According to a banner on Apple Incorporated’s main page, the App Store for the iPhone and the iPod touch has reached the 500 million downloads threshold, only six months after the App Store was originally launched in June last year.

Moreover, approximately one month ago, the company announced that the App Store had hit the 300 million downloads mark.

The service currently hosts more than 15,000 applications, many of which are free of any charge.

Speaking of the App Store, it seems that after Apple had initially rejected an e-book that had been submitted for the service, it has now come to approve it, since the author removed language that the company had found offensive.

David Carnoy submitted his „Knife Music” book for the App Store last year, but his application was turned down by Apple because of objectionable content, presenting in the form of the F word that the author had used a few times throughout his writing.

In an e-mail, the author said that he had decided to censor his language due to the fact that doing so would not have altered the book or the message in any way, since the foul words were not repeated that often.

Moreover, in his opinion, downloading books onto the iPhone is presently virgin ground, but Carnoy expects the smartphone e-book reading phenomenon to turn into something big in the near future.