ABI Research has a new study claiming the iPad App Store has hit three billion downloads since it debuted in 2010.

The iPhone took as long as two years before being able to achieve this level of downloads, while the iPad made it within nearly a year and a half.

This would represent roughly 19 percent of all iOS App Store downloads combined, a significant slice of the pie in terms of Apple’s mobile ecosystem.

In comparison, Android tablets only have around 440 million app downloads thus far, or just a little under one sixth of the amount from Apple’s fledgling — but wildly successful — tablet device.

Source: ABI Research

Looking for a specific iOS IPSW file, specific jailbreak tool, or other iOS related download? Odds are we’ve got what you need in our brand new downloads page. We’ll be updating it regularly and keeping it updated with all new versions of iOS and the latest in jailbreak tools and utilities.

And as always, if we don’t have something listed that you think would be a good idea, shoot me an email to ally.kazmucha@tipb.com and we’ll try and get it added!

TiPb resource pages to check out:

• TiPb Downloads Section
• TiPb jailbreak information
• TiPb tips and how to’s
• TiPb app reviews
• TiPb app and device guides

Apple’s iOS device activation numbers spiked 353% on Christmas Day. In addition, app sales jumped 252% after millions of people opened their new iPhone 4S, iPad 2 and iPod touch and headed straight for the App Store.

Estimates from Flurry Analytics peg iOS and Android device activations averaging around 1.5 million per day, but Christmas day saw around 6.8 million devices activated.

In terms of App Store and Android Market downloads, estimates suggest the number of apps purchased on Christmas day more than doubled from 108 million downloads per day in December, all the way up to roughly 242 million downloads across iOS and Android devices.

To make things interesting, Localytics also issued a report indicating a 15 fold increase in iOS device activations, with the iPod touch seeing as high as a 21 fold jump (most likely due to the low cost of entry into the iOS ecosystem). This contrasts the difference between how analysis of sales and App Store purchases are calculated, but the main point remains the same.

Apple had a huge Christmas day.

Source: Flurry, Localytics

Market research firm Distimo has issued a new report detailing the huge gains the App Store has made in China.

When comparing the two countries, the Chinese App Store for iPhone devices was just 18 percent of download volume vs the U.S. at the beginning of 2011. By November, that share had climbed to 30 percent, meaning China jumped from less than a quarter to nearly a third over a 10-month period. The numbers are even more interesting when examining the iPad: China’s take is just south of 50 percent of combined downloads between the two countries.

This doesn’t come as a huge surprise given the size of the Chinese market. More interesting, however, is that iPad app downloads have now jumped up to a staggering 50 percent of App Store sales for Apple, making it a straight split between the two markets.

China is now the second largest market for Apple next to the U.S. as of June, and it doesn’t look like they’ll be loosing momentum anytime soon.

Source: GigaOM

Apple has issued a fix for iOS 3.1.3 App Store download bug. The bug in question removed the ‘Download’ button altogether when users running the older firmware attempted to acquire apps from the App Store.

Since the App Store is essentially a native wrapper around a web-based interface, Apple is able to update it without having to push out a full version of the whole OS. That can lead to things breaking out of nowhere, but also getting fixed.

It’s good to know that Apple still has the backs of those running on firmware that’s now going on two years old.

Source: Apple Support Communities via Engadget

Reports in Apple’s Support Community suggest some users running on older iOS 3.1.3 firmware are no longer able to download apps from the App Store after Apple pushed out an update on December 16th.

Specifically, when users jump into the App Store and try to download any app, the download button is completely missing altogether. Although fragmentation within Apple’s iOS ecosystem is extremely limited — at least compared to the closest competition with Google — some users are still running older iOS versions.

There’s currently no fix outside of upgrading to a newer version of iOS, but for some users with older devices that simply don’t support current iOS versions, this could become a serious problem. Hopefully Apple pushes out a fix soon.

Source: Apple Support Communities via Engadget

The guys at BlackSmithGames have announced that their AppventCalendar will be returning for 2011. If you go to AppventCalendar.com everyday in December, you will be able to pick up a free game, and a free app. Thats 2 free downloads a day!

Something new for 2011 — an iPhone app, meaning that you don’t even have to visit the website to download your gift. You can check the app, and download the free gift, directly on your iPhone.

Don’t forget, like any advent calendar, if you miss a day you can’t go back and get it later!

• AppventCalendar website
• iTunes Link

If you need a past or present iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Apple TV iOS 5 firmware file, we’ve got ‘em all here. Just browse to the device you want and click the firmware file you need. Your download should automatically start. All downloads are the official Apple firmware release versions.

iPhone 4S

• iOS 5.0.1 (Build 9A406)
• iOS 5.0.1
• iOS 5.0

iPhone 4 (GSM)

• iOS 5.0.1
• iOS 5.0

iPhone 4 (CDMA)

• iOS 5.0.1
• iOS 5.0

iPhone 3GS

• iOS 5.0.1
• iOS 5.0

iPad 2 (Wifi only)

• iOS 5.0.1
• iOS 5.0

iPad 2 (GSM)

• iOS 5.0.1
• iOS 5.0

iPad 2 (CDMA)

• iOS 5.0.1
• iOS 5.0

iPad

• iOS 5.0.1
• iOS 5.0

iPod touch (4G)

• iOS 5.0.1
• iOS 5.0

iPod touch (3G)

• iOS 5.0.1
• iOS 5.0

Apple TV 2

• iOS 4.4.4
• iOS 4.4.3
• iOS 4.4.2
• iOS 4.4.1
• iOS 4.4

Source: Apple.com

Well it looks as though Apple’s App Store is nearing the 10 billion downloads mark and if you are the person who makes Apple hit the 10 billionth download you could be $10,000 richer (well in the form of an iTunes gift card that is)! Seems like that would be the best app you would have ever downloaded. You can also enter for the gift card without downloading an app but I personally will be checking their site and seeing where the numbers are and at least try and be the 10 billionth download. One can dream right?

This is a pretty big number for Apple to be at considering the App Store has only been around since July of 2008. We also know there are well over 300,000 applications available and apparently users all over the world are downloading a lot of apps.

Hit the source link for Apple’s official rules and to enter without downloading anything.

[ Apple ]

TiPb’s gotten lots of reports from iPhone, iPad and Apple TV users concerning super slow iTunes rentals and downloads — we’re talking hours and hours! — and it looks like Google DNS (and OpenDNS) could be part of the problem. According to Joe Mailer:

This totally makes sense. iTunes’ video content is delivered by Akamai who has distributed massive datastores around the world so those large files originate from nearby servers and spend less time getting switched around the network. Akamai somehow uses our DNS routing to determine our location. If Google DNS or OpenDNS routes everyone to Akamai the same way, then those Akamai nodes and the pipes leading to them get overwhelmed.

So if your iPhone, iPod touch, iPad or Apple TV tells you there are 2+ hours to go before you can start watching check to see if you’re using Google DNS or OpenDNS and try switching to your IPs DNS instead. It could cut your wait times down to seconds!

[Joe Mailer]

Both iTunes Store music and iOS App Store apps are being downloaded at an increasing rate. Apps are just increasing faster.

As can be seen, the App store has reached the same total downloads in 2.2 years as the iTMS reached after five years. The two curves are likely to be the same height (around 13 billion each) before the year is over.

I’m downloading far more apps than music, what about you?

[Asymco]

As usual, Steve Jobs began his Apple music event keynote today by giving a breakdown of iOS devices sold to date — 120,000,000. It took them from June 2007 to June 2010 to reach 100,000,000 and only 3 months to add another 20,000,000 on top of that. Jobs also said they’re activating new devices at a rate of 230,000 a day.

While older, 2007 devices are no longer compatible with iOS 4, iPad apps won’t run on iPhone, and camera apps won’t run on iPad or older iPod touches, that’s still a huge number of broadly compatible devices for developers to target. Case in point…

App Store downloads have hit 6.5 billion, which is an astonishing number. And yes, whoosh, that’s increasing at a rate of 200 a second. There are 250,000 apps in the App Store now, 25,000 of which are iPad apps.

iTunes meanwhile hit 11.7 billion songs, 450 million TV shows, 100 million movies, 35 million books, and 116 million accounts.

In terms of Apple Retail Stores, they now have 300 in 10 countries with one in Spain set to increase both counts soon. On some days they get more than 1 million visitors. They teach 80,000 one-to-one classes a week. Over 50% of Mac buyers are new to the platform.

If you need a past or present iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Apple TV iOS 4 firmware file, we’ve got ‘em all here. Just browse to the device you want and click the firmware file you need. Your download should automatically start. All downloads are the official Apple firmware release versions.

iPhone 4 (GSM)

• 4.3.5
• 4.3.4
• 4.3.3
• 4.3.2
• 4.3.1
• 4.3
• 4.2.1
  • 4.1
• 4.0.2
• 4.0.1
• 4.0

iPhone 4 (CDMA)

• 4.3.5
• 4.2.9 – 4.2.8
• 4.2.7

iPhone 3GS

• 4.3.5
• 4.3.4
• 4.3.3
• 4.3.2
• 4.3.1
• 4.3
• 4.2.1
• 4.1
• 4.0.2
• 4.0.1
• 4.0

iPhone 3G

• 4.2.1
• 4.1
• 4.0.2
• 4.0.1
• 4.0

iPad 2 (Wifi only)

• 4.3.5
• 4.3.4
• 4.3.3
• 4.3.2
• 4.3.1
• 4.3

iPad 2 (GSM)

• 4.3.5
• 4.3.4
• 4.3.3
• 4.3.2
• 4.3.1
• 4.3

iPad 2 (CDMA)

• 4.3.5
• 4.3.4
• 4.3.3
• 4.3.2
• 4.3.1
• 4.3

iPad

• 4.3.5
• 4.3.4
• 4.3.3
• 4.3.2
• 4.3.1
• 4.3
• 4.2.1

iPod touch (4G)

• 4.3.5
• 4.3.4
• 4.3.3
• 4.3.2
• 4.3.1
• 4.3
• 4.2.1
• 4.1

iPod touch (3G)

• 4.3.5
• 4.3.4
• 4.3.3
• 4.3.2
• 4.3.1
• 4.3
• 4.2.1
• 4.1
• 4.0.2
• 4.0

iPod touch (2G)

• 4.2.1
• 4.1
• 4.0.2
• 4.0

Source: Apple.com

UPDATE: And the winner is… Louie Sulcer of Woodstock, Georgia who downloaded song number 10 billion — “Guess Things Happen That Way” by Johnny Cash! Congrats! iTunes (and Internet Services) VP Eddie Cue had this to say:

“We’re grateful to all of our customers for helping us reach this amazing milestone We’re proud that iTunes has become the number one music retailer in the world, and selling 10 billion songs is truly staggering.”

ORIGINAL: So the contest is done and we’re waiting to see who won Apple’s 10 Billion iTunes Music download $10,000 iTunes gift card.

We’ll update as soon as they announce a winner, but in the meantime if you bought anything today in an attempt to get in on the action, let us know what it was. We’re always looking for some good tune recommendations!

Apple has begun a countdown to it’s 10 billionth (that’s right, 10,000,000,000) iTunes music download, and to celebrate they’re giving away a $10,000 dollar gift card.

iTunes changed the way you buy music, making songs and albums available for download, day or night. Seven years later, we’re about to celebrate our biggest milestone for music, yet — 10 billion songs downloaded. Buy a song, and if it’s the 10 billionth download, you could win a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card. It’s our way of saying thanks.

Similar to the give away they did for the 1 billionth App Store app download, we’re left to wonder — how would you spend $10K on iTunes, and how harsh will commenters be to the poor young kid who inevitably always wins these things?

According to Times Online, It now seems as if Sony, Warner, Universal and EMI are putting the finishing touches on their new album format, CMX, and are ready to do battle against Apple’s rumored “Cocktail” enhanced album format.

It was just last month we reported about Cocktail, which would feature new interactive booklets, sleeve notes and other features alongside music downloads in an attempt to lure consumers into making more full album purchases. Now, while it looks like “Cocktail” does exist, it seems that none of the record labels had any hand in creating it. According to this story, record labels first approached Apple 18 months ago to see if they wanted in on this new CMX format and Apple politely refused. Apple then created “Cocktail” in order to compete with Sony, Warner, Universal and EMI.

One senior record label insider said: “Apple at first told us that they were not interested, but now they have decided to do their own, in case ours catches on.

While most of us here at TiPb have no major quarrels purchasing our music digitally, there are a lot of people out there who feel when purchasing digital albums over the internet you are not getting the full album experience. Would this new format make purchasing digital albums any less painful for you? And would you rather go with Apple’s “Cocktail” or the music industry’s CMX?

We mentioned the new Store Setting tab just a short time ago. daveizzle on Twitter made the observation that this functionality makes it seem like you could theoretically sign into one account, download apps, sign out, sign into another account, and download apps from that account as well, all onto the same iPhone or iPod touch. Boom. Support for multiple iTunes accounts right on the device.

Why would that be interesting? Say your spouse had already bought a $9.99 app. App Store lets the same account re-download that app to the iPhone without a second charge, so it becomes a way to “share” applications (as long as you trust the person enough to put your iTunes password into their device). Another scenario would be a UK users wanting to download a US-only app. They could log into a US account, download the region-restricted app, then log out and log back into their own, local account.

Note: This has been possible all along via syncing from iTunes. Any apps downloaded from any account would transfer over to the iPhone. This merely extends the purchase and/or download process to the iPhone, further releasing iTunes tethered hold.

(Of course, since you can’t re-download music for free, and you can’t download movie or TV show videos directly to the iPhone, this pertains only to App Store content — likely to prevent Big Media heads from ‘sploding).

Back in January Rene made us all aware that the Apple App Store hit the half billion mark in terms of downloads. A few months later it seems like they will be doubling that number by hitting 1 billion app downloads. This is indeed impressive and Apple wants to celebrate with giving you a chance to win some really sweet prizes.

As of today, nearly one billion apps have been downloaded around the globe. So we just want to say thanks — a billion. Download an app and you’ll automatically get the chance to win a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card, an iPod touch, a Time Capsule, and a MacBook Pro. Just go to the iTunes Store, browse the App Store, and download your best app yet.

Apple has even laid out the top 20 paid and free apps [iTunes Link] of all time with Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D and the Facebook app leading their respective categories. So what are you waiting for? Get your download on for your chance to win some sweet Apple goodness! (Just remember entries are limited to 25 per person per day.)

Good luck!

Head over to Apple.com yet today? If you haven’t seen it already, a new hero image has taken it’s place boom smack in the middle of the home page and it’s announcement couldn’t be more mind-boggling: the App Store now includes over 15,000 iPhone applications, and iPhone users have downloaded apps more that 500,000,000 times.

Considering the App Store only launched 6 months ago, we’re reminded of what Steve Jobs said last quarter — that, in all his time at Apple, they’d never seen platform growth or attachment rates this fast and this furious.

How many apps do you think you’ve downloaded?

If you need a past or present iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Apple TV iOS 3 (previously iPhone OS 3) firmware file, we’ve got ‘em all here. Just browse to the device you want and click the firmware file you need. Your download should automatically start. All downloads are the official Apple firmware release versions.

iPhone 3GS

• 3.1.3
• 3.1.2
• 3.1
• 3.0.1
• 3.0

iPhone 3G

• 3.1.3
• 3.1.2
• 3.1
• 3.0.1
• 3.0

iPhone

• 3.1.3
• 3.1.2
• 3.1
• 3.0.1
• 3.0

iPod touch (3G)

• 3.1.3
• 3.1.2
• 3.1.1

iPad

• 3.2.2
• 3.2.1
• 3.2

Source: Apple.com

redsn0w is the current jailbreak utility made available by the iPhone Dev-Team. It’s free of charge, updated often, and generally considered one of the best, safest ways to jailbreak your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad.

• CLI 0.4.3 -Windows
• 0.9.10b4 – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.10b3 – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.10b2 – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.10b1 – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.9b9d – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.9b9 – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.9b8 – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.9b7 – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.9b6 – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.9b5 – Mac
• 0.9.9b4 – Windows
• 0.9.9b3 – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.9b2 – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.9b1 – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.8b7 – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.8b6 – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.8b5 – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.8b4 – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.8b3 – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.8b2 – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.8b1 – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.6rc16 – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.6rc15 – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.6rc14 – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.6rc13 – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.6rc12 – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.6rc11 – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.6rc9 – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.7b6 – Mac
• 0.9.7b5 – Windows
• 0.9.7rc8 – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.8rc7 – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.7b4 – Mac
• 0.9.7b3 – Mac
• 0.9.7b2 – Mac
• 0.9.7b1 – Mac
• 0.9.6b6 – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.6b5 – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.6b4 – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.6b3 – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.6b2 – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.6b1 – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.5b5-5 – Mac, Windows
• 0.9.3 – Mac, Windows
• 0.8 – Mac, Windows
• 3.0 – Mac, Windows

Source: iPhone Dev-Team

• Absinthe 0.4 – Mac, Windows, Linux
• Absinthe 0.3 – Mac, Windows, Linux
• Absinthe 0.2 – Mac, Windows
• Absinthe 1.2.2 – Mac
• RC6.1 – Mac, Windows
• RC6 – Mac, Windows
• RC5b4 – Mac, Windows
• RC5 – Mac, Windows

• Ac1dSn0w beta 2 – Mac only

• 4.4.4 (untethered) – Mac, Windows
• 4.4 (tethered) – Mac, Windows
• 4.3 (untethered) – Mac, Windows

PwnageTool is Mac only. You will also need a torrent client for most downloads such as Vuze or whatever client you prefer.

• 5.0.1
• 4.3.3.1
• 4.3.3
• 4.3.2
• 4.3
• 4.2
• 4.1.3
• 4.1.2
• 4.01
• 4.0
• 3.1.5
• 3.1.4
• 3.1.3
• 3.1
• 3.0
• 2.2.1
• 2.2
• 2.1
• 2.0.3
• 2.0.1

Source: iClarified

• blackra1n for Mac
• blackra1n for Windows

Please note that Sn0wbreeze is a Windows utility only.

• 2.9.1 – iOS 5.0.1 untethered
• 2.8b11 – iOS 5.0 & 5.0.1
• 2.7.3 – iOS 4.2.8 & 4.3.3
• 2.6.1 – iOS 4.3.2
• 2.5.1 – iOS 4.3.1
• 2.2.1 – iOS 4.2.1
• 2.1 – iOS 4.1

• limera1n for Mac
• limera1n for Windows

There are a ton of jailbreak tools out there from different teams, for different devices, and different purposes. Here are some additional ones you might want to try.

Other software

• Cyberduck (SSH client for Mac and Windows) – Mac, Windows
• TinyUmbrella – Mac, Windows
• TinyCFW – Windows
• Fix Recovery – Mac, Windows
• iExplorer – allows you to browse the files on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch from your Mac or PC
• i-FunBox (Access apps without iTunes) – Mac, PC
• f0recast for Mac
• f0recast for Windows
• iFaith 1.4.1 – Windows only

Spirit jailbreak software

• Spirit for Mac
• Spirit for Windows
• Spirit for Linux

BootLoaders

• 3.9
• 4.6