A few apps updated, went on sale, or made announcements recently, and 9to5Mac gathered the most noteworthy ones in our regular round up below. Today’s crop includes game and productivity app updates, an Angry Birds game sale, and promo codes for an iPhone 5-optimized GPS app. Per usual, we will continue to update this list throughout the day.
Check them out:
As always, we will update our list of new apps and updates hitting the App Store and Mac App Store throughout the day:
Angry Birds Seasons version 2.5.0: New content for Rovio’s “Seasons” edition of Angry Birds rolled out today (including the HD version). The update includes 20 new schoolyard levels, bonus levels, a new pink bird, and new theme music for the playground levels.
Amazon Instant Video version 1.1: Amazon’s iPad app provides access to over 120,000 videos from the Amazon Instant Video store and thousands more Prime Instant Video titles, and it was updated today with a couple notable features. First—a new search function has been added to find specific titles from Prime. Also included in the update are an improved navigation bar and a number of bug fixes.
Shazam version 5.0.6: All of the versions of the song recognition app Shazam were updated today with an improved recognition rate and faster application startup time. The update also went to the $5.99 RED edition.
Dunkin’ Donuts version 1.0: Dunkin’ Donuts officially announced the release of its first mobile app today that allows customers to pay from the app using a virtual barcode-based DD card scanned by the cashier. Other features include a store locator, nutritional information for items on the menu, the ability to send virtual DD cards, and Facebook and Twitter integration.
Last night, an update to Angry Birds HD dropped on iPad with fifteen new levels, a new golden egg and a “feature” that has immediately angered loyal fans – adverts. No, not the unobtrusive types of an AdMob or AdSense variety seen in some apps. In Angry Birds HD, a “news section” – a nicer word for advertisements – hits gamers in the face upon reaching the pause screen.
It pitches the official merchandise, forcing gamers to wait for the promotional animation to finish, thus hindering their ability to restart the level and resume the game as quickly as possible. The move backfired as agitated fans began posting despicable comments in iTunes reviews. Here’s what one avid fan wrote:
Interesting note from a Wired UK story on Rovio: The company was almost in bankruptcy prior to releasing their Angry Birds app in the App Store. They had been making meager earnings selling apps through the mobile carriers and for other companies. One App for app store and now they are $50 million in the black with a lucrative franchise on their hands.
Wired.co.uk via SAI Read more
The new St. Patrick’s Day update to the blockbuster puzzler has gone live today for iOS and Android devices, with Palm and Nokia following soon. It is bound to spoil you with an entirely new level pack containing brand spanking new puzzles to solve, bonus content and the unmistakable, charming humor that turned Angry Birds into such a high-grossing entertainment franchise (video below). Also, Angry Birds Rio is coming later this month.
Apple’s iOS has won a big thumbs-up from the Angry Birds themselves, who say that when it comes to mobile devices, Apple’s going to excel against the rest.
“Apple will be the number one platform for a long time from a developer perspective, they have gotten so many things right,” said Peter Vesterbacka, Angry Birds development lead. Read more
