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Apple Announces Countdown to 25 Billion App Store Downloads with $10,000 Gift Card Prize

isoMorpheus said:
"Prizes. One (1) winner will receive one (1) App Store Gift Card for credit in an amount equal to USD $10,000, redeemable in the iTunes Store, App Store, and iBook Store, as available in the country in which the winner is located. Total US Retail Value of all prizes is $10,000.00."
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What about the part where you can order your apple products through their app and pay using your APPLE ID and then go pick it up?

Doesn't that mean you could technically use it to buy store stuff?
 
olegandbuster25 said:
What about the part where you can order your apple products through their app and pay using your APPLE ID and then go pick it up?

Doesn't that mean you could technically use it to buy store stuff?
Click to expand...

You're talking about using one's Apple ID to purchase stuff from the Apple Store app, which channels through Apple's Retail.

No. Because the Gift card really is a kind of redeemed credit, whereas the Apple ID one uses to purchase things charges directly from one's credit card associated with your Apple ID.

It might be confusing because for some it's as if when there is credit on iTunes, the credit always gets used until it's used-up, at which point the credit card kicks in.

The policy here is different. Apple's iTunes department and retail department (including the Apple Online Store) have different accountings and this prize has been designed specifically to work with the iTunes side, for many reasons.

Did that make sense?
 
zarusoba said:
Please refer to Economics 101: money can be exchanged for goods and services.

Torrents don't allow content creators to get paid. Gift cards do.

If you are proposing a radical new economic system where none of the products are paid for, please detail it in another thread.
Click to expand...

your economics may be valid for the material world, but this is the cyberspace and they have no value here.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.03/economy.ideas_pr.html
 
sweetbrat said:
I can't believe how many people are complaining about a company giving something away. Apple doesn't HAVE to give away anything. People are saying that Apple is greedy because they're only giving away a $10,000 gift card. Maybe you're the one that's being greedy, because you're complaining that a $10,000 gift card isn't good enough.
Click to expand...

Read about the "Ultimatum Game" psychology/economics experiment.
 
olegandbuster25 said:
Ok that makes it 2 Thursdays from now
How do you explain the fact that apples animation on the website will reach 25 billion by next thursday (or close to there)
What are they Gonna do just keep it at that?
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I'm estimating by calculating the slope that the sum line is creating. The estimate should change, sometimes radically, over the next few days. It won't be exact.

How are you estimating next Thursday?
 
Apple has a text file that they load the most recent data from. http://www.apple.com/autopush/us/itunes/includes/countdown.inc

They use the latest count and the number of downloads since the previous count (hour intervals) to estimate a download rate. It's easy enough to use this rate calculation to estimate an end to the contest. The count is delayed by up to 3 hours though, so it's not like anyone is going to use this to lock in a win. It's a fun exercise though, and I've found it can be accurate to within a few hours if you look at enough data.
 
I'd really love to know more information on the tax implications of this. I live in a household that makes less than $40k a year, an extra $10k of taxable income would suck. To be honest I'd rather not have it if that's the case.
 
Some people are crazy....

I'm am completely indignant at people who use Apple's promotion as a reason to say they are greedy because $10k isn't 'enough'. What sort of brat would get $10k in value and be mad, "Oh well you could have given me more :/"

There is no free lunch so be glad when you get something close.

Also I have to reply to the "installlous and torrents make gift cards useless".
If none ever paid for anything since that obsolete there would be nothing to torrent. Then where would we be? The stone age. I wish I had foreseen theft becoming an "innovation".
 
I'm with those moaning about this prize; it isn't the size of it that's the problem, it's that being app/itunes only it basically costs Apple next to nothing, while at the same time not being anywhere as good as an Apple Store gift card. Am I the only one who thinks boredom would set in after the first $1000?

Also, why only one prize? The chances of winning are remote to say the least given that it's a worldwide comp, why not 25 prizes for the first 25 downloads? This giveaway is better than nothing, sure, but not good enough Apple!
 
TTMax said:
Am I the only one who thinks boredom would set in after the first $1000?
Click to expand...
1) Thats part of the point. You should know that a shocking amount of gift cards go either unspent, or only partially spent. Retailers are making a surprising amount of money from this.

2) Many people possess song collections that number in the thousands. Such a collection of music itself would be worth thousands of USD. Add in Movies, more expensive and powerful apps and you could easily be looking at very significant expenses.
 
English is not my native language, but how is this a countDOWN? It is not as if it is counting down.
 
Exhale said:
1) Thats part of the point. You should know that a shocking amount of gift cards go either unspent, or only partially spent. Retailers are making a surprising amount of money from this.

2) Many people possess song collections that number in the thousands. Such a collection of music itself would be worth thousands of USD. Add in Movies, more expensive and powerful apps and you could easily be looking at very significant expenses.
Click to expand...

A few years ago people decided to give me iTunes gift cards for my birthday and Christmas. I redeemed the first one, but haven't spent the credit. I'm pretty sure I lost the others.

I simply don't have any interest in the artists on the iTMS. Apple can't even locate the correct album art for 95% of my iTunes library.

iBooks? There are tens of thousands of good books in the public domain and I'll never have time to read all of them.

So I hope the winner is someone who doesn't yet have a large collection, someone who actually likes the artists whose work is available at iTunes.
 
DirtySocks85 said:
I'd really love to know more information on the tax implications of this. I live in a household that makes less than $40k a year, an extra $10k of taxable income would suck. To be honest I'd rather not have it if that's the case.
Click to expand...

Normally I don't let myself get hung up on up and downrankings of posts, but I would love to know what part of this post was -1 material.
 
Apple is messing with us.

OK, so am I the only one who actually checked to find where they're getting those scrolling numbers from?

Turns out it's just a script in the webpage that automatically counts up from a specific number (given at a specific time). Go to www.apple.com/autopush/us/itunes/includes/countdown.inc to see the starting point for the current coutdown.

I noticed this first when it read 24,510,xxx,xxx and the next time I looked it was 24,499,xxx,xxx.
 
kwschnautz said:
OK, so am I the only one who actually checked to find where they're getting those scrolling numbers from?

Turns out it's just a script in the webpage that automatically counts up from a specific number (given at a specific time). Go to www.apple.com/autopush/us/itunes/includes/countdown.inc to see the starting point for the current coutdown.

I noticed this first when it read 24,510,xxx,xxx and the next time I looked it was 24,499,xxx,xxx.
Click to expand...
Here are all the values I've recorded (and continue to record).
http://www.temporaryfix.net/apps-25b/countdown.dat

The countdown.inc file updates approximately hourly, represents GMT-0700, and is delayed by up to 3 hours from realtime.
 
isoMorpheus said:
You're talking about using one's Apple ID to purchase stuff from the Apple Store app, which channels through Apple's Retail.

No. Because the Gift card really is a kind of redeemed credit, whereas the Apple ID one uses to purchase things charges directly from one's credit card associated with your Apple ID.

It might be confusing because for some it's as if when there is credit on iTunes, the credit always gets used until it's used-up, at which point the credit card kicks in.

The policy here is different. Apple's iTunes department and retail department (including the Apple Online Store) have different accountings and this prize has been designed specifically to work with the iTunes side, for many reasons.

Did that make sense?
Click to expand...

it makes sense
except for the part where (i thought) you use the money on your apple id account and like you said use up whatever debit there is before u start using the credit card
in which case you should have 10000 in debit on your apple id

----------
fracai said:
Here are all the values I've recorded (and continue to record).
http://www.temporaryfix.net/apps-25b/countdown.dat

The countdown.inc file updates approximately hourly, represents GMT-0700, and is delayed by up to 3 hours from realtime.
Click to expand...

so what time zone is the time displayed in exactly?
 
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