Steve :60m iPhone Apps Sold

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Just one month since the store went live Apple CEO Steve Jobs have revealed an incredible 60 million applications - a mixture of both free and paid - have been downloaded so far producing in excess of $30m in revenue or around $1m per day.


Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Jobs declared "it will be a $1 billion marketplace at some point in time" and admitted he had "never seen anything like this in my career for software." He also believes (quite rightly in my opinion) that while "phone differentiation used to be about radios and antennas and things like that" that software is becoming the key factor.

The App Store has taken in about $1 million per day since it opened, according to Apple CEO Steve Jobs. He's also confirmed the existence of a so-called kill switch -- a feature embedded in the iPhone that gives Apple the ability to destroy an app in a user's phone remotely. Jobs described the inclusion of the kill switch as a safety measure in case a secretly malicious program ever got passed around.

iPhone and iPod touch users have downloaded over 60 million applications from the company's App Store in the 30 days since it opened, according to CEO Steve Jobs. Although a great deal of the applications in the App Store are free, users have purchased US$30 million in software since the store's opening, Jobs said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

"I don't think those numbers are shocking," Joshua Martin, a Yankee Group analyst, told MacNewsWorld. "It's a good sign for Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) , especially with [somewhere between] 6 and 8 million iPhones out there at this point, it's about 10 apps per phone."

While apparently popular with iPhone users, the App Store has received criticism for its handling of certain applications. Though Apple reserves the right to inspect and approve of any program before it's made available, the company has backtracked on a handful of applications and pulled them from the store after initially allowing them to be distributed. Those apps' developers say they've had a difficult time obtaining an explanation from Apple as to why the programs were pulled.

Jobs also confirmed the existence of a so-called kill switch a developer discovered embedded in the iPhone's code last week. The inclusion of the kill switch, Jobs told the Journal, is to give the company the ability to monitor and remove software from the device in the event that malicious software makes its way onto the iPhone.

Invisibility cloak-Scientists say they are a step closer to developing materials that could render people and objects invisible.

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Scientists at the University of California – funded by the U.S. Army and the National Science Foundation – are a step closer to developing an invisibility cloak, the team reports in Nature and Science.

According to the AP, the researchers have demonstrated the ability to cloak 3D objects using artificially engineered materials that redirect light around objects.
Researchers have demonstrated for the first time they were able to cloak three-dimensional objects using artificially engineered materials that redirect light around the objects. Previously, they only have been able to cloak very thin two-dimensional objects.

People can see objects because they scatter the light that strikes them, reflecting some of it back to the eye. Cloaking uses materials, known as metamaterials, to deflect radar, light or other waves around an object, like water flowing around a smooth rock in a stream.
Metamaterials … are designed to bend visible light in a way that ordinary materials don’t. Scientists are trying to use them to bend light around objects so they don’t create reflections or shadows.

Best comment on this story comes from Pharyngula. Dan says “We must fund this research to be ready for war with the Klingons.”