Amazon has quietly launched a new web app called "Kindle Cloud Reader" that allows Chrome and Safari users to access their Kindle eBooks through their browsers. The Cloud Reader also supports the iPad version of Safari, giving Amazon a workaround to Apple's new subscription rules requiring any in-app sales to go through Apple's purchasing system.
The iPad version is especially good because the store is fully optimized for the device. And you can easily switch back and forth between the store and your own library. It feels like a native app, but it’s not.
The web app even supports local storage so that you can read your Kindle books even without a web connection.
Apple has been at odds with many content providers after implementing their new subscription rules preventing native iOS app publishers from selling content outside of Apple's own in-app system. Amazon complied with the rules by removing the Kindle Store button from their native application, but for the iPad now has this web-based option that does directly integrate with their sales system.
Thursday January 23, 2025 6:41 am PST by Joe Rossignol
iOS 18.3 should be released to the public next week, following beta testing since mid-December. While the software update is a relatively minor one, it still includes a handful of new features, changes, and bug fixes for iPhones.
Below, we recap everything new in iOS 18.3.
Notification Summary Changes
Examples of inaccurate Apple Intelligence notification summaries
Apple Intelligence...
Thursday January 23, 2025 7:32 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Walmart still does not accept Apple Pay or other NFC payments at its more than 4,600 stores across the U.S., and it stood firm on its reasoning for that today.
A spokesperson for Walmart today informed MacRumors that its position on contactless payments has not changed since we last reached out about the matter in 2022. The big-box retailer said it remains focused on its own convenient...
Friday January 24, 2025 1:55 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Apple is set to release iOS 18.3 next week, bringing further refinements to Apple Intelligence features, a couple of neat new capabilities to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 devices, and bug fixes.
While not quite as packed with new features as Apple's preceding iOS 18 point releases, iOS 18.3 still introduces capabilities that aim to make your iPhone smarter and more intuitive. Below, we've...
Wednesday January 22, 2025 6:01 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
A new Apple TV is expected to be released later this year. In this article, we recap rumored features and changes for the device.
The next Apple TV will be equipped with Apple's own combined Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. He said the chip supports Wi-Fi 6E, which would be an upgrade over the current Apple TV's standard Wi-Fi 6 support. Wi-Fi 6E extends the...
Tuesday January 21, 2025 4:31 pm PST by Juli Clover
Apple provided developers and public beta testers with the release candidate version of iOS 18.3 today, and with it comes release notes confirming what's new. While we knew about several of the features that are in the update, there are some lesser known tweaks and bug fixes.
The update adds new Visual Intelligence features for iPhone 16 models, it tweaks Notification summaries on all...
Friday January 24, 2025 8:16 am PST by Joe Rossignol
iOS 18.3 is expected to be widely released next week, and that means the first iOS 18.4 beta for iPhones should be just around the corner.
Apple has previously implied that iOS 18.4 will be released in April, as that is when it promised to make Apple Intelligence available in even more languages.
Below, we outline what to expect from iOS 18.4 so far.
Apple Intelligence for Siri
Siri ...
Wednesday January 22, 2025 2:07 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Popular caller ID app Truecaller is rolling out an update that brings real-time caller ID support to its iOS subscribers.
Apple introduced Live Caller ID Lookup in iOS 18, allowing third-party caller ID apps to securely retrieve information about a caller from their servers, hence today's Truecaller update.
iPhone users can enable the Live Caller ID Lookup feature by going to Settings ➝ ...
Wednesday January 22, 2025 9:39 am PST by Joe Rossignol
New information has surfaced that indicates the rumored iPhone SE 4, iPad 11, and new iPad Air models are nearing launch.
A private account on social media platform X today revealed that iOS 18.3 or iPadOS 18.3 will be preinstalled on all of those upcoming devices when they are released. It is still unclear exactly when the devices will launch, but this information suggests that Apple will...
Friday January 17, 2025 2:42 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
iOS 19 is still around six months away from being announced, but a new leak has allegedly revealed a completely redesigned Camera app.
Based on footage it obtained, YouTube channel Front Page Tech shared a video showing what the new Camera app will apparently look like, with the key change being translucent menus for camera controls. Overall, the design of these menus looks similar to...
Stuff like this shows how useful HTML5 can be. I'm pleased to see things like this myself, great work from Amazon.
Looking forward to see more things like this powered by HTML5.
Since it's HTML5, it's a bit like Amazon beat Apple at their own game with this. :D
And it really does serve Apple right for the terms they enacted. It's also a good move should Apple decide to become even more anti-competitive with their App Store terms.
Seems like a pretty brilliant use of the latest HTML5 technologies (especially with the off-line functionality). The obvious benefit, as mentioned, would be getting around Apple's "give us 30% of the price for in-app purchases" rule; but it would seem to have other advantages as well. If Apple chose to dramatically change the API in a future release of iOS - or if Google did the same with Android, for that matter - Amazon wouldn't have to break a sweat. Kindle users would continue to have full access to their books on the iPad with no extra effort or feverish overtime work by their programers to update. It's not as if Apple or Google can remove HTML5 functionality without repercussions...
A lot of the scrap on the iOS app store would be much better done as web apps. Much more universal, much less of a pain to develop for the developers and also would help with the crowding in the app store.
Let's face it, many of the apps are just document viewers or smallish databases. The problem is with the "gold rush", everyone went native, destroying basically 10 years of moving stuff to the Web where it fit gracefully. The 80s and 90s was where boxed software was the rage, where you had to install it locally. The late 90s brought us rich web applications where server-side dynamically generated HTML technologies the likes of J2EE and other, simpler stacks.
HTML5 solves a lot of the issues we had client side (offline storage, richer UIs) and moving forward, a lot of apps just make sense as webapps.
