Facebook 3.0.1 for iPhone [Free - iTunes link], which fixes some bugs found in Facebook 3.0, is now being served piping hot and ready from the iTunes App Store.
(And wow but can Apple approve fast in some cases?!)
Every week a few of us from team TiPb, bloggers and forum crew alike, will bring you our current favorite, funnest, most useful App Store apps, WebApps, jailbreak apps, even the occasional accessory, web site, or desktop app if the mood strikes us. As long as they're iPhone (or iPod touch) related, they're fair game.
So who's on deck this week and what are our picks? Find out after the break!
On Friday, Apple launched their new Mac operating system, OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, and whenever that happens, Mac iPhone Jailbreakers everyone wonder if, on purpose or by accident (oh, hi DFU bug!) Apple will somehow break the Jailbreak. Well, good news this time around -- Snow Leopard looks to be Jailbreak safe according to the Dev-Team:
According to developers Bjango, Apple is now telling developers to remove the "Free Memory" function -- the ability to clear data from RAM without force quitting or rebooting -- from their iPhone (and iPod touch) applications or those applications will be removed from the App Store.
Bjango, who makes iStat [$1.99 on sale - iTunes link] had to do just that for their latest version:
Presslite, the folks behind Métro Paris [$0.99 - iTunes link] and London Bus [$0.99 - iTunes link] for iPhone let us know that their apps are now updated in the App Store to contain... augmented reality!
For those unfamiliar with the concept, basically it uses the iPhone 3GS compass, GPS, and live video (what the camera sees) to figure out where you are and what you're looking at, and then adds an information layer (text, icons, etc.) on top of the live video to expound upon what you're looking at. For example, bus routes and schedules could be layered over a street corner, hotel room rates and vacancy over a building, Twitter status in the direction of a person you follow, etc.
Yelp! 3.0 [Free - iTunes link] has apparently also gotten into the AR game but through an Easter Egg that is activated when you run the app and then shake the iPhone 3 times. Check out Mashable's video after the break!
Yep, you read the headline right, after many days of anticipation, and a few minutes of is-it-or-isn't-it, Facebook 3.0 [Free - iTunes link] for iPhone (and iPod touch) is now live in the iTunes App Store. Go download it now, or check out Chad's preview if you're still on the fence... (Why would you still be on the fence, it's the biggest social network in the 'verse and it's for free!)
Does the App Store represent a $2.5 billion a year economy, with 26.4 million iPhone users, 50% of whom pay for apps to the tune of $9.49 a month, or $125 million in August alone? That's the story AdMob's latest figures (via GigaOm) are telling, with 26.4 million iPod touch users, at 40% who pay, averaging $9.79 or $73 million rounding out Apple's mobile platform.
Some other interesting metrics include iPhone users downloading 10 new apps a month, 18 for iPod touch. 8 apps are freebies for the iPhone'rs, 16 for iPod touch'ies.
Yesterday we asked you if Apple should 1) keep on improving the App Store, 2) eliminate the App Store and let people side-load applications from any source, or 3( do both by keeping the App Store but adding side-loading as an option.
As commenter Shallomon pointed out, however, we technically already have option 3, with the App Store and Jailbreaking.
TextExpander touch [$1.99 on sale, $4.99 after Sept. 9 - iTunes link], is the iPhone (and iPod touch) version of Mac favorite TextExpander, an app that takes short bursts of text and expands them (get the name?) into longer passages.
TUAW has the details, especially on how the lack of background multitasking for 3rd party apps means the iPhone versions works (and works around) a limitation it doesn't face on the desktop.
