iOS

Google Play Store: 675,000 apps, 25 billion downloads

Christian Zibreg ∙ September 26, 2012

Google is creeping up on Apple, announcing yesterday on its Android blog that its Play Store now has 675,000 apps which have been downloaded 25 billion times. It was just recently that Google bragged about half a billion cumulative Android activations and on September 5 the search Goliath announced it was activating 70,000 tablets and 1.3 million Android devices each day.

At this rate, Google should have no trouble surpassing Apple's platform by year's end. By comparison, Apple's App Store carried over 750,000 apps and the company sold a total of 425 million iOS devices, as of September 12. The iPhone maker said earlier at WWDC that customers downloaded over 30 billion apps as of June...

Apple could have kept Google Maps until iOS 7

Christian Zibreg ∙ September 26, 2012

Apple could have kept the stock iOS Google Maps for another year, if it wanted, a new report alleges. When Apple publicly announced in June it would drop the native Google Maps app in favor of its own solution, Google was shocked as its contract with Apple to keep the maps app on the iPhone "had more time remaining", the New York Times reports.

Luckily, if the paper's sources are to be believed, Google is working on a standalone Google Maps app though it won't be released immediately because Google wants to do it right and incorporate 3D view as it wants the program to be comparable to Apple Maps, namely its three-dimensional Flyover views of major cities...

Mapgate gets Der Führer treatment

Christian Zibreg ∙ September 25, 2012

I'm tellin' ya, this thing has gone mainstream and it's pretty obvious it needed a Hitler meme. I'm guessing Team Coco will wanna take a look into Mapgate as well. In the meantime, Apple Maps haters needn't worry: Garmin has you covered. More on amazing iOS 6 Maps right here...

Apple TV gets Shared Photo Streams, new screen savers, iTunes account switching and more

Christian Zibreg ∙ September 24, 2012

Apple today pushed out an update for its Apple TV set-top box. The update is focused on iOS 5.1 build 10A406e and a slew of enhancements and a few new features. Among the things we like in the new Apple TV software (in addition to the obligatory stability and performance fixes) is the ability to easily save multiple iTunes accounts and switch between them, support for Shared Photo Streams and AirPlay broadcasting from Apple TV to other devices...

iPhone 5 support is “coming soon” to Sparrow

Christian Zibreg ∙ September 24, 2012

According to co-founder and developer Dominique Leca, the Sparrow team (now part of Google's Gmail team) is working on a minor update that will enable support for the iPhone 5 and its taller screen. "iPhone 5 support is coming soon to Sparrow", Dominique wrote on Twitter.

Still a big fan and regular user of Sparrow on both the Mac and iOS platform, I sure am pleased that they are continuing to provide at least basic level of support to ensure the program runs smoothly on refreshed devices...

That didn’t take long: Passbook for Android lands

Christian Zibreg ∙ September 24, 2012

The brand new Passbook app in iOS 6 is garnering traction in both tech press and the real world with the likes of Starbucks, Target, theme park Accesso, airlines Delta, American Airlines, Virgin Australia and others all announcing they have or are implementing Passbook support.

As Passbook simply organizes digital coupons, tickets, loyalty cards and other items wrapped inside Apple’s new .pkpass file type, developer Attido Mobile was able to create a handy Passbook client for Android devices. It has been available for some time, is called PassWallet, does pretty much everything Apple's app is capable of and could easily be gone if Apple has any say over it...

The iPhone 5 lets you put 16 apps inside a folder

Christian Zibreg ∙ September 21, 2012

We knew ahead of the iPhone 5 keynote that iOS 6 would take advantage of extra pixels on the iPhone 5 (640-by-1136) in order to render an additional, fifth row of icons. What we didn't know (but kinda expected) back then was that the per-folder app limit in iOS 6 running on the iPhone 5 would be raised from twelve to sixteen apps.

Strangely enough, even though Forstall and Schiller made a passing mention of this improvement during the unveiling, Apple's iPhone/iOS pages and the official 155-page iPhone 5 User Guide never detail it.

Now, I'm sure there are better ways to take advantage of those 176 extra lines, but if you're managing the home screen madness by organizing apps into folders, you'll quickly learn to appreciate this little nice-to-have which helps reduce the home screen clutter on your device...

And here comes Mapgate

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 11, 2018

Here, in case you've been wondering why Apple shipped buggy iOS Maps... Come on, you knew this was coming. I'd bet my shirt that Conan O'Brien will be next to diss Apple's crappy maps. Can you say Mapgate?

Starbucks to update its iOS app for Passbook by month’s end

Oliver Haslam ∙ September 21, 2012

Been wondering when you would be able to take your shiny new iPhone into a Starbucks and use Passbook to pay for your grande skinny vanilla latte? Well, wonder no more.

We've just spied a Twitter update from the company itself in which we learn that an iOS 6 compatible version of the app, complete with Passbook support, will be with us by the end of the month!

What's more, Starbucks even added a little bit of geekery to proceedings by signing off with a spot of binary code, just for the lolz...

24 hours later, iOS 6 is on 15 percent of devices

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated August 24, 2016

It is no secret that prior iOS releases were deployed fairly quickly across the vast majority of iOS devices in active use. This year's iOS iteration, iOS 6, is no exception. According to one mobile ads provider, just a day after its public release iOS 6 peaked at more than fifteen percent of all web traffic on its mobile ad network.

More importantly, traffic has remained at that level since. Another non-scientific survey shows a huge spike in iTunes traffic during the hours iOS 6 went live. With more than 400 million iOS devices sold to date, iOS 6 is poised to become Apple's fastest-growing iOS release to date...

Facebook app updated for iOS 6 and iPhone 5

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 22, 2018

After literally years of waiting, Facebook's iOS app was recently re-written from scratch with performance in mind. That said, it goes without saying that we're positively shocked to see Zuck & Co. just push out a timely update to Facebook's official iOS client.

It adds full support for iOS 6, just 24 hours following its public release. The new version also mentions iPhone 5 support, but Facebook stopped short of detailing what that means. We have a huch it's got to do something with taking advantage of that taller display. Here's your changelog...

Apple Maps and Passbook could push 2012 App Store revenue to $4.9 billion

Christian Zibreg ∙ September 20, 2012

An interesting unintended consequence of a downgrade that is Apple Maps in iOS 6: people will grow to rely on transit apps and other third-party software to help get back some of the Google Maps functionality (until Google releases a widely rumored standalone iOS Google Maps app).

And with Passbook debuting in iOS 6, we should increasingly download and use shopping programs (like the Target app) that produce Passbook-compatible coupons, invoices, loyalty points, tickets and other digital items.

As a result of the new Passbook functionality and lacking Maps experience in iOS 6, cumulative App Store revenue for the calendar year 2012 could top nearly five billion dollars, a research firm has forecast...