App Store - page 47

New app Metadata+ tells you whenever a drone strike kills somebody overseas.

Working by pulling data from the UK’s Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the app plots the location of each strike on a map, and then sends a push notification when an attack takes place.

If that doesn’t strike you as something the often-conservative Apple would want available in its App Store, you’re not wrong.

The app’s official release comes on the back of five separate rejections by the company, and a renaming from Drone+, Drones+, and Dronestream to the more innocuous-sounding Metadata+. The official App Store description reveals only that the app deals in, “Real-time updates on national security.”

Apple’s dislike of bitcoin has been on display for quite some while now, but the cyber-currency has been hit yet again as Apple removed Blockchain — the world’s most popular bitcoin wallet — from its App Store late Wednesday.

Apple had previously removed fellow wallets BitPak and Coinbase — while Blockchain had previously found itself excised, only to later be re-accepted.

Apple is starting to crack down on apps that request a user’s unique advertising identifier, but not actually show any ads within the app… and Apple may be doing it to put its own iAd network on better competitive footing.

WordPress is one of the titans of desktop blogging, but when it comes to mobile, the WordPress app has been my least favorite ways of publishing from my iPhone. Since the release of iOS 7 though the company has pushed to revamp their app, including an update today that brings a redesigned post editing experience.

The free update is available in the App Store now but is exclusively for iOS 7, bringing with it an enhanced Reader  section so you can follow your favorite blogs while you blog. They’ve also improved inline commenting, notifications, and stats while throwing in lots of bug fixes into the mix.

Here’s the full list of changes:

The immensely popular SwiftKey keyboard makes its debut on iOS today via a new note-taking app called SwiftKey Note. It promises to be the fastest way to make notes on an iPhone and iPad, and it boasts features like Evernote syncing and multilingual typing. It’s also completely free.

If you’re a user of the official Twitter app for iOS, good news. The app has been updated to version 6.1, and it introduces new options and features, including an easier reply mechanism that allows you to reply with (and edit) photos.

Having just crawled out of its smackdown from Google, Rap Genius is back with a new app for iOS that gives you access the site’s breakdowns and explanations on all those pop songs you just don’t understand.

The Genius app lets you swim in the all the annotations for song lyrics, poems, and news articles provided by the Rap Genius community. Once you install the app it scans your iTunes Library to prep all your song lyrics. There’s also a Shazam like function that can find lyrics for any song that’s playing around you.

The app is only available on iPhone with no word on an iPad version or upcoming support for Android, but you can grab it for free on iTunes starting today.

Here are the full release notes:

We all know someone who is still complaining about the UI changes made in iOS 7, but iOS 7’s growth has remained strong with the latest measurements from the App Store boasting that iOS 7 adoption just reach 80%.

SwiftKey, the most popular third-party keyboard on Android, is coming to iOS through a new note-taking app called SwiftKey Note. A leaked promotional image for the app has been leaked on Twitter today, but it’s not yet clear when it will be available to download from the App Store.

VLC, a popular third-party video player for iOS, today received a major update that introduces a swanky new design and lots of new features. The app now looks right at home on devices running iOS 7, and it has the ability to stream videos from Google Drive and Dropbox. You can even download videos from UPnP media multimedia servers on your local network.

Quantified Selfers in the Apple community have a new app to download, in the form of lifelogging app OptimizeMe, which recently launched in the App Store.

A single iOS app that tracks all of your daily activities, OptimizeMe allows users to log mood, stress level, health status, quality of sleep, weight, and a number of other variables. With the addition of activity tracker Moves installed, it also automatically tracks Running, Cycling, Walking, Steps, Calories and Location (Foursquare).

With season three having come to an end, fans of the BBC’s Sherlock series will be happy to hear that today marks the launch of a new game app — featuring new footage starring actors Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman.

News Republic — the iOS app which describes itself as the “definitive news app” — has received an upgrade, including several significant improvements.

Apple has been accused of censorship in the past when it has been a little heavy-handed (to say the least) about banning content in the App Store.

With that being said, few were upset to hear that Plastic Surgery for Barbie — a game which asks players of 9 years+ to perform liposuction on Barbie-styled characters to make them “slim and beautiful” — has been pulled from the App Store. Google has similarly pulled the app from its own Google Play store.

After negotiating with the Federal Trade Commission for months regarding the use of in-app purchases in the App Store, Apple has reached a consent agreement with the agency, according to a company-wide email Tim Cook just sent employees.

Apple’s in-app purchases practices have frustrated regulators since debuting in the App Store back in 2009. In his letter to employees, which was obtained by Re/code, Cook says a host of complaints from customers led Apple to investigate its practices. Last year Apple emailed 28 million App Store customers regarding their in-app purchases and subsequently refunded more than 37,000 in-app purchases that parents claim were unauthorized. The FTC announced that Apple will refund $32.5 million to customers as part of the settlement.

The settlement also requires Apple to change its billing practices by March 31 to ensure customers give their informed consent before billing them for in-app purchases. Apple also has to add an option for customers to remove that consent at any time.

Cook says “it doesn’t feel right for the FTC to sue over a case that had already been settled. To us, it smacked of double jeopardy,” but the FTC’s deal isn’t going to require Apple to do anything extra, so they decided to sign it and move on.

Here’s the full letter:

The team behind Evomail, a popular third-party mail client for iOS, today released Evomail+, a new version of its app designed for iOS 7. In addition to a beautiful new design, the new release adds a whole host of new features, including customizable gestures, filtering tools, and Dropbox and Box.net integration.

Oh, and like it’s predecessor, it’s completely free.

It’s possible to make a lot of money by writing an iOS app. In fact, the top iOS app makers each gross as much as $90,000 a day from their offerings. Yet despite these success stories, the vast majority of app developers are finding it difficult to make money on the App Store, and the bad news is, it’s only going to get worse, with a new forecast predicting that less than one app in 10,000 will make money by 2018. Woof.

While games dominated the App Store in 2013 in terms of top grossing apps, digital comic app comiXology has announced that it was the highest grossing non-game iPad app  — for the third year running.

Originally arriving in the App Store last Thursday, Rhythm Thief & the Paris Caper mysteriously vanished the following day after SEGA discovered “unexpected problems” with the game.

It’s already received a soft launch in New Zealand, but future Mega Jump 2 gamers elsewhere will have to make do with this trailer, ahead of the iOS game sequel’s official launch this Thursday.

Have you decided that 2014 is the year in which you finally quit the job you hate and move on to greener pastures? Well, as with so many other things, it seems that there’s an app designed to help with just that.

Recently launched in the App Store, the Quit Your Job app takes users through a series of questions to determine why they are thinking of quitting, before crafting a bespoke text message to be sent directly to their boss.

Yesterday came and went like any other day, but it was in fact the seventh anniversary of the iPhone launch, which took place back in 2007.

What better way to celebrate, then, than with a free game of Pac-Man, which was part of the first wave of games for the iPhone when the App Store first opened?

Pogoplug, the official iOS client to the Dropbox alternative of that name, has been updated for iOS 7.

The iOS 7-optimized features offer several enhancements, in addition to matching the look and feel of Apple’s latest mobile OS.

Snapchat has today issued a new update for Android and iOS that allows users to opt out of linking their phone number with their username. The move comes after 4.6 million phone numbers were leaked on New Year’s Day following “abuse” of the Snapchat API — which Snapchat has apologized for in a new blog post.

Particularly if you grew up in the 1980s, you’ll be familiar with games like the Castlevania series which ask the player to invade a villain’s lair.

Adult Swim’s new strategy game Castle Doombad cleverly turns that concept on its head: with gamers taking on the role of the princess-kidnapping Dr. Lord Evilstein, tasked with defending his tower against the various heroes who try and save the day.