 5 New Features Look Familar...
The biggest new features shown of iOS 5 all looked more than a little familiar. There were many features in the new Camera app that looked like they could have been borrowed from Camera+. There's a new todo application called Reminders that could be any number of todo apps in the store. The updates to the Message app, now called iMessage, match the features of the Blackberry Messenger app (BBM), that we're shocked. Even the method for pulling down the notifications list comes straight from Android.
Now to be fair, these other platforms have "borrowed" from iOS as well. So all's fair I guess. And I'm still looking forward to the new features, they look fantastic. And will be nice to have some of the baked into the OS.
200 New Features in iOS 5
Some of the new features that stick out in my head most include photo editing features, Twitter integration (single sign on built into the OS), greatly improved notifications / widgets available anywhere, great new mail features, PC-free setup, and apparently 200 more.
For a full list of new features, check out the official list at Apple. It's got a good roundup and includes a lot of screens and details not mentioned in the keynote.
iOS 5 should be available for all devices in beta, for developers today. It will ship to consumers in the fall.
Video!
Apple has posted a slickly produced video highlighting some of the new features of iOS 5. Or, you can watch the recorded version of the keynote right on the Apple site.
Oh yeah, and there's iCloud. This turned out to be a much greater solution than we were originally expecting to see. Full wireless syncing of your app data, calendar, contacts, email, todos. Even music, photos, and we assume videos (which weren't mentioned) as well. And even bigger, apps! Download a new app on your iPad and, if you turn the feature on, it will also be downloaded to your iPhone.
Besides data syncing for built-in iOS apps, what this means is that, once fully developed and supported by developers, you'll be able to sync data between devices for apps as well. Finish a level on Angry Birds on your iPhone at lunch, that level status will be synced to Angry Birds on your iPad when you get home.
There's a lot more to this than we can cover in this wrap up. Apple has posted a few more details on iCloud on their site.
iCloud will be free for up to 5 GB of data. We assume there will be a way to pay for more storage, but this wasn't announced.
iTunes in the Cloud
The iCloud music features, labeled iTunes in the Cloud, let you sync you iTunes purchases on up to 10 devices. Apple also made available a paid service, iTunes Match, for $24.99 per year. This service will match songs you have ripped from other sources like CDs, Amazon.com, etc. and enjoy them in iTunes and it's 18 million downloadable tracks. All upgraded to 256k AAC. Very nice, and a great deal for $24.99 per year.
Summary
There was a ton announced today. An amazing number of new features for iOS, Lion, and iCloud. So many that they are still digesting. I can't wait to get my hands on these features.
If you aren't familiar with HDMI mirroring on the iPad, it's a feature that lets you plug in an cable into a special adapter on your iPad 2 and display your screen on an HDTV. This feature is great for use in classrooms and has even seen some play in games as well with Firemint using this feature to allow 1080p output on your TV from their Real Racing 2 HD via mirroring. But, you are tethered to the TV with a cable.
So, what's AirPlay mirroring then, you ask? According to Apple, "AirPlay® Mirroring to wirelessly display everything you do on your iPad 2 right on your HDTV through Apple TV®." To me, that means with an iPad 2, you'll be able to do that mirroring without a cable. That means anything you see on your iPad 2, you will be able to see on an Apple TV. Let that sink in and then think using that feature for games.
This means that any game you play on your iPad 2, you'll be able to play on your TV, wirelessly. Yes, wirelessly. You launch Angry Birds on your iPad 2 and the Angry Birds screen will show up on your TV. Boom, instant game console with $0.99 game downloads.
To control the game, you would use the iOS device as the controller. The Apple TV becomes the cheapest console out there at $99 with the largest game library at nearly 100,000 games. Your iPad 2 becomes your controller, albeit a very expensive one. We can assume that this feature will also be available in the next iPhone and iPod touch, once their processors and memory are upgraded and on parity with the iPad 2.
Let's wrap that all up together, and it means that you can consider the Apple TV to be firmly in the game console market now. This is huge! I can't stress enough how much of a game changer this is for the gaming world.
Sony, Nintendo, or Microsoft should be worried. They have all been rather slow to adopt downloadable games, now Apple has gone and made it easy and cheap. If Apple does to the console market what they have done to the mobile software market, they should be very worried. The Apple TV, which started out as Steve Jobs hobby, could turn out to be the most popular home game and entertainment console around.
Outfit7 must be the most downloaded app company on the App Store with well over 100 million downloads across all of their apps. Their series of talking animal apps are hugely successful with kids and adults alike.
Andrej Nabergoj, Outfit7's CEO remarked "With more than 55 million downloads and a cameo on ABC's hit Modern Family, it's clear that Talking Tom Cat has fans around the world eager to see how his character & story will evolve,Talking Tom Cat 2 not only offers a new look and story for Tom but also makes it really easy and appealing for people to create and share their stories. We are really about empowering our users to become story-tellers themselves through original characters and creative interactions."
Amazing success. While these apps are not the kind of app we generally report on, the amazing success has to be noted. Congratulations Outfit7!
The App Store was all quiet on July 10, 2008, with just five hundred applications to its name. But that all changed with the iPhone’s growth in both consumer and business markets, as well as the creation of the iPod Touch and iPad. This week Apple approved the 500,000th application, in a sign of stellar strength that defied the global financial crisis. “It’s amazing to see the growth of the iOS App Store” writes 148Apps Founder Jeff Scott. “Very few devices will ever see 500,00 applications created for it. But to see this many created in less than three years is astonishing.”
In recognition of the App Store’s latest milestone, we’ve teamed up with App Store search service Chomp and game developer Chillingo, to bring you contests and giveaways aplenty in the upcoming months. We’ve also created a special info-graphic to mark the occasion. Click here for all the details.
148Apps will be coming to this year’s Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), and if you’re a developer, we’d love to meet you. Got a new game or application in the works? Schedule a meeting with Jeff Scott here.
The Editor’s Choice badge this week was awarded to Tower Defense: Lost Earth, for its five star graphics and sound, as well as a flawless user interface. “[This game is] one that genre loves and armchair generals should not miss” quips Rob Rich, a contributing writer with the 148Apps network. “Even people who don’t generally care for tower defense games might want to give it a try ... it’s certainly won this jaded nitpicker over.” Tower Defense is available to purchase for $2.99. Read the full review here.
Favorite Four took a turn to video this week, with writer Kevin Stout examining the top four free applications that provide video content on-demand. Crackle, SnagFilms, ABC Player and TED all made the mix, with BBC iPlayer getting a special mention for our UK users. Episode 86 of The Portable Podcast is also available to download, featuring guests Alex Fateyev from A-Steroids and Brett O’Brien from Viddy. Host Carter Dotson discusses their applications, Vampire Rush and Viddy.
In a final piece of news this week, Apple issued a response to the recent controversy created by Lodsys’ patent claims of in-app purchases. Presently, Apple pay a license fee for the use of in-app purchases, an idea originally thought of, and patented by, Lodsys. The company has spoken to a number of App Store developers, claiming that, without proper licensing, they are in violation of patent laws. Apple’s response? “There is no basis for Lodsys’ infringement allegations against Apple’s App Makers.” Read all about it right here.
That’s all for this week - and remember, keep an eye out for frequent contents and giveaways in celebration of the App Store’s unmatched milestone.
