2 years ago today Apple launched the iTunes App Store and it’s safe to say the mobile world hasn’t been the same since.

1 year ago the iTunes App Store had 1+ billion downloads and 56,000+ apps, added turn-by-turn navigation, in-app purchases, and other new features.

Today there’s 5+ billion downloads and 225,000+ apps (including over 8500+ ipad apps), along with $1 billion paid out to developers, iAds, and multitask, among other things.

And it shows no sign of slowing down.

There are still issues with the app approval process to be sure, and Apple has wedged HTML5 every so slightly into the app spotlight. Never mind every competing OS, manufacturer, and carrier is falling all over themselves (and each other) to launch and grow app stores of their own — and some like Google’s and Palm’s are showing ever increasing and innovating results.

Overall, however, with the gateway device that is the iPod touch, the mobile mainstream converger that is the iPhone, and the bigger world that is the iPad, if anything it’s getting faster.

What will we see next, iOS apps on a new Apple TV? Replacing Dashboard and Front Row on the Mac? And what will Apple bring next March is iOS 5?

Jeff Scott from 148apps thinks iOS could hit 35 billion downloads next year. That sounds crazy, but 5 billion sounded crazy just a couple years ago. (And if it’s true, I think we’re going to need a bigger cake.)

So happy birthday iTunes App Store, congratulations on 2 great years. We can’t wait to see what you’ve got in store for us next.

Happy 2nd Birthday iTunes App Store! is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

The class action lawsuit against AT&T’s US iPhone exclusivity has been certified, which means a judge thinks it meets the legal requirements to go forward. If you remember back, The crux of suit states that customer contracts are 2 years, but the AT&T exclusivity is 5 years — so customers were falsely lured to AT&T for 5 years, not 2 — if they want to keep iPhones, that is. The lawsuit seeks to include all current AT&T iPhone customers.

Now, whether or not that original 5 year exclusivity has changed over the past few years is anyone’s guess — the only people who know that for sure are the AT&T and Apple higher ups that sign the contracts. In this day and age, contracts change constantly.

My opinion? I don’t know if a court will buy this as falsely leading on customers. Most carriers don’t ever specify how long their exclusivity deals are, it’s all hearsay until they announce it. Yes, the iPhone deal is unique in length (I don’t believe any carrier has ever had an exclusive anywhere even close to the length AT&T scored with Apple), but I don’t necessarily know if I believe it misleads customers. When the first iPhone was released, the 5 year deal was already publicized, even if it was hearsay, and people still bought iPhones. And honestly, if you get an iPhone, no one’s forcing you to get another one. If you upgrade and lock yourself in, that’s pretty much your decision, your hand isn’t forced.

We’ll watch this one but I personally don’t think it will go very far.

[Engadget]

Lawsuit over AT&T iPhone Exclusivity Could See a Courtroom After All is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Geohot has updated his blog to let us know that he’s apparently jailbroken his iPhone 4 in less than one day.  There’s a little caveat though — he’s said he probably won’t release it.  Well I guess my question is, what’s the point in posting it up then?  Most people are familiar with Geohot’s blackra1n and purplera1n jailbreak tools.  They were simple and downright easy.

He also took the time to mention the rumors of limera1n.com — basically stating that it’s no more than a waterdrop on the web and he’s never mentioned it before, so don’t read too much into it.  My opinion? A picture of Cydia on an iPhone 4 is pretty unconvincing.  He certainly has the skills and the record to find an exploit and jailbreak iPhone 4, but why no video, and why no seeming interest in releasing it?

To say the least, the reason for the post is confusing.

As for now, we’ve got PwnageTool 4.0.1 for iOS4, but iPhone 4 users are going to have to wait a while longer.  I guess we’ll see what the Dev Team and Spirit developers come up with.

[ Geohot]

iPhone 4 Jailbreak – In theory? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Want to chat with random strangers via your iPhone 4 front-facing camera, and expose yourself to every hope and horror that entails? Well, yeah, you guessed it — there’s now an app for that (and we’re guessing, like LED flashlights, there’ll be many soon enough).

Given the demographics you’re more likely to end up face-to-facing a pant-less Mosspuppet [YouTube link - NSFW!] than an anything-less Angelina Jolie, but you launch your app and you take your chances, and you can always swipe to go to someone else.

As always, if you try it out let us know — in G-rated terms — how it works for you.

[iTunes link, thanks to everyone who sent this in.]

iChatr brings “chat-roulette” action to iPhone 4 is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Blogshelf for the iPad is an RSS reader that displays your feeds as magazines on a shelf. Imagine iBooks filled with blogs – that’s Blogshelf. This reader is visually appealing and works great.

When you open Blogshelf, you are presented with 3 shelves filled with your favorite blogs designed to look like magazines. In addition to the blog’s name, the “front cover” displays the title and main photo of the most recent story for that blog.

When selecting a blog, the stories are displayed in a nice list view with a photo to left of each story. Again, if that story doesn’t have a picture, one of Blogshelf’s photos are displayed instead. If you have selected any stories as a favorite, you can tap the heart on the menu bar to see list of your favorite entries. This menu bar can be hidden by swiping down or tapping once anywhere on the screen.

Most blogs will allow viewing of entire articles, but there are a few (like Apple Insider) that do not. I found this to be extremely rare, though. When viewing a reading a story, there are links at the top to view in Safari or to view the original article in the app itself. The stories are displayed very nicely with just photos, videos and text. YouTube videos can be watched in the articles or expanded to full screen.

To subscribe to a blog, tap on “subscribe” from the Blogshelf. The shelf then spins around and brings you to something similar to the iBookstore. Blogshelf has many blogs available to quickly subscribe to by searching for featured blogs or by category. Unfortunately, TiPb (your favorite blog) isn’t listed under any of the categories, but, you can do a quick search to find all of our feeds.

Blogshelf is an excellent RSS reader for the iPad. However, if you are a Google Reader user, Blogshelf does not have a way to import your feeds. So if that is really important to you, Blogshelf isn’t for you. But for everyone else, if you looks and style are important to you, I recommend picking this one up!

Pros

• Nice interface
• Very Apple-like
• Offline viewing
• Search blogs by feature and category
• Adjust font and brightness

Cons

• Cannot import from Google Reader
• Thumbnails don’t always load correctly
• TiPb isn’t included in the technology or Apple categories!

[$4.99 - iTunes link]

Blogshelf for iPad – app review is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Given the iTunes account hacks last week, and again yesterday, we figured it was a good time to go over the basic ways you can reduce the chances of having your own iTunes — or any other — account hacked.

Sure, many of you regular readers already know all this, but take it as an opportunity to forward the link on to friends, family, and co-workers who might not.

Note, we’re not security experts, these are just the tips and tricks we use to make our own accounts more secure, and some of the things we’ve learned — sometimes the hard ware — to avoid.

Weak passwords

A weak password is one that’s easy to guess, never mind actually spend time and effort hacking. Avoid them at all costs.

Don’t

1. Don’t use the word password as your password
2. Don’t use your username as your password or your email address or name. You want your username and password to be as different from each other as possible
3. Don’t use words as you password. Simple, short, really easy to remember also means really easy to guess.
4. Don’t use the same password for every site. If they guess it for one, they guess it for all your logins.

Do

1. Use a mix of lower case and upper case, numbers, letters, and symbols
2. Make it as long as you can. 10 characters should be enough if you’re not guarding James Bond-level secrets.
3. Make it a phrase so it’s easy to remember but still hard to guess. Here are some examples: TheiPh0neBl0g!, iP@d-L1ve-?
4. Add some variation for each major site. If you’re worried about remembering it, keep it relative. For example, you could add the first 2 characters of the domain name to the beginning or or end of your password. (TiMyP@ssw0rd, MyL0g1n_Am, etc.)

Using a short phrase gives you a good length of characters but is easier to remember than a random string. Capitalizing the words lets you vary the case, putting dashes or underscores between words and/or replacing some letters with similar looking numbers or symbols gives it a lot of strength without making it much harder to remember. Adding a little variation means if they somehow still get one, they don’t get them all.

Phishing/Social engineering (i.e. the con)

The easiest way to get anyone’s password is to ask them for it. Get in the habit of never, ever, answering. No reputable company will ever ask you for your password, even for their site. Apple will never, ever ask you for your iTunes password.

They won’t ask you to tell them your password. They won’t send you an email with a link telling you to click it and login to your account, verify your account, or change your password. (And if they do, they shouldn’t — ignore it anyway). And iTunes accounts are managed in the iTunes application, not on webpages. Don’t ever enter your iTunes password on a web page (it’s most likely fake).

Don’t

1. Give anyone your password, ever. If you wouldn’t give them the keys to your house or your wallet, don’t give them the password connected to your credit card and personal information.
2. Click a link in an email that takes you to a web page that wants you to put in your password. Even if it says it’s about an order or purchase you made, even it looks 100% legitimate, it could easily be a fake.
3. Tell anyone your password if they call you on the phone, even if they say they work for iTunes or an internet site you use.

Do

1. Go to websites directly in your browser by typing in the name yourself. Google is probably fine, actually typing in amazon.com is even better.
2. If you get an email telling you to verify your account or order, close the email, launch your browser, type in the name of the website yourself, then go to your account or order status and see if it’s true.
3. If you get a phone call about an internet site you use, hang up, go to the internet site, find their contact information, and call them back. It’s a hassle but at least you’ll know who you’re talking to.

Malware (Viruses, Spyware, etc.)

The above is all good, general purpose advise that will prevent most of the common ways your iTunes — or any other account — could be hacked. The nastier stuff involves viruses that infect your computer and spyware that tries to steal your information.

If you’re running Windows, make sure you’re also running Windows Update religiously, have a good anti-virus and anti-malware program installed (Microsoft’s free internet security suite is great), and keep following the advice above (especially the advice about not clicking links in emails).

Here’s where we apologize for scaring you slightly — there’s all sorts of nasty stuff out on the internet. If you visit sketchy websites, get your music, movies, and software from less than legitimate online sources, etc. you probably know the dangers already, but bad guys can infect even good sites so it pays to always be careful. DNS cache poisoning, keystroke loggers, man-in-the-middle attacks, and similar dangers are out there just waiting to try to separate you from your credit card information.

Don’t

1. Fall behind in your Windows updates. They’ll patch exploits and remove malicious software.
2. Go to sketchy websites. Nothing is truly for free in this world. If they’re offering you free music, movies, software, products, and yes, even porn, chances are they want something in return — and that something could be to infect your PC.
3. There has even been malware inserted into cracked Mac software — don’t assume an Apple logo on your PC makes you bullet proof.

Do

1. Set Windows Update to run automatically.
2. Make sure your firewall is up, you’re running anti-virus and anti-spyware (again, Microsoft’s free stuff is great), and you’re behind a router (like your Wi-Fi router).
3. Know where you download your files and software from. If you don’t explicitly trust the source, don’t download it.

If you think you’ve been infected, if you haven’t been doing your updates or you have been visiting sketchy websites, if you system is running slower than it ought to be, if things popup randomly or start and stop working all the time without explanation, do yourself a favor — find the smartest, tech savvy-est family member, friend, or co-worker you can and have them take a look at your PC.

Worst case scenario, if you’re infected, they can help you back up your data, re-format clean, and re-install your system. Then lock it down with automatic updates and that anti-virus and anti-malware software we mentioned above, and help you reset your passwords.

Use your iPhone and/or iPad

Hey, since we’re an iPhone and iPad site, we’ll just mention that — so far — you’re safer doing your internet browsing and shopping on an iPhone or iPad than you are a Windows PC.

It absolutely won’t protect you from weak passwords or phishing scams but as of this writing there isn’t the malware — virus and spyware — problem on iOS that there is on Windows. And while iPhone and iPad can’t do everything a computer can do, they can do a good portion of the most common things.

There are also a lot of dedicated apps you can use instead of the internet, including the iTunes and App Store apps. Those are currently harder to fake.

Conclusion

This is our best advice, to the best of our current knowledge. We can be wrong and things can change fast. Luckily a lot of smart people read TiPb and there’s a good chance they’ll correct, expand, and update what’s written here in the comments below. We’ll agree to weed out anything off-topic if you’ll agree to give them a quick glance for important new information, deal?

How to minimize the chance of your iTunes account being hacked is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Tweetings for iPhone is a full featured Twitter client complete with push notifications.  Last week we looked at the iPad version of Tweetings, so this week we’ll look at the iPhone version.  In many ways, it’s very similar.  The layout is extremely similar and it also offers things such as push notifications.  The iPhone version also adds themes into the mix as well.

It’s definitely a worthy contender against the big guys like Twitter for iPhone (formerly Tweetie) and Twitteriffic.  Read on for screens, a feature run down, and how you can win a copy of Tweetings for iPhone from TiPb!

Much like the iPad version of Tweetings, the iPhone version includes features such as list support, combined direct messages, support for iOS4, push notifications, now playing support, and FaceBook integration. It also adds themes into the mix. There are a total of seven themes to choose from. They are silver, carbon (dark), plain, speech bubbles (glossy), speech bubbles (matte), shadows, and shadows evolved. I’m a fan of shadows evolved as it’s simple but clean. It adds subtle gradients. Themes are, of course, a matter of personal preference. I’m a fan of simple and clean. I’ve never been a fan of the themes within Twittelator Pro as they seem to always be overdone. Even making my own, I can never get something quite “simple” enough for my liking. It may just be the layout that doesn’t do it for me. I just want to be able to access what I need, when I need it without having to search or dig through menus.

For those of you who didn’t read my iPad review, Tweetings has built-in push notifications. I tested this against Boxcar and the results were pretty good. At some points Boxcar would chime in a little ahead and vice versa with Tweetings sometimes pushing to me quicker. My conclusion was that it probably just depended on how loaded the servers were. They were pretty much neck and neck.

You also have support for services like Instapaper, you can configure them right from within your settings. Your settings panel can be accessed either within app or through your general iPhone settings.

Viewing user’s profiles within Tweetings is simple enough and allows you options like follow and unfollow as well as showing you their bio and their location (if they’ve chosen to share this).

Another feature I like about Tweetings is combined timelines, which allows you to view a conversation between any 2 people you choose. If someone tags you in a tweet and you aren’t sure why, you can always use the combined timeline feature to figure out where you came into the conversation.

Overall, Tweetings for iPhone is an incredibly decent Twitter client with an awesome developer that completely backs their work. You can always contact the developer with questions or concerns via Twitter via the handle @Tweetingsapp.

Pros

• Built in push notifications
• Great developer support
• Frequent updates
• Good theme selection
• Pull down to refresh

Cons

• Sometimes a little laggy when scrolling (most of these seemed to be fixed in the last update, only when scrolling rather quickly does this happen)
• Some clients out there are just as good for a bit cheaper, if Boxcar hadn’t of went free, Tweetings would be ahead due to native push
• Sometimes crashes after changing a theme or using the nearby feature, hopefully this will be fixed in an update

Overall, I think the iPad version is a bit more polished and stable, so hopefully the iPhone version will receive the same polish in a coming update.  The developer is very supportive and seems to update often.  If you’re looking for a good Twitter client (or you’re like me and are completely shallow about Twitter clients), give it a shot (but first enter our giveaway to see if you can get your hands on one courtesy of TiPb and Tweetings!).  If you do, or already have it, let us know in the comments.

Giveaway!

Alright, last week we gave away 5 Tweetings for iPad promo codes and this week we’re giving away 5 Tweetings for iPhone codes! How do you go about getting your hands on one you ask? Just leave a comment. Yep, that’s it. It can be why you want a copy of Tweetings or what Twitter client you’re currently using, anything you want really, or just to say hi! Just make sure you use a valid e-mail address you check when leaving your comment. Next week we’ll pick 5 of you randomly to receive Tweetings code. And keep in mind, this week’s codes are for the iPhone version only, not iPad. Good luck and happy tweeting!

[US iTunes App Store account required to redeem Promo Codes -- Apple's rule, not TiPb's -- and they expire so if you get one, use it quickly!]

YouTube Link

Tweetings for iPhone – App Review and Giveaway! is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog