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

According to Reuters, China Telecom Chairman Wang Xiaochu has essentially confirmed that the carrier is in talks with Apple to offer the CDMA iPhone in that country. A deal could potentially be struck that would allow China Telecom to launch the iPhone after an exclusivity agreement between Apple and China Unicom runs out later this year."We're not denying that we're in touch with iPhone...

All Things Digital reports that Qualcomm has announced that it will release an augmented reality software development kit (SDK) for iOS developers in July, making it easier for developers to integrate virtual content with real content such as images captured by cameras found on many portable devices. The company previously released a similar SDK for Android.It's an interesting move for...

Mobile advertising firm Millennial Media today announced the release of its "Mobile Mix" report covering device, operating system, and revenue share for the month of April. After receiving a bit of a boost in March, Apple's iOS platform has dropped back from 31% of the total ad impressions seen on the network to 28%. Conversely, Android has bumped back over the 50% mark to grab 53% of...

Yahoo yesterday released an update to its Yahoo! Messenger application for iOS devices, going universal with an iPad-specific interface and adding voice and video calling capabilities for the iPad 2.What's new - iPad-optimized layout - Voice & video calling for iPad 2 - Improved spam management: block one or all add requests from a single view - Fixed multiple bugs including the...

As noted by Cnet, Comcast has updated its iOS Xfinity TV app to support streaming on-demand video to the iPhone and iPod Touch. Previously, this feature was limited to the iPad.I gave the app a whirl on my iPhone 4, choosing an episode of "Cowboy Bebop" from the TV listings. There's a sense of familiarity going, as I've already used the streaming functionality on the iPad, which was generally...

Google announced an update yesterday to its Google Search iOS app that includes speed and interface improvements. Google Search received a major revamp in March featuring a new interface and gestures to refine search results. Yesterday's update to version 0.8.2.6553 makes the app "20% more responsive" and disables the "Just Talk" voice-activated search function by default. Additionally, search ...

TUAW reports that developers seeking to submit applications featuring in app purchase to the iOS App Store have had their submissions stalled by an error message on Apple's end linked to a test account required for evaluating the in app purchase functionality.As a matter of policy, Apple requires developers to test in-app purchases (IAP) with a test user account before the application in question ...

Image via ThinkMac Macworld writer Dan Frakes details his frustration at losing his iPhone's folder organization one night. All his iPhone's organized apps had been strewn about folderless. In his attempt to restore the process, he figured out the right way to restore from iTunes to ensure his folder organization remains intact.It turns out that iTunes actually offers two kinds of restores....

Certainly App Store developers are paying close attention to the legal happenings surrounding the Lodsys situation. Lodsys has threatened to sue some App Store developers over seemingly trivial patent claims. Here's some more reading material if you have a vested interest in the outcome. FOSS Patents provides a nice FAQ-style question analyzing the situation between Lodsys and App Store...

As noted by Patently Apple, Apple has filed a new trademark application in Europe covering the term "Noteworthy", classifying the term under computer software. The report speculates that the trademark could have something to do with optical character recognition, or even an integrated sensing display capable of acting as a scanner The usual broad range of terms covered in the classification...

Seagate has introduced the GoFlex Satellite portable hard drive for use with iOS devices such as the iPad and iPhone. The external hard drive includes a Wi-Fi interface as well as the ability to stream photos and movies to your iOS device. Rather than rely on a buffered stream from a distant provider, GoFlex Satellite mobile storage wirelessly serves up media content as a local attached...

Janmike34 posted a nicely produced concept video for how Nuance's voice recognition could be integrated into iOS 5. In essence, text fields can become speech recognition fields by tapping and holding on text fields. This functionality can be offered to 3rd party applications as well using the standard iOS text field. While a nicely produced video, it's not more impressive than what Google...

TouchArcade and GameInformer note that acclaimed game developer Bungie has started work on a mobile game under the company Bungie Aerospace. The new company was started by Bungie and has filed a trademark for "Crimson" which is described as:"Computer game software downloadable from a global computer network; Computer game software for use on mobile and cellular phones; Downloadable computer...

As reported by The Loop, Apple has reached a milestone in its iAd mobile advertising push, with its 100th ad campaign having rolled out with content from real estate company Coldwell Banker.The campaign began in late March and so far, the results are glowing. [Coldwell Banker chief marketing office Michael] Fischer said the iAd garnered and average of 11 pages viewed per visit; average user...

Interactive Art and Technology student Mike Knuepfel has posted a teaser video for his thesis which asks if there are new ways that we can use the touchscreen to interface with tangible objects: Touchscreens like those found on smartphones and tablets have enabled a new generation of versatile user interfaces. My thesis project, Extending the Touchscreen, aims to further this versatility by...

BeamItDown Software, the company behind the popular iFlow Reader eBook application and store for iPhone and iPad, has announced that it will be closing down as of May 31st, citing Apple's recent enforcement of policies forcing content providers to offer content via Apple's in app purchasing mechanism at the same prices offered elsewhere. With that mechanism resulting in Apple taking a 30% of...

Late last week, Daring Fireball's John Gruber helped draw some attention to that fact that Apple had yet to release the source code for components of its iOS 4.3 WebKit implementation as required under the Lesser GNU Public License (LGPL) due to Apple's use of LGPL code in the project. Apple initially released iOS 4.3 on March 10th, and LGPL licensing requires that the source code be released...

As noted by Business Insider, Microsoft earlier this week quietly introduced a new Bing Maps Control for iOS software development kit, making it easier for developers to integrate Bing maps directly into their applications. The Bing Maps iOS Control is an Objective-C control for embedding maps directly into native iOS apps. With a rich, gesture-based UI provided by Seadragon, the Bing Maps iOS...