An article was recently published that estimates Apple’s current profit from the over 1 billion applications that have been downloaded from it’s iPhone OS App Store is approximately $20-45 million. This is much lower than the estimated $1.2 billion in App sales for 2009 that some analysts have projected. With an estimated ratio for paid to free apps as anywhere from 1:15 or as high as 1:45, and the weighted average app price of less than $2, it doesn’t look like the App Store is the golden egg for many developers. In fact, with about 60,000 registered iPhone developers, the average income for them is roughly $3,000. With many of the applications taking many people multiple months to work on them, this is definately not as profitable as some had hoped. Although this is just the average of an estimated number, but it shows that user’s aren’t willing to spend all that much money on software after their initial hardware purchase.

The fellows at Team XBox have released an article claiming that Microsoft is working on a new handheld device that will contain features of the Zune portable music player, as well as be some sort of XBox video game device. They claim that many anonymous sources have spoken with them about the upcoming device, with one person using the term ‘xYz’ refering to the device being a meld of the XBox and Zune devices. The new device could also be used as a phone, which would place it as a direct competitor to the iPhone and iPod touch devices. If this device does come out with superior gaming and other capabilities, it could actually give Apple a run for it’s money. And even if this exact product never sees the light of day, NVidia and Microsoft have officially announced that they are working on a partnership to bring NVidia’s line of new graphics chips for mobile platforms to Windows Mobile devices before any other smart phone platform. I think its safe to say that Microsoft is definitely cooking up something to go up against Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch.

If you’ve tried to download items from iTunes on your iPhone over a cellular connection then you probably know that there is a 10 MB file limit imposed by Apple. That means that most video podcasts and some audio podcasts and songs must be downloaded via WiFi. Well if your like me then this is a major nuisaance. Well your in luck because we’ve found a way to stream items like podcasts and video podcasts via cellular connection no matter how large the file is.

What you do in order to bypass this download limit and stream files of any size is first go to iTunces like you normally would. Then you select the podcast that you want to stream. But when you go the the listing of episodes, don’t tap the download button. Instead, tap on the title of the item and it will load in a QuickTime player. While this isn’t the most convienent way to get these items, it definately works in a pinch. In fact, when you don’t have access to a WiFi connection, this is the only way that you can even access material over 10 MB.

Apple has come up with a new line of TV commercials featuring the now famous Mac and PC guys.  One of them features the duo as they always are, side by side on a plain background.  As soon as the PC starts to talk, some text appears at the bottom of the screen in typical legal fine print fashion.

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Here’s an excerpt of what the fine print really says:

Please note that why you receive your PC there is some suggested work that needs to be done before PCs can perform at their peak.  These steps include, but are not limited to, downloading and installing necessary drivers for peripherals.  These drivers may include printers, scanners, cameras, storage devices, music players, and other media devices.  There may be more depending on your needs.  It is also recommended that first time users remove all unneeded bloatware and remove all optional components.  To remove unneeded bloatware first open uninstaller, select applications to remove, and uninstall…

Next time I go to buy a computer I will keep this in mind, LOL

Apple, Inc. has recently released the newest version of its popular web browsing software.  Safari 4 offers many improvements over previous versions, including many performance enhancements.  For example, the “Nitro engine” in the newest version of Safari runs JavaScript over 4 times faster than the previous version of Safari.  Safari version 4.0 also executes JavaScript up to 30 times faster than IE 7 and more than three times faster than Firefox 3.  Safari loads HTML web pages three times faster than IE 7 and almost three times faster than Firefox 3.

Some of the new features in Safrai 4 include things such as ‘Top Sites’, for a neat visual representation of the user’s most frequently visited pages; ‘Cover Flow’, a feature that allows the user to easily flip through web history or bookmarks like album covers in iTunes; and ‘Tabs on Top’, which makes tabbed browsing easier and more intuitive than ever before; and ‘Full Page Zoom’, which allows for a closer look at a website without degradation of quality.  To some (such as myself) one of the most welcome new feature in Safari 4 also features built in developer’s tools that help with the development of web pages.

Apple’s newest browser, Safari 4, offers support for innovative new web standards including HTML 5 and CSS 3, which allow for new feature-rich web applications with media, graphics and fonts.  Safari 4 is the first browser that supports advanced CSS Effects, which allow web developers the use of reflections, gradients, precision masks, and many other tools that allow for awesome looking web content. Safari 4 is also the first browser to that has passed the Web Standards Project’s Acid3 test that examines how well a browser adheres to web standards.

Safari 4 is built on Apple’s WebKit, the world’s fastest and most advanced browser engine.  WebKit is an open source project that aims to create the world’s best browser engine as well as advance the adoption of new web standards.  Recently, WebKit has led the way for the introduction of the new HTML 5 and CSS 3 web standards.  Many of the industry’s newest browsers are based on WebKit including Google Chrome, the Google Android browser, the Nokia Series 60 browser and Palm webOS.