App Store Now on Twitter

The App Store now has a Twitter account with 50,000 followers and counting. The tweets will feature apps and promotions.

If you're not on Twitter (like me) you can follow the account's RSS feed.

20MB AppStore Download Cap Over 3G Network

I cannot download an iPad App that is greater than 20MB in size via 3G. I have to either use WiFi or do it via iTunes on the Mac.

I don't know if this limit was imposed by Apple or by the carriers. I also don't know if this limit is due to a technical limitation (3G network congestion, 3G bandwidth usage, recovering from a failed or corrupt download) or something else. My parents have yet to exceed 1GB of cellular usage so it's not like I don't have the 3G bandwidth to download apps.

When "Need For Speed Shift" went on sale for $0.99, I was able to buy it at that price, but had to wait until I could connect to a WiFi network before I could download it to my iPad. There is currently a greyed-out icon titled "Waiting" and the iPad nags me for my iTunes password every time it wakes up and after I enter the password, it pops-up a dialog box with the 20MB warning. This gets really annoying very quickly.

Why can't the iPad check if it's on a WiFi network before asking for the iTunes password for a pending download? It's a simple check.

Update June 8, 2011: This article is the second-most popular posting  on this blog (60+ hits since Dec, 2010; averaging 10 hits per month). This is a problem that Apple needs to look into now that iOS5 is un-tethered from a PC. I have a few suggestions:

1. Increase the limit to 50MB (my parents have never exceeded 1GB of their 5GB monthly 3G data plan)
2. Allow more than 50MB only if the user agrees to a pop-up dialog box (which would show current data usage and how much headroom in the data-plan still exists)
3. If you feel strongly about this matter, please send Apple feedback on this issue at the iPad Feedback page.

i(no)Bookstore

David Winograd wrote a comparative analysis of the book selection on the iBookstore with that of Amazon's Kindle bookstore-- Amazon was the clear winner.

I went looking for Olen Steinhaur's CIA spy thriller "The Tourist" on the iBookstore and it wasn't available. Meanwhile, Amazon has a Kindle edition ($9.49), the hardcover edition ($16.47), the paperback edition ($9.99) and the audiobook edition for ($22).

More Apps Than Songs

A survey by Asymco has found that the number of apps downloaded from iTunes has reached the number of songs downloaded in half the time and will soon exceed it.