Most developers will tell you that getting rich quickly through an iPhone App is the exception, but the stories of those who do continue to inspire many. Newsweek profiles some of the biggest winners of the App Store at this early stage.
Ge Wang is the developer behind Smule who has created a number of $0.99 applications, the most popular of which is Ocarina, a virtual musical wind instrument (video). Ocarina has seen over 400,000 downloads in less than a month and remains in the Top 10 Paid iPhone Apps. Wang expects his company to pull in close to $1 million this year.
Pangea Software is another company that has been able to find huge success on the App Store. As a long time Mac developer, Pangea was able to leverage several of their existing titles into popular iPhone Apps. Games such as Cro-Mag Rally and Enigmo will help Pangea generate $5 million in revenue this year. Pangea's Brian Greenstone notes that in the past four and a half months, Pangea's iPhone apps have generated more income than retail sales of all of Pangea's apps for the Mac for the past 21 years combined. It's no surprise that Pangea has given up writing Mac games and will focus entirely on the iPhone from now on. Greenstone claims this sort of success is within anyone's reach:
"Some kid in his bedroom can literally make a million bucks just by writing a little app," Greenstone says.
Friday January 9, 2026 8:17 am PST by Tim Hardwick
2026 could be a bumper year for Apple's Mac lineup, with the company expected to announce as many as four separate MacBook launches. Rumors suggest Apple will court both ends of the consumer spectrum, with more affordable options for students and feature-rich premium lines for users that seek the highest specifications from a laptop.
Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos.
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Thursday January 8, 2026 2:56 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Apple's iPhone development roadmap runs several years into the future and the company is continually working with suppliers on several successive iPhone models at the same time, which is why we often get rumored features months ahead of launch. The iPhone 18 series is no different, and we already have a good idea of what to expect for the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max.
One thing worth...
Monday January 12, 2026 7:38 am PST by Joe Rossignol
In a statement shared with CNBC today, Apple confirmed that Google Gemini will power the next-generation version of Siri that is slated to launch later this year.
"After careful evaluation, we determined that Google's technology provides the most capable foundation for Apple Foundation Models and we're excited about the innovative new experiences it will unlock for our users," the statement...
Monday January 12, 2026 11:38 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Elon Musk today expressed concern about Apple and Google partnering on a more personalized version of Siri powered by Google's generative AI platform Gemini.
"This seems like an unreasonable concentration of power for Google, given that [they] also have Android and Chrome," wrote Musk, in a post on X.
Musk serves as CEO of xAI, the company behind Gemini competitor Grok.
It is unlikely...
Monday January 12, 2026 1:15 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple today seeded the second beta of iOS 26.3, nearly a month after the first beta. So far, the update includes a couple of new features for iPhones.
iOS 15.3 through iOS 18.3 were all released in late January over the years, so it is thereby likely that iOS 26.3 will be released towards the end of this month as well. The update is compatible with the iPhone 11 series and newer.
Below,...
Monday January 12, 2026 8:48 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple and Google today announced that Google Gemini will help power not only a more personalized version of Siri, but a range of future Apple Intelligence features.
"Apple and Google have entered into a multi-year collaboration under which the next generation of Apple Foundation Models will be based on Google's Gemini models and cloud technology," the companies said, in a statement. "These...
Friday January 9, 2026 4:24 am PST by Tim Hardwick
The Unicode Consortium has published a draft list of emoji that could come to smartphones and other devices in the future. The list shared by Emojipedia outlines 19 emoji candidates under consideration for Emoji 18.0, which is expected to be finalized in September 2026.
Among the proposed additions are a squinting face emoji, left- and right-pointing thumb gestures, a pickle, a lighthouse, a ...
Monday January 12, 2026 8:19 am PST by Joe Rossignol
iOS 26.3 will likely be released to the public later this month, but it appears that Apple is preparing to push out another software update in the interim.
Apple's software engineers have started testing iOS 26.2.1, according to the MacRumors visitor logs, which have been a reliable indicator of upcoming iOS versions. The update will likely be released at some point this week or next week.
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