You'll probably see these as soon as you try to update an app or make a new purchase (along with a "This content may not be appropriate for children under 17" warning for some apps). We haven't gone through all the new terms with a fine-tooth comb yet, but it is important to note the following:

items purchased IN an app (like new levels, dresses for virtual dogs, map packs, etc.) may not transfer among devices; our developer friends tell us they are absolutely supposed to transfer, but the effort to make that work is on the individual developer and Apple is simply doing a CYA here in the terms. If you have 2 iPhones with the same iTunes account, you can have the same app on both devices -- but you won't be able to reuse anything purchased in one instance of the app onto the other iPhone, nor are you guaranteed to be able to get all your In App content back if you replace your iPhone.

Also, note that "The Application Provider is solely responsible for In App Purchases." So if Stinky the chihuahua's sweater never makes it into your device, you'll need to hit up the guys who wrote the app for some refund or re-download or... something. It's not 100% clear on how all that will work, since we have yet to get our grubby, unwashed masses' mitts on the system, but Apple is reportedly leaning hard on developers to make sure In App purchasing works as advertised -- while making sure we all acknowledge who's responsible if something goes awry.

If you notice other changes in the T&C, leave 'em in the comments.

We can't wait for iPhone 3.0 to arrive (c'mon, isn't it Wednesday somewhere already?), so in the meantime we're making a list and checking it twice. AppAdvice has posted a short list of apps known or expected to include Push Notification capabilities, including IM+, AP News, Tap Tap Revenge 2.5 and AIM. ESPN's ScoreCenter (promoed at the top of the store earlier today) was also announced as a push-capable app during the original iPhone 3.0 event.

We've got a few others that seem to be promising PN capability at or near the 3.0 launch, courtesy of reader Joachim's research help: Beejive IM and ngmoco's Touch Pets Dogs. A quick search of Apptism for 'push notifications' reveals a few more candidates, including David Fletcher's ChatMaster. Searching the iTunes Store itself shows a couple more interesting (and not necessarily shipping) apps: speed trap checker Trapster, killer Jabber/XMPP client OneTeam, personal finance tool BillMinder and IT manager's virtual machine toolkit VManage all list PN on the roadmap but no sign of new versions yet.

Once the 3.0 version is released and developers can loose their tongues, we fully expect to hear about scores of updates to take advantage of PN and other new features. If your app is among the revised horde, shoot us a line at our app review address.

Thanks to Will for the suggestion.

This is really neat. The folks at Design Commission have produced a stencil to assist with the iPhone/iPod touch UI prototyping, brainstorming sessions, flows, interaction techniques, etc. that you'll do before you begin coding.

Of course, it includes all the standard iconography and buttons. Doesn't it make you want to just break out a fresh sheet of paper and set to work? If you want one, act fast, as they've only produced 100. Each kit ($16.95US) comes with the stencil and a Zebra mechanical pencil. A matching letter-sized template can be downloaded from the website as a PDF.

Now go and make the next killer app!

As with most keynote presentations, Apple released a lot of numbers about just how many people are adopting the Mac and iPhone platforms.

First, over the last three years, the active Mac OS X installed base has grown from 25 million users to 75 million users. This is great news for the platform and for the entire Mac ecosystem.

Also, over 5,200 developers from 54 countries around the world are attending WWDC. Over a million people have downloaded the free iPhone SDK, and created 50,000 applications for Apple iPhones and iPod touch devices.

Speaking of which, over 40 million iPhones and iPod touches have been sold to date. In April, Apple announced that those users had downloaded a cumulative total of one billion applications.

If you happen to be enrolling in Aoyama Gakuin University's School of Social Informatics in Tokyo this year, make sure to stop by the admissions office to pick up your free iPhone -- the school made a deal with Softbank Corporation, the iPhone's vendor in Japan, to give the phones to 550 students for school usage. But oh, there is one catch: they're also going to use the phones' GPS to track students, and make sure they're attending class on time.

It looks like skipping class is an issue -- the students at the school, despite having to answer an attendance check and/or hand in an attendance card, are still skipping out on class and having their classmates cover them. But apparently university officials think the iPhone plan will work better, because students will be less inclined, they believe, to pass off their iPhone to a buddy.

Need to keep track of truant students? There is, apparently, an app for that.

[via Ars]

Sure, the transparent email and the yet-another-dialer brigade are all well and good, but there are a few things the iPhone doesn't do that I really wish it would. Here's a pair of app suggestions that are probably outside the bounds of the SDK and prime fodder for jailbreak developers, but if someone came up with a way to do them that would make it onto the App Store, I can guarantee you at least one customer.

WiFi Master: If you use your iPhone in a major metropolitan area, you've probably encountered the problem I have in New York City -- scores of access points named 'linksys,' 'netgear' or 'default' or a Starbucks broadcasting AT&T's WiFi network on every corner. Join one, just once, and your iPhone insists on hopping aboard whenever it's in range, whether or not the named network is the one you meant to use or whether you've signed into the web portal for the WLAN (leaving you starved for connectivity, as the 3G connection is superceded by the WiFi link).

Tweaking the network settings is generally a no-no for non-Apple apps, but we need help. Give me a quick way to turn WiFi on and off from the home screen, a way to exclude or include access points by MAC address instead of just by SSID (locking out the rogue 'linksys' networks), and instant display of my assigned DHCP address without diving four screens down into the Settings app. Granted, the Devicescape sign-on automation apps are a good start towards this goal (the Easy WiFi for AT&T iPhones app is worth the $0.99 in aggravation reduction) but I need more active WiFi control in this network-dense environment.

As noted in the comments, the jailbreak app SBSettings covers a lot of these use cases; if you're in a WiFi hot zone and you can't take any more, it might be the tool that pushes you to jailbreak your phone.

GotThis?: One of the favored activities of appoholics, when meeting in their secret underground lairs, is comparing screenfuls of cool iPhone apps to see what they might want to download next. It would be easier if these phone-waving sessions could be automated with -- of course -- an app that would compare your installed suite with that of your neighbor's, point out what he's got that you don't and vice versa, show you most-run statistics and then perhaps link you to the App Store if you've gotta have one of those apps right away.

The problem is that the roster of installed apps is not accessible to a sandboxed app running on the phone, at least not under SDK rules; one way to do this would be to scrape the installed app profile from iTunes and then store it, with the user's permission, on an external website (leveraging the existing iUseThis for iPhone, perhaps). Give this app the interface and location awareness of contact sharer & billionth-app Bump, let users tap iPhones to compare installation profiles, and you'd have a fun social networking tool plus an appoholic enabler of devastating proportions.

What's on your app wishlist? Have you seen apps like these, either in the App Store or in the Cydia Store? Let us know below.

Miguel Sanchez-Grice, creator of the iCombat app (a remake of the old Atari game), sent us these stats on piracy of his app after writing a blog post about the same thing, and I find them fascinating. Instead of building DRM into his app, he just detected if the player was using a copy that wasn't from the App Store, and then forwarded them onto a web page that he could track. It seems like he equates unique visitors to his Pinch Media site as users (though he doesn't go into detail about exactly where those "Pinch Media New Uniques" numbers come from), and then subtracts legit app sales from those numbers to get the number of pirates. And while he says the numbers are lower than he expected, they seem pretty high to me: there is a substantial number of people out there using cracked apps.

The other day I had the fortune of hanging out with TUAW's own Mike Rose and our old colleague David Chartier in Chicago, and my main fear going into the meeting was that, given what a bunch of iPhone geeks we were, we'd just spend the whole time showing off apps on our iPhones. Not that seeing cool apps isn't awesome, but if you've ever had anyone excitedly show you what an app can do, I think it gets to be a little much. And I'm not alone -- though yes, the iPhone does a lot of things that we have never been able to do before, it is possible to get "app-noxious," a term coined by MSNBC to describe people who are way too excited about what their iPhone can do. Yes, we know already, there is an app for that. Give it a break.

This isn't the first time this phenomenon has popped up, and if you own an iPhone, you probably already know about it anyway -- I was definitely looking for made-up ways to use SnapTell Explorer when I first installed it. So next time you feel the urge to break into someone else's conversation to let them know about this app you bought last night that does exactly what they're talking about, hold your tongue, at least until you're not interrupting.

And of course that doesn't mean that app nerds can't still be nerds about it -- yes, though Rose and Chartier and I didn't spend the whole time showing off apps to each other, we each did bring out phones at least once to show off just how great this new app we just got was.

[via MacDailyNews]

I love hearing this about the iPhone: the San Francisco Chronicle has a piece about how Apple's little revolutionary telephone has brought a whole new crop of programmers into the development mix. People who had never before looked at code or considered writing their own applications are getting ideas about how to make better software, picking up Cocoa and Xcode books, and going to town. And strangely, we might actually have fart apps to thank for this -- people aren't just seeing the iPhone as an innovative platform, but they're seeing the App Store as an "anything goes" environment, where even their silly little idea might work.

I don't know if we can pin all the credit for the burgeoning iPhone development scene on fart apps and the impression that even a monkey can make bestselling iPhone software (certainly Apple has set the bar and price for entry pretty low, both with the extremely cheap $100 fee for a developer account as well as the high quality Xcode software that comes on every Mac), but there is definitely something in this little device that's driving people to try and create their own software for it.

Oh, and the money probably helps, too. Still, whether people are taking up iPhone development because they want to make millions or are just looking for another hobby, it's us, app consumers, who will benefit.

During our interview with Danielle Cassley of Aurora Feint, I talked with her about OpenFeint, the code backbone for a social network that iPhone developers can use in their apps. Since then, a number of developers have added the interface to their apps, perhaps most notably Pocket God, which has used the tool only to create the barest of online leaderboards so far.

Now the crafty folks at Aurora Feint are revealing another trick up their sleeve: something they're calling iPromote. It sounds like more or less a crosspromotion deal for various apps and games in the OpenFeint system -- certain apps will give their users a chance to pick up other paid apps under the OpenFeint umbrella. While the press release is fairly vague about exactly how it works (they say there will be "a revenue sharing model for sales that occur through OpenFeint"), it'll probably show up in the user's interface as links or promotions for other apps.

There are quite a few of those apps -- Aurora Feint lists over 20 apps that have already integrated OpenFeint, and there are more on the way, including some high-profile apps from Chillingo. Even our friend Steve Demeter, who was working on his own community platform called Onyx, has abandoned work on that to join up with OpenFeint. There are at least a few other such platforms like this that were vying for widespread acceptance on the iPhone, but it looks like OpenFeint is primed to take the top spot. Which means we'll probably be seeing lots of it in applications near you very soon.

Remember LETHAL? It's an app that can keep you awake at night by telling you about all of the dangerous things that can kill, maim, or at least injure you. The good thing is that LETHAL does it in a humorous way.

We did a review of LETHAL a few months ago, and now the development team at Elany Arts has taken the app to a new level. Not only did they significantly upgrade LETHAL, but they also dropped the price of the app from US$1.99 down to US$0.99.

What's changed?

• LETHAL now gives a risk ranking for every US and Canadian town or city with a population over 100,000, plus all Canadian National Parks. If you're within a large metropolitan area, you can watch your LETHAL index change as you drive around.
• More disasters! More dangerous animals!
• The crime information is more specific, with new updated crime data from the FBI database.
• You can view rankings for all locations from most dangerous to least (or vice versa) for all indexes and specific risks. Want to find the #1 area to get killed by a grizzly bear? LETHAL can help.
• Speaking of animals, they're now displayed with their relative risk based on prevalence in the area and confirmed attacks (I griped about this in my earlier review, since they showed mountain lions as a big risk in my suburban neighborhood).
• Disasters are also displayed with their relative risk based on prevalence and confirmed incidents.

LETHAL (click opens iTunes) is a fun and fascinating app, and the new lower price and extra-chunky feature set makes it even more worthwhile.

Twitter is many things to many people. Some folks use it to keep up with friends or the latest news; others make it their primary tool for online coversation. There exists, however, within the throng of Twitter users, a group of people who use Twitter as the stage from which they deliver their own special brand of humor.

For these types, a tweet isn't something that's typed and quickly posted a few seconds later -- it's a chance to make his/her followers chuckle. To that end, they take great care to ensure that each tweet is finely honed and worded to deliver the maximum amount of gag within the 140-character limit. Birdhouse is an application for these people.

Dubbed by its creators as "A Notepad for Twitter," Birdhouse isn't your typical Twitter client. Instead of reading, replying to and favoriting your buddies' tweets, it focuses on composition. Got an idea for a really hilarious joke? Plug the idea into Birdhouse, then come back to it when you have time. Tweak and refine it until you've got just what you want, and hit publish.

There's no hard limit to the number of drafts you can keep at once, and it maintains a timestamped history of all of the tweets you've published. You can rate each message using a 5-star system, and it also allows you to email yourself a complete list of all pending and published tweets in case you're staring at the business end of an iPhone restore and you don't want to lose that truly golden mom joke you've been working on.

Birdhouse [App Store] is available now for $3.99US.

With more than 25,000 apps in the App Store (as of this writing), it's not easy to find the standouts. One such app is Gas Cubby from App Cubby (we're written about it before), and I'm very happy to have spent a week with version 2.0. It's in my top five iPhone applications (along with its sibling, Trip Cubby. But that's another post entirely).

My day job requires me to keep track of automotive expenses. Before I found Gas Cubby, I was unsuccessfully trying to do so with pen and paper. I'd either take the pen out of the car and forget to return it or do the same with the notebook. I'd end up scribbling on anything I could find and promptly lose whatever it was. My accountant wasn't happy.

Gas Cubby solved the issue and actually made it fun for me to keep track of my expenses. That's right, fun. You can collect data on gas and service. First, I'll look at gas.

Update: Yes, this will be a free upgrade for current owners.

As my colleague Aron Trimble has pointed out today, Apple has launched a new series of iPhone ads. As they have done recently, these 3 new commercials talk about all the added functionality the iPhone gets from having many thousands of apps available.

There are some ironies that cross my mind as I look at and enjoy the usual creativity from Apple.

One of the apps highlighted is a point of sale system that runs on an iPhone. Most ironic, since if you go the the Apple Stores the POS system they use is running on Windows CE. They're the little portable credit card units the sales people carry.

These ads emphasizing the variety of apps also makes me chuckle, as I think back to how Steve Jobs insisted in June of 2007 that web apps would be enough for iPhone users. Not only was that not true, but by changing his mind, Apple has generated millions of dollars in revenues it would never have made. It could be argued that the addition of apps has revitalized the iPhone and iPod Touch and given life to a device that was showing some weakness before the SDK was allowed. As the many reviews we've done here show, there truly is something for every taste, or lack of taste at the App Store. Like other good ideas, they're hard to protect. Microsoft, RIM, and the Google Android all have app stores either running or on the way. Let's drink a toast to Steve giving in.