App Store tally: 20,000 apps in seven months (Macworld.com)

iPhone and iPod touch users looking to download software from Apple’s App Store now have 20,000 programs to choose from—at least according to one Web site’s count.

Apptism, an iPhone app activity aggregator, says that the 20,000th iPhone app was added to the store some time on Tuesday. Rob Libbey of apptism says his site monitors the App Store hourly and constantly updates the total number of apps available. As this article was posted, apptism’s tracker had already topped 20,150 apps.

If apptism’s count is accurate—when contacted for comment, Apple declined to confirm the number of apps available for download—it would mean that 5,000 new programs had arrived on the App Store in less than a month. After all, it was only January 16, when Apple officially announced that it had topped the 15,000 app mark.

Then again, a 5,000 app influx isn’t outside the realm of possibility. On December 5, Apple announced that there were 10,000 apps in the store—meaning it took the company a little more than a month to add the 5,000 apps needed to reach the Apple-confirmed 15,000 mark.

That’s a lot of gas-passing simulators and novelty noisemaker apps.

No matter how many apps are in the store officially, the App Store has seen booming business since it came online nearly seven months ago. The store opened its virtual doors on July 11, 2008, with just 500 apps.

AMD’s Yet-Not-Announced Graphics Processors Listed at Company’s Web-Site

ATI RV740, M93, M97, AMD 890 Confirmed


ATI, graphics products group of Advanced Micro Devices, has started to list several yet-unannounced products on its web-site. The new chips are believed to be manufactured using 40nm process technology and are projected to help the company to win market share in its ever-lasting battle with Nvidia Corp. Besides, AMD has validated its future AMD 890 core-logic with PCI SIG.

AMD recently listed its code-named ATI RV740 graphics processing unit for desktops as well as M93 and M97 graphics chips for mobile computers at its web-site as supported by ATI Catalyst drivers. All three chips are the first GPUs produced using 40nm process technology at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and, based on the fact that they are already supported by drivers, are completely functional and ready to ship.

40nm process technology allows making graphics processors more complex and energy efficient without price increases, which is very important when it comes to entry-level or mobile graphics sub-systems.

Technical specifications of the ATI RV740, M93 and M97 graphics processors are unknown at present.

Separately, AMD has quietly validated its next-generation AMD 890 (RD890) core-logic set with PCI SIG, which also means that the product is about to be introduced to the market.

AMD did not comment on the news-story.

by Anton Shilov -- xbitlabs.com