Spotify has filed a legal complaint against Apple for what it believes is anti-competitive behavior.
The music streaming service, like many others, has an issue with the 30 percent cut Apple charges on App Store revenue. Spotify says Apple makes it very difficult to avoid the fee, which makes some services more expensive.
Super Mario Run, the game that will finally bring everyone’s favorite plumber to iOS, will be available to download from the App Store on December 15. The game will be free to download, while a single in-app purchase will unlock all available content.
SoundKey is a clever keyboard app that plays instruments as you type to create melodies from your words.
Developed by two French students who wanted to incorporate music directly into people’s daily use of the iPhone, it’s an unusual twist on the custom iOS keyboards we’ve come to know and love.
Apple is finally giving iOS developers the opportunity to provide promotional codes for in-app purchases. EA will be one of the first to take advantage of the new scheme with a Real Racing 3 promotion that will allow players to redeem free in-game gold that would usually cost $1.99.
Streaming media services that want to sell subscriptions to users of their apps on the iPhone or iPad have to make a deal with the proverbial devil: if they want to sign up customers on an iOS device, they have to give Apple a 30% cut of the sale.
For music subscription services like Rdio and Spotify, where the margins are razor thin, giving up that 30% cut is enough to turn a subscription from a profit to a break-even proposition. So when a company goes this route, it’s easy to assume they are hurting.
By this logic, Beats Music — the new subscription music service launched in January — is hurting.
Apple has refunded Briton Lee Neale £4,000 ($6,131) after his 8-year-old daughter Lily spent the cash on virtual items in her favorite iPad game. Lily knew the password for her father’s iTunes account, but no one expected her to use it to rack up a huge bill on in-app purchases.
Real Racing 3 fans have yet more content to look forward to in a new update that promises a new track, new cars, and new events. EA announced the release, which will introduce twilight racing at the Dubai Autodrome, on the company’s official Facebook page.
The Boingo app for iOS now allows users to buy Wi-Fi using in-app purchases that are charged to your iTunes account. It makes it quicker and easier to get connected on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, and means you no longer have to navigate Boingo’s website.
Alongside its weekly App Store refresh this week, Apple introduced a new page that helps App Store users “learn more about in-app purchases.” The guide explains what in-app purchases are, how they work, and most importantly, how to prevent your kids from spending a small fortune on them without your permission.
The U.K.’s Office of Fair Trading is investigating children’s games that charge in-app purchases for additional content and virtual items. The watchdog will look at games on mobile and on the web, and it’s calling for parents to report titles that “aggressively push” in-app purchases to children.
Remember Lodsys, the patent troll that began suing a bunch of indie iOS developers back in 2011 over their use of in-app purchases? Well, it’s back to do more trolling. The company has targeted another ten mobile game makers in its latest complaints, which it has been quietly filing in an East Texas court throughout 2013.
The studios named include Gameloft, Walt Disney, BackFlip Studios, and Gamevil.
Given the success of the original Plants vs. Zombies game, which first landed on iOS almost three years ago, I’m surprised we don’t already have a sequel. But there is one on the way. PopCap has announced that Plants vs. Zombies 2 will be launching early this summer.
Stories about kids who gain access to their parents’ iTunes passwords and run up huge bills on apps and in-app purchases are becoming all too common. The latest, concerning 13-year-old Cameron Crossan from the U.K., has an interesting twist.
When Cameron ran up a £3,700 ($5,620) iTunes bill playing iPad games, his father, policeman Doug Crossan, called Apple to get a refund. Apple refused to give the Crossans their money back, so Doug went down a different route. He reported his son for fraud.
Amazon has today announced that its in-app purchasing service, which is already available on the company’s Kindle Fire tablet and other Android devices, is coming to Mac, PC, and web games. This will allow developers to take advantage of Amazon’s service on those platforms to provide their customers with a new way to purchase additional content using their credit card or virtual Amazon currency.
While Amazon isn’t the first company to offer an in-app purchasing system, its service does come with some advantages that developers may not get from its rivals. One of those advantages is that their content will be available via Amazon.com.
The future of Microsoft’s SkyDrive service on iOS looks bleak today as the company appears to have entered into a fight with Apple over its 30% cut of App Store revenues. Microsoft recently gave iOS users the ability to upgrade their SkyDrive subscriptions from their iPhones and iPads, but until the company agrees to give Apple a 30% cut of the in-app purchases, it won’t get any future updates approved.
A critical bug fix that prevents the app from crashing has now had to be placed on hold. Should Apple’s rules be a little more flexible in certain cases?
IM+ and IM+ Pro, two hugely popular messaging apps from Shape Services, have been updated today to introduce a new feature dubbed “Off-the-Record” messaging. It’s a $4.99 in-app purchase that allows users to have secret, encrypted conversations with other IM+ users.
Apple’s fight against Russian hacker Alex Borodin, who took advantage of an in-app purchasing exploit to provide users with paid content for free, has paid off. The Cupertino company has developed a fix that will make its debut in iOS 6, which is almost impossible to bypass, according to Borodin.
Apple is working to block the Russian servers that are allowing users to circumvent iOS in-app purchases and obtain content for free. The Cupertino company reportedly began blocking certain IP addresses over the weekend, and had one server taken down. But despite its efforts, the service continues to work.
Interested in seeing the full letter Apple is sending indie iOS devs threatened by patent troll Lodsys over the use of Apple’s in-app purchasing mechanism? We’ve got it, and whether you’re versed in legalese or not, you’ll want to read this: Apple means business.
