Happy 10th Anniversary, the iOS App Store
10 years ago, the App Store still didnt understand what it meant to be mobile
A decade ago, iOS apps were weird
By Chaim Gartenberg@cgartenberg Jul 10, 2018, 10:15am EDT
Today marks the 10-year anniversary of the launch of the iOS App Store,
which officially opened with 500 applications on July 10th, 2008 in what Steve Jobs called the biggest launch of my career. Those words have proven to be at least somewhat prophetic: the App Store now serves as one of the most important software stores on the planet.
It has over 2 million apps, 20 million registered developers, and
revenues topping $100 billion over its decade-long lifetime.
But here, on the 10-year mark, its easy to forget that things werent always this way. Back when the App Store first launched, things were a bit... weird, to say the least. In fact, looking back at the top apps from the first year of the App Stores existence (preserved by the now-defunct iTunes list in an article
by TechCrunch), its truly incredible to see how far weve come, both in what our apps are capable of and how we use our phones today.
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