App Store

Touch ID for App Store purchases stops working for many after updating to iOS 8.3

A growing number of users are complaining about the inability to use Touch ID fingerprint scanning to authorize purchases in the App Store after updating to iOS 8.3.

As reported on Twitter, Reddit and detailed in a thread on Apple's Support Communities forums, iOS 8.3 appears to be asking for an Apple ID password for each and every purchase made in the App Store.

This is regardless of whether or not the option to use Touch ID in the App Store is enabled in Settings. What gives?

‘Star Wars: The Digital Movie Collection’ coming to iTunes on April 10

While we're sure you Star Wars fans have every copy in your man cave, you'll soon be able to add the George Lucas-made films to your iTunes.

The makers of Star Wars announced on Monday the entire, six movie collection is coming to iTunes on Friday, April 10. The App Store on Twitter promoted the link, containing the ability to purchase each movie separately or as a collection when the content goes live in a few days. 

Apple reportedly acquired search startup Ottocat in 2013 to improve App Store discovery

Apple has quietly acquired Ottocat, reports TechCrunch, a little-known startup with some interesting search tech. The deal went down a few years ago—sometime in 2013—but its impact is still being felt today. The site believes the company's tech is behind the App Store's fairly new 'Explore' section.

There's little evidence of the acquisition, except for a patent granted to Apple that lists Ottocat co-founder Edwin Cooper as an inventor. The patent is titled "System and Method for Divisive Textual Clustering by Label Selection Using Variant-Weighted TFIDF," and clearly incorporates Ottocat's tech.

Hotel reviews from Trip Advisor, Booking.com come to Apple Maps

Next time you're driving through Chicago looking for a nice place to stay - Apple has you covered. Over the last several days, the Cupertino company has added more hotel review data to its Apple Maps app on iOS, as it works to continue bolstering Maps to compete with the king, Google Maps.

The new data for hotel reviews isn't being served up by Apple itself, outsourcing the work courtesy of Trip Advisor and Booking.com, along with reviews from Yelp that have been there for quite sometime. 

Apple launches new App Store section promoting World Autism Awareness Day

Apple on Thursday launched a new educational section in the App Store which highlights apps that have been specifically designed for autistic individuals in celebration of the eighth annual World Autism Awareness Day.

More than two dozen paid and free apps for kids and adults are being featured, including two highly specialized apps that cost more than a hundred bucks.

Facebook launches Riff app to make videos with friends

Facebook has launched yet another standalone app, called Riff, that will give you and your friends the chance to go viral.

Riff, available to download on the iTunes App Store and what was born as a side project, is an app that allows you to create videos with friends. The goal is to see how far your video can spread, with your friends' help. 

Apple seeds OS X 10.10.3 beta 6 to developers, public testers

Apple seeded another beta of OS X 10.10.3 on Monday for both members of the Mac Developer Center and public beta testers. The new build, available to download through the Mac App Store's Software Update mechanism, carries the build number 14D127 - compared to the previous build number of 14D113 that was released one week ago.

Periscope shows the future of news with stream of NYC explosion aftermath

I'm watching a building burn down with firefighters rushing to save people inside- as it's happening.

The Periscope app launched by Twitter this morning is already showing its stripes. People have often turned to Twitter (and the Internet) for news in the past - this is nothing new - but Periscope has already shown in its few hours of availability how it could reshape breaking news on the Internet.

2K’s best iOS games are on sale, starting with BioShock at $3 and more

Publisher 2K Games is having a killer Spring Sale deal on its premium 2014 releases in the App Store, reports TouchArcade. Avid gamers can now grab triple-As at a sharp discount, for a limited time. iPhone and iPad titles like BioShock, NBA 2K15, NHL 2K and others are now available starting at just three bucks each.

BioShock for iOS, for example, can be now yours in exchange for $2.99, down sharply from its usual asking price of $10.99. This is actually the first time BioShock has been discounted below five bucks since its release on the App Store.

Users reporting problems accessing App Store and iTunes (update: back up again)

A growing number of users are taking to Twitter this morning to complain of yet another outage affecting Apple's App Store and the iTunes Store. Several folks around the world have reported problems purchasing new applications, with the App Store and iTunes returning a "The item you've requested is not currently available” error message.

Others complain about not being able to conduct searches for content on the iTunes Store and App Store and download apps and other content.

UPDATE 11:35am ET: all systems seem to have become operational again following a brief outage that lasted about an hour or so.

Apple acquires database company FoundationDB to bolster web services

As it looks to build out its web services, Apple has acquired FoundationDB, a company that specializes in speedy, durable NoSQL databases, Apple essentially confirmed to iDownloadBlog after TechCrunch first reported the news.

“Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans,” the company said in a boiler plate statement it gives when it acquires smaller companies. 

Twitter testing autoplay ads on iPhone, iPad apps for some users

Taking a page out of Facebook's playbook, Twitter has begun testing autoplaying videos on the timelines of a small group of users, AdAge first spotted. With the test, you may see videos playing without tapping a play button - and this means ads, too.

A Twitter spokesperson confirmed the test that's occurring on Twitter's iPhone and iPad apps. The autoplay test applies to Promoted Video ads, along with videos uploaded through Twitter's mobile app through its new video service.