As all parents know, a two-year-old is a distinctively different creature than the giggly, adorable infant and winsome, inquisitive toddler that precedes her. She has moods; she begins to articulate wants and needs with a precision bordering on the frightful; she can peel the paint off the walls with a stubborn tantrum or amaze with a clearly expressed insight. For the two-year-old, it's the beginning of understanding that the world doesn't always conform immediately to her desires -- and man, is that ever a giant buzzkil. It's a challenging, sometimes deeply trying transition from babyhood to being a kid. It's the terrible twos.

You could argue that the App Store ages in Internet time (it's like dog years, only slightly faster), so in terms of its mental age it might be closer to a gawky adolescent than a human two-year-old. Nevertheless, as we mark the 2nd anniversary of the launch of the App Store back in July of 2008, in some ways it is remarkably like seeing an individual personality emerge from an immature, unfinished baseline. It may be a personality with a fondness for bathroom humor and some disturbing control-freak tendencies, but it's something.

I could cite superlatives from here until the App Store's next birthday -- over 225,000 apps live in the store, more than 40 thousand unique publishers, over $1 billion in revenue paid out to a crowd of still-enthusiastic developers -- but what it comes down to is this: Apple built a market. Built it, made it run, invited in the innovators and 'the crazy ones' who decided to see what would come of their hard work. Before the App Store, most people didn't associate 'phones' and 'applications' at all, even though there were plenty of apps out there. Now, a would-be smartphone that skips over the app availability question is pretty much dead on arrival.

Happy birthday, App Store; we'll begin our celebration today from the date of the press release announcing 500 launch applications (500!), even though tomorrow (July 11) was the on-sale date of the iPhone 3G with OS 2.0. Congratulations to all the people both inside and outside of Apple who have contributed to making the past two years as lively and exciting as they've been. We can't wait to see what happens next -- even if it is a few months of tantrums and growing pains.

[hat tip to William @ Different District]

Photo by D. Sharon Pruitt | flickr: cc

We've heard great things already about the brand new Apple Store in Shanghai, but this one's interesting: on the back of employees' t-shirts there (which are red, apparently, rather than the usual black found in North America), Apple has printed "Designed in California, Made for China" in Chinese. That's obviously a play on the "Designed by Apple in California, Assembled in China" that you'll find on the back of your iPhone and many of Apple's other products.

Cult of Mac checked in with Chinese gadget blogger Chris Chang, and he says that the reference does play in Shanghai. He was at the store when it opened, and says that Apple is definitely pushing to do better in China, and create more of a presence there. That's really interesting -- Apple's not only trying to simply sell its products over there, but it's actually localizing the brand a bit to do so.

I've been watching the e-reader competition with great interest lately -- after the iPad entered the market with such a splash, Amazon and Barnes & Noble have been trying to position their own devices in a place where they'll at least be profitable. But at the same time, those apparent iPad competitors have also been updating their own App Store apps. Amazon updated the Kindle app a little while back, and now Barnes and Noble has updated its own iPad app, including support for multiple orientations and brightness control, along with a few other bugfixes and features.

As I said before, I like the precedent here -- even if these companies don't match up with Apple on the hardware, this update does a lot to bring the B&N eReader in line with iBooks. Of course this gives us iPad users more options -- even if we don't own a Kindle or a Nook, we've still got the chance to use those services.

I would like to see a little more progress made with compatibility -- it's annoying to buy a book on one platform and not be able to read it on any other. But I guess that's the trade-off for having options -- Amazon and B&N will only keep up their app development while the money is coming in from their respective bookstores.

I bought a one terabyte Time Capsule shortly after it hit the market, along with an external 1.5TB drive. I use the Time Capsule's internal drive to back up two smaller capacity Macs, while the external disk backs up my two larger capacity Macs.

Working with Time Machine in Leopard or Snow Leopard, the Time Capsule updates its backups every hour. This makes perfect sense if you're just dealing with one Mac wired into the Time Capsule, since it really doesn't slow anything down. But if you are using it to wirelessly back up multiple Macs, hourly backups slow everything down to a crawl.

TimeMachineEditor (a free utility that I highly recommend), allows you to set Time Machine to back up as frequently or infrequently as you like. I created a setup where, with staggered backups starting between 2am and 4am, each Mac gets backed up once a day. Outside of some errant sparse image problems that required a reformat, all was well. I had long beaten the 18 month Time Capsule funerals that were recently reported... but then things turned ugly.

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We've posted about the great iRetrofone handset base for the iPhone before -- it's really just a block of resin, but having an actual handset hooked up to your iPhone around the house makes for some pretty nostalgic phone calls. The iRetrophone's creator Scott Freeland said he would be hard at work on new designs, and now he's gone a little Steampunk with the latest one, as you can see above courtesy of iPhone Savior.

It's designed specifically for the iPhone 4, and has both an audio hookup and a USB connection ready to go -- just plug your iPhone into the base and start calling. It's not quite as nostalgic as the old handset, of course, but I like the steampunk aesthetic. And for $450 plus $25 shipping, you better like it. Still, as an art piece (the whole thing is actually cast in copper, rather than just the resin of the first one), it's a pretty unique piece of tech.

I love my iPad 3G, almost unnecessarily so. I use it as my primary computer for a multitude of tasks. The only thing that I dislike about my iPad is that I have to pay AT&T even more money to use their data network, even though I'm already paying for it with my new iPhone 4.

We have covered in the past how to manage your 3G data with your iPad using the Apple/AT&T-sanctioned methods built in to the device itself. Today, we want to show you how you can swap Micro-SIMs to make use of your iPhone's unlimited data plan with your iPad.

Note: This is not an officially sanctioned technique and you do this at your own risk! If AT&T comes down on your SIM-swapping antics with the force of a truckload of anvils... you are on your own, brother.

That said, let's proceed.

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After a day of intermittent issues for email on MobileMe, Apple has noted the issue on the MobileMe support page; the company says the problem is now resolved but "some MobileMe users could not send.... We apologize for any inconvenience.

No kidding. We've had communications about this from our readers, and I've had spotty service for a full 24 hours. There are also comments on the Apple Support boards about today's hiccups.

I made the mistake of using the MobileMe support Live Chat option yesterday, where I described my issues to 'Jason'. I told him I knew several people with the problem. His solution was for me to change my mail password. I typed back that I didn't see how that was the issue because I'd already told him I have the problem on 4 Apple devices (iPhone, desktop, MacBook Pro and iPad) and that the problem was happening on several networks, not just the home and office.

His response was that if I wasn't going to cooperate he was done, and he cut off the chat. Nice. Apple support is usually excellent, but MobileMe has had a lot of problems over the years, and I have consistently found MobileMe support to be often uninformed and defensive. As of this afternoon EDT Apple says it is fixed, and I hope that's true. Apple charges quite a lot for MobileMe services. The company could do better at reliability, and monitoring Apple support comments from users, instead of doubting a problem exists. I'm looking forward to the day when MobileMe 'just works.'

Those pesky Apple parts, they're always parading themselves in front of cameras. This time, a tiny (1.18" square, 3cm x 3cm) touchscreen has shown up in Taiwan. Apple.pro has posted two pictures of the mini mystery (English translation here). In the second shot, you'll see Apple's copyright stamp on the connector cable.

What could it be? A display for a future iPod? Dick Tracy's watch? A prototype that will never see production? A remote control for the hypothetical revamped Apple TV?

Before you scoff, consider Apple.pro's track record. They had a legit white iPhone case and a unibody Macbook Pro case before they were released. With that in mind, we'll say that this little doohickey, whatever it is, might be in our homes or pockets someday.

[via MacRumors]

It was questionable whether Apple would approve LED flashlight apps. After all, having used the LED as a flashlight recently, I can tell you it will drain the battery faster than not having a big honking LED burning brightly. Using the camera app as your LED flashlight was problematic too, because I set my iPhone to lock after 5 minutes, and had to keep tapping the screen to reset that timer.

The App Store is currently flooding with freshly approved LED flashlight apps. Let us know in the comments if you find any gems. But let's face it, the only task these are asked to do is turn on a simple LED. The differentiation is hilarious, at times. I've got a short list below.

• LED-Flashlight: Free. This is the app I use. So far I haven't had a problem and the app starts quickly, automatically turns the LED on and provides a white screen. The LED turns off if you move to another app.
• LED Light for iPhone 4 Free: The free version of this app. It has iAds. Seriously? Because what I want to do after crawling through the underground of post-apocalyptic New York is see an ad about insurance.
• LED Flashlight, only for iPhone 4: Catchy title aside, this one makes some fantastic marketing claims like other apps don't always work, or that they will continue to update and improve the app and that it looks gorgeous. As I said, it can be tough to differentiate yourself in this market. It costs US$.99.
• Actual LED Flashlight: Hey this one adds a strobe feature! It costs $.99
• LED-Torch: You have to double-tap the screen to turn the LED on/off, preventing light disasters. Also $.99
• Power LED Flashlight: I haven't the foggiest how this is different than anything else aside from the icon and interface. But it is $.99
• LED Strobe: And finally, an app that is just a strobe light. Also $.99, seemingly devoid of any actual flashlight setting...

There are easily a dozen more in the store right now, no doubt dozens more to follow. What have we learned from this tiny sampling? Well I wish there were video demos in the store, and you're likely going to have to spend a buck if you want anything more than an app which triggers the LED light -- even then you're not getting that much more.

Predicting Apple's sales numbers is always a guessing game. Phillip-Elmer DeWitt notes that, despite Apple announcing the 3 millionth iPad sale 5 days before the quarter ended, this time will be no different.

He's compiled a number of estimates over at Apple 2.0, with an average around the 3 million mark. On the low end of the range is 2.50 million units sold from Mike Abramsky of RBC Capital. Mark Moskowitz of J.P. Morgan is more optimistic with a projection of 3.75 million units sold.

Most were surprised by the sheer volume of sales. At one point, Apple was selling 45,000 iPads per day. Bernstein Research's Toni Sacconaghi considered what could happen if that "scorching pace" was maintained: "Apple could sell from 25 million to 42 million units in fiscal 2011, its first full year of sales...revenues would amount to about $15B, and likely grow about $10B [year over year]. This would make iPad revenues in their first full year nearly as large as Apple's current Mac ($18B) business."

Of course, it's unlikely that such a rate of sales could be maintained, even if the iPad has truly joined its smaller brethren in breaking out of the core Apple customer base. Sacconaghi estimates that 18 million iPads will be sold in fiscal year 2010.

Apple's Q3 financial conference call will take place on July 20th. We'll be live blogging it as usual.