iOS

Back in the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, one of the favorite destinations for kids after school and on weekends was the local video arcade. Many readers will probably remember changing dollars for tokens, stacking up tokens and quarters on machines to indicate you "had next," and how quickly you could blow your money by playing game after game. Sadly, arcades slowly died out as home gaming consoles improved and stand-up arcade cabinets--for the most part--became a thing of the past.

When iOS devices and the iTunes App Store came along years later, the developers of those old games (… Read more

Apple customers downloaded more than 5 million games each day in March from the company's App Store, say market researchers Distimo and Newzoo, and that's just among the 63 million users tracked for a recent survey.

Combining their individual data for a single report, Distimo and Newzoo found that games are the single biggest category of apps on Apple's App Store, accounting for half of all downloads of both free and paid apps. Tracking a total of 63 million iOS users in March across the U.S. and six countries in Europe, the two research firms discovered … Read more

Last night, Yahoo announced the update for the Yahoo Messenger app to work with the iPad, adding voice and video calling for iPad 2 owners, a sleek new iPad-optimized interface, and improved spam management that lets you block one or all add requests from a single view.

Yahoo Messenger (Universal) had already been available on the iPhone and iPod Touch since April 2009. But with this Universal update, iPad users will no longer have to use the unoptimized iPhone client on their larger iPad screens.

No longer just for instant messages, Yahoo Messenger lets you share photos and videos, make … Read more

A patent application released this morning has provided clues to features Apple might add to iTunes and iOS to make entire music libraries take up less space on mobile devices with limited storage.

U.S. patent application No. 20110118858, which was unearthed by Apple Insider earlier today, details a system where segments of music clips from a user's library are stored locally on a device. When combined with an infrastructure that can fetch the rest of a song once it starts being played, this could provide users with a seamless music listening experience of their entire library, even without … Read more

Android increased its lead over Apple's iOS in April as the top mobile platform tracked by ad network Millennial Media.

Releasing its April MobileMix report today, Millennial Media found that Android accounted for 53 percent of all ad impressions on its network last month, a gain of 10 percent from March. That marked the fifth consecutive month in which Google's mobile OS was the leader.

Android's growth in April came at the expense of both iOS and Research In Motion's BlackBerry OS.

For the month, the share of ad impressions for iOS fell to 28 percent … Read more

Android is the top mobile platform in North America, according to mobile ad network InMobi, but the iPhone's iOS is close behind thanks to a recent surge.

InMobi's Mobile Insights Report for April found that Google's Android remained in the lead among mobile platforms in North America with 37 percent of all ad impressions on its network, a slight increase from January. However, the launch of the Verizon iPhone in February helped boost Apple's share of ad impressions by 9.4 percentage points to 33 percent.

BlackBerry maker RIM found itself in third place in North … Read more

Government inquiries into what companies are doing with location information from mobile devices enter yet another round next month.

The Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission are holding a public forum on June 28 to discuss the topic, the AP reports. On the invite list are both Apple and Google, companies that have been called to testify in front of Senate subcommittees on the issue twice this month.

Representatives from Apple and Google are slated to appear in Washington, D.C., this Thursday to answer questions about mobile privacy and protection from U.S. lawmakers in a hearing … Read more

Google released an update to its Google Search app for iPhone today, claiming that the new and improved app is up to 20 percent more responsive than the previous version.

Interestingly, Google has decided that one of its signature features slows down performance and might erode accuracy. Just Talk uses the iPhone's accelerometer to activate voice search when you lift the phone to your ear, and was quite the stir when it first debuted. It's now turned off by default, though you can enable it in the settings and you can still manually launch a voice search by pressing the microphone button in the app.

In addition, Google has jiggered the search results to make them more finger-friendly. Fonts are larger, and you no longer have to precisely tap a link to open the page; you can just hit just the target area. It looks like the concept of "fat fingered" selection has sunk in.

Google Search is free, and it's available in the App Store for devices running iOS 3.0 and above.… Read more

Apple is said to be "actively investigating" the patent claims made by holdings firm Lodsys, which last week began sending a handful of developers notices that their apps were infringing on a patent the group held, The Guardian reports.

Just yesterday Lodsys posted a series of frequently asked questions, along with corresponding answers to its blog, wherein it detailed how its patent pertains to the in-app purchase feature of iOS, and the developers who use it. The group seeks an ongoing, revenue-based licensing fee, as well as back payment on apps that make use of the feature.

So … Read more