Mozilla had been testing an iOS version of its browser for a while now, and it has finally launched a Firefox version for iOS. This app will now be available on the Apple Store on all iOS run devices ranging from the iPhone to the iPod Touch.
Firefox had previously held a stance against developing software for Apple’s app store, but has clearly moved on since then. The first iOS Mozilla tester had rolled out in May this year, following another one in September, before going live with the final version.
This app is being introduced amongst much competition in the sphere of web browsing, especially with iOS owned Safari already in the picture. This new app will allow Firefox loyalists to continue using the web browser even on their Apple products. Let’s all hope that Firefox is able to gain some new customers whilst keeping its old ones too.
Here is a link for you to download Mozilla Firefox on to your Apple devices. Just make sure your device runs the iOS 8.2 or above.
In an attempt to up its security, Apple got rid of over 250 apps from its App Store. These apps were using a software developed by a Chinese firm called Youmi which allowed them access to the user’s personal details like email address and the serial number of their smartphone. According to sources, the apps received a total of 1 million downloads.
The apps which relied on Youmi’s SDK, mostly made by companies and firms based in China, may not have willingly or knowingly violated Apple’s secutrity. As is backed by SourceDNA’s blog post:
“We believe the developers of these apps aren’t aware of this since the SDK is delivered in binary form, obfuscated, and user info is uploaded to Youmi’s server, not the app’s. We recommend developers stop using this SDK until this code is removed.”
This security issue was brought to light by SourceDNA when they were updating their own product called Searchlight. Searchlight inspects the security and checks apps for security violations. SourceDNA later on went ahead to comment in their blog post, “We’re concerned other published apps may be using different but related approaches to hide their malicious behavior.”
Apple on the other hand, issued the following statement:
“We’ve identified a group of apps that are using a third-party advertising SDK, developed by Youmi, a mobile advertising provider, that uses private APIs to gather private information, such as user email addresses and device identifiers, and route data to its company server. This is a violation of our security and privacy guidelines. The apps using Youmi’s SDK will be removed from the App Store and any new apps submitted to the App Store using this SDK will be rejected. We are working closely with developers to help them get updated versions of their apps that are safe for customers and in compliance with our guidelines back in the App Store quickly.”
In what was seen as a first of its kind of attack, Apple Inc has suffered major internet intrusion in its iOS App Store by a malicious programme called XcodeGhost. Though the company has now taken necessary steps to remove infected iPad and iPhone programmes and files, it has still not announced a way for users to determine whether or not their devices have been infected.
The affected apps include Tencent Holdings Ltd’s popular mobile chat app WeChat, car-hailing app Didi Kuaidi and a music app from Internet portal NetEase Inc. According to the cyber-security firm, Palo Alto Networks Inc, a total of five infected apps have been found in the app store since this cyber-attack.
Christine Monaghan, the Apple spokeswoman, affirmed in an email,
“We’ve removed the apps from the App Store that we know have been created with this counterfeit software. We are working with the developers to make sure they’re using the proper version of Xcode to rebuild their apps.”
Though the malicious software was found embedded in hundreds of apps, Apple has not disclosed the exact number. Needless to say, this unprecedented incident has left Apple users more than just surprised all over the world.
Windows Phones have been in the smartphone race since long, but their App Store is still remains constrained. Microsoft is committed to eliminating the glitch and is ready to offer its users the luxury of the Android app ecosystem. The company is reportedly working on a feature that will open the doors of the Android app store for Windows users.
A trusted blogger Paul Thurrot has commented on Microsoft’s plans that they might come out with at the BUILD conference scheduled for tonight. He revealed that Microsoft is likely to introduce a feature that will let users run Android apps on Windows 10 devices like smartphones, tablets and PCs.
This means the confined app network will now grow to the maximum by encompassing all the apps that are developed for Android till date. It will give a major push to the Windows Phone market, which was till date lagging because of its limited App Store.
It is still unclear how Microsoft will integrate the change. It remains to be seen if it will create a new app store for Android apps or allow support for Android stores by third-party developers. The move will help the company in the long run, but it is dubious how it will go with Microsoft’s Universal App strategy.
It is no secret that Apple has dominated the $45 billion market with its App Store. Even though Android ecosystem has proliferated to almost 80% of the market globally, iOS has taken over the major chunk of the app store revenue on its side.
The main reason being iOS users are more than ready to spend money on apps than Android users. Android being an open source OS comprises of users that may or may not like to spend money on apps, hence, the revenue differs. So the best apps are developed first for Apple’s iOS mobile operating system. Only if they are successful do companies produce an Android version, often months or years later. However, Facebook is planning to change this game.
According to the folks at Facebook Europe, the dominance of Apple is about to weaken soon. Facebook’s Europe, Middle East, and Africa platform director Julien Codorniou while talking to Business Insider suggested that the new trend he is seeing is going to favour Android. According to him, Android is very rapidly catching up iOS in terms of revenue generation. He also mentioned that there days, many developers, especially game developers, are going for Android first in the European market.
Facebook is planning to tap into situation with its own Parse app development platform, and favour Android big time.
“There is a pattern coming from Eastern Europe. The Russian developers develop on Android first because of a big audience, and it maybe being easier to develop. They liked the fact that they could submit a new version of the app every day. [With Apple, you have to get each new version of the app approved before it hits the App Store. There is no version approval for Android.] This is a trend that I see and I think it is going to accelerate.”
Facebook is planning to tap into the situation with its own Parse app development platform and favour Android big time. Codorniou believes that Parse virtually erases the two-step iOS/Android development process, letting companies release new apps on both platforms at the same time. If apps are released at the same time on Android, it erases one of the key selling points of the iPhone, which is users who want the cool new apps must be Apple users in order to get them.
Codorniou has a team of promoters for spreading the word: “As of today, I have four guys from my team in Paris talking to Android developers about the greatness of Parse, Facebook login, app links, app events, all of these things we introduced at f8. It’s a very important bet for us.”
Opera says its effort to build an app store are starting to show traction, with the site now garnering more than 100 million visitors per month with a catalog of more than 200,000 apps for Android, BlackBerry, Symbian, iOS and Java.
As it stands the store currently plays host to over 200,000 apps and has also undergone a redesign back in 2013 which presumably helped play a part in seeing its user base grow. According to Lars Boilesen, the CEO of Software, “In just over two years, the Mobile Store has shown strong growth – from 18 million monthly visitors to 100 million, and has seen a fivefold increase in the number of apps offered. The compression technology in Opera’s browsers, combined with the broad portfolio of apps in the Opera Mobile Store across many different platforms, have resulted in massive adoption of the store worldwide.”
Users can access the Mobile Store via Opera’s flagship Mini, Mobile Classic and Opera for Android mobile browsers. The store has been proven as an effective mobile-content distribution platform in several of the world’s fastest-growing mobile markets including India, Russia, Brazil, Indonesia and South Africa
Three months back, Apple launched its latest OS – iOS 7 in the market. Ever since then, users have treated the iOS 7 with mix reactions, as for some it is improved and for some it lags and freezes.
Despite of the mixed reactions from users, the iOS 7 is now on 74% of Apple devices registered in the App Store. Apple has mentioned this on its developer page. This is a 10% increase in iOS 7 users from the month of October. Coincidentally, Google also announced that in just a month of release, 1.1% of Android users are on KitKat OS.
However, alongside the iOS 7 other iOS versions are still in use. As per the report from Apple, 22% of users in the App Store are still on iOS 6 and 4% users are still on older versions of iOS. The rest 26% might want to know what is iOS 7 all about from the video below:
Temple Run 2, the sequel to Imangi Studios’ immensely popular mobile game, has been downloaded over 20 million in its first four days on the iTunes App Store.
It didn’t hurt that upon its release Apple promoted the run-for-your-life game to Editors Choice, putting it front and centre in its App Store carousel. The brand, however, speaks for itself. The original has been downloaded over 170 million times across the Android and iOS ecosystems (including Amazon) but its sequel looks to quickly surpass it. The free-to-play game emphasizes in-app purchases, too much in our opinion, but it’s still a great game to play with a few minutes to kill.
The game’s co-creator, Keith Shepherd, tweeted over the weekend that Temple Run 2 had surpassed 10 million users in Game Center, Apple’s online leader board, and was quickly catching Cut The Rope and Angry Birds: Seasons in overall usage. Pretty incredible stats considering the number of game choices out there for people to peruse.
Last year, Angry Birds Space rocketed to 10 million downloads in its first three days, but those numbers included Android, Amazon and Windows Phone platforms as well. It will be interesting to see in a week or so how the addition of Android contributes to Temple Run 2?s download numbers.
Google Play seems to be going on one heck of a growth spurt. According to new stats, the Android app store is catching up to iOS fast.
Even though the Apple App Store is four times more profitable than Google Play, iOS can’t match Android’s revenue growth of 311 percent since January and 17.9 percent in the last month. These numbers are misleading, however, since Google started the year with next to nothing in its Play Store coffers, while Apple had already earned $4 billion from App Store revenue.
Most app revenue, on both platforms, unsurprisingly came from game publishers. Zynga and EA, along with Gameloft and Halfbrick (makers of Fruit Ninja) were among the top 10, but Japan and Korean owned eight of the top ten places for app revenue sorted by publisher on Google Play. iOS was more Western-focused, with Electronic Arts leading the way, though with over 950 titles on the App Store their lead is anything but shocking.
Though Apple still outstrips Google in terms of free app downloads by 10%, it’s interesting to see developers such as Go Launcher, makers of the insanely popular launcher alternative for Android, sitting at number four, ahead of big names like Twitter, Skype and WhatsApp.
Overall, the situation doesn’t look as grim for Google as it did a year ago. Users are paying for apps, although most are games, and total numbers of downloads are approaching App Store territory quickly. People are beginning to understand that Google has built itself a versatile and potentially profitable portal for app developers, and users are beginning to see the value in investing their money into it.
Apple has made a couple of small-but-useful changes to its Apple Store app aimed at making shopping more efficient in its retail stores. Version 2.4 of the app lets users ask Siri for help in finding prices on Apple products. It also allows users to buy Apple gift cards (to be sent via e-mail) directly from within the app. The gift cards are now Passbook compatible, to boot.
Any Apple gift card that is purchased online and sent via e-mail—whether via the Web-based Apple Store or the iOS app—can now be loaded up via Passbook, which was launched along with iOS 6 in September. When the recipient clicks a link in the e-mail, Passbook will open to load up the details of the gift card. Then, whenever the recipient walks into an Apple Store with an iOS device, the app should bring up the gift card automatically on the user’s lock screen so it can be used to make purchases.
Unfortunately, Apple gift cards that are loaded into Passbook can’t be used in conjunction with the self-checkout system (EasyPay) built into the Apple Store app, so you’ll have to check out with a real human if you want to use the gift card balance.
Still a long way before this feature makes its way into India? Definitely.
Research In Motion CEO Thorsten Heins is promising to restore the BlackBerry phone’s stature as a trailblazing device even as many investors fret about its potential demise. Heins took the stage Tuesday at a conference for mobile applications developers to rally support for the upcoming release of BlackBerry 10, a new operating system that Research In Motion Ltd. is touting as its salvation after years of blundering wiped out some $80 billion in shareholder wealth.
Blackberry held almost 50% of the market share prior to the Android and iPhone era. With new UI that is more user centric blackberry plans to make a comeback not only in the consumer segment, but its primary source the business/enterprise segment.
RIM is also planning Native apps for Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and LinkedIN, which are quite identical to their iOS/Android counterparts.
In addition to sharing new details about its forthcoming BlackBerry 10 OS, RIM used the BlackBerry Jam keynote to make an announcement about App World. The company just revealed that in addition to applications and games, the store will sell music, movies and TV shows. There are currently 105,000 apps in the store, with 3 billion downloads logged since the store’s opening.
RIM says, BB 10 applications will join the herd soon: the company will begin accepting submissions on October 10th.
Apple’s WWDC Event has just kicked off and Tim Cook has just announced that the Apple App Store has hit 650,000 apps and over $5 billion have been payed out to App Developers. 225,000 of these apps are specific to the iPad. Customers have downloaded 30 billion of the apps since they became an option four years ago.
Apple also wants its developers to know that they are taken care of.
Ever thought gaming would get you so far? The new game called Angry Birds Space, by popular mobile gaming company “Rovio”, makers of the original “Angry Birds” , has taken the gaming industry by storm.
The Game since its release on the 22nd of March has been downloaded millions of times on iOS, Android and even the Mac app store. This is also the first ever game to be officially announced by NASA astronauts check the video below.
Samsung has also introduced a new bird called “Lazer Bird” which resembles the character of Galaxy Note. The Lazer Bird is equipped with some totally new special powers that allow it to divert its angle of trajectory to take aim at hidden pigs, video below.
The “Danger Zone,” which is a pack of 30 levels exclusive to Samsung Galaxy phones is an additional feature for the proud owners of Galaxy devices.
You can download the Game by clicking the button :
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Considering how Apple just reinvented the text book with the new iBooks 2 App, the best feature about iBooks 2 is the ability of authors to write textbooks and publish them on iBooks. To make that project easier, Mac users can now download the iBooks Publisher App. This new app allows would be book sellers the ability to drag and drop photos, videos and even Microsoft Word files into various templates. If you use iWork you can drop a Keynote presentation into the doc, and it becomes an interactive widget. Authors can also arrange glossaries by highlighting and clicking words, and clicking again to add a definition.
The books can then be published straight to the Apple iBooks Store for either Free or a maximum of US $ 14.99, The paid books will go on revenue share with Apple, in a 70/30 split where the Authors get 70% of the total sales.
The App itself is quite amazing as we ant hands on with it.
When you start it up , it shows you a bunch of templates.
You can select your type and then continue to drag and drop media as per your convenience.
