iPhone Hill

Apple has begun seeding iOS 4.1 Gold Master to developers, the final step before the general availability release promised for next week.

In addition to fixes for proximity sensors, Bluetooth, and iPhone 3G performance, it includes Game Center, HD photos, HD YouTube uploads, and TV rentals.

If you’re a developer, head on over to developer.apple.com and start downloading. No doubt the App Store will start taking iOS 4.1 compiled binaries any time now…

[BGR]

iOS 4.1 Gold Master now available to developers is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Wired did some poking around and discovered Phillip Shoemaker, Apple’s director of App Store — the man purportedly in charge of App Store approval and rejection — was or is the developer of fart and urination apps.

Shoemaker apparently had or has a company named Gray Noodle, whose titles include Animal Farts and iWiz. Although the social networking profiles and posts that led Wired to the discovery have subsequently been removed, they’ve retained archive copies. An Apple spokeswoman gave them the following comment:

“Phillip’s apps were written, submitted and approved before he became an Apple employee,” an Apple spokeswoman said in a statement. “His experience and perspective as a developer is one of the valuable things he brings to Apple’s developer relations team. Apple’s policy allows for employees to have apps on the App Store if they’re developed and published prior to their start at Apple.”

Other former Apple employees confirmed that special, executive level permission was required in order for an Apple employee to publish on the App Store, though if the apps predated Apple employment permission for them to remain on the App Store might be easier to obtain.

So is it reassuring for developers to have someone with experience getting controversial apps approved inside the App Store? Does it mean if you were rejected, you didn’t even meet the Animal Farts sniff test?

[Wired, thanks Luke!]

Director of App Store for Apple also made fart and wiz apps is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb – The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

iAds is Apple’s attempt to bring the emotion of television to the interactivity of online, but the Wall Street Journal says it’s off to a bumpy start. Apparently, part of the reason is — surprise, surprise — Apple is exerting tight control over the platform (what, punch the monkey ads aren’t good enough for iOS?!). Apple is also producing the ads themselves at this point and there appear to be longer than expected delays getting them up and running even after they’ve been signed off on.

That has made the creation of the mobile ads laborious, taking about eight to 10 weeks from brainstorm to completion—longer than normal for most mobile ads, executives said. The building of the actual ad, handled by Apple, in some cases is taking two weeks longer than expected, one person added.

Once online, however, they seem to be working.

A Nissan spokeswoman said its iAd “has driven exceptional results to date.” The company said the rate of users tapping on the banner is five times the click-through-rate of the Nissan Leaf online campaign.

Those “people familiar with the matter” claim Apple underestimated the demands of the new business and are scrambling to learn how best to deal with the Mad Men of advertising.

Once it gets established, once Apple rolls out an HTML5 development environment for it, once it gets on an iOS 4.x iPad, once we see more of it internationally (I don’t think I’ve seen a single iAd yet, anyone else outside the US?) — i.e. once it matures — these problems could go either go away, or just become the constant, mild grumbling we hear with App Store growing pains.

[Wall Street Journal]

What’s the deal with iAds on iPhone? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb – The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog