Really amazing to read these new figures: 500,000,000 app downloads. Never heard of a number like this at one of the mobile operator portals of the pre-iPhone century Vodafone life or T-Motion would have dreamed of numbers like this.
But the 500 million app downloads can not be compared with the number of songs, sold on iTunes: Apple only revealed the complete number of app downloads – free and payed apps. So there is a fundamental difference between the number of (paid and free) apps and (only paid) songs.
More than 15,000 apps is also quite impressive – but it is getting harder and harder to find the apps you really like on the AppStore. There is a lot of room for improvements to meet the needs of consumers as well as developers.

This step certainly wasn’t easy for Steve Jobs: He takes a medical leave until Juni to recover from his health problems – which are more complex than he thought. It’s probably a hefty step for him and his family to share this private information with public interest. But the history and also the future of Apple stick tightly to his name. This tight relationship is also reflected in the stock price, which dropped down more than 7 percent in extended trading when the news was spreading.
The Chief Operating Officer (COO) Tim Cook will work as CEO until Steve gets back in June. Cook ran Apple also for two months in 2004 when Steve was recovering from his cancer surgery – and he has a great reputation.

So, again: Get well soon, Steve!

Sources: Yahoo.com, Spiegel.de, Apple.com

Apple just published the Quicktime video-on-demand stream of the MacWorld Keynote Address 2009. So, if you want to tune in and watch Phil Schiller, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing at Apple Inc. …

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/keynote/

iLife’09, iWorks’09, DRM-free music on the iTunes Music Store and the 17″ unibody MacBook Pro … great news

Just read the letter from Steve Jobs and die Apple Community. It’s a pity, that Steve cannot give “his” keynote today, but no problem to get over that. But it’s shocking to hear that it’s because of health problems.
So: I absolutely appreciate his decision – health comes first! I wish you a speedy recovery! Great, that the Apple Board of Directors is just on the same track.

In the last days, there is a lot of whispering: Here a Chinese iPod skin manufacturer publishes a small iPhone skin on his website, an analyst wishes for an iPhone for the mass marked … and bang, everybody is expecting an iPhone nano to be announced. Then the news is spreaded, that Steve Wozniak – second founder of Apple – will join the presentation of the newest modbook at the Axiotron booth at MacWorldExpo … it’s a MacBook transformed into a tablet Mac. That increases the desire and spins the rumor mill even faster for an iPod tablet or MacBook touch. However, the market positioning of such a multitouch-gadget will be tricky:

• If Apple stays with the walled garden iPhone version of Mac OS X they would have the existing and vital iPhone developer community committed to multitouch and gesture control … and by the way an exclusive distribution channel for applications with the AppStore. The main focus probably would be gaming and entertainment. But the gadget will loose the “pants pocket factor”.
• If Apple uses a full Mac OS X version they could use the experiences of Axiotron and have to count on the Mac OS X developers, that they implement the benefits and potentials of multitouch and gesture control within their (existing) applications. The gadget would be more like a “MacBook Air Touch” than an iPod tablet and would more likely suite and target the business customers. En passent this would explain why there is so little spectacular information about the new Mac OS X Snow Leopard features leaked out.

What ever Phil Schiller will present on his Keynote at the Moscow-Center at MacWorldExpo in San Francisco on January 6th … and what is hidden behind the concealed exhibition banners … I’m thrilled and I’m really looking forward to it