The Mac App Store takes the model Apple established with mobile and tablet apps for iOS and applies it to the desktop. Developers who opt to charge for apps get a 70% cut of the revenue, just as mobile developers do.

For developers, it provides a tried-and-true method of monetizing their work, if they're willing to accept Apple's revenue cut. From the looks of it, the platform is popular enough that, if nothing else, the Mac App Store gives developers increased visibility for their finished products. It's become a resource for not only independent, lightweight desktop apps, but also for heavy-duty programs like Logic for audio-editing, Final Cut Pro for video and Photoshop Express.

From Apple to Microsoft, Desktops Begin to Resemble Mobile

The desktop app marketplace is not the only aspect of Apple-manufactured computers that recalls the user experience of using a tablet or smartphone. When the company released Mac OS X Lion earlier this year, it baked in several elements of iOS, from the mobile-style layout of apps in Launchpad to the multitouch gestures supported by the trackpad. Browsing the Web and scrolling through documents and menus on Lion feels more like doing so on an iPad or iPhone now, with a two-finger swipe up resulting in the page moving down (and vice versa).

Apple isn't the only company merging the experience of using the desktop with that of smaller devices. Microsoft is taking things even further. The next generation of their PC operating system, Windows 8, borrows heavily from mobile design and user experience concepts. It features a touch-friendly UI, a new breed of HTML5-driven applications and a relatively seamless user experience between smartphones, tablets and the desktops.

In planting the malicious app, Miller violated Apple terms of service and has been suspended from the iOS developer program for a year and his app has been removed. What the app did was get around the code signature requirement for iOS apps and allowed the app to connect to a command-and-control server to download additional code to the application.

The code signature is like an electronic ID from the makers of an app. In Android, security apps scan for the code of an app and can then choose to white or black list an app or publisher from there. That has never really been a problem with iOS because no app could function without an approved signature. What Miller did was find a part of the iOS browser that was allowed to run without a signature (which, according to Forbes article on Miller's research, was used to accelerate Safari's speeds). Miller then exploited that exception to allow his own app to contact the C&C server.

Apple will probably fix this vulnerability soon. In the meantime, the Apple app screeners will probably be on the lookout for any apps being submitted that may want to exploit this vulnerability. This is exactly the type of thing that malicious hackers have been looking for. Malicious hackers go where there is rich data that they can use for monetary gain. Right now, there is no richer data to be found than what resides in consumers' smartphones.

According to his Twitter account, Miller submitted the vulnerability to Apple three weeks ago. The app has been in the App Store since September.

Yes, Miller violated the Apple TOS by knowingly putting an app with the possibility to download malicious code in the App Store. Does he deserve his fate? It can be said that he saved Apple from a world of headache by alerting them to the vulnerability. Let us know what you think in the comments.

We confirmed the Tapjoy Games platform with a company spokesperson. The platform will be a hub for games across iOS, Android and HTML5 Web-based games that Tapjoy will tie together with virtual currency from the publishers. Can Tapjoy steer clear of Apple's App Store terms of service or will Tapjoy Games be the next in a line of ill-fated attempts from the company?

Tapjoy Games is not exactly a store. The better definition for it would probably be "hub" because it does not act as the point of download, but rather sends users to the appropriate market places. For instance, if one of Tapjoy's partners has its iOS games listed in the Games platform, the user will get redirected to iTunes. Same goes for Android and Web apps. Users are rewarded with virtual currency for downloads across platforms and publishers.

This is different from what was reported by Inside Mobile Apps, which did not mention the re-direct to the Android Market or App Store. Pocket Gamer hit what Tapjoy is doing a little more directly.

This is not exactly a full pivot for Tapjoy. Its current stable of offerings, including its partnerships and video offerings, will not be affected. Tapjoy will add this business-to-consumer aspect to its already large business-to-business offerings.

Getting Around Native TOS With Via The Web

Tapjoy's SDK was ousted from the App Store earlier this year because the practice of rewarding users for extra downloads with virtual currency ended up vaulting apps into the top charts of the market. Apple was not keen on the control Tapjoy had and banned the practice. By using a mobile Web app, Tapjoy is now skirting the iOS rules because, as much as Apple would like to, it cannot control what happens on the mobile Web.

After the leak last week, Tapjoy has pulled back a bit on its announcement. It was slated to go live on Tuesday Nov. 1 but the official announcement has been delayed, perhaps to later this week. Part of the announcement will also be a social discovery and engagement layer between Tapjoy publisher partner apps. The Tapjoy company spokesperson was not ready to elaborate on that aspect of the announcement quite yet.

Is Tapjoy recreating the same headaches it faced earlier this year or will its new Web hub that ties downloads to virtual currency finally be able to stick? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Picture: Pocket Gamer

The new rules have not thrilled publishers, but reactions have been mixed. Some media companies, like Hulu and the New York Times, have decided to play along with Apple and offer a significant cut of their subscription revenue to the tech giant in exchange for access to millions of iTunes customers. Others, like Amazon, have opted to build HTML5 Web apps as a way to circumvent the new rules.

Their Web app is essentially a stripped-down version of their desktop website, with some extra controls and UI elements built in. It's not amazing, but it's comparable to some existing iPad apps for news content and it renders well on tablets. Most importantly, from their standpoint, it maintains the publication's paywall without the need to shell out 30% of their revenue to Apple each month.

Still, being pulled from such a widely-used platform has to hurt subscription revenue, at least at first. PaidContent estimates that the FT iPad app may have had as many as 10,000 users.

It remains to be seen what kind of impact this will have on the FT's overall subscription revenue. While it may take a hit initially, if they can properly market the Web app to tablet owners (iPads, Android tablets or otherwise), perhaps they can manage to make up the difference.

The HTML5 Kindle site appears to be optimized for the iPad. It's accessed from the Safari browser in the iPad, so it routes around Apple's App Store. That means Amazon doesn't need to give Apple 30% of an eBook sale. Because the HTML5 site is very close to the functionality of the iPad Kindle app, this is going to have huge ramifications for Apple. Yes, Apple's walled garden has just been structurally weakened. I'd go as far as to say that it's a matter of months, not years, before Amazon pulls its iOS Kindle app from the App Store.

HTML5 is the latest version of HTML, the browser markup language of the Web. It's an increasingly popular way to deliver interactive experiences in browsers across devices: PCs, smartphones, tablets and more. We named HTML5 one of our top trends of the first half of 2011, because of the impact it is having on the App ecosystem.

Apple's iOS platform (for iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad and Apple TV) has the most apps. But Android is fast catching up - indeed, Amazon itself runs an Android app store.

Apple's App Store is a classic walled garden. Apple controls what apps are approved, just as AOL used to control what content its users could access on the Internet.

Earlier this year Apple took what it probably thought of as the next logical commercial step in its walled garden strategy: take a healthy slice of the action of in-app purchases and subscriptions. After it, Apple likely reasoned, companies are using the iOS platform to make a lot of money - why not take a commission from that?

Apple's 30% toll may turn out to be a huge mistake, because it looks like it underestimated just how sophisticated HTML5 sites can be.

How Good is Kindle Cloud Reader?

After taking the Kindle Cloud Reader for a spin, my conclusion is that it's very close to the functionality of the iPad app version, including being able to read offline. The main issue with Kindle Cloud Reader is that you cannot make new notes and highlights from the site - which is going to affect many readers (myself included, I tend to highlight a lot within eBooks). Jacqui Cheng from Ars Technica did a thorough review and noted some other pros and cons, but they are mostly minor things.

A side-by-side comparison; Kindle iPad app is on the left, Kindle Cloud Reader on the right.

The bottom line is that while the Kindle Cloud Reader isn't quite as good as the iPad Kindle app yet, it soon will be. The addition of notes and highlights can't be that difficult. When Kindle Cloud Reader gets on a par with the iPad app, I'm willing to bet that Amazon will pull the iOS app from the App Store.

Some of you may protest that Amazon wants to keep as many options open as possible, because ultimately it just wants people to use Kindle and buy books. But for many users - and I include myself in this - it doesn't matter what form the Kindle takes on the iPad. As long as it works at least as well as the iPad app version. If Amazon suddenly added the ability for me to create new notes and highlights from the HTML5 version, then pulled the iPad app from the App Store, I'd simply switch to the HTML5 version without blinking.

Most Kindle users on the iPad would do the same. They won't care about the iPad app disappearing, so long as they have just as good a user experience on the HTML5 version. Judging by the high quality of Kindle Cloud Reader, which certainly surprised me, that day isn't far away.

Should Apple be concerned about that? You bet. It's going to end up being a very large hole in its wall, caused by companies wielding HTML5 sledgehammers. Amazon has struck one of the first blows. Other media companies are actively experimenting, too, such as Financial Times and Fortune magazine.

Let us know in the comments if you think Kindle Cloud Reader will soon replace the iOS Kindle app, or if you think the two will continue to exist together.

AIR Marketplace for Consumers

The two stores served different purposes for Adobe. The AIR Marketplace was a consumer-facing effort where end users could search for and discover applications built using Adobe AIR technology, like TweetDeck, AccuWeather's alerts app, AOL's Top 100 Videos or a Facebook Photo Uploader, to name a few of the more popular items. Developers were encouraged to list their apps in this store for self-promotional purposes, and it included typical consumer app store features like images, descriptions, ratings, reviews and social sharing options.

InMarket for Developers

Meanwhile, Adobe's InMarket was an app distribution service targeted towards developers. The idea here was that developers could publish once to distribute everywhere.

Adobe launched the store last fall, when it only supported publication to Intel's AppUp center, a Windows app store designed for netbooks and notebooks. At the time, Adobe said that it expected to support 10 stores by the second half of 2011. Unfortunately, that did not happen. According to the InMarket FAQ, only AppUp and Adobe's own AIR Marketplace were supported. This makes it seem as if the store's shutdown had less to do with "developer feedback" and more to do with Adobe's failure to secure app store partners as promised.

Developers have until August 31st to download their app analytics, revenue reports and other data, and update any widgets or links to their app's webpage. Developers who published to AppUp will receive an email from Intel over the next few days with more details about direct publishing.

Well, guess what? It worked! Look what our headline reads!

Still, it is an impressive number, and one that puts competing app stores to shame. And Apple had even more new numbers to reveal today, too.

Some of these numbers represent an increase over those revealed at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in June. At that time, Apple had reached 400,000 mobile apps, 90,000 of which were iPad-specific and 14 billion downloads.

Compared to Others

To put these numbers in context, Google said at its I/O conference in May that the Android Market had reached 4.5 billion downloads, and Google has seen over 100 million devices activated worldwide. Also at that time, Google was activating 400,000 Android devices daily. By the end of June, Google's Android chief Andy Rubin reported that daily activations had increased to 500,000 per day.

Google said, too, that there are over 200,000 apps in the Android Market. What it didn't want to tell you, however, is how many work on Android tablets. It's an embarrassing number that may be somewhere from 50 to 100, reports The New York Times.

As for Nokia, it's seeing over 6 million apps and content downloads per day, and more than 300,000 new Nokia accounts created daily. The Ovi store is now home to over 48,000 apps. Nokia also said that Qt developers can target more than 100 million devices now, and will be able to target 150 million more in the future, due to the Symbian smartphones Nokia intends to sell.

RIM is now seeing 3 million app downloads per day, the company announced in March, up from 1 million just under a year ago. Microsoft's newcomer Window Phone reached its own milestone recently: 25,000 apps, up from 11,500 in March.

After receiving death threats, Figueira was shot six times on June 15 by gunmen on motorcycles outside his workplace. In addition to being a blogger, he was a newspaper editor and an official in a trade union. This is the second time a blogger has been murdered by his government or, in Figueira's case most likely organized crime figures attached to the government.

Chinese artist and digital native released but muzzled. China's best known artist, Ai Weiwei, has been stuck away in a Chinese jail since his arrest in early April. He was released last Friday but has remained completely silent regarding his detention, no doubt a result of the terms of his release.

But why arrest Ai in the first place? He is an artist, free speech advocate and architect of global standing. Although he had never had a solo show in China, he designed the celebrated "Birds Nest" stadium that was the center of the Beijing Olympics. He allegedly had plans to relocate to Germany, where he had set up a studio. So, he is high-profile and has a big mouth, which he knows how to use. But his arrest was hardly the exception to the rule. At least 129 more people remain locked up in the latest spate of government detentions.

Chinese blogger harassed in advance of her husband's release. Zeng Jinyang has been bothered by Chinese security, and possibly placed under house arrest, in advance of her husband's release after a three-and-a-half year prison term. Her husband, Hu Jia, is also a well-known blogger and environmental and AIDS activist.

Zeng tweeted about being harassed by eight men when she disembarked in Beijing, where her husband will be released. "As I was getting off the plane, eight people came and took me away, they even took my luggage." and "I think this is how life is going to be after [Hu Jia is released]."A third tweet, hours later, was so different in tone it made some suspicious. "I have just got home. I am going to cook tofu and tomatoes. I don't know if it will be good. I saw Hu Jia today. I asked him if he was taking care of himself. There is still time for that. Media friends, my apologies and thank you for your concern."

Chile monitoring social networks. It's not unusual to use "open source" methods for intelligence gathering. But doing so against the Chilean people itself has proven wildly unpopular for the users of social networks. Brand Metrics, a social media measuring company, "will be responsible for alerting authorities when there are 'significant changes' in people's views on a topic, according to the government bid."

Apple removes ThirdIntifada app from store. Apple doesn't exactly have a high bar to removal of apps from its store, as their (temporary) ban of Ulysses proves tidily. Whether this was warranted or not I'll leave to you. It breached their TOS, according to Apple, by allegedly promoting violence.

LulzSec disbands, rebands. LulzSec, the attention-grabbing hacking collective announced its end, or perhaps a transmogrification. AntiSec, which seems to be the successor group, in conjunction with Anonymous, is already hacking away.

WordPress Blocked in Central Asia. WordPress' Matt Mullenweg said on his blog, "As far as I know we've had no contact with KazakhTelecom. Typically this happens when they don't like something a blog is saying, so they block or degrade service for everybody." This is a common reaction to "offensive material" by many countries, who will wind up blocking the whole of, say, Facebook out of fear of one account, as happened last year in Saudi Arabia and as Pakistan is currently in the process of doing.

China's cloud districts censorship-free, for foreigners.The city of Chongqing will be the first in China to see the debut of a "cloud district." Users within the district can access the Internet outside of the traditional Chinese censorship regime. This has upset many Chinese.

Malaysia trying blogger for defamation. According to Article 19's Dr Agnes Callamard, "Charles Hector is being sued for defamation at the High Court of Malaya in Shah Alam by the Malaysian subsidiary of Asahi Kosei Japan Co. Ltd, a Japanese electronics company. The defamation case centres around articles Hector posted on his blog in which he raises his concerns about the companies' treatment of 31 Myanmar migrant workers. His findings were based on research he carried out." How the laws in questions are interpreted by the court could deal a serious blow to bloggers' free speech.

Pakistan increases filtering. According to OpenNet Initiative, "Mobilink, one of the leading telecommunications companies in Pakistan, is now requiring that all users add proxy 10.215.2.32 port 3128 in order to browse the Internet. As a result of this development, Mobilink users are unable to search for several politically sensitive keywords, including the name of the country's president, Asif Ali Zardari."

Zeng photo via Wikipedia