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

Apple's iBookstore is coming to Brazil within the next 30 days, according to a Brazilian magazine. The iTunes Store and iTunes Match launched in Brazil late last year. Brazil has been specifically mentioned by CEO Tim Cook as an extremely important growth market for Apple. The launch of the iBookstore in Brazil may position Apple ahead of Amazon in the country. As the journalist Jardim points ...

As rumored last week, Facebook has released an updated version of its iOS app with support for the new iPad's Retina display. The update also delivers a number of bug fixes to one of the most popular apps of all time. What's New in Version 4.1.1 In this release, we added some features and fixed some bugs so now: - You can go offline in chat - The right profile picture appears for everyone ...

MacRumors reader Mike Jobson sent us this screenshot from the UK App Store that appears to hint at a forthcoming update for Facebook for iPad that would presumably add support for the tablet's Retina display. The Facebook app was last updated in December. ...

There are a number of iPad sketching applications on the App Store, with Penultimate clocking as one of the top 15 most purchased iPad apps ever. Now there's a new competitor that looks to take the iPad sketching world by storm. Paper is the first app by upstart development firm FiftyThree. A number of the employees spent time at Microsoft, developing Courier -- a dual-screen digital notebook...

2012 is shaping up to be a great year for political and news junkies, with huge Supreme Court cases, the Presidential election and lots more. To cater to that demand for news, Comedy Central has released an "Indecision 2012" companion app to its popular nightly news/entertainment shows The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. The app won't include any video content, but will act more as a...

Japanese blog Mac Otakara today offers a brief report claiming that Apple is working on a new product for release in 2013 that will carry a 5-inch Retina-quality display.The product which has 5-inch Retina Display is expected to be released in 2013, and resolution of this LCD will be 1,600 x 960 pixel (800 x 480 by legacy majour) or 1,280 x 960 pixel (640 x 480).Apple has been rumored to be...

The Harry Potter books have been made available as e-books for the first time, nearly 5 years after the release of the final book in the series. The books are available directly from author J.K. Rowling's Pottermore website. The complete collection costs $57.54 in the US. The books are purchased once from the Pottermore site and can be read via Amazon's Kindle service or downloaded in ePub...

China's Quality Certification Center has approved iPad model number A1416 -- that of the new iPad -- for sale in that country. China is an incredibly important market for Apple, with the company posting huge growth in the region in recent years. The approval, which was actually issued last week, comes as Apple CEO Tim Cook appeared in China for meetings with Apple...

Our sister-site TouchArcade points out this Japanese iPhone-powered robot dog. The "dog" is an app that is installed on the iPhone or iPod Touch and then acts as the face of the virtual pet. The dog was originally reported by Japanese blog Mac Otakara. The smart pet uses the front facing camera on the iOS device to recognize and react to certain gestures, and there will be over 100 different...

Tech in Asia points to a new report from Chinese site Sina.com claiming that Apple has reached a deal with Baidu to add the Chinese search engine as an option on its iOS browser as soon as next month.Apparently, Baidu’s cloud and mobile chief Li Mingyuan hinted at this during the launch of Baidu’s cloud storage service last week, saying that the company already had a comprehensive cooperation ...

Just days after the launch of Angry Birds Space, Rovio today announced via Twitter that the application has already seen ten million downloads. The game is topping Apple's paid and top-grossing charts for the App Store in countries around the world.10 million Angry Birds Space downloads in less than 3 days! Thanks to our fans, stay tuned for more!Even on the Mac platform, Angry Birds Space ranks ...

A tipster sends us this tale of a trip to the Fifth Avenue Apple Store last night. Went to the Fifth Ave store near midnight today, and saw that Apple was setting up a separate line just to handle the volume of iPad returns from Chinese resellers. The manager kept the separate line to ensure that regular customer's experience wasn't affected. Some people were returning up to 30. A number of...

It appears that some iPad Smart Covers aren't working properly with the new iPad, including older Apple Smart Covers. The new iPad has a slight change in how its magnets work. Apple has reversed the polarity of one set of magnets related to the sleep/wake sensor that turns the iPad off when the Smart Cover is closed. As a result, older Smart Covers, that weren't designed with this change in mind, ...

Angry Birds Space, the latest installment of the best selling mobile game of all time, has finally arrived. Rovio, the developer behind the series, partnered with NASA, the U.S. space agency, to promote the release, including a plug filmed by an Angry Bird-toting astronaut on the International Space Station. Angry Birds Space delivers the biggest change yet in the series' well-known "launch...

iDownloadblog reveals some new iOS 5.1 strings that include references to "4G".“4G_ON_CALL_CANCEL” = “Cancel”; “4G_ON_CALL_OK_DISABLE” = “Disable”; “4G_ON_CALL_OK_ENABLE” = “Enable”; “4G_ON_CALL_WARNING_DISABLE” = “Disabling 4G will end your phone call. Are you sure you want to disable 4G?”; “4G_ON_CALL_WARNING_ENABLE” = “Enabling 4G will end your phone...

The folks at iPatch iPods have created another hardware mod to follow up on their Backlit Apple logo from September. The original mod was revealed late last year, and they've since added a new feature which they describe as a "headphone jack torch". This video walks through the original glowing Apple mod and also the new headphone jack one: The...

Hipstamatic and Instagram -- Apple's iPhone Apps of the Year in 2010 and 2011 -- will be announcing a partnership that allows photos taken in Hipstamatic to be ported to Instagram's social network with one click. The partnership was reported by Fast Company. It represents the first time Instagram has opened up this platform API to third parties, and marks a move toward letting photos freely...

Google has updated its Google Earth iOS app with support for KML files to add custom maps and overlays to the earth. KML files exist for all sorts of different types of data, including real-time earthquake maps and airline flight tracking, or educational information about volcanos. One of the most powerful features of Google Earth is the ability to view custom maps or overlays, which are also ...