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Apple Launches '1 Billion App Countdown' Promotion
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Wrong. What will be the point of them making a banner now if there is still a couple of million apps to be downloaded? People will just wait till it is almost over and then start buying their apps. This promo is done in a way to make people download NOW as much apps as possible to increase their chances of winning.
Let me repeat this again, if you buy/download an app NOW you can win. The winner will be ANNOUNCED after the 1 billionth app is downloaded.
It doesn't make any sense if it is done otherwise.
This contest is confusing... whatever I'll just put in a few every hour and hope I win.
. 
Used the alternate entry form here:
http://www.apple.com/itunes/billion-app-countdown/entryform/
It says you can enter 25 times / day, but I could only enter once and after that it fails with the following message [sic]:
You have entered to many times today
Weird. Especially the typo...
http://www.apple.com/itunes/billion-app-countdown/entryform/
It says you can enter 25 times / day, but I could only enter once and after that it fails with the following message [sic]:
You have entered to many times today
Weird. Especially the typo...
The values in the file correspond to:
Date and time in CA | current count | change in count since last report
It looks like it's updating once an hour, so the change can be used to calculate the rate at which the counter is changing, unless the counter is using an optimistic calculation.
The values I've seen:
10-APR-2009 05:00:00|927585027|155902
10-APR-2009 06:00:00|927767980|182953
10-APR-2009 07:00:00|927991954|223974
10-APR-2009 08:00:00|928257635|265681
I look forward to your chart
Aha! Why thank you, I haven't seen the value at 05:00:00.
The following paragraph is straight from the Apple Official Rules:
"Sweepstakes. Sponsor is the sole judging organization whose decisions as to the operation of the Sweepstakes and the selection of the potential winner are final and binding in all matters related to the Promotion. The prize will be awarded for the entry (either through an app download or through the non-purchase online entry) sent immediately following the download of the 999,999,999th app. The potential winner will be determined by the order of the entries received. In the event that more than one entrant would be a winner based on the simultaneous timing of entries, one entrant will be randomly selected from those entrants as the winner. Each entrants chances of winning are dependent upon the number of eligible entries received."
I don't understand how you can read that differently. They have to announce the sweepstakes sometime before the one billionth right!? It makes no difference when they start it, just that they start it before they reach one billion downloads. The counter is there for YOUR enjoyment.
So do they pick someone who entered randomly, or is it the person who downloaded the billionth app?
Read the above post. It is NOT random unless there is a tie. It is the person who downloads the billionth app.
i cant believe apple is lying to us!
I also predict that we will hit 1 billion apps at approximately April 21, 4:02 PM Central
The way the counter is moving, there is roughly 100 apps downloaded in 30 seconds or less increments . To be honest I think it might hit the mark by the 14th of this month.
The word is out on a ton of blog sites, all that is going to do is have people rush to download applications free and paid.
The form on Apple's site can be used if you do not have an iphone or if you chose not to download content.
My wife who does not have an iphone yet, registered for the drawing... hopefully one of us will win!!!
This quotes the first sentences of the official rules on the Apple website:
"NO PURCHASE OR DOWNLOAD NECESSARY. A PURCHASE OR DOWNLOAD
OF ANY KIND WILL NOT INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING."
Here you go, don't download free crap. Don't spend money you wouldn't spend anyways.
"NO PURCHASE OR DOWNLOAD NECESSARY. A PURCHASE OR DOWNLOAD
OF ANY KIND WILL NOT INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING."
Here you go, don't download free crap. Don't spend money you wouldn't spend anyways.
awe man that sucks. I'm going to be at outdoor school when the billionth app is downloaded.
I wonder if Kevin Britten (who won a 10,000-song iTunes gift certificate in 2004) has paid to upgrade all of his songs to iTunes Plus?
Using a stopwatch, it is counting at a rate of 1,000 apps dl'd per 16.5 seconds, with no discernable variation that I would attribute to anything other than the imperfection of my finger hitting stop.
So at this rate, it converts to 0.004583 hours/thousand. At the time I am writing this, there are about 928,828,000 apps dl'd leaving ~71.172M left to be dl'd.
So all this factored in gives 13.59 days remaining. I predict that at 3:09 on April 24th, the Billionth app will hit.
Andrew
So at this rate, it converts to 0.004583 hours/thousand. At the time I am writing this, there are about 928,828,000 apps dl'd leaving ~71.172M left to be dl'd.
So all this factored in gives 13.59 days remaining. I predict that at 3:09 on April 24th, the Billionth app will hit.
Andrew
Release Slingbox!
I am not buying another single app until they release sling for iphone.
i am sick of the delays, they one a billion, they'd get there in a heartbeat if they did that!
I am not buying another single app until they release sling for iphone.
i am sick of the delays, they one a billion, they'd get there in a heartbeat if they did that!
Here's the 04:00:00 value as well. I calculated what it should have been based on the 05:00:00 value and offset and did a search. Google had indexed it at that time.
10-APR-2009 04:00:00|927429125|135456
So the 03:00:00 value would be
10-APR-2009 03:00:00|927293669|???
I haven't been able to find anything else, so that may be the earliest data point.
That's only because the 'fake' countdown works by extrapolating out the rate of downloads from the last data it received from the server. It most likely won't really hit 1 billion at that time because the rate of change gets adjusted every hour as Apple's servers update the figures based on actual app downloads.
omg
did apple take "web-clipping" out of Safari beta v 4, because i've been trying to
clip out the billion app countdown to make it a cool widget on my dashboard?
Yea isn't that a cool idea?!
So if anyone can tell me how to do web-clipping on Safari beta v 4 than thank you.
did apple take "web-clipping" out of Safari beta v 4, because i've been trying to
clip out the billion app countdown to make it a cool widget on my dashboard?
Yea isn't that a cool idea?!
So if anyone can tell me how to do web-clipping on Safari beta v 4 than thank you.