App Store

Facebook just announced that it is launching a new App Center—but it is not just for Facebook apps.

9to5Mac reported for months that Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg and company were planning a web-based alternative store to Apple’s App Store and Android’s Google Play dubbed “Project Spartan.” Speculation said the project is a framework for apps that would use social hooks, while working inside of Facebook’s ecosystem.

It seems those reports are ringing true, because the highly-anticipated HTML 5-based App Center will give Facebook users access to iOS, Android, web, mobile web, and desktop apps. Interestingly, Facebook reiterated that it is not competing directly with Apple or Google, because the App Center will send users to both the iOS and Android platforms. For example: If you are visiting Facebook’s App Center on an iPhone, and then enter Words with Friends, or one of the many Facebook-compatible games, you will soon beam to that app’s App Store page for installation. The same holds true for Android users.

“In the coming weeks, people will be able to access the App Center on the web and in the iOS and Android Facebook apps. All canvas, mobile and web apps that follow the guidelines can be listed. All developers should start preparing today to make sure their app is included for the launch,” explained Software Engineer Aaron Brady in a Facebook Developer’s blog post.

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A number of notable apps were released or updated today on the App Store like the release of previously iPad-only news app The Daily, which was originally launched by News Corp last year. We also get a new iPad app from NBC offering video coverage, interactive tools, and live election results for breaking political news, as well as a completely redesigned iPad app for eBay, and more.

The Daily: Like the iPad version, The Daily iPhone client is free with a selection of content accessible to everyone. However, you will need to grab a $20 per year or $2 per month subscription to access the entire app, which is considerably less than the $40 per year and $1 per week offered with the iPad version.

eBay for iPad: This app received a huge update today bringing support for Retina displays, a redesigned home screen, “ultra-high resolution item images,” and many enhancements made to search results and notifications. The online auction and shopping website also noted it added some of the top requested features from users, such as: revise listings, back button, and improved search.

Google Currents: It is not a huge update, but Google updated its free magazine-style news app today with support for iPad Retina displays and the usual bug fixes.

NBC Politics: NBC’s new universal iOS app provides coverage of all-things politics with video coverage including interviews and shows like “Andrea Mitchell Reports” and “Morning Joe.” It also offers an interactive “Battleground Map,” real-time live election results, candidate profiles, and sharing features.

Lowe’s Virtual Experience: Lowe’s released a universal iOS app today allowing you to view 3D models of its major appliances available in its physical retail locations. It employs augmented reality to allow you to view and walk around the products in your home—as if your kitchen was the showroom.

Assassin’s Creed Rearmed: Ubisoft’s latest iOS spin-off of the Assassin’s Creed franchise was updated today with bug fixes for crashing during the character selection screen. But, more importantly, a new “Synergy” feature now allows you to “hack the Animus and use normal abilities in spectacular ways.” There are a eight abilities, such as: Smoke Bomb Immunity, Instant Trap, and Killing Knives.
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yXdD-2wJUac]

There were leaks last month showing what might have been our first look at the Spotify iPad app, but today the company officially launched its long-awaited app with a blog post and the video above. The free app has already landed in the App Store as a universal download (an update for users of the iPhone app), and the service offers a 48-hour free trial for non-Premium subscribers with the ability to increase it to 30 days.

Our iPad app looks great. We’ve included Retina graphics and high-definition album art to make browsing a pleasure. Enjoying all the world’s music instantly on your iPad has never been easier. And with the brand new full-screen view and AirPlay integration, Spotify and your iPad are perfect for each other, both as your pumped-up living room stereo and your lean, green music machine when you’re on the move.

Compared to Spotify’s iPhone experience, the iPad app has been completely redesigned with a layered UI more familiar to Facebook iPad app users and packs most of the service’s features apart from the recently launched Web apps. It also includes a new full-screen mode with Retina graphics to take advantage of the device’s display and AirPlay support. Missing is “Collection” view and few other features only accessible through the online service.

The full set of features, as described by Spotify community manager Andres Sehr, is below:

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Ldq2tNLRDwA]

Samsung just officially denied any involvement with the “Wake Up” protest held outside of an Australian Apple Store earlier this week.

According to SlashGear, the company stepped forth today and rebuffed any ties to the affair: ”Samsung Electronics Australia has nothing to do with the ‘Wake-Up Campaign’.”

For currently unknown reasons, a puzzling demonstration with anti-Apple cues occurred outside an Apple Store in Sydney April 22. A black bus boasted the phrase “WAKE UP” and a slew of paid picketers with coordinating signs paraded along George Street while chanting, “Wake up!”

The staged fuss accompanied a series of billboards posted around the city, as well as “WAKE UP” written on the bottom of Bondi Ice Bergs’ pool, and a baffling website at wake-up-australia.com.au that features a focal point countdown. The URL is registered to ad agency New Dialogue, which underwent rebranding and now goes by the name “Tongue.”  

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Twitter just announced on its blog that its iPhone client will get an update today with enhancements made to “discover, search and notifications.” The update does not appear to be live, but it will be available here when it is.

Included in the update is a new “Activity” stream within the Discover tab. The blog post explained:

With this update, you can see Activity on Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android. Activity is a stream of updates that shows which Tweets are favorited or retweeted by the people you follow and which accounts those people follow or add to lists… Activity appears below the redesigned stories in Discover. Now you can tap any story once to see Tweets about a particular trend or news article. You can then read the entire story or join the conversation by replying, retweeting or favoriting related Tweets.

Improvements to search include suggestions for spelling and related terms, autocomplete for first and last names in the Connect tab, access to your most recent queries in the Discover tab, and the ability to jump directly to a user profile by tapping usernames in Connect.

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With the announcement of the 2012 Worldwide Developer Conference today, Apple also opened its Apple Design Awards nomination page for iOS and Mac developers. Apple announced last year that the annual awards would now only apply to Mac and iOS apps residing in the App Store, which appears to be the case this year as well.

Through the website set up for WWDC, developers can sign up and nominate apps for inclusion in the awards. To be considered, the app must be on the App Store or Mac App Store by May 1. Note: Apps that are not nominated can still win an Apple Design Award if they catch Apple’s eye.

Last year’s winners included iPhone apps Infinity Blade, Cut the Rope, and Golfscape GPS Rangefinder, and iPad apps djay for iPad, Osmos, and Our Choice. For Mac developers, apps including Capo, Pixelmator, and Anomaly Warzone Earth took home last year’s awards. At WWDC 2011, Apple also handed out awards to student developers, which will likely happen again—especially given Apple’s new scholarship program for the 2012 event.

Winners will get an Apple Design Award trophy and usually some Apple gear or prizes that have not been announced. Apple broke down the criteria for apps considered for the awards:

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Apple just announced during its Q2 2012 earnings call that it currently has $110 billion in cash reserves, which is up from $81.5 billion in September 2011. Apple was also up in every other segment with $18.4 billion in short-term marketable securities (up from $16.1 billion) and long-term marketable securities at $81.6 billion, which is up from $55.6 billion in the previous six-month period ending September 2011.

Other numbers that Apple reported today for the quarter:

iTunes and App Store:

-$1.9 billion in iTunes revenue (a 35 percent YOY increase)

-600,000 apps (200,000 iPad specific apps)

iOS devices:

-365 million iOS device sales

-$22.7 billion in revenue from iPhone and accessories

-6.6 billion in revenue from iPad and accessories.

-7.7 million iPod sales

-94 percent of Fortune 500 and 75 percent of global 500 testing or deploying iPad

iCloud:

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mPWWDOjtO9s#!]

Using a development environment/ app called Codea (formerly Codify), Two Lives Left created a free iPad game called Cargo-Bot. It is now available in the App Store.

Cargo-Bot is a puzzle game where you teach a robot how to move crates. Sounds simple, right? It features 36 fiendishly clever puzzles, haunting music and stunning retina graphics. You can even record your solutions and share them on YouTube to show your friends.

The app itself looks good but where it gets interesting is that it was made entirely on an iPad using Codea ($9.99 App Store). Codea uses the Lua programming language and has called the GarageBand of iPad coding for its visual ease of use. Until now, apps built using Codea were only able to play inside the app.  Using a preview of a new Open Source exporter tool, Codea exported the Cargo-bot app and submitted it to the App Store where it was recently approved.

It’s the first game of its kind, prototyped, programmed and polished on iPad. Cargo-Bot was created by Rui Viana, a Codea user who developed his initial prototype and shared it with the Codea community. Two Lives Left reached out to Rui in order to turn his prototype into a published App Store game. They also enlisted the aid of Fred Bogg, a composer who developed a music library for Codea, to create the music for Cargo-Bot.

Coinciding with the release of Cargo-Bot, Two Lives Left is releasing the Codea Runtime Library source code under the Apache License Version 2.0. Registered Apple iOS Developers will be able to export their Codea projects into the Codea Runtime Library in order to release them as standalone apps, just like Cargo-Bot.

How long until iPad game creation is mainstream? Xcode for iPad certainly couldn’t be too far off?

Press release follows:

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By now you probably know that the U.S. Department of Justice launched an antitrust lawsuit against Apple and two publishers this month following an investigation into Apple’s eBook pricing agency model. Three publishers, including Hachette, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster, decided to reach a settlement with the Department of Justice to return to Amazon’s set-your-own price wholesale model. Meanwhile, Apple, Macmillan, and Penguin will take the fight to court.

Interestingly, a report from The Wall Street Journal, which is owned by the HarperCollins’ parent company News Corp, suggested Apple was only ever trying to continue its App Store business model. The Wall Street Journal’s L. Gordon Crovitz described visiting Senior Apple Executive Eddy Cue to discuss changing Apple’s policies for publications. He quoted Cue as comparing book pricing to apps and not wanting to treat publications differently than app developers:

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Apple updated its “Cards” app for creating and sending physical greeting cards that originally launched in October of last year at the iPhone 4S unveiling. Included in version 1.1 of the iOS app are new letterpress cards for Mother’s Day, which are just in time for the holiday that is celebrated in most countries during April or May (May 13 in the United States this year).

Other additions include “Get Well” cards, new designs for birthdays, thank yous, and other categories. As always, you can grab the update from the App Store now as a free download.

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Apple finally commented late this evening on the U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust suit against the company. What did Apple think up with those extra 48 hours? Peter Kafka got the scoop from Apple’s Tom Neumayr:

The DOJ’s accusation of collusion against Apple is simply not true. The launch of the iBookstore in 2010 fostered innovation and competition, breaking Amazon’s monopolistic grip on the publishing industry. Since then customers have benefited from eBooks that are more interactive and engaging. Just as we’ve allowed developers to set prices on the App Store, publishers set prices on the iBookstore.

The civil antitrust suit alleged that Apple’s move to let publishers set their own prices—and it is a requirement that publishers do not sell their digital books for cheaper elsewhere—forced consumers to pay millions more for books than they should have.

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[slideshow]

Update: The app is live on most stores now including the U.S. store for $2.99 here.

Rockstar announced a couple of weeks ago that the iOS port of classic PC, PlayStation 2, and Xbox title “Max Payne” would make its way to the App Store April 12. One day early, it looks like the game is already available in App Stores around the world with the New Zealand store, the Australian store, and others already listing the game.

The game in terms of plot and gameplay does not stray far from the original, but Rockstar updated the port with new high-res textures and graphics with full support for the iPhone 4S and the third-generation iPad’s Retina displays. Controls were reconfigured for the touchscreen, and Rockstar is bundling support for its Social Club Xbox Live-like network for iPhone 4, 4S, iPad 2, and the new iPad users. The game will also support cheats, such as the “Skip to Level.”

We will keep you updated when “Max Payne” lands in the United States store, most likely for around the $4.99 $2.99 mark. When it does, the universal app will be compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod Touch 4, iPad 1, iPad 2, and the new iPad.

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O.K., here is another Instagram story, but now its about the iOS app landing the No. 1 free app spot in the App Store for the first time—despite much media attention on the subject of it selling out to Facebook.

Hipsters everywhere donning their skinny jeans took to Twitter to post one last heavily filtered image, while threatening to delete their Instagram accounts after news broke earlier this week that social network giant Facebook bought the app for a cool $1 billion.

Many tweets and reports even detailed how to keep Instagram photos from Mark Zuckerberg’s acquisitive hands through export services like Instaport.me that essentially leave users free and clear to erase the Instagram app from their smartphones.

The public’s warning now seems empty, of course, as Instagram itself used Twitter this morning to announce its sudden surge in popularity. It looks as though the intense press scrutiny only encouraged the iOS app to soar up the charts. Meanwhile, its new parent company does not even sit in the top 25 free apps in Apple’s App Store.

[tweet https://twitter.com/#!/instagram/statuses/189845445458132992]

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