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Following up on the unofficial news earlier last week that Apple had crossed the 10,000 app mark, Apple has announced 300 million downloaded apps.

The milestone was reported in ads placed in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal rather than the typical press release.

Only one additional marker has been reported since the iTunes App Store first opened in July of this year.  In October, Apple reported 200 million apps downloaded and the availability of 5,000 apps.

Not bad.

According to website “148Apps,” the Apple iTunes Apps Store has reached the 10,000 application milestone.

They’ve posted a nifty page showing mini icons for every application and a bit of interesting data on release frequency and cost distribution.

TechCrunch notes:

About 24% of apps are free; 35% cost $.99. The average cost is $3.12, including free apps. About 34% are games or entertainment, and there are 49 weather related apps for the iPhone despite the fact that a weather app is built in.

[via techcrunch]

Google released Google Earth for iPhone this morning.  The app integrates with the built in GPS for positioning, but obviously lets you explore the entire globe.  Great integration with Panoramio photos too-

The creators of the Shazam iPhone app say that 20 million iPhone requests have been made for song identification on the company’s servers. This is 2-3 look-ups per person, per week vs. 3-5 times per phone on other platforms. 

Is this solely due to the success of the iPhone platform or could it be that they charge money for these lookups on every other platform?

[via MacNN]

Apple has finally dropped the iPhone non-disclosure agreement:

To Our Developers

We have decided to drop the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for released iPhone software.

We put the NDA in place because the iPhone OS includes many Apple inventions and innovations that we would like to protect, so that others don’t steal our work. It has happened before. While we have filed for hundreds of patents on iPhone technology, the NDA added yet another level of protection. We put it in place as one more way to help protect the iPhone from being ripped off by others.

However, the NDA has created too much of a burden on developers, authors and others interested in helping further the iPhone’s success, so we are dropping it for released software. Developers will receive a new agreement without an NDA covering released software within a week or so. Please note that unreleased software and features will remain under NDA until they are released.

Thanks to everyone who provided us constructive feedback on this matter.

iPhone Atlas has an interesting article about iPhone application makeup.  It turns out those .ipa (iPhone application) files are indeed standard packages just like MacOSX .pkg apps- they’re just flat packages so that you can’t open them using the contextual menu in finder.

Using more advanced tools like Pacifist will work fine.  Hack away!

Two new Apple iPod ads means two more new songs.  The music used in these ads:

iPod Nano 4G: “Bruises” by Chairlift from the album Does You Inspire You

iPod Touch: “Around the Bend” by The Asteroids Galaxy Tour currently only available as a single on iTunes: Around the Bend (Radio Edit)

Very interesting- Apple includes SD copies of all HD purchased downloads from iTunes.  Then, iTunes 8 automagically syncs the SD copy to the iPhone and iPod for mobile viewing.  No re-encode allowed or even necessary.

AppleInsider points out that this is very similar to Blu-ray and DVD movies which offer the iTunes Digital Copy.  Apple is just taking this concept online.

Steve Jobs: This is the funnest iPod ever.

Jason Snell: And a million English teachers weep openly.

Music Week is reporting that Apple will be launch an a new app to add exclusive content the iPhone and iPod Touch for the upcoming Snow Patrol album.  Many have cited these types of exclusive features as some of the last remaining benefits to physical CDs.  The app will come in the form of an interactive booklet, containing exclusive videos, photos, lyrics and artwork.