iOS - page 154

It was revealed yesterday that the long-awaited Facebook app for iPad was already here — not in the App Store, but hidden away inside the Facebook app for iPhone. We published details on how to install the app on your iPad, but soon after the news spread, Facebook decided to block access to those using the app before its public release.

Fortunately, as is often the case with these things, jailbreakers have provided a workaround — a new tweak called FaceForward that reactivates the official Facebook app for iPad.

Amazon’s Kindle app for iOS was updated yesterday in order to comply with Apple’s latest in-app purchase terms and secure its place in the App Store. In addition to removing the link to its external Kindle store, however, did you notice that the update introduced more than 100 magazine and newspaper subscriptions to iOS?

Well, that didn’t last long: just a few hours after being yanked from the iOS App Store for failing to comply with Apple’s revised in-app purchasing rules forbidding direct links to outside, web-based e-stores, Google Books has been re-instated, sans the offending link.

Nicely done, Apple. Looks like no one can afford to play hardball with you on this, not even Google or Amazon.

Developers running iOS 5 on their Apple mobile devices have been able to fiddle with iCloud since shortly after it was announced at WWDC in June. However, without iCloud on their Mac as well, they to sync your bookmarks, calendars, photo stream, and documents. Until now!

Lodsys has gained plenty of fame (even infamy) in recent months for its continued pursuit of a number iOS and Android developers for their alleged infringement on patents that cover in-app purchases and upgrade links. Dissatisfied with its results so far, it now takes aim at some of the big names in gaming… but has Lodsys now bitten off more than it can chew?

You’d think that Apple was in need of a rest after pushing out all of that new hardware and software yesterday, but new products and services continue to fly out of Cupertino as the week goes on. Its latest release is the new B2B App Store that allows businesses to purchase iOS apps in volume.

The popularity of Babak Pahlavan‘s new predictive, artificial intelligence app seems to have caught him completely by surprise; so much so that he had to change its (or maybe in this case, his) name from Seymour to Alfred.

Are you stressed?

Of course you are. We’re all stressed. What with global economic meltdown, internet security rapidly becoming a joke, unrest in Libya and the Middle East, gas prices soaring, even our beloved newspaper barons under attack from pretty much everyone. It’s a stressful time.

What we need is something soothing to calm our furrowed brows. What we need is a cup of tea. And some pictures of kittens.

The App Store has seen some awesome game releases in the last 7 days, and our favorites include two huge new titles from Gameloft, a thrilling new racer from the creators of Reckless Racing, and Captain America’s iOS debut. We’ve also got an awesome new dual-stick dungeon-crawling RPG from Crescent Moon Games that’s guaranteed to get you drooling.

This week’s roundup of must-have apps kicks off with a brand new iPhone app from AOL Music that has been described as “Instagram for music.” AOL PLAY is completely free and focuses on music sharing and discovery, allowing you to listen to and share music with your friends on Twitter and Facebook, stream selected albums, and access over 47,000 SHOUTcast radio stations.

We also have an awesome new app called Trimit which will turn entire articles into a few short sentences, and Readdle’s latest iPad app that will turn any document into a professional PDF.

For the second quarter, more apps were developed for Apple’s iOS and Android interest declined. The key: all those credit cards available via iTunes, a new report claims.

It appears Google is learning a lesson from Apple: mobility mean big bucks. The search giant told reporters Thursday Android could become “an accelerator” for the business. There are more than 130 million Android devices now, the company says.

Apple’s App Store is a wonderful thing. When it launched in 2008, it opened up a world now home to 450,000 apps and games available to our iOS devices. There was nothing else like it. Never before had it been so easy for customers to discover and download mobile software, and for developers to distribute and sell it.

Developing for the App Store and the iOS platform isn’t without its flaws, however. As one iOS developer has recently learned, one of the biggest downsides to iOS development is piracy.

On Spotify’s homepage, one of the quotes they prominently use as an advertising blurb was written by my friend and old-Wired colleague, Eliot Van Buskirk, who once famously wrote that Spotify is “like a magical version of iTunes in which you’ve already bought every song in the world.”

They’re right to use it. It’s a great description. Spotify doesn’t have every song in the world — just 15 million, in fact — but boy does it feel like it. That’s not just because of Spotify’s huge library of licensed songs, though. It’s because Spotify seamlessly integrates into iTunes to supplement itself. It’s a true iTunes in the Cloud.

Songify is storming up the App Store charts. Why? Because it’s a dead-simple instant songifier, that’s why.

All you do is speak into your iPhone, and Songify turns your words into a song in about four seconds flat. You can email your song, share it on Facebook and Twitter, and generally have a laugh. The app is free, and comes with three simple backing tracks – if you want more tracks, you pay for them in bundles for a dollar a time.

To accompany its upcoming photo sharing service, Google has just launched an official Photovine app for iOS which it dubs “a fun way to learn more about your friends, meet new people, and share your world like never before.”

Trimit is a new app for your iPhone from Frimby Limited that automatically summarizes large bodies of text to fit the character limits of social networks like Twitter and Facebook. For example, let’s say you’re reading an interesting article and you want to share it with your friends. Rather than just posting a boring old link, you can summarize the whole story into a few short sentences.

Since 1997, Intego has been providing some of the best security software for the Mac, including antivirus, firewall and backup programs. Using its expertise, the company has now created an app for iOS devices that aims to prevent the spread of malware through your email attachments. Don’t scoff.

The same engine and gameplay mechanic of the popular Gears of War series is coming to the App Store… and it’s coming from the studio behind Bioshock.

Apple has just released the third beta of iOS 5 to registered developers, known as Build 9A5259f. We’re downloading and installing now, but in the mean time, if you’re a registered developer, get downloading at the iOS Dev Center.

Noticed anything new in Beta 3? Drop us a line in the comments below! Here are the release notes.

An increasing’App-etite’ means more iOS downloads, higher prices for Apple’s App Store. Along the way, apps are being downloaded at triple the rate of song tracks, one analyst said Monday.

In a striking sign of how the iPad dominates the tablet market, Android phone owners will likely bypass tablets powered by Google’s Honeycomb for Apple, one Wall Street analyst told investors Friday.

A new Apple patent reveals an interesting new method of exchanging information between your devices through “metaphorical gestures” that would, for example, allow you to “pour” your files into your iPad by tipping your iPhone over it.

The long-awaited relaunch of the JailbreakMe exploit from Comex finally went live yesterday, and in one day alone, the service hacked a staggering 1,000,000 devices.

Just a day after the much-anticipated JailbreakMe 3.0 website went live and over 1,000,000 iOS devices took advantage of the web-based hack, Apple has confirmed it will kill the exploit in an upcoming software update.