App Store

Apple: yes, we now remove App Store apps pulled from sale from your Purchased history, too

Christian Zibreg ∙ October 7, 2015

Users around the world are noticing that they're no longer able to re-download older iPhone and iPad apps and games that their developers have removed from sale on the App Store.

The abnormal behavior flies in the face of Apple's policy of allowing people who bought apps from the App Store to re-download them to other devices through the App Store's Purchased tab.

As a result, questions arose as to whether this pointed toward a big problem in the App Store. Sadly, as PocketGamer points out, this is definitely a new Apple policy meaning you now have to back up your purchased mobile apps in iTunes to keep them forever.

Many more high-profile games being pulled from App Store and removed from purchase histories

Christian Zibreg ∙ October 6, 2015

A bunch of premium iPhone, iPod touch and iPad games from major publishers such as Electronics Arts, Telltale Games, Capcom, Sega, 2K Games and many others have been removed from both the App Store and customers' purchase histories without notice, TouchArcade cautioned.

As a result, those who had bought a game can no longer access or re-download it unless it was already installed on their device. No explanation for the removal from customer purchase history was provided in spite of media requests.

Apple bans iFixit from App Store over tearing apart unreleased 4th generation Apple TV

Christian Zibreg ∙ October 1, 2015

Those prolific electronics wizards over at iFixit have found out the hard way that breaking Apple's NDA has consequences. The site fell out of favor with Apple after posting a teardown analysis of an unreleased 4th generation Apple TV with Siri Remote.

According to iFixit itself, not only has Apple yanked their iPhone app from the App Store but also banned their developer account. iFixit's Apple TV unit was obtained as part of development kits provided to some developers who were selected to take part in Apple's early access program.

Apple lists top 25 apps infected by XcodeGhost

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated May 18, 2017

Apple today refreshed its official XcodeGhost FAQ webpage, listing the top 25 iPhone and iPad apps on the App Store that contain the widely reported though mostly harmless XcodeGhost malware.

In addition to WeChat, one of the top messaging apps in the world, Rovio's Angry Birds 2 and China Unicom’s Customer Service app, most of the listed apps are distributed on the Chinese App Store only.

“If users have one of these apps, they should update the affected app which will fix the issue on the user’s device,” writes the company. “If the app is available on App Store, it has been updated, if it isn’t available it should be updated very soon.”

Apple has pulled many of the infected apps and said it's working closely with developers to get impacted apps back on the App Store.

Apple to offer local Xcode downloads in China, posts official XcodeGhost malware FAQ

Christian Zibreg ∙ September 23, 2015

The XcodeGhost malware couldn't have arrived at worst time for Apple as the company prepares to launch its iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus tomorrow. The company has already removed the App Store apps infected by the malware, which has been found to inject its payload into apps compiled with compromised copies of Xcode that were distributed on non-Apple servers in China.

Wednesday, the Cupertino firm has confirmed plans to mitigate the threat by hosting local Xcode downloads within China. In addition, Apple has posted an XcodeGhost FAQ webpage on its Chinese website detailing the XcodeGhost malware and how customers might be affected by it.

Apple educates developers on validating Xcode downloads following XcodeGhost malware attack

Christian Zibreg ∙ September 22, 2015

A new type of attack called XcodeGhost is wreaking something of a mini-havoc in the App Store, injecting its malware payload into popular iPhone and iPad apps and prompting Apple to pull the infected apps.

The malware itself is pretty harmful—it collects and sends information about your device—but the method of spreading is cunning. Rather than target the App Store itself, attackers have distributed hacked versions of Xcode, Apple's tool required for iOS and OS X development.

As Xcode is a multi-gigabyte download, developers in countries like China where Internet speeds are slow have downloaded these modified Xcode builds from non-Apple sources without realizing a hacked Xcode injects malware when compiling apps.

This morning, Apple issued an email to developers providing an update on the XcodeGhost situation while laying out easy-to-follow instructions for checking if their Xcode copy has been tampered with.

Apple begins removing apps infected with the XcodeGhost malware

Jeff Benjamin ∙ September 20, 2015

Apple is fully aware of the recent malware attack on several of its App Store apps, according to an Apple rep that spoke with Reuters via email. It has begun removing all known apps that have been infected, and is working with developers affected by the breach.

XcodeGhost, as we told you about yesterday, is malware that is attached to several legitimate App Store apps. The apps were infected due to using an illegitimate version of Xcode, which was downloaded from a third-party server in China. Most of the infected apps are of Chinese origin, but there are a few apps impacted, WeChat to name one, that are popular in other territories.

EA silently pulls nearly two dozen classic iPhone and iPad games from App Store

Christian Zibreg ∙ September 11, 2015

Electronics Arts, the world's top developer and publisher of video games and one of the most prolific makers of mobile games for the iPhone and iPad, has quietly removed a bunch of classic iOS titles from both the App Store and Google's Play store.

As first reported by TouchArcade, hit games such as the original Real Racing, Need for Speed Shift, Flight Control, Mass Effect: Infiltrator and many more can no longer be purchased in the App Store, nor will they be supported going forward.

Apple rolls out brand new Twitter account dedicated to App Store games

Christian Zibreg ∙ September 3, 2015

The App Store has been on Twitter since September 2009 but as of today, a new curated Twitter account dedicated to highlighting the App Store games is available as well. It's now yet known whether gaming-related tweets will now be exclusively posted on @AppStoreGames alone or retweeted on @AppStore but it's an encouraging sign of Apple's mobile gaming prowess.

“Embrace the future of gaming,” reads the account's bioline. “Straight from our Games Editors.”

Sale: 1Password is now 30% off on Mac and 1Password Pro is now 50% off on iOS

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated October 13, 2018

If you've yet to purchase a copy of 1Password for your Mac, iPhone and iPad, now is definitely the time to consider doing so. Despite our urgings over the years via blog posts, and via our podcasts, we're aware that there may still be a few of you out there who have yet to make this great security investment.

Starting today, both 1Password Pro for iOS and 1Password for Mac are both reduced in price significantly. Now is a great time to get in the game, and start taking responsibility for your security.

Obscura simplifies taking the perfect picture

Timothy Reavis ∙ Updated October 14, 2018

Photography is the capture of emotion for reuse. I’m particularly fond of art – photography or otherwise – that makes me feel something on an emotional level, because if art doesn’t induce emotions, what is its point?

Obscura is a new camera app for iPhone that simplifies the art of taking meaningful pictures. The first real shot I took with this app made an onlooker want to download the app immediately, because she looked at the image and felt something. Even Obscura’s flat, black and white interface leaves the user with a feeling of simplicity that, while decidedly modern, somehow connects back to the original colorless photograph.

Apple Music, Beats 1 & store services experience downtime during VMA nominee announcements

Christian Zibreg ∙ July 21, 2015

In what's become a norm for the company these days, another outage has hit a number of cloud-based services as users around the world report issues accessing Apple's content stores: the App Store, the Mac App Store and the iTunes Store.

We're also tracking issues with Apple Music and Beats 1.

Indeed, I'm currently struggling to stream my Apple Music songs and Beats 1 radio.

UPDATE 1: Apple has now acknowledged the outage on the iCloud status page. “Users are experiencing a problem with the services listed above,” reads the notice. “We are investigating and will update the status as more information becomes available.”

UPDATE 2: The iCloud dashboard says all services have been restored after three and a half hours of downtime.