In app purchase now available for free apps

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: App Store News, Free Apps

It took Apple a while, but finally, in-app purchases are allowed to be used in free apps. Why is this exciting? Well, previously, only apps that had a price were allowed to include an in-app purchase model. That means that games like Tap Tap Revenge 3 has to cost at least $.99 if the developer wanted to sell you add-on packs. This is also the reason that you see so many demo, or “Lite” versions of apps in the App Store. Now, you can download a demo version of an app, and upgrade to the full version while playing the free version. We’d love to see apps like Shoot It! get on board with this as well, as we think the freemium model is the sweet spot in the App Store.

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Spotify streaming music app coming to iPhone

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Music, App Store News, New Apps

Hey, streaming subscription music fans, it looks like Spotify has finally been approved by Apple, and it will be appearing in the App Store shortly. You may not realize how big a deal this is at first glance, but trust me, this is huge. Spotify is a service that gives you all-you-can-eat access to music for a set fee each month. The app appearing on the iPhone and iPod touch means that you can use another store besides iTunes to listen to, and download, music. Yes, Spotify even lets you listen to downloaded tracks if you are offline. This is a game-changer, and we look forward to getting our hands on Spotify once it is released!

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Apple App Store passes one billion downloads

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: App Store News, Apple

If you had any doubt of the success of Apple‘s App Store, the fact that one billion apps have been downloaded in nine months should be enough to change your opinion. At 1:52 pm today, the App Store officially sold its 1,000,000,000th app for the iPhone and iPod touch platforms. As exciting as that is, we have the iPhone 3.0 SDK currently in beta, which will allow apps with new capabilities that aren’t yet available. Exciting times.

Read More | Apple

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iPhone 3.0: Some apps currently incompatible [UPDATED]

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Entertainment, App Store News, Free Apps

We know, there was a lot of excitement surrounding the iPhone 3.0 beta release yesterday, and tons of people rushed to upgrade. However, now we are seeing some of the negatives that are starting to creep up. Sure, the keyboard can be a bit sluggish in some apps, and MMS isn’t working at the moment, whatev on those. What really sucks, though, is the fact that there are some apps that will just flat out refuse to run install. Case in point, the new Fandango app. If you try to install it on your 3.0-enabled iPhone, you’ll get a message telling you that the application isn’t compatible, and that it requires the iPhone 2.2.1 software update. We aren’t feeling that, because we wanna get our Fandango on!

Let us know if you find any other apps that choke on iPhone 3.0.

Update: Looks like the problem here is with installing from the App Store directly on the iPhone. We just tried downloading and installing Fandango using iTunes, and it works swimmingly. Keep that in mind.

[Thanks, Tyler!]

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Apple announces that 500 million apps have been downloaded

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: App Store News, Apple

Okay, look, if you are still a hater who is of the mindset that the iPhone is no big deal, today’s news out of Apple should seriously put all that to rest. This morning, the company announced that there have been 500 million apps downloaded from the App Store. With all the iPhone and iPod touch owners out there snapping these things up, it really comes as no surprise to us - especially considering that you can get some really great software for free, or for as little as $0.99.

Good on them, we say. Now can we get a few more pages allowed in the iPhone home screen area? We are three downloads away from completely filling our 9 pages, no doubt.

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