It’s no secret that part of the iPhone’s success is due in part to Apple’s addition of the App Store.  Apple announced earlier this month that 1.8 billion apps have been downloaded.  Keep in mind the App Store has only existed since July 11, 2008, that’s just over a year.  The App Store began with 500 apps and now has over 75,000.

Next month will see the release of the Motorola CLIQ which will come with an impressive list of preloaded apps including LastFM, Amazon’s MP3 Store, QuickOffice, and TeleNav Navigator.

Currently, the Palm Pre is considered the iPhone’s closest competition.  They opened their app store yesterday and it’s looking like Palm is starting off a little too good.  Palm Developer Community Manager Chuq Von Rospach posted the following on Palm’s developer discussion boards:

We got more applications than we could handle well, which is a good problem to have. Unfortunately, it means we dropped some things on the floor, and that’s bad, but with the impending “stuff” that’s coming, this is all going to get a lot easier for everyone and a lot more transparent.

If you didn’t get a response in a timely manner, let me apologize to you. We should have done a better job on this, and I apologize for this. I’m working with the people I work with on this to try to make sure we do a better job of this moving forward. Good news is we’ve hired some people — one’s started, one starts next week, and the third starts the week after that, and that’ll give us some great people and some new resources to make sure this gets fixed and works properly.

chuq

This is indeed a good problem for Palm to have.  Palm had one foot in the grave prior to the Pre and now has a lot riding on it.  As smartphones are becoming more like portable computers cell phone makers are going to need apps to go along with their phones.  Consumers are going to be considering more than just the phone in the future, they’re going to demand new software regularly to use.

There have been a few rumors floating around that the Nintendo Wii is going to have a price drop from its current price of $249.99 to $199.99. I’m guessing it will happen in about a week. Not only do I think this is going to happen but I think it should happen. In no particular order, here are my top five reasons why:

Reason # 1 – The PS3 Slim

When Sony announced their new PS3 slim they also told us that it would be coming out a the new price point of $299.  Put that next to a Wii at $249 and it looks like Nintendo is price gouging their customers.  For an additional $50 buyers get a a gaming system that is high definition, has a 120GB hard drive, an extensive online store, and a Blu-Ray player.  The Blu-Ray player is the real deal considering many stand alone players cost almost $299 by themselves.

Reason # 2 – The Xbox 360

For almost a year now the Xbox 360 Arcade version has been $199.  This is just embarrassing for Nintendo.  Neither system has a hard drive and they both come with a single controller.  The Xbox is an HD gaming system and allows players to be part of Microsoft’s wildly successful Xbox Live.  If that wasn’t bad enough, the price of the Xbox 360 Pro with a 60GB hard drive has now been lowered to $249 in response to the PS3 price drop.  The same price as the Nintendo Wii.

Reason # 3 – Wii Motion Plus

The latest addition to the Wii lineup has been Wii Motion Plus.  This new peripheral gives the Wii Remote real 3-D tracking.  Now every little twist or bend of the remote is captured.  It’s gotten good reviews but it’s another $20 for every Wii Remote that you have.  Doing some quick math, if you buy a Wii ($249 – which comes with one Wii Remote & a Nunchuck), an addition Remote & Nunchuck ($35 & $18) so you can actually play with someone else then add two Wii Motion Plus add-ons ($20 each) you’re up to almost $350 already.  Not such a great deal anymore…

Reason # 4 – Demand Drop

The Wii has now been out for close to 3 years but for more than the first year and a half it was almost impossible to actually find one in a store.  It was worse around the holidays.  A site called Wii Tracker was even created to help buyers find them.  Nintendo just couldn’t make them fast enough.  Around April of this year demand began to drop.  It seems that everyone that wanted a Wii had one.  The only people without one are those that would just buy one on a whim.  Paying $249 on a whim is getting more difficult for most people.  Which brings me to my final reason…

Reason # 5 – The Recession

No one likes it, no one can agree how it started, and no one can seem to fix it but it’s here.  Even if Ben Bernanke claims it’s “technically over” there are still a lot of people out there hurting.  Unemployment looks like it is going to stay high for a while too.  Since Nintendo has been making huge profits from their Wii for a long time it’s time they give their consumers a little break.  It would also be the smart thing for them do do before demand drops even further.

Update: Looks like I was right.  Link.

Windows 7 is scheduled to be released in just over a month, October 22nd. Most of the reviews have been overwhelmingly positive especially compared to how badly Vista was received. I have been running Windows 7 on an EeePC netbook for several months now, first the beta and now the Release Candidate. It’s fast, it’s stable, and it has some great new features. Microsoft has done a good job with their latest operating system. But that’s not what I think is important.

When the first Release Candidate was made available it included wallpapers that were far from Microsoft’s normal ones. One of my favorites is shown above and a few more at the bottom of the post. The full set can be found here at resolutions up to 1920×1200.

More recently Microsoft has released a series of advertisements using an adorable little girl named Kylie to promote the new OS. The five year old says Windows 7 is “snappy and re-pon-ki-ser” then shows off a slide show that uses 80′s rock.

Now, all of this might seem a little odd for Microsoft but that’s exactly my point. Apparently the corporation that has a budget the size of a small country is beginning to go by Apple’s old Think Different slogan. They’re moving away from the outlook that computers are just functional and are getting closer to Apple’s outlook that computers can be cool. As a longtime Windows user I welcome this new direction.