iTunes App Store removes "All Apps" Button

The App store was ramping to hit 4,000 titles today (Monday) but the All Applications button has been removed from the iTunes store so I and my feeble mind can no longer divine how many Applications there are?

Conspiracy?  

Psystar Apple Anti-trust Update

Sometime this week there should be news about the Apple / Psystar / Hewdell Packovo Suit countersuit

Apple is due to "Answer" Psystar's counter suit filed on August 28th  Psystars answer PDF (Groklaw article)

In case your sane and don't read 200 Apple RSS feeds a day.  A brief rundown.  Psystar is the company (by company I mean a couple of guys in their early 20s that are learning a lot right now) that started producing "Open Computers" back in April that run Mac OSX.  Apple, not pleased filed suit asking for all profits and all sold computers to be retrieved since their brand could be irretrievably damaged.  And then most recently Psystar countersued claiming that Apple is damaging consumers and them acting as a monopoly and Psystar should be able to produce computers that run Mac OSX.

In past comments we examined Psystar's argument,  but more importantly their motive (likely just greenmail, I know boring funded perhaps by their lawyer but we know not by them, They do not want to win) and a cool albeit unlikely conspiracy theory involving some of the worlds largest PC manufacturers (Hewdell Packovo).  

It would not be hyperbole to say that the face of the computer industry would change as a result  of a Psystar win in this suit however infinitesimally small the chance of that happening are.  In the mean time it is fun to follow along.

App Store Blogstorm

So there is this kerfuffle regarding the App store.  On the one hand we have Gruber.  Defender of the liberal arts and on the other Mike Arrington of Tech Crunch defender of well gravity.

  

Gruber/Arrington make very different arguments so you would think that they could not both be right but they are.  The thing that makes this argument cool is that we are free to assign whatever motive we want to Apple since we have no way to know what really happened.

Gruber is right, Gruber is Always right (Daring Fireball.net )

It’d be different if Apple had published an explicit rule stating, for example, that podcasting apps are prohibited. But there is no such guideline. Podcaster seems to fully comply with Apple’s published guidelines, and yet it was rejected for violating a secret rule....

The point is not that Apple can’t reject apps arbitrarily. They can. Elsewhere in the SDK Agreement is a more or less wildcard clause that grants Apple the right to reject apps — and remove apps which were previously accepted — for whatever reasons it chooses. The point isn’t about what Apple can do but what they should do.

And they shouldn’t be doing this. 

Gruber gets hot about an issue once every couple of weeks and lets fly all of his substantial edumicated smoothyness.   Slick awsome and right.  He represents that part of us for the world as we would like it to be.  He is hopeful, but unyielding and ultimately willing to make a go/no go decision based on something that is a poor compromise.

Arrington:

The fact is that there are more than twelve million iPhones in people’s hands today, and another800,000 or so are likely sold each week. That is too much of an opportunity to pass up. Developers will complain, but ultimately they’ll play by whatever rules Apple demands. Even if those rules are ambiguous and subject to change regularly without notice.

Arrington is right, I mean he is seriously correct.  This is what will happen.  I like Arrington too, it's just that I don't want to agree with him.  He is drive, ambition, business everything I admire in someone that likely feeds his family.

The downside of Arrington's argument is that it means we live in that world that is not fair, where we don't necessarily like the choices we have at any given time.  There is this MBA/Machiavelli thing that while right is a little to grown up.  

(Daniel Dilger is involved in the argument too but besides being pedantic I don't think I like him and three ways are sooo confusing)

As an aside.  The App store continues to Explode with Apps.  Four Hundred have been added since last weeks iPod show (3405 current total). Including todays release of The Force Unleashed.  This is the first release on the App store by THQ and further evidence that the iPhone/iPod Touch are going to be taken VERY seriously as a gaming device.

Update:  Fake Steve Jobs Weighs in at his lucid best: Blow Blogstorm Blowww.

Lets Rock. . . Apps iPhone Developer update part of the show

Huge activity on the Apple App store tonight.  100+ apps have come across my RSS Feed.

Expect to hear something like this during the presentation on the 9th.

...and now over 3,000. applications available for download in the App store.

It is not rocket science as of 12:30 AM  Eastern time  there are 2982 applications.  

Manic iPhone owners crave. . . Peace?

By virtue of the fact that Apple has recently added the ability to sort applications in the App Store by "Popularity" it is now possible to know the following ironic factoid.

The top two most popular applications that require more than zero dollars for purchase for the ADD addled owners of the, in touch all the time in all places and conditions iPhone, are ... Wait for it

Ambient Noise generators...

Namaste  Ambience #73 overall, and Asleep #93 overall  as Fake Steve would say we honor the place where your quiet and our manic gizmoness become one...

App Store Chaos

I have written before about the piles of usless programs piling up quickly in the Apple App Store. There are some great and creative ones too but increasingly they are hidden beneath the iBeer detritus.

There are iTunes issues, (lack of good search/sorting capability), that compound the problem. But the marketplace is chaos by design.

Apple designed the App Store as a unique and ONLY outlet for iPhone/Touch applications. The more Apple restricts programs for sale there the better the argument for a developer restraint of trade lawsuit.

I could be wrong but what the evidence suggests is that Whatever review their is for the programs submitted is just to make sure the program is not malicious and does not break contractual agreements with carriers.

What do you think?