14 DAY TRIAL // Apple has now passed the 100,000 mark in iPad applications, leaving competition in a trail of dust not only hard-ware wise, but also software-wise.
With such a big collection of iPad-native applications, the iPad can become pretty much what everyone wants it to be.
Whether you want one for web surfing, Facebook and Twitter, for studying or even work at the office, “there’s an app for that,” as Apple puts it. Make that over 100K apps starting this week.
The milestone was hit in roughly 450 days, according to a report on MacStories, but Apple issued no formal announcement whatsoever.
Instead, the company’s marketing page for iPad apps still says: "Over 90,000 apps for iPad. For work, play, and everything in between.”
Perhaps Apple themselves are tired to count.
Last time they did, they confirmed over 10 billion downloads on the entire iOS App Store, which includes both iPad and iPhone apps.
Speaking of which, the iPhone App Store holds about four times more applications that the iPad App Store does.
Remember, we’re talking ‘native’ apps here, meaning those applications are 100% supported on a certain device configuration.
The neat thing is that, when the original iPad was born, hundreds of thousands of applications that had already been available in the App Store were compatible with the iPad, out-of-the-box.
That’s ‘compatible,’ not ‘native.’
While most iPhone apps do work on the iPad, they don’t quite leverage the increased screen real estate. All they do is show up like blown-up versions of the same piece of software.
Most of the time, these look pixelated and… well, downright crappy.
However, a year after the first iPad was introduced, over 75,000 ‘native’ applications had become available for the post-PC device, indicating that developers were eager to take advantage of the new hardware, including the more powerful A4 chip.
Three months ago the second Apple tablet - the iPad 2 - came out.
An array of iPad 2 apps now take advantage of its even faster A5 chip and the dual cameras.
Needless to point out, competitive tablets like those developed by Samsung, Motorola and HP (if they can even be called competition), are still struggling to build a collection of relevant pieces of software.
Quite a head start for Apple, huh?