Apple has the best App Store on the planet. Thousands of developers. Millions of apps. Billions of sales. But no one can find a damn thing.
Since 2008, iOS users have downloaded more than 75 billion apps. How we locate a winner from among the App Store’s 1.2 million apps hasn’t changed much, but Andy Baio thinks Apple could revolutionize the way we discover and consume apps. And he’s got a brilliant concept Apple should borrow.
Having recently clarified its position on virtual currencies in the App Store (hint: Apple doesn’t hate them as much as you thought it did!), we’re starting to see certain iOS apps which deal in Bitcoin being approved for availability in the App Store again.
One of the first is CoinPocket, an app which allows users to send and receive Bitcoin, as well as collect private keys into a single spot and encrypt them. It’s very similar to Blockchain and Coinbase: two Bitcoin wallet apps which were previously given the boot by Apple.
Back in 2008, basketball star LeBron James received a small stake in Beats Electronics in exchange for promoting the company’s headphones. Now that Apple has bought Beats, guess how much James is set to make? You really don’t want to know, but watch our news wrap anyway. The rest of it, including updates on split-screen iPad multitasking and the future of the iPhone 5c. will cheer you up.
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Purchasing media across iTunes accounts can fuel household arguments. Add in parents having to share their Apple IDs and passwords with children, and you’ve got a perfect recipe for irritation. In today’s hands-on video, we’ll give you a look at a new iOS 8 feature called Family Sharing, which remedies these common problems.
Family Sharing lets up to six people share movies, music, TV shows, books and apps purchased from iTunes, iBooks and the App Store. It also offers other useful features, like photo and calendar sharing. See how it all works in the video above.
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When browsing the App Store, it’s easy to get lost in an endless sea of apps. Apple tries to make it easier to find the best apps with a team of editors that handpick the best options in different categories, like productivity and health.
In Europe, Apple now has editors curating seven more categories of the App Store, reports The Guardian. Adding more kinds of apps that are curated puts European App Stores on a closer level to the U.S. and Canada, where every category has human editors.
We’ve been seeing reports on Twitter of the iTunes Store not working, and it does indeed seem that Apple’s cloud servers are acting up. Both the App Store and iTunes Store are having trouble loading for a lot of people.
SAN FRANCISCO — You created an app. You think it’s awesome. Your friends say so too. Something nags at you, though: You have zero reviews, your downloads don’t outnumber your Facebook pals, and you need to make rent.
There’s a fancy name for your problem: “discoverability.” Millions of good apps face it, gathering dust between bogus fart apps and Flappy Bird clones.
“It’s hard to make a living in the App Store,” says Michael Yacavone, founder of Individuate, which makes personal-development apps Ace It! and Affirmable.
But there is definitely money to be made in the App Store, to the tune of $15 billion Apple has paid developers so far. Apple recently vowed to improve discoverability by adding an “explore” tab to the App Store, but whether users will search for new and exciting apps remains to be seen. The basic problem remains for most developers: Nearly everyone is ignoring you. Journalists can help, but you have to know how to deal with them.
Apple could be looking to make the Maps app more of a social experience. TechCrunch reports that Apple has bought Spotsetter, a service that let users search for places based on recommendations from friends.
Spotsetter worked kind of like Foursquare, expect that it pulled from a host of other social networks, including Twitter and Facebook. The startup allegedly had big plans for wearables as well, which could bode well for an imminent iWatch.
Despite pulling various Bitcoin trading apps from the App Store, Apple hasn’t previously made clear its stance on virtual currencies and how it plans to handle them in future.
Following the unveiling of iOS 8 at yesterday’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), the company has issued a revised set of its App Store Review Guidelines, complete with a section specifically dealing with virtual currencies. If we’re interpreting it correctly, it appears that Apple will accept apps for review which deal in the transmission of digital funds — at least to a degree.
Readdle today rolled out its biggest update yet for PDF Expert 5, one of the finest PDF editing apps for iOS. It adds support for continuous scrolling and calculations, improves performance, and makes PDF Expert a universal app — so you only have to buy it once to use it on both iPhone and iPad.
Apple has made a slight but also important update to the way the App Store handles apps that have been refunded by developers to customers.
While you used to be able to request a refund for a paid app and continue getting updates, that is no longer the case. Once a refund has been granted, the customer is unable to get support for the app or download it again.
Controversial cannabis-growing game Weed Firm has been booted out of the App Store.
Essentially Farmville for stoners, the app put you in the role of a marijuana dealer, as you try to grow your business (literally) and stay one step ahead of “thugs and cops.” Somehow making it past Apple’s usually stringent guidelines for adult content, the app had made it to the top of the App Store’s Top Free iPhone games prior to its expulsion.
Apple is finally giving iOS developers the opportunity to provide promotional codes for in-app purchases. EA will be one of the first to take advantage of the new scheme with a Real Racing 3 promotion that will allow players to redeem free in-game gold that would usually cost $1.99.
The most addicting game to ever hit the App Store will make its triumphant return in August. Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen tells CNBC that he has a new version in the works, but this time it won’t be as addictive.
Nintendo won’t bring its popular game franchises to iOS, and Apple won’t allow emulators in the App Store. In order to play titles like Super Mario and Zelda on your iPhone, then, you have to look at unofficial alternatives. GBA4iOS was one of the most popular — but after its creators received a DMCA notice from Nintendo this week, it is no more.
Remember Facebook Poke? It’s become nothing more than a faint memory since its introduction in December 2012. But for some reason the iPhone app has stayed on the App Store until now.
Today Facebook decided to do some spring cleaning in the App Store by pulling not only the Poke app, but Facebook Camera as well.
Apple has launched a new section of its iOS App Store, offering a roundup of the past month’s best mobile apps as selected by an Apple editorial team.
The “Best of April” selection is split into two categories: “Great Games” and “Amazing Apps.” These include titles such as Monument Valley, Fantastical for iPad, Duolingo, and Hitman GO.
ComiXology has long been one of my favorite iOS apps, but I’m not a big fan of the latest update, which makes it impossible to purchase comics from within the app.
For the longest time, ComiXology was the easiest and best way to buy comics on a mobile device. Now the app has become solely a comic book reader: You must visit ComiXology’s website to buy new issues. You can still browse comics in the app, and download free ones, but the actual payment part must be done elsewhere.
Why has ComiXology gone all supervillain on us?
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The Leap Motion Controller adds a whole new layer to your digital world, transforming the way you interact with your computer into a 3D interactive experience. That wide-open space between you and your computer is now your virtual canvas. Play, create and explore as you reach into another world without actually touching anything.
And right now Cult of Mac Deals has this revolutionary device for only $79.99. Plus, Leap Motion is offering a $20 credit free to their App Store with this promotion, so you can start exploring right out of the box!
The StackUp iOS App Bundle is offering 12 iOS apps valued at $113 for just $36. Several of these apps are geared towards making your iOS experience a more productive one, which is why this particular bundle caught my attention.
To pick up any (or all) of the apps in The StackUp iOS App Bundle, you can head to the Deals page and click on the “Buy Now” button or use the “Text Me” option to get texted a link so you can directly download the app to your iPhone.
Apple’s continued Chinese expansion saw App Store revenue in China increase by 70% last quarter. That’s according to figures from a new Q1 2014 report from app analytics firm App Annie.
Key to this increase is the China Mobile deal which was announced at the end of last year, opening up Apple’s potential customer base to the 763 million users currently on the country’s biggest mobile network.
Apple has been releasing its weekly top games charts as of late, and they make interesting reading.
The latest list — published Tuesday afternoon — shows the cumulative iOS game downloads for the week running April 7 to April 13.
Faster than a speeding bullet,
As one of last year’s top-grossing iPad apps, the digital comics platform has sold an astonishing 6 billion comic book pages since its 2009 debut — 4 billion of those coming in 2013 alone.
In helping revive an industry that was almost dead on its feet, ComiXology has done for comics what iTunes did for legal music downloads.
At the height of its success, it’s now been snatched up by Amazon for an undisclosed amount of money — prompting the question of whether Apple has missed out. (Particularly when taking into accounts the reports that Amazon is reportedly set to debut a smartphone of its own — capable of busting out 3-D.)
After all, ComiXology’s CEO David Steinberger has always had big ambitions. He once wrote that his “crazy goal” was to turn everyone on the planet into a comic reader. Sounds just like Steve Jobs.
Before the acquisition, CEO David Steinberger told Cult of Mac ComiXology’s backstory and its deep ties to Apple. Sometimes the Cupertino company has acted as its Krypton-esque home planet, and other times more like its Lex Luthor-style nemesis.
Ready for ComiXology’s secret origin story?
Let’s be honest, searching in the iTunes Store sucks, especially on the desktop. It’s often slow, and the results are difficult to navigate. Apple has tried to simplify things by displaying one result at a time in the App Store on iOS, but that approach also means that it can take longer to find the specific app you want in a sea of knockoffs.
A new web tool called “fnd” makes it easier to quickly search and navigate not just the App Store, but the iTunes Store in general.
