Apple has 2x or more credit cards on file than Amazon

Following Apple’s most recent earnings report, Tim Cook revealed in a conference call with analyst that there are now more than 800 million iTunes accounts in use and said that “the majority of those have credit cards behind them.”

How does this compare to Amazon, the king of online commerce? Turns out that Apple actually has twice as many credit cards on file than Amazon, at least. This poses a tremendous opportunity should Apple decide to introduce a mobile payment service of its own, as expected…

Leo’s Fortune is the best platformer we’ve played in a while

Ah, the platformer, a genre that has stood the test of time for generations. Once Mario and his brother graced our living room screens, we were hooked on the run-and-jump adventure that platformers offer. After so many decades, it is starting to get hard to tell titles apart. It seems like anyone can make a platform game, but not everyone can make it good.

Leo’s Fortune is a platform game that is visually attractive, mechanically exciting, and filled with complex puzzles that keep you coming back for more…

Angela Ahrendts to join Apple as retail chief next week

During this afternoon’s quarterly earnings call, Tim Cook announced that Angela Ahrendts will be officially joining Apple next week. The announcement was made last October, but Ahrendts has been under contract with her previous job—CEO of luxury clothing company Burberry—until now.

Ahrendts will join Apple as the Senior Vice President of Retail and Online Stores, a position that has seen significant turnover in recent years. In 2011, Ron Johnson left for a CEO position at JC Penney, and his replacement, John Browett, was ousted in less than a year due to a conflict in strategy…

Aaron Sorkin talks Jobs movie at Tribeca Film Festival

Aaron Sorkin took a moment yesterday to speak about his upcoming Steve Jobs movie. The Academy Award-winning screenwriter was answering questions at New York City’s School of Visual Arts for the Tribeca Film Festival last night when the subject of the Sony-backed Jobs film came up.

Sorkin of course avoided talking about the drama that surfaced yesterday surrounding the picture’s director and cast, but he did offer up a few details about his script. Some of it we’ve heard before—such as his goal to do something other than a ‘Jobs biography’—but there were a few new tidbits…

iOS 7 presents new challenges for theme makers

While the release of a Winterboard update with support for 64-bit devices is very exciting, the entire process of creating a theme has been fundamentally changed because of how iOS 7 is built. The move away from so-called “skeuomorphism” in favor of translucency and vector-based design creates additional barriers that theme makers didn’t face on iOS 6 and earlier… 

Tank Domination rumbles through the App Store

When I was a little kid, I “played tanks.” That is, I drew a picture of a tank on one side of a blank piece of paper, and then drew another tank on the other side. Then, I’d “pew, pew, pew” as I drew dotted lies across the page, finishing with a nice, scribbly “ka-ploosh” as my Crayola-based ammunitions struck the armored vehicles.

Tank Domination is sort of like playing tanks. Except the paper is an iPad, the Crayola drawings are high-definition graphics, and the “pew, pew, pew” is awesome explosions that look so real it will melt your face off…

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Skype updated with redesigned sign-in screen and other improvements

Microsoft has updated its iOS Skype client today, bringing the app to version 4.1.5. The update brings about a number of improvements including a redesigned sign-in screen, performance enhancements and bug fixes.

The new sign-in screen was designed to reduce startup time so you can start chatting quicker. And it accomplishes this by making it much easier for folks to login to the service with their Skype ID or Microsoft account…

Read more on iDownloadblog.com

How NBA teams are using iPad to improve their game

The Wall Street Journal a month ago revealed that Samsung of South Korea signed a lucrative deal worth a hundred million bucks to provide its tablets and TVs that referees will use to review close calls. It’s part of the Galaxy maker’s ongoing and massive advertising push which includes big name celebrity endorsements, event sponsorships, sports tie-ins and more.

But despite the partnership which moves Samsung into the valuable space so close to the action, Bloomberg is reporting today that NBA is still very much in love with their iPads and has produced a video explaining how NBA uses Apple’s devices to improve their games. More on that right after the break..

Leaked document shows White House in favor of banning unlocking, jailbreaking

The last we heard, things were looking good in the fight to reform out-of-date policies on deviceunlocking here in the US. Last week, the FCC chairman sent a letter to the CTIA saying he’d like to see changes made before the holidays. But don’t get your hopes up just yet.

According to information recently leaked by WikiLeaks, the White House—despite publicly supporting unlocking—has been secretly negotiating a treaty with other countries and special interest lobbyists that would make this and other processes illegal by international law…

Twitter pulls option to receive DMs from everyone

A little over a month ago Twitter rolled out a new setting in the web interface allowing you to choose whether to receive direct messages (DM) from any of your followers. Traditionally, the micro-blogging service has only allowed users who follow each other to send direct messages back and forth to one another.

The change has allowed Twitter users to elect to receive direct messages from any follower, regardless of whether or not they’re following the person back. Unfortunately, the company has now inexplicably removed that option, seemingly without an explanation…

Fifty-Three launches Pencil stylus for iPad

Steve Jobs once said, “If you see a stylus, they blew it” in regard to tablets which depend on the stylus as their primary means of input. That hasn’t stopped the accessory industry from engineering dozens upon dozens differently shaped and sized styluses for use with popular tablet brands, Apple’s iPad included.

Fifty-Three, the people who brought you the popular Paper drawing app, Apple’s 2012 iPad App of the Year Editor’s Choice, have been hard at work developing its upcoming Pencil stylus for quite some time. Last month, the gizmo surfaced in an FCC filing. Starting today, the $60 Bluetooth-enabled Pencil goes on sale…

Lone Wolf review: a new gamebook experience for iOS

As many of our readers know by now, I am a huge fan of tabletop adventure games. Whether it is a Dungeons and Dragons style role-playing game, a stats-based board game, or a gamebook adventure, I’m interested in it. If it requires more than six-sided dice to play, I’m going geek over it.

Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf is a gamebook game that incorporates a bit of Infinity Blade style hand-to-hand combat against baddies that won’t go away. Hack your way through the city to clean out the riff raff and rebuild a destroyed community…

Yahoo Mail updated with message swiping

Yahoo Mail has been making some serious moves lately with a major redesign across the web and mobile apps. On the iOS side, the iPhone and iPad Yahoo Mail app recently saw a major revamp and feature additions, including folder management, multiple account support, native iPad interface and more.

I’ve been increasingly liking the 16-year-old web-based email service, especially now that every account comes with one terabyte of free storage. The app has been updated yesterday to version 2.0.3 with quite useful message swiping functionality and a few other tweaks…

Moga’s ‘Ace Power’ iOS 7 game controller now available

Moga announced this morning that its first (and subsequently the first to market) iOS 7-compatible game controller is now available for purchase. It’s called the ‘Ace Power’ and it works with the iPhone 5, 5c, 5s and the latest iPod touch.

The controller features an enclosed design, meaning it fits around your iPhone or iPod. It plugs into the Lightning port, and features a d-pad, dual analog sticks, 4 action buttons and triggers, a headphone jack, and can charge your device…

OS X Mavericks 10.9.1 to fix remaining Mail bugs and refine graphics performance

Apple released its OS X 10.9 Mavericks as a free Mac App Store upgrade on October 22.

As is the norm with new OS releases, while these things tend to address complaints and issues from the previous version they frequently introduce new ones as well.

For example, immediately after Mavericks went live a bunch of people started complaining about a new and annoying Gmail issue in the stock Mail app.

This past Friday, the company supplied its registered Mac developers with the first beta release of what would become the OS X 10.9.1 software update. The software focuses on graphics enhancements and is said to squash the remaining Mail bugs…

Apple posts new Apple TV software beta with iPad mirroring improvements

Apple has just released the first beta of what would become the major iOS 7.1 software update containing a bunch of fixes and tweaks, including the updated Yahoo logo, performance improvements, a new HDR Auto feature in the Camera app and more. To go along with the software, the Cupertino company also posted an accompanying Apple TV beta software which contains an interesting iPad content mirroring feature. Jump past the fold for the full reveal…

Apple releases iOS 7.1 beta to developers: here is what’s new

Apple has released the first beta of iOS 7.1 to registered developers this afternoon. The update, which carries the build number 11D5099e, can be downloaded via Apple’s developer center.

Today’s release comes just one week after Appleissued iOS 7.0.4 to the public, which included a fix for FaceTime, and marks the beginning of developer testing for the next major iOS update…

Apple launches trade-in program in India to make older iPhones less expensive

India is home to 1.24 billion people. As such, the second most-populous nation (after China) is among the fast-growing markets for smartphones. Brazil, Russia, India and China have a collective population of nearly three billion people and as such these so-called BRIC markets are estimated to each overtake the United States in smartphone sales by 2018.

India is particularly important to Apple so Tim Cook & Co. in past few months rolled out a series of initiatives aimed at making it easier for cash-strapped consumers to purchase an iPhone. Apple’s premium pricing strategy coupled with high import taxes and low average pay put the iPhone out of reach for many average Indians so the firm is now launching a new smartphone trade-in program in co-operation with local resellers…

Deemo: a hybrid of music rhythm game and urban fantasy

Gaming has come a long way since Guitar Hero, but people still love to play games that require you to tap out a rhythm to score points. These days, you don’t use a fake guitar to rock out.

Deemo is a musically driven rhythm game that also includes a deep storyline to give you more reasons to play well than just becoming a rock star in your own mind…

Everythink HD review: your iPad’s all-in-one GTD app

Sometimes you need a good list-making app. Sometimes you need a good calendar app. Other times you may need a good organizer app. Usually you need them all.

Everythink HD is an iPad app that does it all. Sync your native Calendar, Reminders Contacts, Photos, and Location Services, as well as Dropbox, Google Drive, and Evernote in one place for total access over everything you need to get things done…