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

Zynga today acquired NaturalMotion, the company that developed the Clumsy Ninja app, for a total of $527 million in cash and stock. Clumsy Ninja, which was released in November of 2013 after a long development period, was highlighted by Apple during the iPhone 5 media event in September of 2012. Following its initial debut, the app and the company behind it received a lot of attention for the...

The National Football League will launch a digital streaming network called NFL Now this summer, ahead of the 2014 NFL season.The network will include game highlights and videos sourced from the NFL's 32 teams, NFL Network, NFL.com and NFL Films, in addition to a vault of NFL videos. Live team press conferences will be available, as well. There will also be a paid subscription service that will ...

Evernote today updated its iOS app to version 7.3.0, adding several new home screen customization options including three new color themes in light, dark, and classic green. Users have also gained the option to rearrange and hide unnecessary sections on the home screen, add a sync status bar, and display recently viewed items in Notes, Notebooks, Shortcuts, and Tags. Along with...

Facebook today announced Paper, a news creation and curation tool that ties into a user's Facebook account. The app is the first product to come out of Facebook Creative Labs, a division within Facebook made of small teams who are dedicated to startup-style projects. Paper is split into a news reader that pulls its content from both a user's Facebook News Feed and from well-known online...

Last October, Apple filed a motion seeking sanctions against Samsung and its outside lawyers, accusing both of unlawfully obtaining sensitive data about Apple's 2011 patent license agreement with Nokia. Samsung responded to the allegations by filing three motions intended to slow the investigation. However, those motions were denied by Judge Lucy Koh, who also proceeded to call Samsung's lack...

A Gmail glitch earlier this month resulted in some users accidentally deleting emails and unintentionally reporting others as spam (via The Verge). The bug occurred when users were managing their inboxes, and the system inadvertently applied these actions to the wrong email messages. In a notice appearing for some Gmail users, Google confirmed this issue occurred between January 15 and 22...

Negative reactions to Apple's Q1 2014 earnings report extended overseas to Japanese component manufacturers, says Reuters. Suppliers such as Taiyo Yuden, TDK, Sharp and Nitto Denko saw their stock prices fall by as much as 3.9 percent following the release of Apple's quarterly financial results. Stock prices of these Japanese suppliers are expected to rebound because of their broad client ...

The Automatic connected car system today received an over-the-air update that allows users to turn their Automatic Link hardware devices into iBeacons, reports TechCrunch. As iBeacons, Automatic devices let users transmit to or receive information from other sensors or devices in the vicinity. First introduced in March of 2013, the Automatic hardware plugs into a car's onboard diagnostics...

Back in December, it was reported that Sprint -- the U.S.'s third-largest cell carrier -- was preparing a bid to acquire T-Mobile, the country's fourth-largest carrier. The deal, depending on the stake Sprint attempts to buy, could be worth more than $20 billion.Recently, a pair of Sprint board members met with the U.S. Department of Justice to discuss a possible acquisition, reports The Wall...

While developer Steven Troughton-Smith has shared several screenshots and a video of iOS in the Car running on iOS 7.0.3, the iOS 7.1 beta currently available to developers offers even more iOS in the Car functionality, including a redesign. According to Troughton-Smith, it is difficult to access iOS in the Car in iOS 7.0.3, but another developer, Denis Stas, has discovered that it's much...

AT&T today announced its 4Q 2013 earnings, revealing the company added 1.2 million postpaid smartphones to its network (both upgrades and new subscribers) and gained 809,000 new subscribers, with 566,000 being postpaid customers with a contract. It is unclear how many of AT&T's new customers were choosing iPhones, however, as AT&T, like Verizon, no longer reports quarterly iPhone activations or...

Rap Genius, the site that recently had a run-in with Google for its dubious SEO strategies, today launched an official Genius iOS app that allows users to access the site's archive of song lyrics. The app includes access to annotated lyrics for millions of songs, and it also includes lyrical breakdowns and explanations that delve into the meaning behind phrases and words in music. Annotations...

Google today launched Chrome apps for iOS and Android, which will see Chrome-based apps encased in a native application shell that allows them to be distributed through the Apple App Store and Google Play. Currently, Chrome-packaged apps are written in JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, but are able to launch outside the browser, access APIs and work offline. Developers can access an early developer...

Even as Apple's share of the smartphone market declined in the fourth quarter of 2013, the rise of smartphones to replace more basic feature phones has allowed the company to continue increasing its share of the overall mobile phone market, according to new numbers from research firm IDC. According to IDC, yearly smartphone shipments topped one billion for the first time in 2013 and now...

Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and made public yesterday claim U.S. and UK intelligence agencies are retrieving personal data sent by mobile apps during mass surveillance sweeps. Rovio's Angry Birds was one of the apps targeted by intelligence agencies for key profile data such as age, location and gender, and the company has now defended itself against these...

During the company's earnings conference call today, Apple CEO Tim Cook commented on the state of the iPod, noting that the product is a declining category for the company:The way we look at it, our business is a sell-through point of view less iPod -- all of us have known for some time that iPod is a declining business. The iPod was Apple's "halo" product for years, getting new customers to buy ...

During its financial results conference call covering the 2013 holiday quarter, Apple shared new details on sales at its iTunes Store and Apple Retail segments, in addition to details about how much money the company is paying out to its developer partners on the App Store. Last quarter, Apple's customers spent $4.7 billion on iTunes, with $2 billion being paid to developers. The company has ...

Following approximately four-and-a-half months of availability, iOS 7 is now installed on 80 percent of devices connected to the App Store, according to the newest numbers posted on Apple's App Store support page for developers. As iOS 7 adoption numbers grow, iOS 6 usage continues to drop, and the older operating system is now installed on just 17 percent of devices. Three percent of...