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Yesterday, at Apple's "Back to the Mac" press event, the company announced an App Store for the Mac, similar to the stores it already runs for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad within iTunes. There's no doubt a computer-based "app store" is an interesting concept, and it will likely attract developers because of the exposure it provides, not to mention the hassles it eliminates - like dealing with credit card processing, or paying for hosting and bandwidth bills.

As with the iTunes App Store, developers receive the standard 70/30 (developer/Apple) revenue split on app sales. Also like the iTunes App Store, Apple has created a long list of apps it plans to reject.

This week, an interesting new startup called Appbackr launched, creating the first wholesale market for iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) applications. The idea is that developers can submit apps to Appbackr instead of the iTunes App Store at wholesale prices.

So why would developers want to do this?

The Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), an alliance of telecommunications firms working to create a common mobile application platform, just added 32 more members, including big names like Opera Software, Oracle, Alcatel-Lucent, Fujitsu, LG Electronics, China Unicom, Rogers Communications and others.

The group's goal is to simplify the mobile application creation process for developers, allowing them to deploy mobile apps across all member networks simultaneously. Essentially, it's an effort to build a global app store.

When Apple launched Ping, its new music-focused social network found within iTunes 10, the response was decidedly lukewarm. The effort felt incomplete, as if its social features had been rushed out the door before the service was fully built. Ping lacked the most basic functionality, including the ability to rate non-music purchases and an inability to take into account your own music ratings. It also lacked personalized recommendations for artists to follow (apparently everyone likes Lady Gaga) and, at the last minute, Apple pulled Ping's Facebook integration, too.

Still, we cautioned that disappointed new users shouldn't give up on Ping yet - the features it needs to be successful aren't beyond Apple's grasp. And this weekend, Apple added two new features that prove the company isn't giving up on Ping yet, either.

There's an interesting chart making its way around the Net this morning comparing the number of iTunes app downloads to the total downloads of songs. The surprising reveal is that it shows apps are being downloaded much more rapidly than songs. In only 2.2 years, the iTunes App Store has reached the same total downloads as the iTunes Music Store did after five years. And before the year is out, the two curves on the chart will be around the same height - 13 billion downloads each.

Why is this happening? Why are apps becoming more popular than music?

Only 24 hours after the launch of Apple's new social network, Ping, the service has been overrun by spammers. The fraudsters have created iTunes profiles and are posting links to a number of online scams, including ones that promises "free iPhones" or "free iPads" in exchange for filling out online surveys. For the most part, these suspicious links are being posted in the comments sections of the most popular artists on Ping, like Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, U2 and others, all of whom are among the recommended accounts linked to from the Ping homepage.

Part of the new iTunes 10 software, announced and launched yesterday, is a significant new social networking feature for iTunes called Ping. It allows you to comment on music, 'like' it a la Facebook, or rate it. Ping is also very similar to Twitter, in that you can 'follow' people and music stars. All of this happens inside of the iTunes application, either on your computer, iPhone or iPod Touch.

We took the new feature for a spin and came away intrigued, despite some initial flaws. We do however wonder at the overly commercial focus of Ping. Is this really about social networking, or mostly for Apple and artists to sell more music?

The new iTunes social network Ping will let you connect directly with your favorite artists, but Apple's promotional image for the new feature conveniently omits a string of Tweets from Lady Gaga's timeline in which she protests anti-gay marriage legislation Proposition 8.

It's a little thing, but given the controversies Apple has faced around app store censorship, and the direct-to-audience promise of both Twitter (and presumably Ping), it certainly seems notable. Apparently the company wanted to have its cake and eat it too when it came to one of the world's most famous, and outspoken, musical artists.

It was a busy day at the YBCA Theater in San Francisco today as Apple unveiled a slew of new products and services to its crowd, and to those watching live on the Web. We saw upgrades to the iOS software for all iOS devices (even the iPad), a new line-up of iPods for the holiday season, iTunes 10 with its social network Ping and of course, the new $99 Apple TV. Here's a run down of everything that happened in one handy-dandy list in case you missed it!

When social networking behemoth Facebook launched its foray into the location game with Places, some declared that apps like Foursquare and Gowalla would be rendered obsolete. The result, so far, has been quite the contrary, as the megaphone of Facebook has helped spread the word about location apps to the laypeople. Today, the mobile location app market got another big boost as iTunes launched "On the Grid," (iTunes Link) a special showcase featuring geosocial iOS apps on the front page of the App Store.