Apple has today replaced all the ‘FREE’ download buttons with the word ‘GET’ across both the App Store and Mac App Store. The change appears to be worldwide, so you should be seeing it right now no matter which store you happen to frequent.
Apple may currently be working to bring forth iOS 8.1 later on this month, which will include some exciting new features like Apple Pay, but even at its current duration, iOS 8 offers plenty of changes and improvements for the iDevice community to familiarize themselves with. Along with some of the more blatant additions to iOS 8, such as third-party keyboards and Notification Center widgets, Apple has made a multitude of subtle, less obvious adjustments, and among them, a long-standing gripe regarding App Store purchases has now been addressed.
The fact that all iOS apps need to be approved by Apple in order to make their way into the App Store is both a blessing and a curse for the platform, but nobody can deny that it, most of the time at least, guarantees at least some sort of minimum design quality. It also means that developers often need to jump through hoops in order to get their hard work in front of those that they hope will download it.
The App Store began its life as a convenient hub of apps and games that help to enrich the experience of using iOS as a whole, and while it remains as such, the fact that it now boasts several hundred thousand apps means that it's quite a bit more time-consuming for folks to discover what's hot and what's not. Apple has already laid on several categories including top charts and editors' choice, which make this task decidedly easier, and now, the Cupertino giant looks to have introduced monthly "Best Of" lists.
The act of taking a selfie and sharing it with the world may be thought of as a flash-in-the-pan phenomenon by most of us, but it looks like Apple could be on a mission to give it some credibility and longevity.
It's been a big couple of weeks for Flappy Bird gamers. Almost from nowhere, Flappy Bird popped up at the top of the App Store and Play Store free app charts and since then it's been a real rollercoaster ride. First we had the discussion about just how much the free game is raking in through in-game ads, with some claiming the figure to be around the $50,000 mark per day. Then we were treated to the drama that followed news that the game's developer actually disliked the attention his work was receiving.
Today has been one of those days. First there was the unexpected release of a new untethered jailbreak from the folks at Evad3rs, which got everyone so excited we thought our Twitter streams might explode. It seems people really like being able to jailbreak their iOS devices.
Tim Cook and Apple's executive team are always keen to wax lyrical about how many apps have passed through the App Store over the last five years. The majority of the company's media events heavily feature slides featuring the number of available third-party applications available and the amount of revenue that has been paid out to the developers who create and publish those apps. In the relatively short lifespan of the App Store, Apple has managed to hit, and go beyond some pretty impressive milestones. Recent data from AppsFire suggests that Apple have hit yet another notable goal by now having over one million apps live in the U.S. App Store alone.
Apple recently dropped a pretty significant update to its official Apple Store app, and one of the key implementations made was its ability to distribute free content to users for promotional purposes. Far from being an empty feature, the freebie mill has already been kicked into action, with the usually 99 cent app Color Zen now available for free via the Apple Store app.
The way Apple's iOS updates its third-party apps is seen as a marvel to some, and an annoyance to others. While the whole process is, as with most of the software's features, nicely streamlined, that oh-so frequent feeling of constrained functionality does tend to creep in from time to time. For example, if you're updating an app, and decide, midway through, that you wish to retain the current version for the time being, there's no native way of doing so. Luckily, as is so often the case, there's a tweak for that, and it's called, quite naturally, CancelUpdate.
