Apple on Monday quietly announced its users have subscribed to one billion podcasts through iTunes. The milestone is being celebrated via a special iTunes section that includes the What's Hot and New & Noteworthy sections.
Additionally, Apple highlights cherry-picked shows like This American Life, TEDTalks, 60 Minutes, Happy Tree Friends, etc.
There are now 250,000 different podcasts in more than a hundred languages available through iTunes...
Gameloft and Marvel announced the official tie-in game for the upcoming Thor sequel this weekend. It's called 'Thor: The Dark World - The Official Game' (that's it's real name), and it will be arriving on iOS and Android platforms this November.
We don't know much about the game, outside of its title. But judging by this trailer Gameloft posted this afternoon, it looks like it's going to feature gorgeous graphics, and the usual hack-and-slash gameplay. We've posted the clip after the fold...
KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo is fast becoming the de facto most reliable Apple watcher. Expanding on his April note which advised investors to brace themselves for a delayed iDevice roll-out over manufacturing "challenges," his just-updated shipments timetable now offers more in way of detail.
Long story short, the analyst is expecting the iPhone 5S in late-September, but in limited quantity, with the oft-rumored plastic iPhone (he's calling it an 'iPhone Lite') becoming available even sooner than the iPhone 5S in early-September because its chassis is easier to make than the two-tone iPhone 5S design.
Early September will also bring us an updated iPad 5, he said, but there will be no iPad mini successor this year due to engineering issues. As for the Mac family, Kuo sees a mid-September launch of a Haswell-enabled Retina MacBook Pro, with a Haswell-driven iMac up for a late-August introduction. The full breakdown is right after the break...
I don't have kids yet. But when I do, I'm going to make sure that I take all of the necessary steps to prevent them from making purchases in the App Store. There are various ways to do this, and for me it's just common sense—I wouldn't leave them with real money.
But apparently, it's not such a cut-and-dry matter for some folks. Take this story by UK's Mirror publication, which went viral this weekend, about an 8-year-old girl racking up a staggering $6000 App Store bill on her father's iPad by making several in-app purchases...
I'm a simple guy when it comes to listening to digital music: the iTunes/iTunes Radio + Spotify combo pretty much has me covered these days. That's not saying I'm not on the lookout for music solutions outside the Apple-Spotify landscape.
Take the once relevant jukebox app and music subscription service Rhapsody (remember them?), which has been trying to become relevant for years now.
Just two months ago, the firm has renewed its efforts by overhauling its aging mobile app, adding tons of goodies.
In another update issued today, Rhapsody version 3.5 brings out standard social sharing features and the useful offline playback mode whilst putting exclusive curated content front and center...
Apple has seeded the 4th developer preview of OS X Mavericks, and it's available for download right now. The download, which comes in at about 1.27GB for users of OS X Mavericks DP 3, can be found via the Mac App Store app. For those of you not yet running OS X Mavericks, the download would normally be available through the Mac Dev Center, but it's been down as a part of a well publicized security breach.
Apple's iPhone 5 accounts for just over half of the company's smartphone sales, with 48 percent coming from the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4, according to new research. That compares to the iPhone 4S which comprised about 75 percent of Apple sales almost a year after launch.
The figures illustrate how a larger portion of Apple's smartphone revenue is being generated by lower-cost iPhone models, a concern for investors heading into Tuesday's third-quarter financial report...
AT&T has introduced two new Mobile Share plans this morning, rounding out its family of Mobile Share rate options it first introduced in the summer of last year. The offerings are designed to allow users to share monthly data allotments across multiple devices.
Previously, the plans started at 1GB of data per month and then jumped straight to 4GB. But today, AT&T announced that it would be adding 300MB and 2GB plans to the mix, giving users that don't require much data a wider selection of options to choose from...
Last Friday, Apple confirmed it had snapped up HopStop, the brains behind a transit-navigation app which provides detailed subway, bus, train, taxi, walking and biking directions. The move should complement Apple's troubled mapping solution as the company works toward folding HopStop's high-quality public transit data into its in-house Maps app.
Though an important capability, Apple initially felt content with third-parties tackling the transit navigation puzzle. Be that as it may, it's now come to our attention that the Windows Phone app has rather unceremoniously been pulled following the HopStop acquisition.
File this one under the 'business as usual' drawer: Apple similarly pulled Chomp for Android after acquiring the app discovery engine back in February 2012...
iOS continues to change modern living for the better by improving upon the connected home promise through various innovative app-enabled accessories from third-parties, like the beautiful and smart Nest thermostat, the intelligent Philips light bulbs and clever locks by the likes of Jawbone and Kwikset, to name just a few.
Canary, "the world's first smartphone security device for everyone" by a New York-based startup, promises to beef up your home security by bringing motion detection, push alerts, streaming spycam video and other goodies to your iPhone by way of an IndieGoGo crowd-funded project.
The stylish device, reminiscent of Jony Ive's industrial design work, comes packed with a 720p HD camera, wide angle lens, Wi-Fi connectivity and smart sensors that detect motion, and is easy to set up on your mobile device. I've included a promotional video for your viewing pleasure just after the break...
Tuesday is either report card day or judgement day for Apple, depending on your particular doom-and-gloom scenario. The iPhone maker is expected to report a flat mid-summer quarter as investors question whether the best days of the company are behind it.
At the same time, observers see the third quarter as peculiar, given that no new iPhone or iPad has been announced, opening up CEO Tim Cook's leadership to speculation and questions whether the iPhone maker can come back from two consecutive quarters of disappointment...
What would it be like to receive instant query results from Google directly from within iOS's stock Spotlight search? A new tweak entitled SmartSearch provides a few clues as to what that might be like. It's far from a perfect execution of the idea, but it's an interesting idea nonetheless. Have a look at our video walkthrough, which shows SmartSearch in action.