Apps

Pandora update brings iPhone 5 support and new social features

Heads up Pandora users, the internet streaming company pushed out a significant update to its iOS client last night. The update brings the app to version 4.0, and includes loads of new features and improvements.

The app now supports the iPhone 5's 4-inch display, and it also now offers new social network sharing options. So now you can tell your friends on Facebook and Twitter what song you're jamming out to...

Apple updates Find My Friends with new features, resolves unexpected iBooks quits

Apple has updated its Find My Friends app for iOS devices and iBooks 3, which launched alongside the iPad mini last week. iBooks version 3.0.1 is a minor update which resolves an issue where iBooks may unexpectedly quit. With last week's release of iBooks 3, a free download, Apple added a new continuous scrolling theme akin to the Instapaper app, the ability to see iCloud purchases on your bookshelf, social sharing of quotes and more. Find My Friends version 2.0.1, also a free download, now features friends' notifications regarding your location right under the Me > Followers section. You will also find your temporary friends listed under Followers in the Me tab as well...

PassHack allows you to hide stock apps directly from Passbook

We already told you about Rag3Hack, the non-jailbreak solution to hiding stock apps on iOS. Now the folks behind Rag3Hack are back with PassHack. PassHack is essentially the same thing, except for now, you can easily access the URLs necessary to hide stock apps from the convenience of Passbook.

This solution actually has no bearing on Passbook besides the fact that it contains a pass with the URL schemes on its rear. Look at it as a handy bookmark to all of your favorite Rag3Hack URLs. Take a look inside as our video shows you the details...

New app promises to remove purple haze from iPhone 5 pics

Shortly after the iPhone 5 launched, a number of users started complaining about a "purple haze" in their photos. It's essentially a purple flare effect that comes from a bright, out-of-scene light source while capturing an image.

Apple has already addressed the issue, and a number of other smartphones and portable cameras have been proven to have similar hazes. But if it's still really bothering you, there's a new app that claims it can help...

Amazon updates Kindle iOS app with X-Ray for Textbooks

Amazon refreshed its Kindle lineup last month ahead of Apple's September 12 iPhone 5 announcement. One of the easily overlooked software features the online retailer also brought out: X-Ray for Books, Textbooks and Movies. In a nutshell, the X-Ray feature intelligently retrieves additional information when you tap an on-screen object, like a movie character, book passages, glossary and what not, also pulling related data from Wikipedia and YouTube to enhance your e-reading experience.

Likewise, X-Ray for Movies lets you learn more about the movie's cast and characters by just tapping the screen, which produces relevant content by cinema site IMDb. In today's update to its free Kindle app, Amazon is bringing X-Ray for Textbooks to iPhones, iPads and iPods...

Apps Apple personally tested now appear in App Store’s Categories menu

In its never-ending quest to improve app discovery, Apple with iOS 6 added to its App Store on the iPad, iPhone and Mac something called App Collections, a curated section which lists apps that the company personally tested. As of recently, App Collections are now prominently featured on iOS devices and Macs via a dedicated section nested within the Categories menu of the App Store and iTunes. All of the apps featured in App Collections are basically recommendations by Apple's editorial team...

Good news: Tweetbot for Mac is out. Bad news: it costs $20

TapBots' beloved Twitter client Tweetbot has finally arrived for the Mac, following an extensive period of beta testing since July. The bad news is, it will run you a whopping twenty bucks a pop! It's not that developers have become greedy overnight, mind you. As you know, Twitter has capped their user base in a quest to exercise total control of third-party programs.

Twitter is doing so by enforcing token limits upon third-party developers. Tokens determine how many users an app like Tweetbot for Mac can have. As a result, developers get to only sell the app until they use up all the tokens Twitter allocated.

That's the official line. Some people think it's crap, others point the finger of blame at Twitter. You could call it economics, I guess. No matter how you look at it, Tweetbot for Mac - at least to my knowledge - has officially become the priciest Twitter client on the Mac App Store...

Microsoft to launch new Xbox Music service, iOS app in the works

Microsoft announced Sunday evening that it was going to be launching its new streaming music service, Xbox Music, in the coming weeks. The move will pit Microsoft directly against Spotify, RDIO, and even iTunes.

Xbox Music will debut on — what else — the Xbox, and then roll out to Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 devices as they become available later this month. Microsoft says it's also working on iOS and Android clients...

Apple pulls Google-powered ClassicMap from the App Store

While the jury is still out on whether or not Apple will approve Google's rumored standalone Maps app, it seems clear now that the company doesn't want any copycats in the App Store.

Reports started surfacing this morning that Apple has pulled ClassicMap, a Google-powered mapping application that looks a lot like the Google Maps app Apple replaced in iOS 6...

Eric Schmidt on Maps situation, the Android-Apple platform fight

Google chairman Eric Schmidt sat down with The Wall Street Journal tech columnists Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher last night to talk Maps, Apple and Android. “Apple should have kept our maps”, he remarked. “Apple decided a long time ago to do their own maps", he revealed, suggesting Google very well knew way in advance that the iPhone maker would nuke Google Maps from orbit on iOS devices.

He also talks about the epic iOS versus Android fight and comments what it would take to persuade him to become an Apple CEO. A couple more highlights and a nice video right after the break...

Google+ app gains iPhone 5 support, new features

Google today finally updated its slick Google+ mobile client with some much-needed support for iOS 6 and the iPhone 5's four-inch display, so people don't experience the ugly letterboxing. More importantly, the program has received a couple new features that finally make it easy to edit posts on the go. And if you have your own page on the Google+ social network, you can now view, post and comment as your Google+ page...

Have you seen this Steve Jobs tribute in Gmail app screenshots?

I was a little surprised realizing the blogosphere today reported on a nice little nugget I discovered nearly a month ago, but here it goes. If you visit the iTunes Preview page on the web for Google's Gmail iOS app and check out the screenshots, you will notice a nice tribute to Apple's late CEO Steve Jobs in two screenies. The images depict an email message with the subject line “Your favorite Steve Jobs quotes” and contain the following text in the message body...