Apple's App Store today reached 50 billion downloads since its inception in 2008, and along with the milestone comes the end of the company's "50 Billion App Countdown" promotion launched thirteen days ago .

A German court has ruled that eight provisions in Apple's privacy policy are inapplicable because they run afoul of German consumer protection laws , reports Bloomberg .

comScore today released the results of its monthly rolling survey of U.S. mobile phone users for the January-March period, showing that Apple's smartphone market share rose 2.7 points from December to March, from 36.3% of total U.S. smartphone platform and hardware sales to 39%, marking a record high share for the company

Echoing recent reports about a redesigned 'flatter' user interface in iOS 7, 9to5Mac says the next version of the operating system will lose "all signs of gloss, shine and skeuomorphism" . Jony Ive took charge of all Apple's user interface teams last October following a management shakeup .

Apple today announced on its developer news website that it will be "hitting the road" with individual Tech Talk sessions for developers this fall ( via The Next Web ). The news comes a day after tickets for the company's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) sold out in two minutes . Enthusiasm for WWDC 2013 has been incredible, with tickets selling out in record time.

Former Xerox CFO Luca Maestri officially joined Apple as Corporate Controller in late February and a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission published earlier today reveals that he received 38,091 restricted stock units (RSUs) in March of this year. As with most RSUs handed out by Apple, these carry staggered vesting dates with 1/8 of the total number of units converting to actual shares every six months over a four year period.

As noted by The Verge , a strange iMessage bug is causing the final word of certain phrases sent via Messages to an iPhone to be invisible to both the message sender and the recipient. When the following two phrases are sent using iMessage, the last word is not displayed on the iPhone: - I could be the next Obama (with a space after Obama) - The best prize is a surprise Both messages look complete when they are being composed, and the full text shows up in notifications, but within the Messages app itself, the words Obama and surprise are both invisible

Tickets for Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference sold out this morning in less than two minutes , leaving a number of developers with error messages stating that their purchase requests were unable to be processed. According to a tweet from Red Sweater Software founder Daniel Jalkut , Apple contacted some registered members of its developer program to offer them a second chance to purchase a WWDC ticket.

A new ChangeWave survey shows that consumers have a similar level of interest in buying a rumored Apple iWatch, as were interested in buying an Apple tablet just before the iPad was announced. 19% of respondents indicated they are 'very' or 'somewhat' likely to buy an iWatch, with current Apple product owners significantly more likely than others to want an iWatch. The survey results show very strong consumer interest – with 5% of respondents saying they areVery Likely and 14% Somewhat Likely to buy an "iWatch" for themselves or someone else.

After being delayed yesterday, Funny Or Die's Steve Jobs movie "iSteve" has now been released online . The movie stars Justin Long as Steve Jobs and Lost 's Jorge Garcia as Steve Wozniak. The film is the longest video produced by the humor site and runs nearly 80 minutes long.