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

Shazam was one of the early App Store success stories, offering users the ability to easily identify music by capturing a snippet of the song and matching it against a database to provide title and artist information. The service has since expanded to integrate with the iTunes Store, YouTube, lyrics, and more, with TV shows and ads even adopting Shazam to allow users to easily learn more about...

Popular email app Mailbox, which launched for iPhone in early February with a reservation system that saw well over one million users sign up before the company eliminated reservations last month, has now gone universal with a native interface for the iPad. ReadWrite has more on the development, including a brief interview with Mailbox founder Gentry Underwood about how designing for the...

As noted by The Verge, Microsoft has released a new Windows 8 tablet ad that uses Siri to highlight a few of the iPad's shortcomings, depicting the ASUS VivoTab Smart tablet as a robust productivity machine while implying that the iPad is more suited to entertainment. In the ad, which is entitled "Less Talking, More Doing," an iPad is depicted next to the aforementioned VivoTab Smart, showing...

Realmac's gesture-based list making iPhone app Clear has been updated to version 1.2.2, adding a feature that allows users to email their lists to other people. When viewing a list, Clear users can shake their phones to bring up the new emailing option. Emails sent from Clear contain the app's lists plus a link that provides the option to open the sent lists within the app. The Clear update...

In an event today at the CTIA conference, case maker OtterBox announced it was acquiring waterproof case maker LifeProof. OtterBox will keep LifeProof's San Diego location and employees will remain in their current locations. OtterBox global headquarters remain in Fort Collins, Colorado. The companies are not disclosing any terms for the transaction.Much like OtterBox, LifeProof is a rapidly...

Google has announced plans to roll out an update to the iOS version of Chrome that will enable voice searching. The feature will function similarly to Siri on the iPhone, requiring a tap on the microphone to bring up the interactive search interface. Touch the microphone, say your search query aloud and see your results (in some cases spoken back to you), all without typing a single letter....

FiftyThree, the developer behind the popular sketching app Paper, has posted a lengthy article examining the new Zoom feature that was added to Paper earlier this month.Zoom is one of those UI controls, like the color picker, that has grown so familiar as to become almost invisible. Designers drag and drop it out of a mental library of stock functionality, and the most pressing consideration is...

As noted by Gizmodo, iLoveHandles has launched a new Trunk Lightning charging cable for the iPhone 5, offering an innovative posable design that allows the short cable to also serve as a stand for the device.Unlike the short, flaccid charging cables on the market, you can bend Trunk vertical to charge on the wall, bend it the other way and use GPS in the car, or straighten it out and put it in a...

Logitech today announced the upcoming launch of its Wired Keyboard for iPad, a $60 accessory specifically targeted at schools. The keyboard is available in both Lightning and 30-pin varieties and aims to eliminate the complexity of pairing numerous Bluetooth keyboards with their respective iPads in a classroom setting.“Schools are increasingly purchasing iPads for use in the classroom,” said...

Bioware and LucasArts’ Star Wars role-playing game Knights of the Old Republic may be coming to the iPad in the near future, reports IGN, after obtaining a revealing email newsletter that Aspyr Media accidentally sent out to fans. A header in the email, which was meant to advertise a sale on Call of Duty games, leaked the news: "The critically-acclaimed Star Wars RPG is now available on...

VUDU, the third most popular internet video-on-demand provider behind Apple's iTunes and Amazon's Instant Video, today updated its app with a feature that allows users to download movies for offline viewing, a redesigned video player, and more. Previously, VUDU users using the VUDU Player app had to stream their content from within the app and could not view their movies and TV shows offline. ...

Following the opening of a new retail location in Melbourne last month, Apple is set to open another Australian Apple Store on May 25, this time in Adelaide. The Adelaide Apple Store will be Apple’s 20th retail location in Australia, and it is located at Rundle Place, a four-story shopping center that houses more than 70 stores. Adelaide is Australia's 5th largest city and the new Apple...

The Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai is perhaps the world's most luxurious hotel, and the latest addition continues that tradition. The seven-star hotel is now giving 24-carat gold-plated iPads from Gold & Co to guests for use during their stay.The iPads will act as a 'virtual concierge', offering information on restaurants in the hotel, as well as spa treatments and butler services. They carry the ...

Just as Yahoo has announced its acquisition of Tumblr, the Tumblr team has released an update for its iOS app bringing a redesigned user interface that offers up a brand new post type chooser, displaying post options that fan out vertically from the app's redesigned compose button to allow for speedier posting. The redesigned menu is similar to the radial posting options used by social...

Anatolia News Agency reports that Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited Apple yesterday as part of a tour of Silicon Valley companies ahead of the country's move to purchase 10.6 million tablets for its schoolchildren. Erdoğan also visited Microsoft's Bay Area outpost and Google during his trip. Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (left) visits Apple The meeting at Apple ...

Gameloft is offering up two of its most popular games for free this weekend. Both N.O.V.A. 3 - Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance and Gangstar Rio: City of Saints can be downloaded at no cost for the first time ever. Originally released last year, N.O.V.A. 3 is a first person shooter with impressive graphics and a science fiction theme. Like many of Gameloft’s games, it includes a multiplayer...

Haunting Melissa, from Hooked Media Digital and "The Ring" producer Neil Edelstein, is an app that aims to deliver movies on mobile devices in an entirely new way. Much like a TV show on iTunes, the film is broken up into segments that can be unlocked by sharing a user's viewing experience on Facebook, purchasing each episode within the app for $1.99 or paying $6.99 to $14.99 for the entire...

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has begun sending educational letters to app developers to make them aware of upcoming changes to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) that was updated back in December.The two letters [PDF, PDF] inform developers that the restricted collection of personal information of kids 13-and-under has been expanded to include photographs and video and...