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.
According to Topeka Capital Markets analyst Brian White earlier this year, Apple’s busy working on an “iRing" finger ring we’ll use to control our Apple devices with. The suggestion was so preposterous that even the usually poker-faced Tim Cook cracked a joke about it.
The reality is that much of the “digital hub” functionality that an iRing would have brought will likely be carried out by the iWatch when it finally surfaces. For those who really wanted this rumor to be true, however, never fear: several companies have created their own third-party iRings to bring this rumor to life.
Remember those Topeka Capital Markets reports from last year about how, by this time, we’d all be using finger rings to control our newly launched Apple televisions?
While those predictions may not have come to fruition just yet, music technology company IK Multimedia is launching an iRing of its own that will allow people to perform specific tasks on their iOS devices using gestures.
When Xbox Music finally made its debut on the iPhone last September, one of its most notable shortcomings was the lack of ability to store music locally for offline listening. But a new update that hit the App Store today rectifies that, giving subscribers the ability to enjoy their favorite playlists without a data connection.
Apple has today announced that App Store sales topped a whopping $10 billion in 2013, with over $1 billion made during December alone. Almost three billion apps were downloaded during the final month of the year, making it the most successful month in App Store history.
Just because you’ve built a great app doesn’t mean that they will come. It hasn’t been that way for years. Have you ever wondered what it takes to get into the top charts of the app store? What are the top apps doing that you aren’t? Is it luck?
Cult of Mac Deals has an offer on a course that will provide the answer: The Secrets to App Store Success in iOS 7 Course. And it’s available for 59% off for a limited time – just $99.
As we approach the end of 2013, it’s time to take a look back and pay some recognition to some of the finest apps that have hit the App Store over the past 12 months.
It’s not easy to build a successful iOS app anymore — with over 1 million of them in the App Store, competition has never been tougher — but some developers have proven it’s still possible to stand out among the crowd with titles that are either completely unique, or just far greater than their rivals.
We’ve picked 15 that you really shouldn’t miss.
If you’re constantly switching between devices while also handling large quantities of different document types, finding one app that allows you to easily sync them with each other is essential.
That is pretty much the remit of the newly-launched Notebooks 7 app, which offers users a single, unified place for all their writing, minutes, tasks and documents.
iOS 7 adoption is currently stealing 1 percentage point away from iOS 6 every week.
That’s according to Apple who have just updated their iOS adoption figures, presenting the data on its developers’ support page. Apple first reported iOS 7 numbers based on App Store usage on December 1, when 74 percent of users were on iOS 7, compared to 22 percent on iOS 6, and 4 percent on earlier versions.
BitTorrent Sync has received an end -of-2013 update — adding an often requested feature and several important fixes.
Ho! Ho! Ho! It’s Christmas CultCast time! This episode: a new deal in China hands Apple 770 million potential new customers; we cover some of the wackiest rumors of 2013; the Mac Pro delivers surprising results in performance tests; some of App Store’s best apps just went on sale; and we recall some of the best and worst gifts we’ve given or received!
Have a few laughs whilst getting caught up on each week’s finest Apple stories! Download new and past episodes of The CultCast on iTunes or hit play below and let the audio enjoyment commence.
Thanks to lynda.com for sponsoring this episode. Learn at your own pace from expert-taught video tutorials at lynda.com.
Australian-based developer Halfbrick is at it again, with free-to-play Colossatron: Massive World Threat, now available around the globe.
You’ll take on the role of the humungous mechanical robot Colossatron on your quest to utterly destroy city after city, using various colored robotic modules to give your wanton destruction just a little extra oomph.
Yeah, color-matching doesn’t sound that fun, but this one? It really is.
The Pebble smartwatch started as a project on Kickstarter and has now shipped over 190,000 units. While select partners like Yelp and Foursquare have been working with Pebble to create apps for the platform, Pebble is announcing that it will be introducing an official app store of its own in 2014.
Developers will be able to submit and sell apps in what Pebble is calling a “first-of-its-kind wearable tech application directory.” Like Apple’s App Store, Pebble owners will be able to browse for apps to install from the Pebble iOS and Android companion apps.
Last month Pebble released its 2.0 SDK that gives devs access to the device’s accelerometer and full support for iOS 7’s enhanced Notification Center. You can order a Pebble online for $150.
Source: Pebble
iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks have made passwords easier to deal with than ever thanks to iCloud Keychain, which saves your passwords and logins and syncs them across your devices, but it comes with a downside: you have to use Safari on all of your devices.
That cuts Chrome users like me right out, but luckily, there’s great apps like AgileBits’ 1Password, which does everything iCloud Keychain does and much, much more. In fact, I’d go as far as to say it’s the best password manager out there, full stop. So here’s good news: AgileBits has dropped the usually steep price of 1Password by 30%, allowing you to buy the award-winning, ultra-secure password locker for just $34.99.
1Password is an expensive upfront purchase, but once you make it, it’s worth it: free solutions like LastPass just have none of 1Password’s polish.
You can buy 1Password on the Mac App Store here.
As crazy as it may seem, this year marks Nintendo's 125th anniversary, from its origins as a playing card company back in September 1889, to its status as a gaming powerhouse today.
As much as we love Nintendo, however, it has been pretty reticent about embracing the world of mobile gaming; refusing to port any of its core titles to iOS and forcing the takedown of emulators that have tried to provide this (slightly illegal) service. True gamers that we are, though, we hold out hope that one day Nintendo may see the light. With that in mind, here's our list of the 8 Nintendo titles we'd love to see on our iPhone screens.
Scroll through our gallery to see which ones made the cut.
Once the king of mobile gaming, over the past few years, Nintendo has found itself caught flatfooted by the rise of smartphones. Although the company’s 3DS portable game console can’t be said to be a total flop, it’s certainly not selling in gangbuster units compared to previous consoles, like the DS or Gameboy. The reason why is simple: most people have a perfectly good gaming device in their pockets all the time now in the form of their smartphone, and don’t want to have to carry around (let alone buy) an entirely separate device dedicated to gaming.
Many critics have suggested that it’s time for Nintendo to give up and just start releasing games based on its prize characters such as Mario or Link as iOS apps. Such advice is short-sighted, but that doesn’t mean Nintendo can’t be better leveraging Apple’s iOS platform… which is exactly what the Big N seems to have in mind.