Apple is removing hundreds of apps from the App Store after discovering that they contain a malicious program called XcodeGhost.
In the entire lifespan of the App Store, Apple has only previously found five malicious apps — making this easily the single biggest security lapse in App Store history.
We’ve been waiting years for Apple to wow us with a new Apple TV that embraces gaming, controls the home and is super-easy to use — and that appears to be just what we’re going to get.
Thanks to a steady stream of leaks from the rumor mill, we already have a pretty solid idea what Apple will show us next week when it finally unveils the new Apple TV. It’s been years in the making — here’s what to expect.
Google Street View is no longer hidden away inside Google Maps; it now has its very own app on Android and iOS, which offers immersive 360-degree imagery, and allows you to contribute your own.
Apple’s App Store policing is being called into question again after the company rejected a Cecil the Lion-inspired game in which animals turn guns on poachers.
Cecil’s Revenge features a safari truck of cheerful-looking wildlife firing at various caricatures of hunters, ranging from old-timey colonialists with rifles to cartoon Africans with guns.
Free-to-play mega hit Monster Strike was pulled from the App Store this past weekend for trying to get around Apple’s in-app purchase system.
The app was offline on Saturday the 29th of August from 5:30 pm until around 1 am Sunday morning, costing the Japanese developer an estimated $600,000 in revenue. The Android version was not taken down, and the iOS version is back online as of Sunday.
Instagram is no longer a photo sharing service just for squares. The company today announced that it will finally support portrait and landscape photos and videos with its latest updates on Android and iOS.
There are thousands of colors an App Store icon can be … so why does it so often look like developers only had half a box of crayons to choose from when we look at our iPhones?
But App Store iconography may be more colorful than it seems at first. Don’t believe me? These color wheels show exactly how dominant certain colors are in the icons of the most successful apps.
Making games can be as fun as playing them, and the key to mastering both is practice. After working through this bundle of lessons, you’ll be ready for the iOS game-making equivalent of Carnegie Hall. Covering the how-tos with over 20 games in four different genres, this package from StackSkills usually goes for over $2,000. But right now the whole thing is just $20 at Cult of Mac Deals.
Rovio has churned out more sequels to its Angry Bird franchise than any developers on the planet. They even have sequels to the sequels (we see you Angry Birds Star Wars II), but six years after the original was released, Angry Birds 2 is finally here.
The thirteenth title in the Angry Birds franchise is packed with new puzzling towers to topples, missile birds, and boss piggies. There’s also a new feature that lets you challenge your friends over Facebook to see who’s the true master at flinging birds.
Check out the first gameplay teaser:
When it comes to the App Store and the Mac App Store, the two software dispensing platforms are not treated equally.
Not only do top 10 Mac App Store apps make a whole lot less than the chart toppers on iOS, but developers are noticing that Apple’s not even giving Mac app developers some of the same critical tools their counterparts enjoy on the App Store.
In what will surely be met with a sigh of relief from developers, Apple has stopped people running beta versions of iOS from writing reviews of apps in the App Store.
Many of these reviews tend to be negative because developers have yet to optimize their apps to run the latest prerelease software version. As a result, apps run on a beta version of iOS are far more likely to crash, or feature bugs.
Fans hoping to catch MTV’s announcement of this year’s VMA nominees on Beats 1 this morning got a rude awakening as Apple servers crashed right before the artists were revealed.
We’ve been trying to access Beats 1 radio all morning but keep getting “Request timed out” errors on all our devices. Other services have been impacted as well: People on Twitter have reported a number of issues with Apple services, including problems accessing the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay and iTunes Match.
Here’s a list of Apple services affected:
You can’t choose between Android and iOS without taking Google Play and the App Store into account. They’re the largest mobile marketplaces on the planet, and they both have their strengths and weaknesses — especially when it comes to control.
Apple has strict App Store guidelines, and every title is tested by a human before being approved. In comparison, Google is happy to let most things fly — so long as it’s not offensive or harmful — which gives us access to things like emulators and file downloaders that aren’t available on other platforms.
But is “open” really better, and could Apple benefit from loosening its grip on the App Store?
Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac as we battle it out over that very question.
Fallout Shelter, the terrific vault-building game from Bethesda, raked in a whopping $5.1 million during its first two weeks availability.
The payday is even more staggering when you take into account that the game is totally free to download and play, only offers one virtual add-on, and isn’t even available on Android yet.
Android’s massive lead in market share is translating into a staggering number of app downloads, with Google Play serving 85 percent more apps than the App Store during the second quarter of 2015. But despite that, iOS is holding onto a significant lead where it matters most — in revenue.
Apple has launched a new promotion, entitled “Amazing Apps & Games,” offering 24 different apps from a variety of different genres for just 99 cents each.
Ranging from games such as Goat Simulator, Blek and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 to productivity tools like Scanner Pro 6 and Clone Camera Pro, and even throwing in educational apps like the STEM-related Simple Machines, it’s a great chance to pick up some excellent apps at some low, low prices.
Based on changes in taxes and foreign exchange rates, Apple is set to increase the prices of App Store apps in Mexico, South Africa, South Korea and Turkey.
Hopefully you won't be doing any work this July 4 weekend, but Scanner Pro 6 is definitely worth a download for the next time you have to scan a document.
Essentially transforming your iPhone camera into a miniature document scanner, all users have to do is point and tap to scan a document to their handset. A batch-scanning mode meanwhile lets you simply pass multiple documents in front of your iPhone, with the app intelligently scanning each one in turn.
Perhaps best of all is the new Scan Radar feature which detects images in your camera roll — meaning that you can scan images even if you don’t happen to have Scanner Pro 6 open at the time.
Available on: iPhone/iPad
Price: $2.99 (on sale)
Download: App Store
It’s been over 150 years since the South lost to the Union army in the American Civil War, but only recently has the call to finally remove the Confederate Flag from public places picked up steam. Now Apple is getting in on the action too by banning all Civil War games from the App Store that display the Confederate Flag in “offensive and mean-spirited ways.”
If you ever dig into the privacy policies of app developers, be prepared for a shock. This is where they confess their sins: invading your privacy, selling your data, and pestering you with popups and unwanted ads.
As the App Store becomes increasingly crowded and competitive, many developers struggle to make a profit. Some turn their attention to alternative sources of revenue, and the quality of their apps suffer as a result.
It doesn’t have to be that way. Here are the 10 rules for developers to keep things “classy.”
Apple’s rolled out some much-needed changes to how Apple Watch preview screens look in the App Store.
Have you looked at those shots lately? They look weird. And depending on which version of iOS you’re currently running, that could mean “horrible” or “way better than before, holy crap.”
A group of six university researchers claim to have successfully bypassed Apple’s tight App Store approval processes to publish Mac and iOS malware apps. According to the report, the team presented the zero-day vulnerability to Apple back in October 2014 and were told to keep quiet about it for at least six months.
Luyi Xing, a security researcher who helped expose the zero day vulnerability, still has yet to hear back from Apple on a possible fix.
It’s the weekend, which means that Cult of Mac is ready to bring you a roundup of the last week’s best new app releases and updates for iOS and Mac.
From the week's best new iOS shooter, to a significant live-streaming app update to Twitter, to a gorgeous new Mac Twitter client, we've got what you need to make your next week an 'appy one
Pun fully intended!
Pebble Watch fans have been absolutely freaking out on Twitter the last few days due to a delay with the Pebble Time app for iOS getting delayed in the App Store approval process.
After sitting in ‘pending approval’ since May 22nd, Pebble fans rallied around the #FreeOurPebbleTime hashtag to get their voices heard by Apple, but everyone can stop their whining, because the Pebble Time app for iPhone is finally available for download.
Apple and Google boasted that they paid over $17 billion to app developers over the last year. What they left out is that they also made a tidy $7.3 billion off those sales, thanks to the 30/70 split pioneered by Steve Jobs with the launch of iTunes in 2003.
That split could coming to an end soon, though, according to a new report claiming Apple plans to make a departure from its old pricing formula in an effort to make Cupertino’s devices more appealing to media companies.