App store Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

McDonald's releases McPlay app: 'Hey kids, this is advertising'

by Mike Schramm (May 1st, 2013)

McDonald's has awkwardly tried to enter the App Store marketplace with an app it calls "McPlay," available for free on the App Store right now. I wouldn't recommend a download (personally, I've boycotted the golden arches for almost a decade now), but it is fascinating to see the fast-food giant ...

Apple posts 'Learn more about in-app purchases' in iTunes

by Kelly Hodgkins (Apr 26th, 2013)

Apple has been steadily beefing up its in-app purchasing policy to prevent children and adults from inadvertently buying items from within an app. As spotted by App Advice, Apple recently added a new disclaimer about in-app purchases to its App Store on the iPad. The new "Learn More About ...

Circadia celebrates 100,000 downloads with new content

by Mike Schramm (Apr 25th, 2013)

Circadia is a great game that I wrote about a little over a year ago -- it's put together by a developer named Kurt Bieg, and until now, it's basically just been sitting on the App Store waiting to be found. But Bieg has just put out a nice solid update for the game, and that gives me another ...

Apple to pay Chinese authors $118,000 for violating copyrights

by Matt Tinsley (Apr 25th, 2013)

As reported by China Daily, a Beijing court has ordered Apple to pay three Chinese authors US$118,000 in damages for selling their books without prior consent through apps available on its App Store. The lawsuit was filed against Apple by the Writers' Right Protection Union (also known as the ...

Creative uses for App Store icons: Ransom Apps and App Icon Quiz

by Mike Schramm (Apr 24th, 2013)

Brian Stucki is the developer behind MacMiniColo (the Mac mini colocation outfit in Las Vegas), and he recently sent us a fun project he's hosting called "Ransom Apps." It's just a silly little web app, but the idea is that you enter a phrase of text, and Ransom Acts returns your phrase written ...

Apple has paid out $9 billion to developers; App Store downloads reach 45 billion

by Yoni Heisler (Apr 24th, 2013)

Apple's earnings conference calls are typically brimming with interesting tidbits regarding Apple's operations, and Tuesday's was no different. Apple announced that it has, to date, paid out more than $9 billion to developers. To put that figure into context, let's take a quick look at just ...

Firaxis' Haunted Hollow appears on, disappears from the App Store

by Mike Schramm (Apr 23rd, 2013)

There's good news, bad news, and the best news on this one, and I'll give you the good news first. Firaxis' Haunted Hallow appeared on the App Store this morning, which means the game is just about ready for prime time. The free-to-play strategy title was one of my favorite games I got to see ...

GoComics brings the funny pages to your iPhone

by Mike Schramm (Apr 23rd, 2013)

Universal Uclick is the company that holds the licenses for most of the comics in your daily newspaper -- the company was formed when the Universal Press Syndicate joined up with the Uclick media group. They've run a web archive of the company's comics for quite a while now, and today that ...

Apple begins restricting use of special characters in app descriptions

by Michael Grothaus (Apr 23rd, 2013)

As first reported by AppleInsider, Apple has begun restricting the use of special characters in app descriptions in the App Store. For now, Apple is restricting the checkmark, the explosion, the "no symbol" and the speech bubble. One can only hope that Apple will eventually add emoji faces to ...

Two great board games headed to iOS: Talisman Prologue and Eclipse

by Mike Schramm (Apr 22nd, 2013)

There's some great news today about two different -- both excellent -- physical board games headed to digital versions on the App Store. First up, the game Eclipse has been submitted to the App Store as a digital app. This is a great galaxy-spanning civilization builder, and the physical ...

Status Board updated with bugfixes, performance improvements

by Mike Schramm (Apr 19th, 2013)

Panic's well-received Status Board app has been updated to version 1.1, and as you might imagine, it's mostly a bugfix update. The biggest issue fixed was probably a bug with sending standard video out, but that should be all taken care of according to Panic (sending HD video out still requires ...

Chinese hackers launch pirate App Store, no jailbreak needed

by Michael Grothaus (Apr 19th, 2013)

Chinese hackers have launched a pirate app store that allows people to download pirated iOS apps with no jailbreaks needed. The online web store uses geolocation to determine a user's whereabouts. If the user is outside of China, he is not granted access to the store, instead being redirected ...

Rumor: Amazon's Goodreads purchase cancelled a possible Apple partnership

by Mike Schramm (Apr 18th, 2013)

The Wall Street Journal says that before Amazon's purchase of the Goodreads service earlier this year, Apple was planning to possibly integrate the social reading-recommendation service into its own iBookstore. Apple and Goodreads, says the WSJ, had been talking for a year or more about ...

Shadow Era gets a new expansion, a new website, and a new app

by Mike Schramm (Apr 18th, 2013)

These days, the only iOS card game I'm playing with any regularity is SolForge -- I wish there was a little more to it, but the mechanics are very well-constructed. Shadow Era, one of the first collectible card games on the App Store, is still kicking around, however, and has gotten bigger than ...

Apple kills AppGratis' push notifications

by Steven Sande (Apr 18th, 2013)

What? You thought you were going to be able to make it through another day without an update on what's going on with AppGratis? Sorry to disappoint you -- Apple has now added insult to injury by killing push notifications for AppGratis. The company let subscribers know this morning in an emailed ...