Happy 500 millionth download Apple App Store

Bejeezas! That's half a billion! Not one of our solid British billions, mind, but a cheating thousand-million American one. Still props to the Apple folk for a staggering 500,000,000 App Store downloads (looks pretty big written like that, eh?).

Only a month ago Apple were firing their party poppers and inhaling all the helium balloons for the 300,000,000 download mark, crossed in just 21 weeks of App Store existence. Back then there were 10,000 apps to go at - now there are 15,000 apps. At this rate there'll be more apps than people by, ooh, 2913 or so, we'd say.

Course, we wouldn't like to say just how many of those are free iFart-esque applications of dubious utility but we're guessing Apple and a few developers have made some money along the way.

Chief of those will probably be the author of I Am Rich, who flogged, well, the most useless app ever for $999.99 to those people who tend to be born every minute. That'd closely be followed by the £4.99 Super Monkey Ball maker, Sega, which all but topped the 2008 download charts for paid apps, coming second to the 59p Koi Pond.

Now, just think how many the App Store would be on if Apple hadn't pulled iBoobs...

[ Apple]