MacRumors iPhone and iPad Blog: Apps, News, and Rumors

Apple has updated the iTunes Connect portal that developers use to track and manage App Store apps. The site has a new Sales and Trends section that allows developers to track sales across certain time periods, sales groups, and more, as well as estimate total revenue amounts, iMore reports.The lack of modern, useful reporting tools has been a source of developer complaints since developers have ...

Apple's first retail store in Brazil opened in Rio de Janeiro this weekend, with approximately 1,700 customers waiting in line for the grand opening (via The Globe]. Customers started queueing up on Thursday night for the Saturday morning debut, with groups waiting both inside and outside the Village Mall. Photo from The Globe The opening of the Rio de Janeiro store was announced last week...

T-Mobile is planning to implement some changes to its "Jump" early upgrade program, according to TmoNews. The company has plans to nix the six month waiting period and eliminate limits on how often customers can upgrade their devices, but there's a caveat – under the new terms, customers must pay off 50% of their existing device costs before being allowed to upgrade. As with the existing...

The official Apple Store app for iOS offers free books, apps and other content that users can download to their iOS device, and the company has recently updated its promotion to make Tetris [Direct Link] from Electronic Arts available for free. The current Tetris offer is advertised as "A throwback for you. On us." Typically priced at $0.99 in the iOS App Store, the app is free when users...

Last month, it was reported that Apple CEO Tim Cook and Samsung Electronics CEO Oh-Hyun Kwon agreed to attend a mediation session on or before February 19 ahead of a second patent infringement lawsuit between the two companies set for next month. Now, ZDNet Korea [Google Translate] (via The Verge) is reporting that both companies met in the United States last week but failed to reach an agreement ...

BlackBerry Messenger for iOS was today updated to version 2.0, adding a number of features to the app that have long been a part of the native BBM function on BlackBerry's own line of phones. Version 2 of BBM for iOS now supports direct voice calling between BBM users over Wi-Fi or cellular networks. Channels, another feature new to the update, allow users to communicate in a group setting...

Apple's Chief of Worldwide Marketing, Phil Schiller, will be among the witnesses that both Apple and Samsung lawyers plan to call to the stand when the two companies return to court in March, reports PCWorld. The second trial will cover newer products that were not able to be included in the first jury trial. Phil Schiller was first called as a witness during the initial patent dispute between ...

Taco Bell is planning to roll out its mobile ordering platform nationwide later this year, according to a report from Nation's Restaurant News, an industry trade publication. Taco Bell has been developing its new mobile ordering app for two-and-a-half years, testing the platform at five stores in California.A number of other restaurants have supported mobile ordering, including Chipotle, as...

While some hints about the functionality of Apple's upcoming smart watch have surfaced through software leaks and the company's hiring of a slew of sensor experts, the design of the product still remains a total mystery. It is unknown what kind of screen the device will have, how the band will work, and how it will incorporate the myriad sensors it is rumored to include. For that reason, a...

Almost half of the consumers who buy a new smartphone are storing their older phone instead of recycling it in the used handset market, according to the "Mobile Mountain Study" conducted by research group OnePoll for resale site SellCell (via MarketWatch). These unused phones are worth almost $47 billion, with older iPhone models accounting for approximately $13.4 billion of these hoarded phones. ...

Rovio today announced a new version of its popular Angry Birds game after hinting about it yesterday on Twitter. The upcoming Angry Birds Stella features the "fierce and feisty" female lead character, Stella, along with her "friends and (fr)enemies." Angry Birds Stella will open a door to a part of the Angry Birds universe you've never seen before! There will be plenty of fun and adventure, ...

Verizon today introduced its new "MORE Everything" plans, which offers up to double the monthly data for customers while also implementing doubled bandwidth, a complimentary 25GB of cloud storage, and unlimited international messaging. The carrier is also offering discounts for customers enrolled in its Verizon Edge early upgrade program, as those with monthly data plans of 8GB of data or...

Rovio today tweeted a teaser image of an upcoming Angry Birds game, which it calls "a big adventure with new birds." Many of the games in Rovio's ultra popular Angry Birds series have utilized the same group of birds introduced in the original game, each of which has its own special ability. While the company has added some new birds and modified existing birds for select games like Angry...

Apple’s iPad Air outperforms competing tablets by a significant margin when it comes to battery life, according to a new test conducted by Which? Test Lab, a consumer test organization in the United Kingdom.In a battery usage test that covered both Internet and video use, the iPad Air bested both the iPad 2 and the Retina iPad Mini, as well as tablets from competing companies like Amazon,...

iOS devices accounted for 73 percent of all enterprise mobile device activations and grabbed the top ten spots for most popular devices in the fourth quarter of 2013, reports Good Technology in its Mobility Index Report for Q4 2013.From a device perspective, we continued to see an increase in iOS activations this quarter, which we can attribute to two new iPhone models coming to market just...

At the same time the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration is easing restrictions on the in-flight use of electronics for passengers, it is tightening its rules on electronics usage by pilots. A new FAA rule (PDF) published on Tuesday prohibits the personal use of electronic devices by flight crew members while an aircraft is being operated. It is an addendum to the FAA's 1981 "Sterile Cockpit"...

Fuse Chicken, the company behind the multi-function Une Bobine iPhone stand, today launched a new product on crowd-funding site Indiegogo. Called the TogoDock, Fuse Chicken’s newest iPhone accessory combines a magnet-laden mount with an integrated charging cable, allowing users to turn any surface into a dedicated charging station. The TogoDock can be mounted on any surface, from a wall to a ...

At CES last month, LaCie announced its "Fuel" wireless hard drive for iOS and Mac devices, allowing users to easily expand storage for their devices. With the Fuel now available for purchase, LaCie has given MacRumors some hands-on time with the Fuel, showing that the device does indeed live up to its billing for those willing to carry around an extra device as needed. Similar to the Wireless...