31 Comments

Apple’s “Billion App” Countdown Clock, It’s Fake

April 12, 2009 by in Random with 31 Comments

So, are you one of those people who are carefully watching Apple’s Billion App Countdown hoping to get in on the $10,000 iTunes Gift Card, an iPod touch, a Time Capsule, and a MacBook Pro prizes? Well, if you are hoping that the countdown is accurate you are going to be a little upset.

Seems that the featured counter actually ties to no tangible data and is increasing numbers at a calculated pace.

According to the algorithm that Apple is using for the fake counter, the billionth App would be sold sometime on the 20th at 4:57am.

Now, if that is actually when the billionth app will be sold is yet to be told.


  • Dave

    how disgusting.
    I’d cut them some slack, saying that implementing such realtime data into a flash app would be difficult, but
    1. they are Apple
    2. I’ve seem some damn-impressive Flash utilizations

  • http://camediaweb.com Moitah

    Ok, now, this is getting ridiculous.
    I saw this rant on another site, too.

    This is stupid.
    Of course, the counter doesn’t reflect the app’s count in real time ! because that would simply be impossible !

    The countdown reads this file : http://www.apple.com/autopush/us/itunes/includes/countdown.txt and calculates the counting pace according to the latest stats available. So the countdown IS almost real-time, because the counting speed changes every hour or so !

    @Dave this is not a “flash app”, it’s actually a very smart background change of this image http://images.apple.com/home/images/digits.png in order to simulate the movement. because doing this in Flash would be really stupid, since Flash sucks, and putting a swf on your home page in one of the mots stupid things to do (Adobe does that, of course… But they have to defend their crappy software)

    This countdown is state of the art. You should be impressed by the job done here instead of ranting.

    Now, that said, I usually really like this site and news feed. Keep it goin’ !

  • Dave

    fascinating, I just assumed it was flash because so much of the internet today is

    also, why is putting a swf file on a homepage stupid? SEO reasons?

  • http://camediaweb.com Moitah

    You’re right, it’s bad for SEO because Google can’t index a swf’s content (yet, they’re working on it), bad for compatibility because you have to have a plugin, and Flash isn’t a standard, because it’s maintained by a company.

    I hope I answered your questions :)

    Cheers

  • http://mavrev.com Matt

    Oh come on, this is just stupid. Of course it’s not in realtime, there’s no way they could feasibly do that. It works by reading a file with the latest information and goes from there. If sales continue in the current trend they are at now then the Billionth App will happen sometime on 4/20, but if sales rise/fall that’ll change.

    Great to know UNEASY has still got those tinfoil hats…

  • http://www.uneasysilence.com Dan

    “Observing the unobserved” You should know this by now!

  • http://camediaweb.com Moitah

    What do you mean ?

  • http://www.uneasysilence.com Dan

    The tin foil hat thing…

  • Alexander S.

    Guys it’s obvious that this requires no skill, and no real need to enter more than once a day (not that the no purchase entry form allows that anyway). It requires pure luck, and chances are they have already sold their billionth app, and that the winner is already chosen. Apple is now just going to wait until the counter gets to a billion, in the meantime keeping all eyes on them, and all eyes on their website. This is truly marketing genius. Not only are they increasing their app sales but they are attracting people to their website.

  • DeadParrot

    It’s also stupid because the iPhone (you know, what all those apps are being sold on) doesn’t do flash.

  • http://camediaweb.com Moitah

    I still think the countdown reflects the actual numbers… But you’re right on the fact that it only requires some luck.

  • http://www.phins-spotlight.com/ Chris J. Nelson

    You’re an idiot. The counter isn’t meant to be real, it’s just a graphic.

  • Alexander S.

    Maybe instead of insulting people you should research it to see if it’s actually true, dawg.

  • Dominic

    My thoughts are maybe the counter is fake, but for a purpose.

    Maybe there has already been 1 billion downloads, so they are not lying.

    When they host the WWDC maybe the go live on their website and everybody watches the final countdown then celebrate…

    It would be great if that happened.

  • hjlhkj

    Whoops, I meant to say “OF COURSE IT’S NOT EFFING REAL”. Ok, now start barking, nerds.

  • http://camediaweb.com Moitah

    I don’t know why you say that and try to be insulting, but you’re still wrong. This proves you don’t know anything about javascript/Web nor Apple.

  • Alexander S.

    I don’t know guys. Looking at the counter it seems to speed up and slow down as I watch it…

  • http://camediaweb.com Moitah

    ;)
    I’m not responding on this thread anymore.

    Bye

  • http://none elihja

    Anyone know how to replicate this animation?

  • benblack123

    As of 11:45 4/14, the timer will end on 4/22 at 8:07 (or thereabouts). I think it does speed up and slow down.

  • http://web.me.com/alex.nahon/Apples_App_Store_Secret/The_Video.html Alex

    Watch this video slowly on the website listed above. (Incase it doesn’t show the website, http://web.me.com/alex.nahon/Apples_App_Store_Secret/The_Video.html )
    See what the explanation is for the video on the page “The Explanation” ( http://web.me.com/alex.nahon/Apples_App_Store_Secret/The_Explanation.html )

  • Jason

    Yeah i was just looking at the homepage with Safari’s web inspector and found that digits.png file. Im really curious exactly how this works. If anyone could give a nice explanation or could find a tutorial on a similar concept that would be great!

  • http://poop.com poop

    Oh My God!
    It’s a f’ing website counter
    Does it really matter?!!!!

  • Ryan R

    I uncompressed the downloadcounter.js file on Apple’s server and ran an exact copy of it on my page. Thanks to Apple’s large and descriptive function and variable names, it’s easy to tell that the entire thing is a ruse.

    The client makes a request to countdown.txt every time the page loads – the only problem with that is countdown.txt is only updated by Apple every hour. The numbers you see that appear to be close to the same on every tab in Safari are like that because it takes the date from your computer and ESTIMATES how many downloads there have been in the last hour.

    I sent an email to Apple about it … doubt they’ll respond.

  • magnifico1

    HAHA smartassssss ur wrong its the past the 20th…even if its not real…u got ur calculations wronggg :P
    hehehe

  • http://web.me.com/alex.nahon/Apples_App_Store_Secret/The_Video.html Alex

    This is actually created by moving a really narrow image (just one of these filip things wide) really fast at a specific point in the image. see the website for the image. interesting how apple did this.

  • Alex

    Apple had a big error, the timer ended about a day and a half early!

  • Alex

    it was supposed to end on friday, ended mid day thursday

  • Alex

    On the contrary, Apple has an exact count at all times of how many apps they have sold with more details than just one big number. It is quite possible and necessary for Apple’s marketing team, and Board of Directors. Linking the digits to this live count would not be (is not) difficult.

    Hope this clears up any misconceptions.

  • Alex

    Not flash…just javascript…wait……..a LOT of javascript!!!!!

  • Alex

    Before the “Thanks a Billion” message was shown, Apple fixed the little bug that allowed users to change the numbers with the clock settings. This change was made about 2 days ago (today is 4/23/09).

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