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

Availability of the new iPad continues to improve, as evidenced by shipping estimates for new orders now registering at 3-5 business days in Apple's online stores for the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The change comes less than two weeks after shipping estimates improved to 5-7 business days. The shorter timeframes have not yet propagated to Apple's other online store distribution...

Last year, the Financial Times, a major business newspaper, announced it would discontinue its iOS app in favor of an HTML5 based web app. The move was in response to Apple's requirement that it get a 30% cut of any subscription sold through iTunes, as well as Apple's refusal to pass along the personal information of subscribers without their permission. The FT's sleek HTML5 web app has been ve...

In the early '90s, one of the premier PC games was 7th Guest. It was the first game to use full rendered 3D animation and navigation, and Bill Gates called it "the new standard in interactive entertainment". Trilobyte, the company that made 7th Guest and its sequel, The 11th Hour, eventually went out of business. However, some members of the original Trilobyte team have ported The 7th Guest...

In March, a number of regulatory organizations announced they were looking into Apple's advertising claims surrounding the 4G capabilities of the new iPad. The Advertising Standards Authority in the United Kingdom has announced it doesn't feel Apple has adjusted its iPad 4G advertising to comply with local laws, reports the BBC. Apple's UK site still offers consumers the chance to buy a "wi-fi ...

According to former Apple executive Tony Fadell -- these days remaking the thermostat -- Apple's designers had extensive discussions about including a hardware keyboard on the iPhone, but ultimately decided against it. Fadell discussed the iPhone design process in a sit-down interview on Josh Topolsky's On The Verge show. I wanted to try [a touchscreen keyboard]... I wanted it to work. It made...

Rovio today announced that Angry Birds Space has reached 50 million downloads, marking yet another milestone for the popular franchise. The title debuted on a number of platforms, including iPhone, iPad, and Mac, on March 22. Angry Birds Space hit 50 million downloads within 35 days, making it the fastest growing mobile game yet and breaking all our previous records. This has been simply...

Following its late February acquisition of app search and discovery firm Chomp, Apple has now killed off Chomp's Android services. The move was reported late yesterday by a MacRumors reader who noticed that the Chomp app for Android had ceased functioning on his device, and GigaOM confirms that Chomp has also removed Android search functionality from the Chomp website. Apple reportedly...

Professional-focused networking site LinkedIn has updated its iOS app today, adding native iPad support to the app for the first time. The universal app also offers support for Retina graphics on the new iPad. - LinkedIn is now available on the iPad - Optimized for Retina display on the new iPad - New calendar feature lets you see LinkedIn profile information for people you're meeting with ...

Sprint today was the last of the three major iPhone carriers in the United States to release earnings for the first calendar quarter of 2012, announcing that it sold 1.5 million iPhones during the quarter. The number is down slightly from the 1.8 million units sold in the previous quarter, the debut quarter for the iPhone on Sprint. Sprint remains the smallest of the three major U.S. iPhone ...

Reuters reports on the first public comments from a government official regarding Apple's dispute with Proview over ownership of the "iPad" trademark in China, with the official stating that according to Chinese law Proview is indeed the rightful owner of the trademark."According to the ... provisions of the China Trademark Law, currently Shenzhen Proview is the legal registrant of the iPad...

Midway Arcade, a collection of classic Midway video games ported to the iOS, has received an update adding support for the iCade iPad gaming add-on. The iCade started life as a ThinkGeek April Fool's joke, but has since become a well-supported iOS game controller. Ion Audio, the company behind the iCade, announced new versions of the product at CES this year. TouchArcade, writing about the...

The hugely popular Plants vs. Zombies has received a big update adding several new game modes and mini-games. The game is a big reason why EA paid more than $650 million for PopCap Games. From our sister-site TouchArcade:Plants vs. Zombies for iPhone and iPad both received some content loving while you were in bed last night. Plants vs. Zombies iPhone received Vasebreaker Endless mode, which ...

Draw Something, the wildly popular app that led Zynga to acquire creator OMGPOP for $200 million, has received a major update. The update, which applies to both the free and paid versions of Draw Something, adds a number of features that the apps' millions of users have been requesting, reports The Next Web. The update brings three new features that should be nice for regular players, including...

Korean site ETNews.com claims that Apple is planning to use new "liquid metal" alloys in the iPhone 5 to yield a thinner and lighter device that is resistant to impact damage. Apple acquired the rights to Liquidmetal Technologies' "amorphous metal alloys" in August 2010 and soon after was spotted hiring engineers to work on the materials, but little concrete news on Liquidmetal's contributions...

A frequent complaint amongst some iPhone power users is the number of steps it takes to toggle Bluetooth on and off. It takes the user four steps -- Settings/General/Bluetooth/Toggle -- to turn it on or off. However, a just-launched app aims to make the task much simpler. Bluetooth OnOff launched last night and enables the toggling of Bluetooth with just a tap -- or even, via a blank toggle,...

We first previewed Propellerhead Software's second iOS app, Figure, last month. It's since been released and has been featured as Apple's iPhone App of the Week in the United States. The software, powered by Reason -- the company's flagship music production software -- aims to let amateur musicians create their own beats through powerful but easy-to-use multitouch controls. Playing bass,...

Last October, along with the iPhone 4S, Apple launched a new app called Cards that allowed iPhone owners to send real-world, customized, greeting cards to friends and relatives straight from the iPhone -- postage included. The app was just updated with a number of new card designs, including more than two-dozen for Mother's Day, coming up on Sunday, May 13, 2012 in the U.S. There are 28 new...

App developers Geoff Teehan and his team created this high resolution Photoshop file to help them when mocking up ideas for app designs. The file includes full-resolution elements of buttons, keyboards, and all the other user interface elements that are available to iOS developers. Instead of keeping the file for themselves -- which would be understandable -- Teehan decided to share it with...