AppShopper

Apple this morning announced that its App Store had reached the 50 billion download mark and that the contest to mark the occasion, which had started on May 2, has concluded. The winner of the contest, who gets a $10,000 App Store gift card, is Brandon Ashmore from Mentor, Ohio.

Apple would like to thank our incredible customers and developers for topping 50 billion apps downloaded,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “The App Store completely transformed how people use their mobile devices and created a thriving app ecosystem that has paid out over nine billion dollars to developers. We’re absolutely floored to cross this milestone in less than five years.

Ashmore’s winning download was the free iPhone game Say the Same Thing by Space Inch, the developer of Mac app Lost Photos, which we featured earlier this week.

Apple’s App Store has seen incredible growth since its launch in 2008. As pointed out by our sister site MacRumors, the App Store took about 3 years and 8 months to reach 25 billion downloads and only 14.5 months for the next 25 billion to reach 50 billion downloads.

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  Say the Same Thing

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  From the band OK Go, a totally new kind of word game. It's creative, with no preset answers -- a funny, unpredictable, mind-melding, turn-by-turn game where you have to think like your friends! Say...

Apple announced a new contest yesterday to commemorate the upcoming 50 billionth download from the App Store with a $10,000 App Store gift card as the grand prize. Additional prizes of $500 App Store gift cards will be given to those who download the next 50 apps after that.

To enter, all you need to do is download an app (free or paid) and if you happen to download the 50 billionth app or one of the 50 after that, you win. If you’d rather not go through the trouble of downloading an app, you can enter to win by completing an online form right here. You can find the official contest rules here.

The contest page in iTunes also lists the top free and paid apps of all time. Unsurprisingly, Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja top the paid list while Facebook and Pandora Radio top the free list.

Apple held a similar contest to mark the 25 billionth download in February 2012, also offering a $10,000 App Store gift card prize then, which was won by Chunli Fu of China. That contest lasted less than two weeks until a winner was announced and I’d wager this contest will conclude even faster than that, so get to downloading apps sooner rather than later to increase your chances of winning. If you’re not looking to spend any money, check out our Top 200 Free iPhone Apps and Top 200 Free iPad Apps lists.

Following the announcement last month that Google will be shutting down its Google Reader RSS service in July, developer Silvio Rizzi promised updates to his popular Reeder app earlier this month to make it usable after the shutdown and dropped the prices of the Mac and iPad versions to $0 until these updates hit. The first of these updates has arrived for the iPhone version of Reeder with the addition of Feedbin support and the ability for the app to act as a standalone RSS reader.

Feedbin is a paid RSS service that works similarly to Google Reader. But if you don’t want to pony up the $2.00 per month to get a Feedbin account, you can just use Reeder as a standalone RSS reader. If you take the latter route, you can add your subscriptions manually or import your existing subscriptions from your Google Reader account. Easy peasy.

The Mac and iPad versions of Reeder are still free and will remain so until Rizzi releases updates to them that add the same new features that just made it the iPhone version so get to downloading them now if you haven’t already. The iPhone version of Reeder is just $2.99 and it’s an excellent app to stay on top of your RSS feeds while on the go.

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  Reeder

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  RSS reader and client for Feedbin, Fever, Readability and Google Reader. - Feedbin syncing (optional, paid account required, see feedbin.me) - Fever syncing (optional, paid web app required, see...

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  Reeder for iPad

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  Google Reader Client. - Syncs with Google Reader - Browse by feed or folders - Manage starred items, notes - Mark as unread - Image caching - State saving - Slider control for list entries: ...

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  Google Reader Client. ★ Syncs with Google Reader. ★ Full Readability (readability.com) integration (see Preferences → General) ★ Customizable interface (see Preferences → Appearance) ★...

If you got a new iPad or iPhone over the holidays and like magazines, you should check out Zinio’s current sale. Zinio is a digital publisher with a free iOS app that lets you access the company’s catalog of hundreds of magazines.

Zinio’s sale knocks up to 50% off the top 350 magazines offered, including titles like Macworld, PC Magazine, and Popular Mechanics. You can find all of the magazines on sale here. This sale ends on January 7 so head over to Zinio’s site sooner rather than later.

I’ve been subscribing to Car & Driver through Zinio for a couple of years now and I love having some light reading material on hand anytime through my iPhone or iPad. Zinio’s reader app is universal and available for free in the App Store. You can purchase subscriptions or individual issues directly from Zinio’s site or via in-app purchase in Zinio’s app.

Zinio is also running a giveaway through which you can win an iPad mini. This giveaway ends at 12:22 pm EST on January 7 and you can find the details on how to enter here.

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  Zinio – 5,000+ Digital...

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  Browse more than 5000 digital magazines from around the world in a newsstand with the largest selection, or read fresh articles daily for free. The best in news, politics, technology, art, style,...

As pointed out by our sister site, MacRumors, the local police of Mildura in Victoria, Australia are warning visitors to avoid using Apple’s Maps app in iOS 6 due to poor directions that have left motorists stranded. Maps has apparently led some to a national park that’s over 40 miles away from the actual location of the city of Mildura.

Tests on the mapping system by police confirm the mapping systems lists Mildura in the middle of the Murray Sunset National Park, approximately 70km away from the actual location of Mildura.

Police are extremely concerned as there is no water supply within the Park and temperatures can reach as high as 46 degrees, making this a potentially life threatening issue.

Some of the motorists located by police have been stranded for up to 24 hours without food or water and have walked long distances through dangerous terrain to get phone reception.

The article goes on to state that the police have contacted Apple to flag this issue.

Apple has taken quite a bit of heat for inaccuracies in its mapping data when Apple moved away from Google’s mapping solution with the debut of iOS 6. The criticism was so strong that Tim Cook issued an apology in late September, promising to make the app better.

I haven’t seen corrections to any of the inaccurate information in Maps that I’ve reported (you can find instructions on how to report errors here) but hopefully Apple is indeed working diligently on these and all the other myriad issues that have been pointed out in the past few months.

There are many alternatives to Apple’s Maps, several of which we highlighted in this article. My personal favorite from that list is Navigon. Also worth a look is newcomer Sparkling Maps, which uses Google’s map data and provides turn-by-turn voice guidance at the bargain price of $.99. Though no matter which app you use, check your directions against another reliable source so you don’t get stranded in an unknown location where help may be hard to find.

The Daily, a news publication exclusive to the iPad that was launched in February 2011 by News Corporation and Apple, will be shutting down on December 15. The closure was announced in a press release issued this morning, which also detailed several other organizational and business changes within the New York City-based media corporation.

The press release includes a quote from the Chairman and CEO of News Corp, Rupert Murdoch, on the failure of The Daily to reach a large enough audience to remain financially viable:

Mr. Murdoch said: “From its launch, The Daily was a bold experiment in digital publishing and an amazing vehicle for innovation. Unfortunately, our experience was that we could not find a large enough audience quickly enough to convince us the business model was sustainable in the long-term. Therefore we will take the very best of what we have learned at The Daily and apply it to all our properties. Under the editorial leadership of Editor-in-Chief Col Allan and the business and digital leadership of Jesse, I know The New York Post will continue to grow and become stronger on the web, on mobile, and not least, the paper itself. I want to thank all of the journalists, digital and business professionals for the hard work they put into The Daily.”

The Daily made waves at launch as a news publication available only on the iPad, lacking even an internet presence as an alternate method to access its articles. The app was severely criticized for poor performance and stability, which The Daily acknowledged in a blog post shortly after launch. After several weeks of free access in celebration of its launch and to make up for the app’s instability and bugs in version 1.0, The Daily’s subscription fees kicked in, costing $.99 per month or $39.99 per year, paid via a subscriber’s iTunes account.

The Daily app has already been removed from the App Store though it still works if you’d downloaded it previously. I had subscribed to The Daily for a few months after launch out of curiosity and to show my support for a news publication that was focusing on digital delivery over dead tree versions. While I’m not at all surprised to see that it couldn’t amass the number of subscribers to stay afloat, it’s still a bit sad to see it go.

As expected based on more rumors than you can shake a stick at, Apple announced the new iPad mini at today’s media event. The smaller tablet features a 7.9-inch display with the same resolution of the 2nd-generation iPad 2 of 1,024 x 768 pixels, which will allow all existing apps that work on the iPad 2 to run without any need for modification on the iPad Mini.

iPad mini is every inch an iPad. With its gorgeous 7.9-inch display, iPad mini features the same number of pixels as the original iPad and iPad 2, so you can run more than 275,000 apps designed specifically for iPad,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “iPad mini is as thin as a pencil and as light as a pad of paper, yet packs a fast A5 chip, FaceTime HD and 5 megapixel iSight cameras and ultrafast wireless―all while delivering up to 10 hours of battery life.”

The iPad mini is tiny, measuring just 7.2 millimeters thick and weighing .68 pounds. Like its larger sibling, the iPad mini features both front-facing and rear-facing cameras. The front-facing FaceTime HD camera has a 1.2-megapixel sensor and the rear camera has a 5-megapixel sensor and can record 1080p HD video. The iPad mini also has all of the wireless connectivity goodness available in other models with Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0, plus 3G and 4G LTE in certain models.

The iPad mini will come in Wi-Fi and Wi-fi + Cellular models in two colors: black/slate and white/silver (just like the iPhone 5). The Wi-Fi models will cost $329, $429, and $529 for the 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB models, respectively. The Wi-Fi + Cellular models will cost $499, $599, and $699 for the 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB models, respectively.

Apple also announced the latest version of the iPad mini’s larger sibling, the fourth-generation iPad. The new iPad gets Apple’s own A6X processor and a FaceTime HD front-facing camera.

Both the fourth-generation iPad and the iPad mini will have the new Lightning connector that first debuted with the iPhone 5.

The iPad mini will be available for pre-order starting this Friday, October 26. The fourth-generation iPad and the iPad mini Wi-Fi models will be available starting on November 2. The iPad mini Wi-Fi + Cellular models will start shipping in December.

That isn’t all Apple announced today. For more, see the following articles over at our sister site MacRumors:

• Apple Announces Lighter, Thinner iMac Models with Fusion Drive
• Apple Introduces 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display
• Apple Introduces New Mac Mini With Faster Processors and Quad-Core Option
• Apple Updates iBooks Author with New Templates and Remote Update Feature
• Apple Announces Updated iBooks App With Continuous Scrolling

Today’s media event was packed with a ton of news today, with Apple announcing the next model of its flagship iOS device, the iPhone 5.

The new iPhone 5 will feature the expected 4-inch display and 4G LTE connectivity, along with improved camera features (though the sensor for the rear-facing camera remains at 8 megapixels) in an aluminum and glass enclosure. All in all, the iPhone 5 will be the same width as the iPhone 4S but will be taller to accommodate the larger screen yet still thinner and lighter overall.

Internally, the iPhone 5 gets a faster and more efficient A6 processor, dual-band 802.11(n) Wi-Fi capability and will use a smaller Nano-SIM card. When it comes to battery life, the iPhone 5 matches or exceed the iPhone 4S with up to 8 hours of LTE or 3G talk time, up to 10 hours of Wi-Fi browsing, and up to 225 hours of standby time.

The iPhone 5 also gets a new, smaller dock connector called Lightning. Unlike the older 30-pin connector, the Lightning connector is reversible and doesn’t need to be connected in a specific orientation. Apple will sell an adapter so you can use your existing accessories with a 30-pin dock connector but it will set you back $29 for one, which can add up to a pricey proposition if you have several older accessories you want to use with your shiny new iPhone 5.

Pre-orders for the iPhone 5 will begin on September 14 and it will begin shipping in the US and eight other countries on September 21 and will roll out to 22 more countries on September 28.

The iPhone 5 will be available in black (with a slate aluminum back) or white (with a raw aluminum back) and will cost $199, $299, and $399 with a 2-year contract respectively for the 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB models.

That’s not all Apple announced today – check out these articles over at our sister site, MacRumors.com:

• Apple Announces 4-Inch iPod Touch, Multitouch iPod Nano
• Apple Announces Major iTunes Update Coming Next Month [Update: Version 10.7 Released Today]
• Apple Announces New Dock Connector Called ‘Lightning’
• Apple Announces EarPods Earphones

A specific time for the launch of pre-orders on Friday has not yet been announced but I’m hoping it’s not 3:00 am Eastern like it was for the iPhone 4S. I’m also hoping that Apple is truly prepared for pre-orders this time and beefs up its systems and servers so I don’t have struggle for hours to place my pre-order.

At today’s media event, Apple announced that iOS 6 will be released on September 19, just a couple days prior to the release of the iPhone 5 in the US and eight other countries.

First announced at Apple’s WWDC keynote event in June, iOS 6 will offer a bunch of new features. Siri will be enhanced to provide sports scores, post to Twitter or Facebook, give movie listings, and more. The Maps app will feature turn-by-turn voice navigation guidance and a 3D Flyover mode to show realistic building and landscape details. The new Passbook app will hold your passes, tickets, and loyalty and payment cards from participating businesses like Starbucks, American Airlines, and Target so far.

A new Do Not Disturb feature will mute alerts and calls during times you designate so you can sleep or work uninterrupted (or interrupted only by people you specify in advance). The Phone app will let you send a quick a text message reply when you can’t take a call or set a reminder for you to call someone back later.

Like iOS 5, iOS 6 will be a free update for compatible devices, which are the iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad 2 and later, and the 4th-generation iPod touch and later.