iPhone

Six months after Mark Papermaster accepted a key leadership role at Apple, he has finally started leading the group developing future iPhones and iPods.

Papermaster's first official day was Friday. His title is senior vice president of Devices Hardware Engineering, and he reports directly to CEO Steve Jobs. Papermaster replaced Tony Fadell as the leader of the hardware design of Apple's mobile computers, while Scott Forstall is still in charge of the software development that runs on those devices.

Apple had to fight with Papermaster's former employer, IBM, in order to get him into the fold. IBM … Read more

This story has been updated. See below for details.

Just before 2 p.m. PDT Thursday, Apple delivered the 1 billionth App Store application, just nine months after the store launched.

The whole countdown process was a little arbitrary, but nonetheless represents a significant milestone for Apple. Although not without its share of controversy, the App Store has been a resounding success for mobile computing, and has forced Apple's competitors to take similar steps.

Someone won a fair amount of Apple gear as part of a contest surrounding the promotion, but Apple has yet to announce the winner.

Update, … Read more

Updated at 3:00 p.m. PT with word from Sikalosoft.

Apple issued a statement Thursday apologizing for allowing the Baby Shaker application onto the App Store.

Just hours before the App Store offers up its 1 billionth download, Apple was forced to acknowledge that perhaps the most notorious iPhone application ever constructed was "deeply offensive" and a "mistake." Baby Shaker appeared on the App Store Monday, and was pulled Wednesday after a media frenzy grew following the discovery of the application by the founder of a shaken baby syndrome foundation.

Apple's statement follows in … Read more

LyricFind has been trying to compile song lyrics into a searchable database since 2000, and after a few years of failed negotiations with rights holders, the company is finally getting some traction.

Earlier this month, it released a lyrics app for the Slacker RadioPlus service. The Web site has never been much use: it only lets you search on snippets of lyrics to try to find song matches; I'm much more interested in entering a song title to get the full lyrics for that song.

So I was excited when I heard that LyricFind was releasing an iPhone app … Read more

Coming off the best quarter in the company's history that didn't involve a holiday miracle, don't expect Apple to make major strategic changes.

The worst recession in decades has had a limited effect on the consumer electronics powerhouse that is the modern-day Apple. The company's second-quarter earnings results shattered Wall Street expectations, despite a relatively weak quarter for the Mac, the rise of low-cost Netbooks, and the strong performance of iPhone rivals such as Research in Motion's BlackBerry.

As the economic situation has worsened, some analysts and observers have opined that Apple needs to embrace … Read more

Apple has removed the Baby Shaker application from the App Store, just hours after it was discovered.

The application still shows up in the App Store search, but upon clicking on the title, an error message appears. Baby Shaker, a game in which the user is invited to silence a baby's cries by violently shaking an iPhone, appeared on the App Store Monday despite Apple's policy of banning "offensive" iPhone applications.

Company representatives have still not responded to inquires about how Baby Shaker made it into the App Store in the first place. In the past, … Read more

Updated 1:25 p.m.: Apple has pulled Baby Shaker from the App Store.

If you needed any further proof that Apple's App Store approval process is horrifyingly out of whack, consider one of the latest additions to the App Store: Baby Shaker.

A company called Sikalosoft is currently selling a $0.99 iPhone application called Baby Shaker, as of Monday. The object of Baby Shaker is to stop the incessant crying of an infant pictured on screen by violently shaking the iPhone, at which point two red "x" marks appear over the baby's eyes. "… Read more

China Mobile is staking out its own ground in the mobile-application marketplace.

According to IDG News Service, the world's largest wireless carrier plans to introduce its own mobile-application store later this year, calling it "Mobile Market." The report says the store will be open to both independent developers and companies, though it's not clear what operating system or platform technologies will be used by the phones running on China Mobile's network when the store is ready to go.

China Mobile's plans for Mobile Market illustrate the difficulties that it and Apple faced in trying … Read more

We could stare at the countdown tickers on Worldometers all day. Wow, 10.3 billion toilets have been flushed so far today! So it's no wonder we love the Apple App store contest with its mesmerizing flipping numbers counting us down to the 1 billionth app download, when some lucky punter will win shedloads of Mac stuff and a $10,000 iTunes gift card.

As the hour approaches--we're topping 988 million and change at the time of this writing--Mobile Squared, a U.K. research company, is helping us game the system by figuring out when the crucial moment … Read more