App Store

Although there are a few unofficial apps in the App Store that allow you to access content from the Khan Academy, the online education portal just launched an official iPad app. Available free in the App Store now, the app provides access to the organization’s 2,700-and up educational videos. The videos cover a range of subjects from K-12 math and science to history and finance. The biggest difference between the new official app and those from third-party devs is that you can now log in to your Khan Academy account; get credit for watching videos, and track goals and achievements from within the app. The app also provides fully subtitled videos with the ability to browse by subtitle, an enhanced video scrubber, and lets you download videos and playlists for offline viewing.

Spend an afternoon brushing up on Statistics. Discover how the Krebs cycle works. Learn about the fundamentals of Computer Science. Prepare for that upcoming SAT. Or, if you’re feeling particularly adventurous, learn how fire stick farming changed the landscape of Australia.

The app does not currently include actual exercises offered through KhanAcademy.org to go with the videos, but the service promises they are “coming soon.” According to FastCompany, there is also a feature to sync progress between devices. You can grab the free Khan Academy app here.
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Apple demoed quite an impressive iPhoto app today during the new iPad unveiling, and the app is now officially live on the App Store for $4.99 [iTunes]. In case you did not know, the app is a universal download for both iPhone and iPad. You can grab iPhoto for iOS now (iTunes link). Apple also boasted updated versions of iMovie and GarageBand today that you can already get on the App Store here and here for $4.99 each (free update for current owners). The updated GarageBand app features a Note Editor, Smart Strings orchestra feature, and Jam Sessions for realtime playing and recording with up to three other iOS devices.  You can read our full break down of the new iPhoto app here.

In addition Apple updated iBooks Author today to “take advantage of the Retina display on the new iPad” and did the same for the iTunes U app. The updates also include the usual stability and performance improvements.

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Ever since we first sampled the Starbucks app in September 2009, we could not help but wax eloquently how your iPhone will become your wallet. A deluge of ideas Apple has patented with NFC over time, and some interesting hirings, hint that the company is heavy into NFC. Then, in January, 9to5Mac heard from a developer at Macworld that iPhone 5 would have NFC and that MasterCard/Paypass would launch partners for an Apple-branded payment service that would span both iOS devices and Macs.

Fast forward to today, as the United States Trademark & Patent Office awards the company a major patent grant that covers the intricacies of the iWallet. According to PatentlyApple, this invention is supported by as much as 23 patent claims and dates back to the first quarter of 2009—indicating just how important it must have been to Apple.

The document outlines “techniques for implementing and defining financial transaction rules for controlling a subsidiary financial account,” allowing parents to control spending of their children, for example. Financial transaction rules are also detailed that would allow for spending limits based upon different criteria, such as a particular time period or geographic region.

The really interesting part about this are the drawings included with the patent application depicting a future iPhone with Near Field Communications (see the above illustration). The drawings indicate the use of iTunes billing system for credit card statements and records. The iWallet app could also tie nicely with a number of other utilities Apple’s been researching, such as this iPhone app for buying movie tickets.

But what’s in all this for you and me?

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[slideshow]

The App Store is the home to many VNC apps that let you run a desktop using your iOS device. Some are quite good, but most are too clunky, slow, and cumbersome. Edovia’s Screens app for the Mac and iOS released more than two years ago and just received a major overhaul with new features that leapfrog rival offerings. Coupled with the new Screens Connect service at screensconnect.com, Screens 2.0 is by far the most elegant solution to connect to a Mac or PC box through your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad through a local network or the web.

Upon installing the Mac client, simply enable screen sharing under System Preferences -> Sharing and registering your computer with Screens Connect (which takes care of network changes and configuring your router for UPnP and NAT-PMP) and that is all it takes for the iOS app to auto-configure itself. Screens 2.0 also sports iCloud integration for seamless experience across devices. It is the kind of app that will truly shine on Retina Display iPad 3…

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In a move that will surely keep the Mac and iPhone maker on top of the digital music and software application industry, Apple is preparing its first iTunes Store redesign in nearly three years. In late 2009, Apple launched a new iTunes Store that traded in a blue-themed, convoluted store for a much simpler, white-themed store that provides a great focus on the store’s downloadable content.

The redesign of the iTunes Store that runs on both the iTunes application for the Mac and the PC is a top priority for Apple. The work on the redesign comes soon after the launch of new services in the United States such as the Spotify music streaming service and the growing popularity of Amazon’s online music store. Apple dominates the majority of the digital music market, and it will continue to bet on an in-application download store and not an online store found only in a web browser.

The new design is said to be even simpler and more user-friendly than the current design. Apple is working on ways to enhance the speed and efficiency of finding new content, such as songs, videos, and applications. The cornerstone element of Apple’s new iTunes Store is interactivity. As Apple vaguely explained to a number of music labels and entertainment partners, Apple is looking to make the iTunes Store a much more engaging experience. Read on for more…

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Pitchers and Catchers are set to report over the next few days and MLB is getting its 2012 App ready

Baseball fans will be happy to hear that Major League Baseball is again bringing the MLB at Bat app back to the App Store so they can enjoy every game throughout the season on their iOS device. In previous years, the MLB at Bat app on the App Store made available audio of the games and in-game statistics. A premium package could open video for all games. This year, MLB is changing the way they bring you games.

Luckily for this season, MLB confirmed with EverythingiCafe that MLB at Bat ’12 would be available for free on the App Store for both the iPhone and iPad— as long as you pay for the one time subscription. The app will stream both audio and video and bring in-game stats.

MLB at Bat ’12 will be available Feb. 29 for free. However, if you want to use the app, you will have to pay a once-a-year $119 subscription as a returning customer or $125 as a new customer. Those who subscribe can view 150 Spring Training games and all 2,430 regular season games, though some are subject black outs. You can now sign up for the MLB.TV season on the MLB website. The first game will stream March 3.

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Apple started a countdown to its 25 billionth app download on the App Store. A promotional page at the company’s website reads:

As of today, nearly 25 billion apps have been downloaded worldwide. Which is almost as amazing as the apps themselves. So we want to say thanks. Download the 25 billionth app, and you could win a US$10,000 App Store Gift Card. Just visit the App Store and download your best app yet.

A special section on the App Store, and the official rules, state that a person lucky enough to download the 25 billionth app will take home a $10,000 App Store Gift Card. You can also fill out an entry form here to take part in the contest.

Hat tip to @Crossingman.

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The app development world went into a frenzy when social network app Path was caught uploading users’ address book information without asking for permission last week. We already gave our view on the matter, but Forbes reported on a study by University of California at Santa Barbara yesterday that found Cydia apps leaked private data less than apps available on the iTunes App Store.

The group built a tool called PiOS that analyzes iOS apps for private data leaks. It looked at 1,407 free apps: 825 apps from the App Store; and, 526 apps from Cydia’s repository the BigBoss.

The findings indicated 21 percent of the App Store apps tested uploaded a users’ iOS device’s UDID, 4 percent uploaded location information, and .5-percent uploaded users’ address book—like Path did. When it came to the 526 apps tested on the BigBoss repo, only 4 percent leaked users’ UDID, and only one app leaked location and address book data.

Many people are under the impression that third-party apps do the majority of the uploading, but that might not be the case. Perhaps Apple’s new restriction on uploading address book information without permission will help remedy the situation.

You can view the study’s full graph after the break:

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Apple responded today to the contacts-sharing issue with a statement indicating it plans to put some form of a setting on contact data that would allow users to control who views the data, similar to the way Apple locks down location data.

“Apps that collect or transmit a user’s contact data without their prior permission are in violation of our guidelines. We’re working to make this even better for our customers, and as we have done with location services, any app wishing to access contact data will require explicit user approval in a future software release.”

Congress became involved and probably motivated the move, but the legislative body is not going to like what it hears.

The problem is that iOS apps not only have access to a user’s contacts database (including addresses and notes), but apps also have full and unencumbered access to everything in the iOS app sandbox, such as pictures, music, movies, calendars, and a host of other data. Any of this content is literally open for developers to freely transmit to their own servers while apps are open.

(note that pictures with geotags will pop up a Location dialog which can be averted in code with some well known tricks)

Moreover, approved apps also have access to the iPhone’s camera and microphone, so apps can also take pictures and make recordings without permission (although, this would be easy to detect by the user with the light from the front camera or red bar during audio). Photos, videos, and audio are transmittable securely or insecurely up to servers that you and Apple do not know about.

To developers, this is no big secret. It is not trivial, but putting that kind of functionality into an app is straightforward and only uses Apple’s publicly available and blessed developer APIs (which means this stuff will not likely be detected by Apple’s App Store approval process).

Obviously, shady developers and even government entities are probably already using such apps to gather information. Therefore, these are some scenarios:

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The Path debacle just took another turn for the worse with House Energy & Commerce Committee Ranking Member Henry Waxman and Commerce Manufacturing and Trade Subcommittee Chair G.K. Butterfield issuing a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook (via The Next Web). In it, the legislators seek to find out whether Apple is doing enough to protect personal data on users’ iPhones, including their contacts. Specifically, the letter asserts there have been claims that the practice of collecting address book data without users’ consent is “common and accepted among iOS app developers.”

As a consequence, the legislators argue, “This raises questions of whether Apple’s iOS app developer policies and practices adequately protect consumer privacy.” They want Apple to respond to questions by Feb. 29. Apple is asked to detail its App Store review practices in respect to protecting users’ information. Whichever way you look at it, it is hard to escape the notion that everything on your iPhone is waiting to be uploaded.

As you know, with the exception of location services, iOS does not prompt users when apps tap APIs to access personal data stored in an iPhone’s address book, camera roll, music library and other places. This also includes little things such as geolocation information embedded in image files taken on the device. This is bothering the legislators and now they want to know why Apple has not implemented a simple toggle that lets users control access to their data other than location.

You have built into your devices the ability to turn off in one place the transmission of location information entirely or on an app-by-app basis. Please explain why you have not done the same for address book information.

We included the letter in its entirety below the fold.

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Avid, the makers of the music industry’s leading DAW called “Pro Tools”, just dropped an iPad version of its pro-sumer Final Cut Pro competitor known as “Avid Studio.” Although the latest Final Cut Pro X update brought multicam editing, broadcast monitoring, and many of the features pro users demanded be re-implemented, the Avid Studio iPad app shows why Apple should and most likely will release FCPX for iPad.

The app is available from the App Store now for $4.99, significantly less than the desktop version that retails for $169.99, but the app will increase to $8 after an initial 30-day introductory period. The Avid Studio app is the company’s first video editing suite for iPad and aims to provide most of the features offered through the desktop version.

Users will get the familiar timeline and storyboard, but new gestures will allow them to pinch and squeeze to scale images and videos, and arrange edits on the timeline for picture-in-picture effects. Users of the desktop software will also appreciate the Precision Trimmer, Razor Blade tool for on the fly cuts, and the ability to export projects easily to Avid Studio on the desktop. Projects can be uploaded to iCloud, and finished projects can be shared to YouTube, Facebook, and by email from within the app. Unlike the desktop version, there is no Flash export option.

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Robin Burrowes, the person in charge of Xbox Live marketing in the EMEA region, left Microsoft for Apple and is now charged with heading the App Store marketing initiatives for iTunes Europe. Burrowes led Xbox Live marketing for seven years and were responsible for product, business and marketing management as well as planning, strategy and leadership of Xbox Live across regions, according to his LinkedIn profile. Prior to joining Apple, the executive was involved with Microsoft’s MSN online operation as events/B2B marketing manager, British retail chain HMV (promotions manager) and Tennent Caledonian Breweries (brand marketing manager).

Burrowes graduated from University of Strathclyde in 1991. Apple fashionably would not comment on its new hire. Hiring yet another games veteran indicates Apple’s desire to expand on iTunes gaming initiatives in Europe. Apple’s business in the region and around the world is booming on strong iPhone sales. Interestingly, a recent job listing on Microsoft’s website for a software development engineer possibly hinted at Xbox Live games for iOS devices. A spokesperson for the Windows maker told Forbes they are “working to extend a few of our Xbox experiences and titles to other platforms.”

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Prominent iOS application developer, and friend of the website, Steven Troughton-Smith released a neat new iPhone and iPod touch application called “The Lotto Machine“ that is a random number generator. Besides the great design, the application is unique because of its physics engine. The physics engine is best demonstrated when a user holds down the “Hold to spin!” button that cranks the wheel. The new application also shows off its accelerometer usage when a user tilts their device. As you can see in the video below, as a user moves their phone around in space, the lottery balls also move:

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Update: Like others before it, Apple is now pulling QuasiDisk from its global iTunes stores. But we’ve added another below the fold

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNx6X4ZZFRA]

It appears another tethering app snuck into the App Store.  QuasiDisk ($1.99) purports to be a file manager for the iPhone, but it appears that in the most recent update over the weekend, it stealthily got the ability to tether via proxy.  Apple is usually pretty quick to pull these, so you might want to jump on this app if you want some tethering without a carrier plan.

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[slideshow]

All the talk about Microsoft bringing its Office suite to the iPad has thus far failed to develop into a tangible product—at least as native apps. In the meantime, many virtualization apps cropped up on the App Store, allowing you to share a desktop virtual machine with your tablet. OnLive today jumped on the bandwagon with an interesting cloud-based solution stemming from their expertise as a provider of streaming gaming experience through their OnLive cloud gaming platform.

The OnLive Desktop app provides access to a seamless Windows desktop experience sporting Microsoft Office applications and 2GB of free cloud storage. It leverages OnLive’s video compression technology to run the Office suite in the cloud and stream rendered video onto your iPad. This is the same technology used by OnLive’s cloud-gaming platform, meaning your experience may wary depending on your broadband Internet speed, congestion and other factors affecting video streaming.

OnLive Desktop for iPad is a free download from the App Store. You will need a free account with OnLive to use the program. Both free and paid plans are available, offering up 50GB of storage, more apps, and priority access and collaboration features for businesses…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jdzmBCH24_Q]

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You are probably familiar with Shazam’s iOS app that lets you identify the name of the song being played, but today, Shazam launched a new iOS app called “Shazam Player.” Shazam Player is free and aims to be a more feature-packed alternative to the default iOS music player.  Shazam Player offers options like streaming lyrics; tour dates from artists, YouTube videos, artist biographies, and even the ability to buy new tracks from iTunes within the app.

Besides the ability to play music, Shazam Player can also identify songs similar to the original Shazam app can. From there, you can launch iTunes from within the app to preview or purchase the song. You can share music with your Facebook and Twitter friends. The ability to view tour dates and bios from your favorite artists right within the app is very cool.

Shazam Player certainly is not as lightweight as Apple’s music player, but it does add a great list of features. If you are big on listening to music, this might be the perfect app for you. Try Shazam Player in the App Store!

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4vTqozhDWo]

Epic Games and Chair Entertainment, developers of the popular on-rails, hack-and-slash iOS franchise called “Infinity Blade,” just announced the two titles have earned over $30 million since the first game launched in the App Store in December 2010. Assuming “earnings” accounts for total earnings, Apple’s 30 percent cut would be $9 million.

Epic Games, Inc. and its award-winning Salt Lake City-based development studio, ChAIR Entertainment, today announced that earnings from ChAIR’s blockbuster Infinity Blade video game franchise have eclipsed $30 million in just one year since the introduction of the original game. One of the most popular gaming franchises to be launched on the App Store, the award-winning series has also created significant licensing interest in the underlying Unreal Engine 3 technology from developers worldwide.

In the announcement (via Joystiq), the developers also noted that Infinity Blade II reached over $5 million in net earnings since its release last month on Dec. 1, 2011. In comparison, it took the first Infinity Blade title three months to achieve that milestone. The first game now accounts for more than $23 million of the franchise’s earnings.

The original Infinity Blade is available as a universal download for $5.99 here. Infinity Blade 2, which IGN gave a “Perfect 10” score, is available for $6.99. The companies also noted a number of other products in the franchise were released, including the Infinity Blade: Awakening digital novel (on Amazon here), and the Infinity Blade: Original Soundtrack.

Epic Games President Dr. Michael Capps said the following in a statement:

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Following multiple reports claiming that Apple is holding an event later this month to discuss new media-related services, Clayton Morris shared some tidbits that he has heard from sources. First, Morris claims he heard about the event in September 2011 and the event was originally scheduled for late 2011. Morris said the event has been long in the making and the announcements were close to Apple Co-founder Steve Jobs. Morris again affirmed that we will not be seeing hardware at the event and he expects two “large projects” relating to education to be announced.

We have independently heard that the iTunes team is on “lockdown mode” ahead of the announcements, which have been delayed before as also reported by Morris. This affirms that whatever Apple announces will be connected to iTunes in some fashion. Keep in mind the iTunes team runs the actual iTunes Store, the App Store, and the iBookstore.

Update: MacRumors reported that Apple has filmed promotional interviews with executives from the textbook publishing industry, possibly affirming that this upcoming event will focus on digital textbooks. They noted that while these interviews have indeed been worked on, there is no confirmation that they relate to this upcoming event.

Update 2: Goodereader claimed that Apple will be launching an iTunes self-publishing service with the EPUB format…
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It’s Caucus Day in Iowa, and most Americans will be tuned into their favorite news channel to see who the winner will be.  This year, though, the elections entered the twenty-first century due to The New York Times’ “Election 2012” free iPhone application available through the App Store.

According to the NYT, the app gives iPhone users “news, opinion, polls and live election night results,” from its own publication and other top sources, while providing “the best campaign coverage anywhere.”

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Apple saw record-setting sales this holiday season, according to Localytics. So well, that 12.5 times more iOS devices were activated over Christmas than past weekends. For comparison sake: there were 21 times more iPods compared to 14 times more iPhones. The iPods were most likely gifted to younger children who do not yet have a cell phone. At any rate… there were many people enjoying iOS devices on Christmas Day.

Apple is said to have another record setting quarter after a very successful fiscal Q4 for the company. The last earnings report said Apple claimed $28.27 billion in revenue and saw record-setting Mac and iPhone sales. The holiday quarter is expected to be even better.

Apple is set to have its best year ever in its App Store with approximately 10 billion downloads in 2011, along with a record-setting holiday season. That estimate doubles collective downloads from the three years prior, according to research firm Flurry. The report noted the Android Market hit 10 billion cumulative downloads in December, up from 3 billion total downloads in May 2011.

Flurry also backs up Localytics claim and said Christmas Day 2011s activations crushed Christmas Day 2010s by almost 2.5 times. This year saw 6.8 million iOS and Android device activations, and last year saw 2.8 million device activations. That’s a 140 percent growth. We are looking forward to hearing what Apple has to say in late January.

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Apple offers a wide variety of digital content for those looking to find their Christmas spirit this holiday season. Classic flicks adorn iTunes and the App store as digital downloads, audio books, albums and applications, and each media selection gives global users the opportunity to find good cheer…

[vodpod id=Groupvideo.10664228&w=650&h=420&fv=]

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