iPhone

The number of iPhone users downloading mobile games to their devices jumped 14 percent in November, putting them in the lead of all mobile-phone game downloaders in the U.S. that month, according to a ComScore report released Friday.

The figures, based on a year-over-year comparison of three-month averages, showed that game downloads in November rose 17 percent overall to 8.5 million.

Although mobile subscribers users are increasingly putting their phones to work to download games, only 3.8 percent of all U.S. mobile phone users took the time to download a game in November, according to ComScore. … Read more

January was a good month for both the emerging Windows 7 and the venerable Mac OS, according to Web metrics company Net Applications.

The Mac OS is now hovering around the 10 percent mark among operating systems accessing the Web.

In its Operating System Market Share report for January, Net Applications showed the Mac OS at 9.93 percent, up from 9.63 percent in December. The iPhone also trended upward to 0.48 percent in January, from 0.44 percent in December.

In its recap of the Net Applications numbers, Fortune highlighted the ground gained by Apple's iPod … Read more

The work at Adobe Systems toward getting its nearly ubiquitous Flash technology onto the Apple iPhone goes on...and on, and on.

Speaking with the Bloomberg news service on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen acknowledged that even after months of striving, a workable version of Flash for the iPhone remains a tough nut to crack.

"It's a hard technical challenge, and that's part of the reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating," Narayen told Bloomberg Television. "The ball is in our court. The onus is on us … Read more

Market research firm iSuppli has taken apart the BlackBerry Storm and discovered that the sum of its parts is worth more than those of Apple's iPhone 3G.

Components used to build new Research In Motion smartphone cost about $203, according to iSuppli. Verizon Wireless, the exclusive carrier of the Storm, sells the device for $199 after rebates and with a two-year service contract. Meanwhile, the total cost of components in Apple's 8-gigabyte iPhone 3G, which was introduced last summer, is $174. AT&T, the iPhone's exclusive carrier, sells the 8GB device for $199 with a two-year … Read more

Apple may be planning a new section of the App Store dedicated to premium game titles that will put more cash in the pockets of developers.

The new section will supposedly cater to games that sell for about $20, according to the blog PocketGamer.biz, which first reported the rumor.

The new section will be restricted to only games of large publishers, rather than titles created by smaller gaming developers that are already offered through the main App Store, the site said.

PocketGamer believes that Apple will likely introduce the new section its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June.

The … Read more

As might be expected, it doesn't seem that the iPhone 3G will be Apple's last iPhone.

MacRumors has discovered code inside the OS X 2.2.1 firmware released earlier this week that describes an "IPhone 2,1" model. Previous discoveries have shown that Apple uses this labeling nomenclature for both the iPhone and the iPod Touch.

The original iPhone was labeled "1,1", while the iPhone 3G was model "1,2." The iPod Touch has already advanced to a second-generation design, as the iPod Touch released at September's music event … Read more

Updated at 12:30 p.m. PST with more details.

Apple announced on Tuesday that former IBM executive Mark Papermaster has resolved his dispute with IBM over a noncompete agreement and will start leading Apple's iPhone group on April 24.

IBM had sued Papermaster for allegedly violating the terms of a noncompete agreement in agreeing to join Apple as senior vice president of Devices Hardware Engineering, claiming that Papermaster would be in a position to divulge important IBM trade secrets. The two parties exchanged briefing papers for a few months but apparently found a way to settle their differences.… Read more

Apple has released a minor iPhone firmware update that is supposed to help improve the stability of its Safari browser.

The update should be popping up Tuesday if you connect your iPhone to iTunes. Update 2.2.1 is the first tweak released since Apple added Google's Street View to the iPhone's software back in November with the 2.2 release.

Despite the brief list of new features and fixes, this update is just as big as that release, weighing in at 246.4MB. As a result, it's taking awhile to download and install. I'll let … Read more

The iPhone developer behind Podcaster has found a way to get into Apple's App Store without invoking the wrath of iPhone Inspector No. 5.

The developer, who has a private Blogger profile but appears to go by Alex according to Uneasy Silence, has a new application called RSS Player that duplicates the basic function of Podcaster--letting you download podcasts to your iPhone or iPod Touch--but without some of the features that Apple appears to have disliked. For example, you can't search for podcasts through the app, you have to subscribe to the RSS feed for those podcasts.

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