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.
It’s official. Spotify — that wonderful streaming music service that operates like the most fully packed iTunes library in the world — is finally coming to the United States.
It’s now a two-way race for control of the U.S. smartphone market and long-time No. 2 player Research in Motion finds itself being lapped by Apple.
New screenshots demonstrating Facebook’s much-anticipated Project Spartan web app platform, in addition to a tentative launch date for the service, have been published online. And despite Facebook’s promise that the service isn’t intended to rival the App Store, developers say there’s no question.
Apple famously solved the copy-and-paste touchscreen challenge with their innovative hold-and-drag-corners approach first introduced in iOS 3.0, but is there a better way? Microsoft thinks so. They think they’ve got an even better way to copy text in the latest version of their Bing for iPad app. It’s called the lasso.
While the release of JailbreakMe 3.0 is expected to be imminent, those of you struggling to wait any longer can now set up your own web-based jailbreak for all devices running iOS 4.3.3 and below. Here’s how!
Thanks to the continued growth of Apple’s iOS devices, the iTunes platform that includes the App Store and the iBookstore is set to grow at a rate of 39% over the next three years and rake in a whopping $13 billion in revenue during 2013.
The New York Times has issued an update to its iOS apps today that now allows users to subscribe to paid content through in-app purchases. The change comes a day later than the June 30 deadline Apple imposed on subscription apps that must now provide a way for users to sign up without being redirected to a website.
For this week’s giveaway we’ve partnered up with the friendly folks at Appular to bring fans a great package of iOS gaming apps, for free. We’ve got codes for five of the hottest games in the iPhone App Store right now and we’re ready to dish em out to our awesome fans to liven up your iPhone gaming lives. Today’s package of apps includes Cars 2, Tiny Wings, Hanging With Friends, The Game of Life, and Sea Battles. If you want a chance to win all five games then hurry up and enter the contest.
It’s become a pattern for consumers – word of a new Apple device puts the brakes on purchases of the current version. Verizon Wireless is now seeing that as Apple fans hold off buying the iPhone 4 to wait for the iPhone 5.
It’s not official until Apple makes it so, but expect this blip to pop up Apple’s July 19th financial results call: the iPad now has more than 100,000 native apps available for it.
As we prepare to welcome iOS 5 to our devices, a look back finds iOS 4 is used by nearly all iPhones just a year after its release. Unveiled a year ago for the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G, iOS 4 is on 95.59 percent of Apple handsets, an advertising firm announced Wednesday.