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

Back in March, Marvel announced that it would give away 700 of its No. 1 digital comics as part of a South by Southwest promotion. Unfortunately, the promotion caused more demand than expected and Marvel shut it down early after the ComiXology servers were overwhelmed with requests. Marvel today resurrected the promotion, once again offering consumers the chance to download 700 first issue...

AppGratis, a popular app discovery app on the iPhone, has been pulled from the App Store following the recent launch of its iPad version. TechCrunch reports that AppGratis has not spoken publicly about the issue, but other apps have been pulled from the App Store for violating a rule on displaying 'Apps other than your own for purchase or promotion in a manner similar to or confusing with the...

Best Buy has slashed pricing on third-generation iPad models by thirty percent, bringing the price down to $315 for the 16GB Wi-Fi models. Comparable refurbished units are available for $379 directly from Apple.However, the iPads are only available via in-store pickup and it appears that selection varies widely between stores.Potential purchasers can check availability for individual models...

Apple yesterday rolled out another tweak for its iOS App Store, adding age rating icons to the top section of each app's information page. While the ratings have long been included in app details at the bottom of the pages, the new icons are much more prominent to help parents quickly assess whether a given app might be age appropriate for their children. The change comes roughly two weeks...

Walmart is offering 16GB Wi-Fi iPad Mini models for $299 across the U.S. (via DealNews)This is the lowest price seen for a brand new iPad Mini and is the same price Apple asks for the refurbished unit. It requires in-store pickup, but customers can reserve one from the website and pick it up...

Music subscription service Rdio has expanded to video, today launching a movie and television streaming service called Vdio. Vdio functions like iTunes rather than like Netflix, allowing users to purchase and rent video content. Though it does not offer a subscription service, Vdio does incorporate social content discovery, allowing users to see what their friends are viewing. Vdio users are...

Twitter has updated its iOS app to version 5.5, adding the ability to launch and install apps from within a tweet on the iPhone. The new functionality is part of Twitter's updated Cards feature, which was introduced yesterday at a developer meetup. Apps that support the new Card functions can be installed directly from a link within Twitter. Currently, that includes apps like Vine, Etsy,...

According to the latest report from Net Applications (via All Things D), Apple's Safari continues to be the top mobile browser. Safari for iOS was responsible for 61.79% of total mobile internet traffic during the month of March, an increase from 55.41% in February. Safari's closest competitor for mobile browser dominance was Google's Android browser, which had a 21.86% share of Web traffic in ...

Classic shareware game Duke Nukem 2 was released for the iPhone and the iPad today, allowing the 1993 hit to be revisited by fans of the series. Duke Nukem 2 is a sidescrolling platformer, where the goal is to proceed through the level grabbing weapons and annihilating enemies. The iOS version of the game features the 32 levels of the original, along with quick saves and online leaderboards.-Sm...

Rovio today announced plans to bring social Facebook game Angry Birds Friends to the iPad and the iPhone. Angry Birds Friends merges classic Angry Birds gameplay with Facebook-integrated social features like weekly tournaments and score sharing. Pop some piggies with your friends wherever you are! Angry Birds Friends spruces up the classic Angry Birds experience with fun new social features...

Wacom today released a smaller version of its popular Bamboo Stylus, the Bamboo Stylus mini, which offers up a thicker barrel with a much shorter 1.85-inch size. The portable stylus comes equipped with a handy plastic mini-jack plug that allows it to attach to the headphone port of the iPhone or the iPad, preventing it from being misplaced. Available in six bright colors, Wacom's Bamboo...

500px has updated its universal 500px iOS app, adding functionality that allows users to see who they follow and who follows them, along with stability and speed improvements. The iPad version of the app also comes equipped with Flow, a popular feature that was previously limited to the iPhone. Flow offers up a stream of photos that friends in the app have liked, favorited, or commented on. ...

As noted by O Globo, Apple today made significant cuts to its pricing for the iPhone 4 and 4S in Brazil, lowering the price of the 8 GB iPhone 4 from R$ 1499 (US$741) to R$ 1099 (US$544) while dropping the 16 GB iPhone 4S from R$ 1999 (US$989) to R$ 1699 (US$840). New iPhone 4/4S pricing in Brazil Apple's standard sales arrangement in Brazil includes financing of 12 monthly payments, but...

Our sister-site TouchArcade has published a roundup of upcoming games announced or previewed in the past couple weeks at PAX East and the Game Developers Conference.There are dozens of promising games on the horizon, including Blizzard's Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, Gun Media's Breach and Clear, and the iPad remake of Leisure Suit Larry.TouchArcade looks at a number of these games, and...

With Google shutting down its RSS aggregation platform Google Reader in July, several companies have pledged to build a better reader, with existing news aggregator Feedly among them. Soon after the shutdown announcement, Feedly revealed that it had developed a clone of the Google Reader API called Normandy, which got it instant attention from former Google Reader users. Less than a month...

Last December, asynchronous multiplayer strategy game Battle Dungeon hit the App Store. Less than a week after the game was released, an .ipa file surfaced on the internet and illicitly obtained copies of Battle Dungeon caused a huge amount of stress on the game's servers. The team behind Battle Dungeon, Hunted Cow, was forced to shut it down after the server load caused technical difficulties ...

Twitter has updated Vine for iOS, adding a feature that allows Vine users to embed their videos on web pages. The embed option, which is located in the app, can be used for self-created videos and for videos created by others. Embeds can also be done via the Vine.co webpage assigned to Vines on the internet. Video sharing offers two stylistic choices, including "Simple," which is a borderless...

Mac Otakara reports that the long-running Japanese magazine MacFan has claimed that Apple will be holding a special media event on June 20 to introduce the iPhone 5S. According to the report, the iPhone 5S will actually launch in July with the rumored lower-cost iPhone following in August. Various analysts and other sources have been indicating that the iPhone 5S could launch as soon as June...