Cheshire Cat Photo Blog(...said the Cat: 'we're all mad here....')

Yesterday morning, the Apple App Store reached a milestone of 10 billion apps downloaded, less than three years after the store was launched. Apple had promised to give a $10,000 App Store gift card to whoever bought the 10 billionth app.

The response of Gail Davis, of Orpington, England to the caller from Apple who offered her the prize…?

“Thank you very much; I’m not interested.”

Yes, we are all getting a little numb. The whole incident reminds me a bit of a Monty Python sketch in which an encyclopedia salesman tries to gain entrance to the home of a potential customer by announcing himself as a burglar (rather than as a dreaded encyclopedia salesman)! We just don’t know whom to believe anymore. Ms. Davis had hung up on what she believed was a prank call!

But Gail Davis REALLY HAD won the prize, and the caller REALLY WAS from Apple…!

According to CultofMac.com, with the exclusive:

“… Davis says it was actually one of her two daughters who downloaded the 10 billionth app, winning the family a $10,000 iTunes gift card. Her daughters, 14 and 17, had downloaded several apps in the morning. One of them, the free Paper Glider app, was the magic 10 billionth app.“

“The girls came down and said it wasn’t a prank,” Davis explains. “I had a moment of panic.”

The first call came from Eddy Cue, Apple’s VP of iTunes, a genuinely nice man and capable executive whom I had the pleasure to know when I worked in his area (Internet Services at the time) at Apple when I was an on-site Netscape employee.

When Davis tried to phone Apple back, she was unsuccessful at getting through to her original caller.

“The more I thought about it, the more I realized it was a genuine call,” she says. “The girls were getting quite tense. They never would have forgiven me. They would have held it against me for all eternity.”

She’s right, you know!

Fortunately, one of Cue’s colleagues called her back a couple hours later.

Davis’ daughter downloaded the 10 billionth app at about 9.30AM UK time, or 1.30AM PST/4.30AM EST. Davis’ daughters have iPod touches, but Ms. Davis and her husband are thinking about upgrading from their nanos to something that can run apps.

Her daughters, meanwhile, have been deciding which apps to download next!

Congratulations!

-Bill at

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