Apple App Store closing in on 10 billion downloads

By Molly McHugh Published January 14, 2011

Apple is quickly nearing 10 billion downloads in the App Store, and if you’re lucky enough to secure the ten billionth, you could pocket $10,000 in iTunes content. A countdown and contest details are featured on the App Store site, and as of 3 p.m. PST, there were a little over 200,000 downloads needed to reach the milestone.

Apple held a similar contest when it neared 10 billion iTunes downloads, a number that took eight years to reach. The App Store, in comparison, has needed less than three. Computer World estimates that at its current rate, the App Store will reach its 10 billionth downloaded app on January 23.

But there’s little time to celebrate before beginning the next countdown. Apple recently opened the Mac App Store, which offers the same service for Mac PCs and laptops. While limited to 1,000 apps to choose from on opening day, its content is quickly growing and it reportedly sold one million applications on its first day.

For the time being, try to calculate exactly how you can be lucky number 10 billion. Whoever can solve that equation totally deserves the prize.

Topics

Apple
Apps

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Before coming to Digital Trends, Molly worked as a freelance writer, occasional photographer, and general technical lackey…

Apple

Apple might drop support for the iPhone SE and iPhone 6S with arrival of iOS 16

iphone 6s launch

Apple may finally be dropping some of its oldest supported iPhones with the next iOS release. This report comes from the French publication iPhoneSoft, which accurately predicted the iOS 13 and iOS 14 road maps.

Apple has been praised for supporting its iPhones for an exceedingly long period of time with full updates, and that has led to impressive scenarios like the iPhone 6S and iPhone 7 being updated to iOS 15 last year. Granted, they couldn't take advantage of several hardware-enabled features, but they weren't rapidly outdated either.

Mobile

U.K. agency says Apple and Google are stifling user choice in their app stores

App store icon showing three notifications.

Apple and Google's mobile platforms have faced a maelstrom of criticism regarding their respective app store and operating system rules, and the U.K.'s Competition and Market Authority (CMA) is adding to that cacophony of voices. After the result of a probe this year, the CMA concluded that the mobile duopoly is leading to "less competition and meaningful choice" for customers.

The CMA highlighted a few incidents of concern. Apple famously not allowing Microsoft's xCloud game streaming app into the App Store merited a mention, as did Google's deals with smartphone makers to include Chrome and other Google apps in exchange for access to the Google Play Store and Google Play Services.

Computing

Apple’s Universal Control won’t arrive on Macs, iPads until 2022

The MacBook Pro with the default wallpaper, which hides the notch.

After having dropped the latest releases of its operating systems -- including iOS 15.2, iPad OS 15.2, macOS Monterey 12.1, watchOS 8.3, and tvOS 15.2 -- early Monday morning local time, one highly coveted feature that Apple promoted during its WWDC presentation earlier this year was notably missing. Unfortunately, it appears that Universal Control, a KVM-like feature that allows you to share a mouse and keyboard and work seamlessly across a Mac and iPad, didn't quite make the cut in the latest versions of the company's new iPadOS and macOS operating system releases.

It appears that the release date for Universal Control on the Mac has now been adjusted from winter to "available this spring," according to Apple's information page for macOS Monterey. The company did not give any further details or explanation for the delay, though this could mean that the feature won't arrive until macOS 12.2 drops.