In-app purchases Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Federal Trade Commission is reviewing Apple's in-app purchase system

by Kelly Hodgkins (Feb 23rd, 2011)

The FTC is reviewing Apple's in-app purchasing policy after reports of inadvertent purchases by children have continued to surface. FTC Chairperson Jon Leibowitz agreed to look closely at the matter after Representative Ed Markey of Massachusetts brought the matter to his attention. Leibowitz ...

Why Amazon may not care about in-app purchase

by Erica Sadun (Feb 23rd, 2011)

In all this furor about the App Store and in-app purchases, we have not heard a peep from Amazon, the 800-pound gorilla of external content. (TUAW long since contacted Amazon for a statement, and like everyone else, never heard anything back). Chuck Toporek of Addison Wesley/Pearson has a ...

TinyGrab declines to sell subscriptions through the App Store

by Mike Schramm (Feb 21st, 2011)

Add another name to the list of developers who are choosing to opt-out of Apple's subscription restrictions lately. Rhapsody and Readability were the first two we posted about, although Readability didn't so much opt-out as get rejected and decide not to play the subscription game. Now, a service ...

Well, that's just Smurfy! Apple reportedly talks to Capcom about Smurfs' Village

by Megan Lavey-Heaton (Feb 16th, 2011)

We reported last week on how a kid playing with the Smurfs' Village iOS app racked up hundreds of dollars in charges, prompting a variety of responses regarding how Apple and parents should treat such apps. Now PocketGamer.biz is reporting that Apple has taken game publisher Capcom to task for ...

Smurf it all to smurf! In-app purchases ring up $1,400 in charges

by Megan Lavey-Heaton (Feb 9th, 2011)

It's not exactly a new thing, but the Washington Post reported on the latest episode of a child spending hundreds -- actually $1,400 -- on in-app purchases. In this case, the 8-year-old was buying Smurfberries to decorate the Smurfs' Village app. You can spend up to $99.99 for a single in-app ...

Periodicals on App Store must offer in-app subscriptions by March 31

by Chris Rawson (Feb 3rd, 2011)

According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple will require any subscription-based periodical apps on the App Store to offer an in-app purchase option by March 31 or else face rejection. While that may sound like a fairly draconian demand on Apple's part, the Journal also notes (albeit way down in the ...

Capcom's free-to-play Smurfs' Village out-grossing Angry Birds

by Mike Schramm (Nov 17th, 2010)

If you, like me, responded to the release of Smurfs' Village by saying, "Really? A freemium game from Capcom? Based on the Smurfs franchise?" then you probably want to rethink how the App Store works, because apparently it's a hit -- Smurfs' Village has topped even Angry Birds recently for the top ...

TUAW's Daily App: Landformer

by Mike Schramm (Jun 30th, 2010)

Owen Goss is the mind behind Streaming Colour Studios, makers of Dapple and Monkeys in Space. I first met Goss earlier this year at at the 360iDev conference, and during his panel there (in which he created a game about bacon farming in just 90 minutes), he showed off a few early shots of a ...

C64 creators also bringing Amiga, Atari 2600 emulators to iPhone

by Mike Schramm (Apr 20th, 2010)

I just posted at the end of last week about Manomio's decision to go free with its licensed C64 emulator for the iPhone, but today it let us know that there are even more plans in the works. Given the success in porting C64 games (with official licenses) over to the iPhone, Manomio is working on ...

Found Footage: Urban Airship's AirMail takes push notifications to the next level

by Erica Sadun (Mar 22nd, 2010)

Here's an exclusive TUAW video preview of Urban Airship's latest product, AirMail. Like their other products, AirMail is powered by a precompiled drop-in library that developers add to their iPhone applications. AirMail adds a whole new spin on push notifications by transforming them from ...

GDC 2010: How to develop an app with EA Mobile

by Mike Schramm (Mar 11th, 2010)

For the first panel of day two here at the 2010 Game Developers Conference's iPhone gaming track, Oliver Miao of Centerscore Studios took the stage to talk about working on Surviving High School for the iPhone as a part of Electronic Arts' Mobile division. As Miao made clear early on, he's an ...

TUAW Interview: Freeverse CEO Ian Lynch Smith on the Ngmoco purchase

by Mike Schramm (Feb 23rd, 2010)

We were all pretty gobsmacked last night with the news that iPhone gaming developer Ngmoco had purchased longtime Mac game developer Freeverse, so we went hunting for answers. Fortunately, Freeverse CEO and founder Ian Lynch Smith was nice enough to sit down and take our questions this morning, and ...

Fieldrunners updated to 1.3, offers two new maps as in-app purchases

by Mike Schramm (Dec 30th, 2009)

Touch Arcade has word that one of 2008's best iPhone games (our 2009 list is coming out this week), Fieldrunners [iTunes link, $2.99], has released an update (1.3), in which they've released two new maps available as in-app purchases, and they've included OpenFeint 2.4 functionality, with ...

C64 emulator back on the App Store

by Mike Schramm (Nov 10th, 2009)

The C64 emulator that was pulled from the App Store by Apple for leaving a BASIC interpreter intact has now returned, though we presume it's minus the Apple-offending code. But while it will no longer run your own code, it will run some old-school C64 games, including eight for free with the app, ...

Apple relents: in-app purchase for free apps allows demo-to-paid

by Erica Sadun (Oct 15th, 2009)

Big news coming down the pike today for App Store developers. Apple has finally relented on a sticking point in the developer agreement, allowing in-app purchases for free applications. Finally, developers can distribute a free trial version of their applications, unlocking features from directly ...