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iOS

Apple cleans App Store of high-profile lookalike apps

Apple has declared war on lookalikes in its App Store.

The company today removed a handful of iOS applications that bore a resemblance to more popular apps, and had climbed the charts as a result.

As spotted by TechCrunch, apps like Tiny Birds, Plants vs. Zombie, Numbers with Friends, and Temple Jump have been removed from the App Store. That's not to be confused with titles like Tiny Wings, Plants vs. Zombies, Words with Friends, and Temple Run, longtime crowd favorites and best-sellers that remain available.

The removals come on the heels of a report posted by The GuardianRead more

Apple feels no need to offer lower cost iPhone, says analyst

Apple seems to have no desire to sell cheaper smartphones, according to a report from Citigroup technology analyst Richard Gardner.

Meeting with Apple CEO Tim Cook and Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer yesterday, Citigroup analysts discussed a variety of topics with the two executives, notably the smartphone market.

Asked about the sustainability of Apple's average selling prices and margins for the iPhone, Oppenheimer suggested that the company will keep focusing on producing "great products," believing that customers are willing to pay more for them.

"We did not get the impression that Apple feels a burning need … Read more

Apple's smartphone share rises, but Android still on top

Apple and Android both grabbed a bigger piece of the pie last quarter, but Google's mobile OS kept the top spot with almost half of all U.S. smartphone customers.

For the quarter, Android's market share rose to 47.3 percent, according to ComScore, up from 44.8 in the prior quarter. Apple also watched its share rise to 29.6 percent from 27.4 percent but remained in second place by a wide margin.

Apple enjoyed a huge gain in smartphone sales during the holiday quarter, selling a record 37 million handsets. But Android continued its onslaught … Read more

MyAssistant app teaches Siri some new tricks

There may come a time when Siri can help you buy a new flat-screen TV from the comfort of your bed, but for now the gal's capabilities are limited.

For the misfits and troublemakers who have jailbroken their iPhone 4S, there's a new app that promises to change that. It's called MyAssistant, and for 99 cents on third-party app market Cydia, it gives Siri much deeper access to your system settings and software than Apple offers out of the box.

How deep you might be wondering? Once installed it lets you do things like reboot your phone, … Read more

Reckless Racing 2 power-slides into the iTunes App Store

The sequel to one of our favorite iOS racing games is out today, and new game modes, customization options, and car upgrades make Reckless Racing 2 the best in its genre at the iTunes App Store.

When the original Reckless Racing came out, it was a revelation of what a savvy developer could do on an iOS device. With great-looking graphics, ultra-realistic physics, and a retro edge, Reckless Racing demonstrated a new breed of racing game on iOS.… Read more

Sync contact photos and usernames from Twitter to your iOS device

One of the most powerful data sets on your iOS device is your list of contacts. Many of the amazing features the iPhone and iPad have are predicated on the information available from your address book. To help get the most out of your iDevice experience, you can use Twitter to beef up your contacts.

iOS 5 added quite a bit of Twitter integration, including the ability to automatically retrieve usernames and profile photos for any of your contacts who have Twitter accounts.

Essentially, if your contact has an e-mail address associated with a Twitter account, you can choose to … Read more

Apple calls iMessage bug story an 'extremely rare situation'

Apple has weighed in on a controversial issue with its iMessage service that keeps accounts on devices even when the owner has wiped the phone.

A story posted by Gizmodo yesterday detailed the dangers of the issue after a reader sent the outlet photos and details of iMessage exchanges that appeared on their iPhone after having it serviced at an Apple store.

According to their story, it all stemmed from that employee using their own phone's SIM card as part of the repair, which linked up the customer's phone to that employee's iMessage account. That resulted in … Read more

iPhone users grabbed 6 million free apps a day in December

iPhone users were busy in December downloading more than 6 million of Apple's top free apps each day.

For the last month of 2011, the iPhone app store witnessed a record 6.04 million downloads per day, a 7 percent jump over the previous high of 5.45 million daily downloads in November.

Compiled by mobile ad firm Fiksu, the App Store Competitive Index looks at the total number of downloads of the top 200 free iPhone apps in the United States. The downloads have been gaining momentum since September when the average daily number was 3.8 million.… Read more

Supposed iPad 3 debug data teases A6 chip, 4G data

Do you believe photos of screenshots?

If you're one of those folks, Boy Genius Report has a tale for you this morning. The outlet has posted four shots of debugging code from a source who says they have Apple's next iPad in hand.

Still with me? Inside these shots are mentions of two--count them two--new iPad models, as well as a quad-core chip.

Before getting too excited about that two model thing, BGR says it can be inferred as one with just Wi-Fi and another with Wi-Fi and cellular networking. That second model is packing a chip that … Read more

China carrier deal could mean 40M extra iPhones in 2013

Apple's expansion to two additional carriers in China could bring in an extra 40 million iPhone buyers next year, according to a new analyst note.

Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty sent a note to investors yesterday (picked up by Apple Insider), suggesting that Apple this year will expand its mobile presence in China by making deals with China Telecom and China Mobile--the latter being the world's largest wireless carrier with about 650 million subscribers.

Huberty suggests Apple's next iPhone will be offered on both of those new networks, and with an estimated 20 percent of customers in … Read more