Apple is closing in on the monumental milestone of 50 billion app downloads through its celebrated iTunes App Store, and to mark the occasion, the Cupertino giant has compiled a list of the all time most-downloaded free apps, as well as the bestselling paid offerings. On top of that, the lucky downloader of the 50 billionth app will receive a whopping $10,000 in App Store credit, and even though most the guys here at Redmond Pie get through several app purchases on an almost daily basis, even we would struggle to use up all that glorious credit.
When Instagram was purchased by Facebook early on last year, many devotees feared their treasured app would simply become an extension of the social network. To Mark Zuckerberg's credit, he's kept to his promise of allowing Instagram to retain its identity, but in an update released simultaneously today for both iOS and Android, the famed photo tagging feature has just been added to the Instagram repertoire.
Angry Birds has been the runaway success of the mobile era, and having started as a simple game for the Apple iPhone, now spawns every major platform with numerous adaptations of the original title. We learned early on last month that Angry Birds Friends, a social take on the popular format, would soon be debuting over at the App Store, and today, creator Rovio Entertainment has delivered a double whammy of avian-slinging madness by releasing the title for both iOS and Google's Android.
We've checked out an abundance of tweaks recently here at Redmond Pie for those who love nothing more than to play music on their iOS devices, and if you are reliant on your iPhone as a double-up mp3 player, you will have almost certainly experienced that rueful situation whereby you misplaced, forgot or even completely lost your headphones. No headphones mean no music, or at least it should do in a public place, but if you're in ownership of an earpiece for purpose of making handsfree calls, a new tweak over at the ModMyi repo will see this double up as a makeshift earbud.
The Loop's Jim Dalrymple, famed for his "Yep" responses in corroboration of Apple rumors, has pulled off his trademark one-liner once more on the topic of the Cupertino company's iOS 7 shipping on schedule. Earlier today, it was revealed that Apple was having some difficulty readying the next major revision of its mobile operating system, and with sources of AllThingsD suggesting that Tim Cook's men are in an iPhone/Leopard situation (pulling developers away from OS X development to muck in with iPhone), Dalrymple's sources also seem to be singing a similar tune.
Apple's iOS weather app is functional, that's for sure. In fact, it's about the only really good thing we can say about it. It'll tell you the weather forecast for any location you ask of it, and it'll represent that forecast with some nicely drawn logos. Terrific stuff.
It's fair to say that, while the rear-facing cameras of mobile devices seem to be improving vastly with each year that goes by, the front-facing snappers are used sparingly due to their vast inferiority. In fact, video calling aside, you'd have to be pretty mad to take any snaps or record any clips using your smartphone or tablet's front shooter, but a brand-new sensor from Omnivision could see this trend well and truly bucked.
Weather is a funny old thing, unless you happen to be caught up in the middle of it. There's nothing worse than the best laid plans being ruined by some unseasonal rain, or perhaps even unseasonal sunshine! The iOS App Store is literally flooded (bad pun!) with weather apps as far as the eye can see - some are good, some are bad, even more are downright abysmal.
The Google Search app for iOS received the update to cap all updates a couple of days back when it was revealed that the company had integrated its Now service to users on the Apple operating system. As is typical with initial Google releases though, the new Google Now for iPhone feature was restricted to U.S. only, but as it does so very often, the jailbreak scene has popped up with a solution for those whose Google Now functionality was restricted.
It seems that a day can't go by right now without there being some sort of story that revolves around Apple's decision to either build a larger iPhone, or its decision against it. It appears that every analyst on the planet has an opinion on the subject when, in all honesty, they're quite probably just guessing as much as everyone else. That doesn't stop them proclaiming their guesses as fact, though.
