Apps

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…

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A new and free iOS app called Action Movie FX lets users create Hollywood special effects on top of a video by using their iPhone’s camera. Action Movie FX is pretty simple in that you record a target and then the app will do the rest. Besides a visual effect, the app also adds realistic sound that gives a very real sense to what you are seeing. As you can see above, the car explosion looks very real.

Once Action Movie FX processes the video, you can share it with your Facebook friends, send it by email, or save it to your camera roll. There are two special effects available for free called “missile attack” and “car smash.” Other effects can be purchased for 99-cents in-app.

Unlike similar applications on the App Store, Action Movie FX works very well. The app quickly processes the effect, and even lets you select a certain point in the video where you want it added. Since it is available for free, we definitely suggest you try Action Movie FX.

Check out a few more screenshots and video after the break:

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Apple does not often have or advertise sales on Boxing Day, a holiday recognized in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. On the holiday, retailers discount products similar to Black Friday in the United States. However, this year, Canadians are getting a Boxing Week sale on iTunes.

As of right now, Apple is running a promotion in at least the Canadian iTunes store with a selection of 69-cent songs and albums from $5.99, including: Mylo Xyloto by Coldplay, Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites by Skrillex, Foo Fighters’ Wasting Light, and Take Care (Deluxe Version) by Drake.  Each album is selling between $5.99 and $7.99. Altogether, there are 30 or more albums offered.

There is also a selection of 69-cent song collections consisting of the top-selling songs from 2011, best songs of 2011, classic hits, and more.

It is unclear whether Apple will have a Boxing Day or Week sale in its Canadian, U.K., or Australian online and retail stores. Canadian retailers typically run Boxing Week sales from Dec. 24 through Jan. 2, but Boxing Day is traditionally recognized on Dec. 26. It appears the iTunes sale has not popped up in the U.K. or Australian stores, but let us know in the comments if it does.

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Adobe just -the No. 1 e-signature service used by over four millions users- for both iPhone and iPad as a free universal iOS application. The new app is available now, and it allows users to send documents and have them signed with a legally binding e-signature on the iPad or iPhone.

Users will access their EchoSign account, search and send from the EchoSign library, or send documents from their photo album, an email attachment, or apps like Box.net and Dropbox. There is also built-in, real-time status tracking, and the ability to quickly view signed agreements in an EchoSign account. Adobe promised the signing process within the app includes all of EchoSign’s “key authentication and privacy, fraud protection, and consumer disclosure”.

Out of EchoSign’s four million users, some of the estimated 50,000 paid subscribers include Twitter, Google, Facebook, VMware, Dell, and Groupon. Jason Lemkin started the company in 2006, and it was eventually acquired by Adobe in July of 2011 when the company had around 35,000 paid subscribers.

You can grab the app for free from the App Store now (iTunes link). Apple iPad screenshots are below:

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The Kindle iPhone and iPad app were given a significant update, bringing it up to version 2.9 and introducing many new and highly requested features.

First up are a few iPad specific changes, such as a new user interface for magazines on the larger screen, and you now have the ability to “read print replica textbooks” with support for layout and rich formatting of the print editions, notes, zoom and pan, and table of contents.

When it comes to updates that apply to the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, you can now email documents to your “Send-to-Kindle” address to store in Amazon Cloud, open PDFs from within Safari or Mail by sending them to your Send-to-Kindle address. Moreover, a new library organization view lets you manage content from Newsstand, Docs, and Kindle Books.

You can grab the Kindle iOS app as a universal download from the App Store (iTunes link). Check out a full list of changes below:

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Apple’s App Store is currently taking approximately four times more revenue generated by the 200 highest grossing apps in comparison to the Android Market. According to research firm Distimo’s recently published 2011 report, a significantly increasing portion of app downloads are originating in China.

Likely further increased by Apple’s recent announcement to begin accepting App Store payments in Chinese Yuan, Distimo said when comparing the United States and China, 30 percent of downloads are coming from China. This is up from approximately 18 percent reported by Distimo in January 2011.

Growth in China is even more impressive when looking at just iPad numbers with China now accounting for 44 percent of all downloads from the two countries. Distimo reported late last month that App Store downloads for the top 100 paid apps in China nearly doubled just days following Apple’s decision to accept Yuan.

During Apple’s fourth quarter earnings call, CEO Tim Cook called the progress in China “amazing” and said the country represents “enormous opportunity.” As of that time, revenues from China accounted for 16 percent of Apple’s revenue for the September quarter – approximately $4.52 billion.

Some of the other interesting numbers reported by Distimo, include: 50 percent of App Store revenue for iPhone is now generated by freemium apps and in-app purchases for the 200 highest grossing apps; there are currently 79,077 games for iPhone, 28,683 for iPad, and 46,045 for the Android Market.

While the report noted App Store downloads have been on the decline for the year, downloads peaked following the release of the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S. Distimo attributed the increase to what they call the “anticipation effect” for Apple’s new devices.

Distimo put together their App of the Year Award based on total downloads worldwide across all platforms. Not surprisingly, Angry Birds took the top spot, followed by Facebook, Skype, Google Maps, and iBooks. Check out the full top 10 below.

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Just days after detailing the first Bluetooth 4.0-enabled iPhone accessory and app, Apple approved another application that takes advantage of the low-power standard. This time it’s the first Bluetooth 4.0 heart rate monitor app approved by Apple for use with Bluetooth smart and SmartHRM accessories.

Available in the App Store for $1.99, CardioMapper provides “full real time and post exercise analysis” with statistics for the typical calories, distance, duration, speed, and pace. It will allow a user to track burned calories using the iPhone’s GPS, but the real benefit is the ability to connect to the latest Bluetooth 4.0 SmartHRM and Bluetooth Smart accessories. That will allow a user to track heartbeat rhythms, and there is also a live GPS accuracy indicator to make sure a user stays on route during a workout.

The company promises to show off some of the accessories and new Bluetooth smart accessories at CES 2012. However, the app’s iTunes page does warn: “Continued use of GPS running in the background can dramatically decrease battery life.”

Here is more information about how the app works:

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UPDATE [Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 2:06pm ET]: It appears the app had originally slipped past Apple’s censors after all as the company just yanked the program out of the App Store.

A new iOS application called Quickpick hit the App Store (no jailbreak!), and it fills a void that many feel Apple left in their implementation of the iOS 5 Notification Center.

For those unfamiliar, Notification Center is a place on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch where a user can view their device notifications along with weather and stocks widgets (iPhone and iPod touch only). Many hoped Apple would add a universal launching feature within the Notification Center, but the company did not do so. Until the time comes (if it ever does), Quickpick fills the void.

Quickpick uses the iOS web-based shortcuts feature to initiate phone calls, text messages, website launching, emailing, and more from the Notification Center.

For example, I have set up a calling shortcut, emailing shortcut, web address shortcut, and a shortcut to open YouTube. Since the application uses native iOS URL scheming, the possibilities are endless. Here are some giant databases (1, 2) of URL schemes you can use, and there are cool examples:

• fb://profile – Open Facebook app to the user’s profile
• twitter://post?message – Open Twitter.app to send a tweet
• fb://friends – Open Facebook app to the friends list
• fb://notifications – Open Facebook app to the notifications list
• fb://feed – Open Facebook app to the News Feed
• itms-apps:// – Open the App Store
• maps:// – Open the Maps app
• sms:// – Open the compose window of the Messages app
• music:// – Go to the currently playing song in the Music app
• youtube:// – Open the YouTube app
• itms-books:// – Open the iBooks app

The aforementioned calling, texting, website launching, and emailing examples do not require a special URL; the app sets those up automatically.

Quickpick is now available as a universal application for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch for $0.99. After the break are instructions on how to setup custom URLs in Quickpick:

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Facebook recently went public with an awesome new feature called Timelime, a brand-new interface for profiles. That feature launched for the mobile web view of Facebook for iPhone but until today has not been available in Facebook’s native application on the App Store.

Today’s Facebook app update for Mobile Timeline is iPhone and iPod touch exclusive, but Facebook is promising Timeline support on the iPad “soon.” Some other new features work across the iOS ecosystem, though, including Friends Lists, better photo management, and subscriptions support. All the details after the break:

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Rockstar games has just released Grand Theft Auto 3 for both the iPhone and iPad late this evening. This release  marks the 10th anniversary of the game, which was originally released for the PS2. Grand Theft Auto 3 is available for $4.99 on the iTunes App Store.

Rockstar Games celebrates the 10th anniversary of one of the most influential games of all time. The critically acclaimed blockbuster Grand Theft Auto III comes to mobile devices, bringing to life the dark and seedy underworld of Liberty City. With a massive and diverse open world, a wild cast of characters from every walk of life and the freedom to explore at will, Grand Theft Auto III puts the dark, intriguing and ruthless world of crime at your fingertips.

Check out some gameplay after the break:

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Google has just started rolling out an update to the Gmail app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch with a few new welcomed features. First off, users now have the ability to set a custom signature for messages as well as a vacation responder. Both of those new features will be available via the gear icon at the top of the app’s new menu. The update also includes support for nested labels and the usual “bug fixes and UI improvements”.

A new Scribbles feature allows you to open a canvas, draw a picture or sketch with multiple colors, brush sizes and line elements, and attach it to a message within Gmail. Scribbles is available now in both the Gmail iOS app and Gmail mobile web app. Another notable and highly requested change is a new notification sound on iOS 5, making it easier to tell when you’ve received an email

Google also mentioned in their blog post that they are continuing to work on some of the most requested features from users including multiple login support, banner notifications, and a “send as” feature to send mail from multiple accounts within the app.

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Here’s a fun iPad game for the whole (Partridge) family.

Rockmate turns your iPad into a complete music studio easy and super fun to use. You can compose, record and play songs with up to 4 Rock players on one single iPad. Rockmate is easy to play with smart chords progressions, sounds great with separated guitar effects and in-house produced audio samples and is also fully customizable with multiple drums and keyboard styles.

Rockmate is ready to rock ! Your guitars are always well tuned, no need to carry your drum kit or to patch your keyboard. A smart metronome and a real-time looper will assist you in composing and recording your songs. That you can share by email or in your iTunes sharing folder.

We want as many people as possible to experience Rockmate. So we have decided to make Rockmate available for one week (From 14 to 21 december 2011) at the introductory price of $0.99. Regular price $3.99.

(iTunes $.99)

For those who are after something in the professional realm, a new App called Shredder was released today…
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Microsoft today introduced an iPad version of their OneNote mobile app previously only available to iPhone users. The new app has of course been given a facelift for the iPad with a two-pane view and also includes a tabbed user interface, quick note creation, tables in notebooks, and the ability to sync notebooks over WiFi.

Additionally, the iPhone app has also been updated to version 1.3 and both apps support several new languages including English, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish. 

*With the free version of OneNote for iPad you can access, create and edit up to 500 notes. Once you reach this limit you can still view, delete, and sync your notes. To continue taking and editing notes, you can upgrade OneNote for iPad to unlimited use through an in-app purchase.
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Earlier today, Mark Tweeted the amusing new file Apple put in iOS 5.1 beta 2 which includes a lot of silly references to devices that don’t exist.  This isn’t entirely new – Apple had done this to another file in iOS 5.1B1.

As you’d probably expect, it isn’t going to stop developers from finding the special sause inside iOS 5.1B2.  That doctored file is a high level file which is easily found.  Developers which we are in contact with are already digging through the lower level stuff which remains the the feeding grounds for useful information.
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We heard at the beginning of the month that BBC’s iPlayer iPad app would be getting an iPhone and iPod touch version in the coming weeks and today the app has officially landed for UK users. To accompany the release, the app will also be able to stream content over all 3G networks and now officially supports AirPlay on iOS 5.

The company’s blog post notes a ‘Live Channels’ feature will allow you to quickly switch between BBC channels just like on radio and TV, and all BBC national radio stations support background audio for multitasking. They have also made improvements to streaming by introducing HTTP Live Streaming using adaptive bitrate technologies, allowing the app to adjust your streaming quality based on your connection speed. The web version of the app accessible at bbc.co.uk/iplayer will also soon get 3G streaming capabilities.  
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Apple just issued a press release announcing that its App Store mobile bazaar now carries over half a million apps for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. Additionally, customers have downloaded apps from the Mac App Store over a hundred million times. The App Store has passed over eighteen billion downloads since its inception and continues to clock more than a billion downloads a month.

An Apple spokesperson confirmed to The Loop’s Jim Dalrymple that Mac App Store downloads don’t include Lion, updates or downloads to other Macs. Apple CEO Tim Cook said at the October 4 iPhone 4S introduction that they were approaching 60 million Mac users worldwide and that Mac OS X Lion had been download from the Mac App Store over six million times. The press release quotes Apple’s head of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller:

In just three years the App Store changed how people get mobile apps, and now the Mac App Store is changing the traditional PC software industry. With more than 100 million downloads in less than a year, the Mac App Store is the largest and fastest growing PC software store in the world.

The statement also features quotes from Autodesk and Pixelmator, developers who saw tremendous success with their iOS and Mac offerings. AutoCAD in late-August 2011 made its Mac App Store debut, along with companion iOS apps on the App Store such as the free AutoCAD WS app for iPad and iPhone or sketchbook for iPhone, a pro-grade paint and drawing app that recently raked in fourteen million dollars, or about $9.8 million after Apple’s customary thirty percent cut.

Pixelmator, a popular image editing program, was recently updated to version 2.0. This nifty Photoshop alternative is being exclusively distributed on the Mac App Store and in no time proved one of the most popular downloads on the store. The success has prompted Apple to name Pixelmator  the Mac App of the Year in the iTunes Rewind 2011 charts released last week.

As for Adobe, they released Photoshop Elements Editor 1 and Adobe Premiere Elements 10 on the Mac App Store, the Carousel image management app for the Mac and iOS devices and promised to deliver a range of iPad apps soon. Microsoft, the world’s leading software maker, is rumored to bring Office to iOS. Full release below the fold.

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Update: Apple has now released Logic Pro 9 ($199) and MainStage 2 ($29) in the Mac App Store. Weighing in at 413 MB, Logic Pro 9 requires 3.6GB of disk space and still comes with all the built-in plug-ins and sounds. However, for commenters pointing out the many GBs of additional content bundled with the soon to be discontinued $499 Logic Studio, Apple is making 19GB of additional content available via in-app downloads. Otherwise the app, at first glance, appears to be largely unchanged.

To accompany the release the of the new Mac App Store versions, Logic Pro was also updated to version 9.1.6 today. Apple also updated Aperture in the Mac App Store to version 3.2.2., which mainly fixes an issue with “auto-imported Photo Stream images”.

Apple has officially informed retailers they’ll be moving distribution of their Logic Pro and Logic Express digital audio workstations to a download-only, Mac App Store model (via MacRumors):

Apple today issued a notice to resellers announcing that it has discontinued the boxed versions of its Logic Studio and Logic Express audio software packages effectively immediately, also announcing that the Logic Pro 9 and MainStage 2 components will be moving to the Mac App Store for distribution.

The report notes Apple said “new” versions of Logic Pro 9 and MainStage 2 (components of Logic Pro) would be coming to the Mac App Store, although it’s unclear what that means for Logic Express (essentially a light version of Logic Pro 9), and Soundtrack Pro. The packaged version of Logic Studio currently sells for $499.

In June Apple released a completely redesigned, and some would argue scaled back, version of their Final Cut Pro video editing suite called Final Cut Pro X. That update was also released as a download through the Mac App Store, but wasn’t well received, and some fear that the Logic apps are headed in the same direction. Apple just recently launched a universal iOS version of GarageBand, their consumer/amateur version of Logic Pro that ships with iLife. No word on a potential Logic Studio iOS app.

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Today, Twitter announced an all new online version of Twitter, and to complement this new site, the popular micro blogging service launched a re-designed iPhone application. The new application features an all new user-interface and it looks awesome. The new app has four tabs across the bottom: Home, Connect, Discover, and Me, detailed below the fold.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qqDy5BmYKE]

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Last year StyleTap launched their Palm OS emulator platform for iPhone, but for obvious reasons it wasn’t made available through the App Store and instead limited to jailbroken devices. To circumvent Apple’s App Store guidelines, over the past year StyleTap has developed and now launched the ‘StyleTap iOS Wrapper SDK‘, allowing Palm OS devs to wrap their apps in an iPhone app that’s ready to submit to Apple. Here’s how it works:

StyleTap Platform for iPhone^® cannot currently be purchased through the Apple App Store because it provides capabilities (e.g.the ability to download other Palm applications) that are restricted by Apple. The StyleTap iOS Wrapper SDK allows you as a Palm application developer to create an iPhone (iOS) application that “wraps” a Palm application inside StyleTap Platform for iPhone in a way that removes all of the restricted capabilities. You can then submit the resulting iPhone application to be included in the Apple App Store.

StyleTap will provide devs with the StyleTap Platform designed for non-jailbroken iPhones through a template Xcode project that also includes instructions on configuring apps for submission to Apple. After devs throw their .prc and .pdb Palm application and license info into the StyleTap Platform setup, they will then have to build an iOS app. Of course devs will still have to be part of Apple’s Developer Program and StyleTap isn’t guaranteeing Apple will accept submitted apps. Also noteworthy is the fact that this enables organizations to deploy Palm apps to non-jailbroken iOS devices, and those apps don’t require submission to Apple.

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OnLive has just announced (via TechCrunch) a new iPad app capable of accessing their cloud game streaming service previously only available to PC, Mac, and OnLive console owners. Launching in the US and UK first, 25 console titles have been ported to the smaller screen with touchscreen controls, and almost all 200 of the service’s library of console quality titles will be playable via the $50 OnLive wireless controller.

The OnLive service allows streaming of console quality games like Assassins Creed, L.A. Noire, and other titles typically reserved for consoles like the PS3, directly from the company’s servers. The service has received mixed reviews, mostly due to inconsistencies in performance. The same appears to be true for the mobile version, with an early hands-on by TechCrunch highlighting the same performance issues common on PCs. These are “console-class” games, but not always a console quality experience. It’s playable, but really laggy.

The free app should be launching in the App Store any second now, and will still of course require that you purchase or rent the games. Fortunately, any purchased or rented content is instantly playable through any compatible device. You can check out a full list of titles that have been ported with touch controls here. IGN already got their hands on the app for iPad (video below), and they seem to have better first impressions than TechCrunch:

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Microsoft has released a new iOS app called My Xbox Live that lets users manage their Xbox Live accounts while on mobile. The app doesn’t have gaming of any sort, but lets users edit their bio, check messages, see what friends are online, and change their avatar. Xbox’s Major Nelson outlined the new features:

Read and send messages to friends
Manage your friends list, invite new friends
Read and Edit your full LIVE profile (name, bio, motto)
Change your avatar features/items with the avatar closet
View and compare your achievement progress with friends

Microsoft has made My Xbox Live available for free, on both iPhone and iPad. We’ve uploaded a few more photos of the app after the break.

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