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

FOSS Patents reports that Apple has been granted an expanded sales ban on Samsung's Galaxy Tab 7.7 over design infringement, with a German court issuing a preliminary injunction ruling that Samsung may not sell the device anywhere in the European Union. A sales ban in Germany has been in effect for a number of months now under a decision related to its larger sibling, the Galaxy Tab 10.1, but...

Apple will streamline the App Store purchasing experience when iOS 6 arrives this fall, as noticed by Reddit submitter Varmanj. In two significant changes, Apple will no longer require that users enter passwords to download free apps, nor when users download an update to an existing purchased app, whether paid or free.In iOS 5, users must enter their password whenever they wish to download an...

As noted by Engadget, Chinese company Proview has been sued by its own lawyers responsible for handling its trademark lawsuits against Apple that yielded a $60 million settlement earlier this month. The law firm claims that it is owed $2.4 million for its role in the case, but Proview has yet to make the promised payment.While acknowledging their contractual arrangement (wherein the law firm...

As noted by 9to5Mac, Apple has turned on its iTunes Match service in Hungary and Poland today. Notably, the additions appear to make the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden the only ones of the over 60 countries in which Apple offers music through the iTunes Store to not have access to iTunes Match. iTunes Match is Apple's subscription service that allows users to...

Subatomic Studios launched their long awaited sequel to Fieldrunners tonight. Fieldrunners was one of the early success stories on the App Store with an initial launch in October 2008. The game was one of the first Tower Defense games in the App Store and has since been ported to a number of other platforms. Fieldrunners 2 builds on the popularity of the first game:Fieldrunners 2 was...

While AT&T hasn't yet decided whether or not it will charge users for using Apple's FaceTime video-chat service over its cellular network, Sprint says it's customers can use the service free of charge.Reports the Wall Street Journal:Sprint Nextel Corp., which still offers unlimited data to new and existing users on its network, said it has no plans to erect pricing barriers to FaceTime."We...

Apple has added a new feature to its online store, now offering a text message alert notification service to keep shoppers up-to-date on their orders. Apple will send users a text message once their order ships or is ready for pickup at a retail store. Texts are only send between 8AM and 9PM in the recipients' time zone.Apple Notifications is a text-message-based alerts service designed to...

NBC has released a pair of iOS apps to give US-based viewers comprehensive 2012 Summer Olympics coverage, including livestreaming of every event from London.The most exciting development in Olympics coverage this year is NBC's livestreaming of every event from London. The company plans to offer streaming on computers both on the NBCOlympics.com website, and on the NBC Olympics Live Extra iPhone ...

ThinkiOS reports (via 9to5Mac) that it has received a pair of drawings claimed to be of the "iPad mini" from a source in China. The drawings are rather simplistic in nature, and several other inconsistencies make it difficult to believe that they are genuine drawings based on the actual design of the rumored product. The most glaring inconsistency is the aspect ratio of the display on the...

Back in February 2011, Apple executive Eddy Cue was on hand for the launch of The Daily, a new tablet-focused news publication from News Corp. that premiered on the iPad. Availability of The Daily has since expanded to both Android tablets and the iPhone, but questions about the publication's viability have remained as revenues remain well below the tens of millions of dollars being pumped...

Indie developer Andreas Illiger has released a major update to his popular Tiny Wings iOS game tonight. The 2.0 version is a free update to the original $0.99 game and offers Retina support and a new game mode called "Flight School". From the update notes:Hi Tiny Wings fans! The long-awaited Tiny Wings 2 is finally done! I’ve put a lot of love into creating this major update, and I hope...

Facebook today announced the launch of a significant update to its software development kit (SDK) for iOS developers, making it easier to include Facebook integration within apps. The release also sets the stage for direct Facebook integration in iOS 6.After iOS 6 launches to users, the SDK will automatically use the native Facebook Login in iOS 6 when available. Just enable Login with Facebook...

Gotta Be Mobile posts a pair of photos of what it calls an "engineering sample" of the next-generation iPhone. While it isn't entirely clear just what the sample represents, it seems to be solid chunk of aluminum machined into the form factor of the rumored device. Assuming that the sample is genuine and related to the iPhone development and production process, it supports previous photos...

Two major games are coming to the iPhone and iPad on Thursday: Amazing Alex, Rovio's first non-Angry Birds title, and Tiny Wings 2, the sequel to the seventh most purchased iPhone app of all time.Here's what Rovio has to say about Amazing Alex:Meet Amazing Alex! With his boundless imagination, this whiz kid turns everything into adventure! From cleaning his room to battling cardboard robots in ...

Twitter has updated its iOS app with push notifications for tweets and ambient notifications for when using the app, along with a new logo and a number of other additions.What's New in Twitter Version 4.3- Expanded Tweets: when you view Tweet details containing links to partner websites, you can now see content previews, view images, play videos and more [please note: this feature is rolling...

TED, the popular technology conference, has launched a new iOS app containing short eBooks written by TED speakers, with some including video and audio -- including TED talks -- embedded directly into the books.TED Books are short original electronic books produced every two weeks by TED Conferences. Like the best TEDTalks, they're personal and provocative, and designed to spread great ideas. TED ...

UX Write [App Store], a new iOS word processing app by UX Productivity, aims to compete with Apple's own Pages, Dataviz's >Documents to Go and other heavy-hitting word processing apps currently available in the App Store. UX Write touts several features to streamline the writing process for long and complex documents, including unique cursor and text selection controls, extra punctuation keys on...

Over the past few days, Digitimes has posted a series of rumors from its own supply chain sources and other reports out of Asia discussing a number of modifications reportedly being made by Apple on the third-generation iPad. Apple is said to already be making some of the changes, with a public launch of the revised model set for later this year. The changes include: - As we mentioned in...