The App Store reached the 25 billionth download milestone over the weekend, and Apple recently announced the lucky winner of the $10,000 contest, Chunli Fu of Qingdao, China. It’s only fitting that the winner comes from China when you consider the exponential growth Apple has been seeing in that part of the world.
As it did when the App Store reached 10 billion downloads last year, Apple has revealed the all-time top paid and free apps for the iPhone and iPad.
Apple issued a press release this morning to confirm that more than 25 billion apps have now been downloaded from its “revolutionary” App Store by more than 315 million iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches worldwide. The company also announced the lucky winner of its $10,000 iTunes gift card.
Take a glance at the App Store Top Paid Apps list and you’ll see that 7 out of 10 are games. So, if you want to CRUSH it with an iOS app…then this iOS game development course may just be your ticket.
Angry Birds, Cut The Rope, Peggle— each one is as unique as they come, but they’re tied together to one simple principle: they’re built using Cocos2D. In this course, expert Cocos2D instructor, Marin Todorov takes a hands-on approach and walks you step-by-step through the process of building a complete game.
Get it while you can, this Cult of Mac Deal is 50% off for a limited time!
Today would have been Theodor Seuss Geisel’s 108th birthday. Of course we know him as Dr. Seuss, one of the most revered children’s book authors of all time. Many people and organizations will be celebrating his works today and even Hollywood is doing its part by bringing the classic Thorax (auto-correct fail) The Lorax to life in an amazing looking 3-D CGI film (in theaters today). While his books have entertained and educated children for generations, recent technology has breathed new life into his classics via digital interactive children’s books. Oceanhouse Media, a leader in DICBs, has also joined the celebration by discounting their Dr. Seuss apps on both Android and iOS.
Popular web reading platform Readability has launched its official iOS in the App Store. iPhone and iPad uses can download the free app to access their Readability accounts and read optimized web pages on the go.
Originally previewed several days ago, the native iOS app gives you a beautifully formatted view of the articles you save on the web to read later.
With baseball season nearly upon us, now is the time to download MLB’s brand new iOS app. MLB.com At Bat went live in the App Store for free this morning with some great features and better pricing options.
Instead of having to pay $30 for the separate iPhone and iPad apps like last year, MLB is offering a free, universal download with a season-long in-app subscription for $14.99, and there’s more options available.
BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — In Russia, if you want to come up with a mascot for your company or a character for your app, there’s no focus groups or testing: it all comes from the top down.
That’s why when Russian app development and publishing company iFree wanted to release a new virtual assistant for Android and iOS to take on Siri, i-Free’s Kirill Petrov dictated the design of i-Free’s latest character. He would be an all white, gremlin-like humanoid with huge flashing teeth and glowing yellow eyes. He would hail from the planet Edelweiss (named after a beer), and he would come to Earth in the time-honored tradition of many alien invaders before him: namely to kidnap our women for his own lascivious pleasure.
Meet Spoony. He’s terrifying. He uses much of the same core technology as Siri, the distant relation he’d eventually like to kill, or at least surplant. Presumably after making out with her first.
Remember when we told you about Evi, a Siri clone in the App Store? While the iPhone app mimicked much of the features found in Apple’s digital assistant, there seemed to be enough differences to keep it safe from the watchdogs in Cupertino. For instance, you can ask “Where’s a good place to eat Mexican?” and Evi will use Yelp’s API to provide you results in-app.
According to new reports, Apple has threatened to yank Evi from the App Store. The app has been downloaded over 200,000 times and costs $0.99 in the App Store.
Popular video service Vimeo has updated its iOS app with full support for the iPad. Previewed at CES earlier this year, version 2.0 of the app includes a native iPad UI and updated iPhone layout. You can shoot, edit and share videos from your iPad and browse content in a gorgeous interface.
Popular web reading platform Readability has confirmed that it will finally be launching its native iOS app in the App Store on Thursday, March 1st. The release comes after Readability was rejected by Apple for not complying with the App Store’s in-app purchase guidelines.
When the iPhone and iPad app becomes available to the public later this week, users will be able to read and share web articles that have been beautifully reformatted for a mobile reading experience.
Following an accidental and brief appearance in the App Store on Saturday, Adobe has officially unveiled its new photo editing app for the iPad 2. Photoshop Touch is available now in the App Store for $9.99.
The app was recently introduced for Android, and Adobe has now brought image editing tools to the iPad 2 that users of Photoshop on the desktop will recognize. The interface looks a whole lot like an Android app, but Adobe has packed some great features that make a compelling product.
BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — One of the things that first inspired me to be a professional writer was sharing my early fiction experiments as a 10 year old on the discussion boards of the old dial-up service, Prodigy. The instantaneous feedback, the helpful advice, the suggestions from other people about what should happen next to my character (a monster-killing, Nazi-loathing private dick named Dr. Crypt, a name which I still use as my Twitter handle): all of this was a formative experience for me, and without it, I never would have dared to dream that someday, I would make my living putting words down on paper.
Prodigy’s bulletin boards aren’t around anymore, but a new start up is trying to encourage kids and teenagers to write the same way. The company’s called Movellas, and it’s taking the concepts of Twitter, LiveJournal, Kickstarter and the Kindle self-publishing platform to help identify and nurture the next Stephanie Mayer or Stephen King when he or she is still a kid. And, of course, they have an app for that.
We’re huge fans of the simplistic to-do app called Clear here at Cult of Mac. We’ve been captivated by its entrancing gestures and sexy design ever since we saw it at Macworld last month.
Following the highly-anticpated release of Clear in the App Store, Realmac Software has confirmed that the app has moved a staggering 350,000 copies since its launch on February 14th. Nice!
Are you still emailing contact cards and photos to your friends? Did you know that you can transfer them instantly with a fist bump using the free Bump app? The best thing about Bump is it’s not just available on iOS, so you can use it to send contacts and images to friends on Android devices and other smartphones, too.
Here’s how to get started.
Along with iTunes (ten minutes to transfer a TV show to my iPad?), the iTunes Apps Store is possibly the worst experience one can have while using Apple products. You can never find anything good; all the listings are clogged with scam software and other crap; and it is slow, slow, slow. The good news is that Apple looks set to fix it, with the purchase of Chomp.
We were looking forward to EA’s latest Battlefield title for iOS before it hit the App Store. But when it finally arrived, we couldn’t have been more disappointed. Battlefield 3: Aftershock offered only online gameplay, with just one map and a very limited variety of arsenal. Gameplay was frustrating at best, plagued by unbearable lag on top of server and connection errors.
It’s no surprise, then, that EA has now pulled the release from the App Store.
Apple hasn’t made the Mac App Store the only source for Mac software, but the company is nudging both developers and users in the store’s direction. That’s fine for consumers, but it may create problems for businesses that need to buy software in bulk and distribute it to a large number of Macs.
Path recently sparked a huge controversy over user privacy violations in popular App Store apps, and the media firestorm that resulted has now promoted The California Attorney General to enforce new standards for informing users about app privacy policies.
Apple, Google, Microsoft, HP, Amazon and RIM will now be implementing new policies that developers must comply with when publishing apps online. All information that’s collected from the user will be outlined in the app’s privacy policy and made viewable in app stores before downloading.
Twitter has pushed out an update for both the Android and iOS mobile apps which brings back a few popular features as well as adding a couple new ones. Also, owners of the Kindle Fire will be happy to know that the Twitter app is now available via the Amazon App Store, and if you happen to own a Barnes & Noble NOOK Color or NOOK Tablet, you can expect to receive the app on February 23rd. So what’s new? According to the Twitter Blog, here’s what you can expect:
Remember that Office for iPad product shot that was floating around earlier today? Well, Microsoft won’t actually come out and call it bogus, but they do say any report of Office for iPad is based on “inaccurate rumors and speculation.” So is that a denial or what?
Sometimes the morass of Mail windows on a Mac can just become too much. Various apps have tried to help manage this in various ways: Sparrow by bringing the streamlined Tweetie aesthetic to mail, Postbox by in-line quick replies, and so on.
Even so, more often than not, when I close Mail for the day, I’m closing about a dozen or two blank or half-written email windows that have been opened during the day, then forgotten. Why can’t sending an email be as painlessly fire-and-forget as sending an IM? Enter QuickMailer.
An official Microsoft Office suite for the iPad has long been the subject of hopeful rumors, but a leaked shot of the software in action on Apple’s tablet proves for the first time that it’s real, and that it is on its way to the App Store.
It’s never been easier (or as cheap) to translate words and phrases between over 60 languages than it is with the free Google Translate app for iOS. Simply select the language you require, type or speak your phrase, then wait while Google does the hard work. Here’s how to get started.
Following its launch in the U.S. back in January, CloudOn has finally arrived in the U.K., allowing British users to access Microsoft Office applications on their iPad. The free app lets you view, edit, and create Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents on your tablet, which can then be saved directly to your Dropbox account.
Update: We have selected our winners and would like to CONGRATULATE Selena Gannon (@SeleneGannon) and Teodora Yodar (@TeodoraYoder). Please email us at [email protected] to get your goods — and thanks to everyone for entering!
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The iPhone App Game Plan Bundle offers one of those rare opportunities to save a ton of cash and also gain the opportunity to make a ton of cash with the results of following through with what’s being offered. How’s that? Well, you get a killer training program that allows you to plan, launch and market an app that you’ve worked hard at making – and the training you’ll receive has stellar odds to pay you back over and over again. It’s a real win-win!
Speaking of “win”, we’re about to up the ante on this Cult of Mac Deal even more.