Apple launches App Store Resource Center to ease submissions

Apple has created a new section on its site dedicated to iPhone developers that documents important details about the iPhone submission process.

The new App Store Resource Center within Apple’s iPhone Dev Center site is now live, providing access to much needed information detailing the App Store submission process.

According to Apple’s e-mail communication dispatched to registered iPhone developers this past Friday, the new online content assists developers with submitting and managing their iPhone apps.

Christian’s Opinion

We finally see Apple addressing the mounting criticism aimed at the App Store application process. The new resource center is an important step towards making the application process less painful and more transparent. Frankly, one would have expected this resource center back in March 2008, when Apple first announced the iPhone SDK and created a comprehensive online destination for iPhone developers dubbed the iPhone Dev Center.

Although the iPhone Dev Center has been providing a myriad of invaluable content to would-be iPhone developers, important details about the submission process have never been made public until now. However, the most important piece of the puzzle is still missing - the review process policies. Until Apple publicly documents its internal policies that govern the iPhone review process, the company will be bashed heavily each time it rejects an app over dubious claims.

Source:http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/

Apple May Be Highest Grossing Fifth Avenue Retailer

As vacancies increase and retail sales throughout the U.S. remain a shadow of the decade’s boom, Apple Inc.’s stores are defying the recession.

At Fifth Avenue and Fifty-Ninth Street, the noon-day line on Aug. 11 snaked out the front door. More than a dozen people waited to buy an iPhone, which runs from $99 to $299, plus at least another $70 a month for a service plan. Every computer, seat and station was occupied by a visitor to midtown Manhattan.

Apple, based in Cupertino, California, increased revenue at its stores by 2.5 percent in the first six months of the year to $3 billion as the rest of the retail industry suffered. During the same period, sales at all U.S. retailers fell 9.2 percent compared with the first half of 2008, according to the U.S. Commerce Department.

Retail sales in New York City have fallen 8 percent to 10 percent from comparable 2008 levels, according to the Federal Reserve’s Beige Book business survey published July 29.

“Even if they are not spending money elsewhere, people are still spending money on technology gadgets,” said Patricia Edwards, a retail analyst and founder of Storehouse Partners LLC in Bellevue, Washington. “It’s both a need and a want. It fulfills that retail-therapy component.”

Apple’s store performance in the last year has been driven by the iPhone, according to Charlie Wolf, an analyst who covers Apple at Needham & Co. in New York. The retail operation saw a 22 percent increase in traffic during the quarter ended June 27, hosting a total of 38.6 million visitors, Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said on a conference call in July.


By:Allison Abell Schwartz and Oshrat Carmiel

Read Full Story On :http://www.bloomberg.com/apps

Apple Adds Online Purchase of IPhone 3G for New Customers

At long last, you can now buy an iPhone 3G via the online Apple Store and have it hand-delivered by your local FedEx guy directly to your domicile--presuming you meet certain criteria.

It's been a long and bumpy road for buying the iPhone 3G online. When the device was first launched in July 2008, the only way to get your hands on one was to go in to your local Apple Store or AT&T outlet. In September of last year, Apple started letting customers use its online store to reserve an iPhone at their local Apple Store; the process worked for both those customers new to AT&T as well as existing subscribers. But you still had to make a trip to your local brick-and-mortar to get your hands on the unit, and availability was not guaranteed.

Last December, AT&T started offering online purchases of the iPhone and since then it has also, from time to time, sold refurbished units. Regardless of where you purchased the iPhone, however, you were still required to sign up for a two-year commitment with AT&T.

By contrast, in 2007 the original iPhone was available for sale online at the same time that it arrived in stores. The was made possible by the ability for customers to activate their iPhones via iTunes at home; with the iPhone 3G, Apple and AT&T in most cases insisted upon activating the unit in the store.

Despite the addition of online purchasing Wednesday, there are still some restrictions. For example, while new customers can have their iPhones delivered, the process doesn't currently accommodate existing AT&T customers; they can go through the sign-up process online, but they will still have to pick up the iPhone at a retail store.

As always, we expect this to provide ample fodder for Apple conspiracy theorists on both sides: those who will claim that this illustrates an attempt to boost unit sales that were down sequentially last quarter, and those who will point to this as an obvious indication that Apple is clearing out inventory in advance of introducing a new model this summer.

While it does seem likely that there's some reason Apple chose to do this now, we're inclined to believe that the wheels of progress grind exceedingly slow, especially when AT&T is in the mix.

Source: www.pcworld.com

Nokia and Apple go head-to-head with latest app store plans

The battle of the app stores continues to heat up, with Nokia promising that its forthcoming Ovi Store will go live with about 10,000 items, while Apple is under fire again for saying it will only consider products based on the new iPhone 3.0 software for App Store. However, the new release does open up a wide range of new APIs, which could spark an even greater wave of developer activity for the handset.

Nokia told Forbes magazine that Ovi Store will have 20,000 apps at launch, making it the second largest after Apple's. This will certainly top Android Market's launch with just 50, and RIM's with a few hundred, though is well short of the iPhone's current tally. Key differentiators, says Nokia, will be a heavy focus on entertainment and video; the ability for users to personalize the choices with which they are presented; and extensive use of the store to distribute new Nokia software updates as well as apps.

Meanwhile, despite its popularity with users, the App Store continues to excite controversy among developers. The latest way that Apple has succeeded in getting their backs up is the announcement that it will only now review applications that are compatible with iPhone 3.0 as well as the current iPhone 2.2.1 OS. Any software currently in the Store that does not run properly on 3.0 will be removed, Apple told programmers on Thursday. iPhone 3.0 will be released to the public some time this summer, probably with new phone models too.

According to ArsTechnica, many developers are concerned. Apple said existing apps should run on the new OS without modification, but many have found otherwise, and fear their wares may be ejected from the Store even before 3.0 devices appear. One fear expressed by various programmers is that the move from 2.x to 3.0 changes parts of the ABI (application binary interface), which could cause problems for software that uses static libraries built using the 2.x toolkit.

To make matters worse, until developers are released from non-disclosure agreements about 3.0, they cannot put apps in the Store that are based on the new OS release or use 3.0 specific features, threatening a hiatus period in revenue terms until the unspecified date when the new platform goes live.

In other Apple news, a recently spotted job ad suggests Apple may be planning a PC with embedded 3G, and possibly even a netbook, despite scathing remarks made about the form factor by Steve Jobs and other Apple executives. The ad calls for a quality assurance engineer with experience in "3G and/or Wireless WAN".

And AT&T is reported to be planning to cut the iPhone's monthly services plan by $10 when new models appear, to keep it competitive against a wave of new upcoming phones. This would make the entry level data service plan for the device $59, down from $69, and reduce the cost of the two-year contract by $240. Currently, AT&T subscribers spend $1,856 over the life of their deal. The new deal could accompany a much rumored cutdown iPhone or 'iPhone Nano'.

Read More here:http://www.rethink-wireless.com/?article_id=1354

Apple Appstore nearing 1 Billion download

And so is nearly everything else. On Friday, Apple unveiled a Web page dedicated to tracking the number of downloads for the iPhone and iPod Touch until the company hits a billion downloads. Just four months ago, in January, the company announced it had surpassed 500,000 downloads.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/apples-app-store-nears-one-billion-served/