Apple’s operating systems and its software are generally believed to be the best available in terms of security and stability, but a new report from Trend Micro reveals that’s a huge misconception… at least in recent months. In fact, the Cupertino company suffered more vulnerabilities during the last quarter than rivals like Oracle, Google, Adobe, and even Microsoft.
Plants vs. Zombies has been a smash hit on iOS for well over two years now. But despite its age, developer PopCap is still adding new content. Its latest update is sure to put a smile on your face, adding a new game mode, new minigames, more achievements, and lots more.
One of the most annoying things about Apple’s Bluetooth implementation in iOS is that turning it on or off is a four-step process involving digging deep into Settings. Considering the battery drain associated with just leaving Bluetooth on and the wide variety of devices you can connect via Bluetooth to your device, it’s a constant irritation for many.
Jailbreak utilities like SBSettings make turning bluetooth on/off on the fly a fairly simple proposition, but unfortunately, Apple hasn’t borrowed inspiration from any of them when it comes to baking better Bluetooth toggling into iOS. A new $0.99 app on the App Store, though, makes it much easier to toggle Bluetooth on the fly on your device even without a jailbreak. Launch the app once to toggle Bluetooth on, launch again to toggle off. Simple.
Gemini is a Mac app that does one thing: Find duplicate files on your Mac. You just point it at a directory (your home folder is a good place to start) and sic it on your files. After a few moments it gives a list of anything that is doubled-up on your machine, and then the fun begins.
Read It Later, the most popular way for users to save content they find on the web, has just received a new name, stacks of new features, and lost its price tag in a major update released today. Now called Pocket, the new app is free across Android and iOS devices, and delivers a new user interface, video and image filters, favorites, and much, much more.
Many of us feel a deep personal connection with our iPhones, and small wonder: the average person’s smartphone knows more about them than their spouse or significant other. Our iPhones hold our contacts, photos, videos, music, banking data, texts, emails, voicemails, web logins, apps and more. We use our phones to pay our bills, send texts to our girlfriends, check-in to our favorite club, play games with friends, and much more besides.
That makes our iOS devices a juicy target for tracking, and what most people aren’t aware of is that, historically, Apple has made it very easy to anyone to tell what you do with your iPhone. It’s called a Unique Device Identifier or UDID. Every iOS device has one, and using it, third-parties have been able to put together vast databases tracking almost everything you do with your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad.
The good news for privacy advocates is that the days of UDID are numbered. Following the recent stink the U.S. Congress raised over how iOS apps handle a user’s personal information without permission, Apple has given an ultimatum to third-party App Store developers: either stop tracking UDIDs or get kicked out of the App Store. Now ad networks and developers are scrambling to agree on a way to track your device in the future.
But are these replacements any good, or do they pose even bigger privacy concerns than UDIDs did?
Want to download a trial version of Apple’s iWork apps? Tough. Apple just pulled them, replacing the page on its site with a notice sending you over to the App Store: “The trial version of iWork is no longer supported. But you can easily purchase Keynote, Pages, and Numbers from the Mac App Store to start creating beautiful presentations, documents, and spreadsheets today.”
Translation: Everything – and we mean everything, will be going through the App Store from now on.
Apple CEO Tim Cook was reportedly spotted at the headquarters of PC gaming platform Valve this morning. The Washington-based company boasts the most robust and established desktop gaming network in existence. Think of Valve as the iTunes of PC gaming. Is a Valve/Apple partnership in the works?
Unlike some of EA’s recent iOS games (I’m looking at you, Battlefield 3: Aftershock!) Mass Effect Infiltrator has become a huge success. It’s great gameplay and entertaining storyline have earned it some really glowing reviews, and it recently featured in our selection of the best Retina-ready games for the new iPad.
Today it receives a “massive” update that adds a new bonus mission, manual aiming, more optimizations for the new iPad, and more.
In an effort to increase security for your Apple ID, Apple is forcing users to set a number of security questions and answers that will help “verify your identity in the future.” If you forget your password or your account is compromised, you will be asked to answer these questions to prove who you are.
LogMeIn has launched a new cloud-based storage, syncing, and sharing service that hopes to compete with services like Dropbox, Box.net, and the upcoming Google Drive. Called ‘Cubby’, the service offers 5GB of free storage which is protected by LogMeIn’s 128-bit SSL encryption, and it can be accessed from a web browser or using the official Cubby apps for Android and iOS.
Apple’s App Store approval process is a mysterious thing. Sometimes the Cupertino overlords can be incredibly stringent about the guidelines an app has to adhere to in order to be approved for sale onthe App Store, and other times we’re all left scratching our heads wondering how on earth an app like this made it through.
Siri knockoffs are nothing new, of course. In fact, they’ve been a pretty common occurrence in the iOS App Store ever since Apple unveiled the digital assistant alongside the iPhone 4S last October. We’ve seen apps like Evi that piggyback off Siri’s success, but a relatively new app has seen incredible success by riding Siri’s coattails all the way to the top of the App Store charts.
The best part? Not only does it look heavily — ahem — inspired by Siri, even the developer doesn’t know how it got approved.
Quickoffice Pro HD is one of the App Store’s best third-party office suites, and until Microsoft Office hits the iPad, it’s the best way to view and edit Word and Excel documents on the go. Its latest update adds Powerpoint editing to that, in addition to native email support, an enhanced visual interface, and more.
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After teasing the game way back in October, Criterion will finally release Burnout Crash! for iOS tomorrow, April 12. The top-down racer will be Criterion’s first mobile game, and it’s already shaping up to be a huge hit. Even David Hasselhoff loves it, as you can see from the clip above.
Looks like Instagram’s billion dollar deal with the devil didn’t land it in hot enough water after all. Following widespread concerns regarding Instagram’s future from what was apparently a vocal minority, the popular photography app has soared to the top of the App Store.
For the first time in the app’s 16 months on the App Store, Instagram reigns as the most popular free app for the iPhone. Take that, haters.
Rumors have been relatively quiet on the iTunes front for awhile. We’ve had reports pop up here and there over the past couple years, but nothing that exciting has happened to Apple’s desktop music app for a long time.
iTunes is due for a refresh, and it looks like we’ll be seeing an iCloud-centric iTunes 11 alongside the release of iOS 6.
It’s pretty clear that digital distribution is going to play a large role in the future of magazines and newspapers. That doesn’t mean, however, that print editions are going away any time soon. For the foreseeable future, we’re likely to see print/digital hybrids while consumers and publishers test the waters of both digital products and distribution channels.
The road to digital hasn’t been a smooth ride for many publications. Part of the reason is the lack of resources being devoted to creating engaging and immersive digital content that doesn’t feel as if you’re simply reading a PDF of the print edition.
One big area where publisher are still failing is advertising – despite excellent interactive ad systems like Apple iAd, publishers are still stuck in a print mentality when it comes to ads. In fact, according to a new study, publications often simply toss the exact same print-formatted ads into digital editions that run in their print counterparts.
Papermill launched on Android several weeks ago. Developed by Ryan Bateman and designed with the help of Matt Legaspi, the app is a beautiful Instapaper client for Android devices. Papermill received high praise from the community and widespread media coverage when it launched, and the developer has since broken down its success based on sales. The conclusions he draws about Android users in general are particularly interesting.
Bateman says that, “Android users not being willing to pay for an apps whose focus is quality and whose price reflects this.” Is this true only for the average Android user, or should the average iPhone user be considered as well? How can one make the blanket argument that people don’t want to pay for quality apps? I think it comes down to the basic issue of supply and demand.
Marine authorities estimate that there are only 350 to 550 whales left in the world, making the mammal an endangered species. Those that are left are at risk of being killed by deadly collisions with ships, but conservationists are hoping Apple’s iOS devices can help save the species from extinction.
When the App Store first launched on iOS, the need for an alternative marketplace quickly arose. Jailbreakers and power-users wanted a way to download and install apps that gave them more control over their devices than what Apple would allow.
That was how Cydia was born. Created by Jay ‘saurik‘ Freeman, the Cydia app store allows users with jailbroken devices to not only install apps that bypass a number of iOS’s built-in restrictions, but to more easily discover them.
On the Mac, there’s obviously no jailbreaking, but given the sandboxing restrictions placed upon App Store developers, there’s still a need for a Cydia-like alternative: an easy-to-use, curated catalog for apps that give power-users too much control over their systems for Apple’s comfort.
Enter the HackStore, which hopes one day to be as synonymous with user-empowered Macs as Cydia is with jailbroken iOS devices.
Dolphin Browser is arguably one of the best third-party browsers for iOS, and the iPhone version just became even better with its latest update. Version 4.0 brings a stack of new features including Dolphin Sonar voice controls, a URL keyboard, and a night mode — and it’s available to download now.
There are now over 500,000 iPhone apps and 170,000 iPad apps available on Apple’s App Store and that number will surely continue to increase as new app developers enter the foray. In March 2012 Apple’s App Store surpassed its 25 billionth download. If you’re not already buying apps regularly, you probably will be soon. Here are some tips that may help you save some money on your App Store purchases.
The new American Pie film American Reunion is set to open in theaters this Friday, April 6th. To help promote the movie, Universal Pictures thought it’d be a great idea to release an app called Stifler’s App Suite featuring a soundboard of all the various raunchy sayings of the series’ infamous support character, Stifler.
Looks like Stifler was too hot for the App Store to handle, though. An anonymous source has exclusively told Cult of Mac that Apple’s App Store review team has rejected the app due to foul language. The rejection has forced the Universal team to resubmit a watered-down version of the app. Stifler’s hardly even himself anymore.
When we broke the story on Friday about Girls Around Me — an iOS app by Russian-based app developer i-Free that allowed users to stalk women in thee neighborhood without those women’s knowledge, right down to their most personal details — Foursquare was quick to respond within hours, cutting off the API access that the app relied upon to function.
Foursquare’s swift response to the issue effectively killed Girls Around Me, and i-Free quickly yanked the app from the App Store in the aftermath until they could figure out a way to restore service. And for a lot of people, the story ended there. The app’s gone. Why keep talking about it?
That’s exactly the way Foursquare (and Facebook) wants things.
When the creepy girl stalking app Girls Around Me went missing from the iTunes App Store last night, it wasn’t immediately clear who had pulled it: Russia-based i-Free, the developer behind the app, or Apple itself.
Now i-Free has clarified matters. They pulled the app themselves… but not because they think they did anything wrong. In fact, they’ve gone as far as to say that it is “unethical to pick a scapegoat to talk about the privacy concerns. We see this wave of negative as a serious misunderstanding of the app’s goals, purpose, abilities and restrictions.”
Oh really?