Apple’s new “https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/apple-store/id324621527?mt=8″ app_id=”69413” target=”_blank”>PicPosterous, one that combines many social tools, that will be helpful.
Looking for more on Apple’s announcements? Here’s a round-up:
David Pogue talks to Steve Jobs (New York Times)
Is iTunes too bloated? (TechCrunch)
The iPod touch wants more gamers (VentureBeat)
The war between Apple and Palm escalates (Apple Insider)
And about that Apple Tablet computer… (Silicon Alley Insider)
What’s still missing from iTunes is a social component for finding and sharing apps, a point we emphasize at Appolicious.com. If your friend shows you the apps he has on his iPhone, that’s a connection that resonates with users and will help guide your app purchase decisions. Users of Appolicious can see what apps their friends own plus download new apps from iTunes based on what their friends and the people they follow suggest.
There’s no doubt using Genius for finding apps will improve search. But Apple needs to go further. How will users really know that a Genius-recommended app will really be right for them?
A much more useful upgrade Apple added to iTunes was how users can organize apps.
Using your computer’s iTunes software, select one or more apps, and then move the app to a new page or lower on the same page. Hence, it will make it easier for people to put all their news apps on one page, games on another and social networking tools on yet another. Once the order is arranged on your computer’s iTunes program, just sync your iPhone or iPod touch and the new order will appear on the device.
This, of course, is a huge improvement over the old method of highlighting your apps (making them wiggle) and then dragging them to the page you want. Since users now have the ability to have 180 apps on their iPhone or iPod touch, this is a handy tool indeed. Users can have 11 pages of apps with each page holding 16 apps. That equals 176, plus four more apps in the dock on the bottom of the screen. An iPhone 3.1 software upgrade was also introduced on Wednesday.
Still, the highlight of Wednesday’s Apple show was seeing Steve Jobs back on the stage at an Apple event for the first time since his liver transplant. But what Jobs had to show was largely underwhelming.
Besides price cuts and a bigger iPod touch, the biggest hardware news was a video camera built into a new iPod nano.
Prices the iPod touch line-up start at less than $200, with the 8gb touch now selling for $199 (it was $229). A new model with 64gb was launched for $399. Previously, the 32gb iPod touch was $399; it now sells for $299.
According to Apple, more than 75,000 apps are availiable for the iPod touch and iPhone.
