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

Forbes reveals that Stanza [App Store], a free eBook reading application for the iPhone, has distributed over 395,000 copies via the App Store. Forbes notes that this exceeds the estimated number of Kindles sold for 2008 and likely makes the iPhone the biggest eBook reader on the market. To be fair Stanza is a free download, but the intent is still there. Stanza, like Kindle, lets users...

A new tool called iPhone Backgrounder is now available for jailbroken phones which allows you to run official App Store apps in the background. The timely release comes just as Apple's missed the September deadline for background push notifications. Backgrounder is a Mobile Substrate-based extension to Apple's SpringBoard application launcher that allows applications to run in the background...

Macworld correctly notes that Apple has missed their deadline for a September release of background Push notifications for the iPhone. At WWDC, Apple described a new method for applications to receive notifications even when not currently running. This functionality is required since iPhone applications are not allowed to run in the background. A common reason for this need would be to...

Screenshot from Raging Thunder iPhone gaming continues to be one of the most active sections in the App Store. There are over a thousand gaming titles for the iPhone now available. Here are a few recent favorites from TouchArcade. BlockBreaker Deluxe 2 ($4.99) - as compared to the "official" Atari Super Breakout, this unofficial version brings more action, power-ups and fun.

A recent survey of the "coolest" brands in the UK found that the iPhone placed at the #2 spot while Apple placed at the #3 spot. The list was topped by Aston Martin. The annual CoolBrands poll reflects the opinions of industry experts and more than 2,500 members of the public. Members of the expert judging panel include Mother strategy director Dylan Williams, fashion designer Ben de Lisi and...

Facebook has updated their native iPhone app to version 2.0 today. The long awaited update brings a number of new features to the popular social networking application. New features include: - Notifications -The full News Feed - News Feed story comments - People search - Friend requests - Photo tagging - Photo captioning - Photo posts to your friends' ...

Apple CEO Steve Jobs wowed the crowd during the companys World Wide Developer Conference back in June with demos of various iPhone games that were in development for eventual App Store release. One of the more impressive titles was Digital Legends Kroll. Kroll appeared in the App Store today as a $7.99 download. Kroll is

Softalk has released the first spreadsheet application for the iPhone called Spreadsheet [App Store]. The developer lists the following features: - Zoomable, scrollable cell grid - Formulas - Functions - Cell formatting (bold, italic, color size and alignment) - Cell types (General, Number, Currency, Percentage, Date, Time, Text)...

Those of your waiting for a better Instant Messaging client may want to look at Beejive's new instant messenger for the iPhone and iPod Touch. BeejimIM [App Store] is a full featured client which offers the following features, as listed by the developer: General Features - Reliable and efficient networking: be connected 24/7, and it's gentle on your battery. - Be connected even after you...

Apple is now requiring that users who wish to review an App Store application actually have downloaded the application. Clicking on the "Write a Review" link on an application's App Store page now generates a dialog box if the user does not own the application. Users have complained in the past that the App Store reviews have been riddled with poor reviews and comments from users who have...

We've previously neglected to mention Shazam [App Store] here on MacRumors. Today's announcement by the company that over 1.5 million people have downloaded the iPhone app seemed like a good excuse to finally post something about the app. The Shazam iPhone application has had a phenomenal user response both in the number of downloads and the number of tracks being identified, said Andrew Fisher,...

Reuters reports that the iPhone will finally go on sale in Russia beginning on October 3rd with estimates that 150,000 units could be sold by the end of the year. "All retailers will begin sales of iPhone in Russia at the same time, during the night between October 2 and October 3. Our company will be also selling them," Nadezhda Senyuk, a PR director at retail chain Tekhnosila, said by telephone.T...

The release of the beta of the iPhone 2.2 brought few obvious changes to the iPhone's firmware. One tweak that was noted was that Mobile Safari got a bit of a refresh, moving the Google search bar into the title bar. In the current version of the iPhone, the Google search only appears when you tap on the address...

Atari has brought modern versions of two of their classic games to the iPhone: Missile Command [App Store] and Super Breakout [App Store]. Atari president Phil Harrison spoke highly of the iPhone platform: Its very exciting to be bringing these influential and timeless games in their redesigned form to the iPhone and iPod touch, devices which are leading the global charge in innovative...

With increasing competition, it's harder for developers to get their applications noticed. Some developers have started offering sales to boost sales and recognition. A few notable apps that have recently gone on sale include: (price links to App Store) Trism ($4.99 -> $2.99) - puzzle game (review) Band ($5.99 -> $1.99) - collection of virtual...

NewsGator posted stats from the iPhone version of their NetNewsWire [App Store] news reader application. According to their blog post: - There are over 200,000 users of NetNewsWire for iPhone - Over 115,000 iPhone users have signed up in the past 30 days - The average NetNewsWire iPhone user subscribes to 26 feeds - One NetNewsWire/iPhone user has over 2,800 feeds -- wow! - More than 130 ...

Tuaw takes a look at Equivalence [App Store] for the iPhone. Equivalence is a conversion tool "for engineers" designed by one of our forum members. Besides converting over 260 different units, the app also has an auto-update system so it can add new units and make changes over-the-air rather than waiting for an App Store update. Other features listed by the developer include:...

Sometimes it's the simple apps that we enjoy the most. We previously highlighted Mach Dice [App Store], a multi-sided Dice simulator app that sells for $0.99. Since the 1.0 release, developer Mach Kobayashi has been hard at work on a large number of updates to the popular dice-rolling application as detailed in his blog. He has not yet submitted the new update to the App Store, but...