Tag Archives: App Store

iTunes shares 2015’s top-selling music, movies, TV shows, apps & more

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Thanks to its undeniable ubiquity, Apple’s iTunes storefront is a great barometer of the most popular media sold in entertainment. Let’s take a look at who and what performed well in 2015…

Included in iTunes’ top-selling albums are Drake’s If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, Taylor Swift’s 1989, and Adele’s 25 (which came out only weeks ago!). The top-selling song of the year is Mark Ronson & Bruno Mars’ addicting “Uptown Funk.” Hanging around in the top 20 are Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud,” Fetty Wap’s “Trap Queen,” The Weeknd’s “Can’t Feel My Face,” and of course, Adele’s “Hello.” In addition to these top-selling lists, Apple likes to share hand-picked Editor Choice awards and they include: Drake (Best Artist), Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly (Best Album), The Weeknd’s “Can’t Feel My Face” (Best Song), and Bryson Tiler (Best New Artist).

Top-selling movies include Star Wars: The Digital Movie Collection, Big Hero 6, American Sniper, Inside Out, and Kingsman: The Secret Service. Apple’s featured best movies include Mad Max: Fury Road, Inside Out, the Amy Winehouse documentary Amy, and Dope. In TV, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, Downton Abbey, Scandal, and The Blacklist are amongst the year’s best-selling series. Apple’s featured best TV shows include Mr. Robot, Fargo, UnREAL, and Inside Amy Schumer.

Apple’s App Store is home to the largest library of apps in the world. The best app to help pass the time with friends, Heads Up!, keeps its crown as the top-selling paid app in 2015. Rounding out the top five paid apps: Minecraft: Pocket Edition, Trivia Crack (ad free), Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, and Facetune. The top 5 best-selling free ones are always easy to nail: Trivia Crack, Facebook Messenger, Dubsmash, Instagram, and Snapchat. Don’t worry–YouTube, Facebook, Uber, and Crossy Road don’t trail far behind.

Calling all book readers! Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train, E L James’ Grey, Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker, and John Green’s Paper Towns are among the best-selling fictional novels. Top-selling non-fiction novels include Chris Kyle’s American Sniper, Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken, Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Daniel James Brown’s The Boys in the Boat, and Erik Larson’s Dead Wake.

Lastly, in the realm of podcasts, NPR’s Fresh Air is the most downloaded of the year. Apple named Mystery Show Best New Podcast and WTF with Marc Maron Best Classic Podcast.

Want more? Open iTunes to view all the top-selling media across Apple’s digital ecosystem.

iTunes shares 2014’s top-selling music, movies, TV shows, apps & more

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Apple returns to reveal its best-selling media across the major entertainment industries including music, movies, TV shows, apps, and books. Consumers flock to the iTunes Store for the latest and greatest, and so it’s always fun to look back and discover which products made the biggest dent in their respective categories.

The top-selling album of 2014 is actually a soundtrack: it’s Disney’s Frozen! Included in the top 20 are T-Swift’s 1989, Coldplay’s Ghost Stories, Sam Smith’s In The Lonely Hour, Beyonce’s self-titled surprise album, and Lorde’s magnificent debut Pure Heroine. The top-selling song of the year is Pharrell Williams’ addictive “Happy,” a song that made waves in the animated feature Despicable Me 2. Also in the top 20 are John Legend’s “All of Me,” Katy Perry’s “Dark Horse,” Sam Smith’s “Stay With Me,” A Great Big World’s “Say Something,” and OneRepublic’s “Counting Stars.” In addition to these top-selling lists, Apple likes to share hand-picked Editor Choice awards and they include: Best Artist (Beyonce), Best Album (Taylor Swift’s 1989), Best Song (Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy”), and Best New Artist (Sam Smith).

Top-selling movies include Frozen, The LEGO Movie, The Wolf of Wall Street, Catching Fire, and Neighbors. Apple named Guardians of the Galaxy Best Blockbuster, The LEGO Movie Best Family Movie, Boyhood‘s Richard Linklater is crowned Best Director, and Obvious Child is Best Discovery. Moving over to TV, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, Downton Abbey, Breaking Bad, and Scandal are amongst the year’s best-selling series. Apple named Fargo TV Show of the Year, The Honorable Woman is Best Discovery, Key & Peele is Best Breakthrough, and Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson’s performances in True Detective are commended.

Apple’s App Store truly houses the best app ecosystem–there are just so many to choose from. In 2014 people gravitated toward trivia game Heads Up!, which receives my personal Best App To Help Pass The Time Award. Other best-selling paid apps include Minecraft–Pocket Edition, Afterlight, Plague Inc., Sleep Cycle alarm clock, and Facetune. And I bet you can easily guess the top 5 best-selling free ones: Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. 5 for 5? Thought so.

Are you a reader? John Green’s The Fault in our Stars, Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, Veronica Roth’s Insurgent, Allegiant, and Divergent are among the best-selling fictional tales. Top-selling non-fiction novels include Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis, Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell and Patrick Robinson, Heaven is for Real by Todd Burpo and Lynn Vincent, and Duty by Robert M. Gates.

We cannot forget about podcasts! I will share with you my favorite podcast this year. It’s Serial, from This American Life. It’s being called the most popular podcast of all-time and for good reason. It tells a highly serialized and incredibly addicting true crime story across 12 episodes. It’s like a riveting TV drama, except you get to imagine all of the characters and settings in your head. In addition to Serial, which Apple calls the Best New Podcast, other top-selling podcasts include works from NPR, HowStuffWorks.com, Joe Rogen, Carolla Digital.

Open iTunes to view all of the best-selling media across Apple’s digital storefronts.

iTunes shares 2013’s top-selling albums, movies, TV shows, apps & more

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Apple’s iTunes, App, and iBooks Stores have truly become the destination on the Internet to discover and download the latest and greatest in music, movies, TV shows, apps, and books. And every year the house that Jobs built tallies the best-selling media, so let’s take a look.

In music, Justin Timberlake’s The 20/20 Experience is crowned the top-selling album of 2013. Also landing in the top 15 are Imagine Dragons’ Night Visions, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ The Heist, and Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories. The top-selling song? M&R’s “Thrift Shop,” followed by Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” and Imagine Dragons’ “Radioactive.” In addition to these top-selling lists, Apple has hand-picked Editor Choice awards; namely, JT is named Artist of the Year, M&R’s The Heist is Album of the Year, Lorde’s “Royals” is Song of the Year, and Kendrick Lamar (Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City) is Breakthrough Artist.

The top three best-selling movies are Skyfall, Wreck-It Ralph, and Argo. Apple named Gravity Best Movie and Despicable Me 2 Best Animated Movie. On TV, Breaking Bad, Downton Abbey, and The Walking Dead lead the top-selling series of 2013. Vince Gilligan’s masterpiece is TV Show of the Year, Scandal is Best Breakthrough, and Orphan Black is Best Discovery.

The best-selling paid app is Minecraft – Pocket Edition; also making that list is Heads Up!, Temple Run: Oz, and Angry Birds Star Wars. The best-selling freebie? Candy Crush Saga, of course, followed by Temple Run 2, Vine, Google Maps, and Snapchat.

The most popular books (fiction) are Dan Brown’s Inferno, E L James’ Fifty Shades of Grey, and Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl. Apple quite liked Tenth of December by George Saunders.

Click here to browse Apple’s Best of 2013 charts across all the various forms of media.

iTunes shares year’s top-selling songs, albums, apps & more

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At the end of the year Apple digs into its archive of music, movies, TV shows, apps, books, and podcasts to share with its customers its top-selling content. Since the iTunes Store and the App Store are so prolific these days, I deem it appropriate to take a look at what we bought up from Apple’s widespread ecosystem in 2012.

In the music department, Apple lists the 20 top-selling songs and 25 top-selling albums of the year. Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” lands at #1 on the song list and rounding out the top 5 are Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used To Know,” Fun.’s “We Are Young,” Maroon 5’s “Payphone,” and Nicki Minaj’s “Starships.” Maroon 5 managed to land on this chart twice; “One More Night” comes in at #17. Also, Flo Rida’s hit singles “Whistle” and “Wild Ones” show their staying power securing the #9 and #10 slots, respectively. For the second consecutive year in a row, Adele’s 21 sits high as the most purchased album of the year; what follows is Taylor Swift’s Red, Mumford & Sons’ Babel, One Direction’s debut Up All Night, and Fun.’s Some Nights. The only artist to show up twice on this chart is Mumford & Sons; their 2010 effort Sigh No More keeps selling and fell in the #6 position.

In addition to these charts, Apple handpicks their own selections in a section they call “Editor’s Choice.” They named Frank Ocean Best New Artist and they had this to say about his much buzzed about release Channel ORANGE: “Deftly original, the brooding R&B outcast and Odd Future cohort spilled a can of stinging venom and vulnerability that spread worldwide.” Grizzly Bear’s Shields was awarded Best Album, Fun.’s infectious single “We Are Young” nabbed Best Song, and they enjoyed the fusion of country and gospel from The Lumineers so much to label their self-titled debut release Breakthrough Album.

The Hunger Games, Downton Abbey, Fifty Shades of Grey, Angry Birds Space, and YouTube dominated the other content categories. Click here to browse Apple’s Best of 2012 charts (the link opens in iTunes).

The 25th billion app has been downloaded in Apple’s App Store

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Today Apple updated their homepage to celebrate another major milestone in the company’s relatively short history in the app domain. As of today, March 3, 2011, 25 billion apps have been downloaded in the company’s App Store. The lucky individual who downloaded the 25th billion app has been awarded a $10,000 gift card that can be applied to the App Store. Since you probably didn’t win, take solace in the fact that you were still likely part of it all by helping Apple reach this wildly impressive achievement.

GarageBand comes to iPhone and iPod touch

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Mac OS X and iPad users have been creating sick beats and rocking out with Apple’s music creation app for quite some time now. Today the company released a new version that can be downloaded and installed on iPhones and iPod touches. The official press release announcing the news (posted in full after the break) describes the app’s prominent features:

You can plug your electric guitar into iPad, iPhone or iPod touch to play and record through classic amps and stompbox effects, or record your voice or any acoustic sound using the built-in microphone. GarageBand allows you to record and mix up to eight tracks and then share your finished song with friends or send it to your Mac to keep working on it in GarageBand or Logic Pro.

GarageBand for iPhone (3GS, 4, 4S) and iPod touch (3rd and 4th generation) is now available in the App Store for $4.99. If you already purchased it for the iPad, it’s totally free to port it to your other iOS devices.

[Via Apple] Continue reading GarageBand comes to iPhone and iPod touch →

Google+ app comes to iPhone

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When Google pushed out their new social service Google+ they simultaneously gave Android users a way to access their accounts on their phones in a handy dandy app. Up until now, iPhone users have been forced to login and check their accounts inside the Safari browser. Today, thankfully, Google has pushed out a native Google+ app for iPhone users. The app’s homescreen includes Stream, Huddle, Photos, Profile, Circles, and a Notifications tray. In Stream you can view new posts from your Circle mates, those that are Nearby (if you allow the app to tag your location), and Incoming posts; you can also check-in at places and obviously send out posts and attach pictures to them. In Photos you can view pictures that have been uploaded by your Circle mates, photos of you, from your albums, and from your phone. In Profile you can view (but cannot edit) your About page, your Posts and Photos. In Circles, you can see all of your Circle mates, tap them to view their profiles, and from there you can move and/or remove them from Circles; you can also create new Circles. And lastly there’s Huddle, the one feature that has been exclusive to Android users until now. With Huddle you can initiate a group messaging experience that gathers together selected friends or circles so you can chat together in one space; users can be searched by name, email, and circle.

And that about covers the Google+ app for iPhone. Download it today for free from the App Store. Note that it is only compatible with iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and iPhone 3G; Google has not specified when (or if) the app will make its way to other iOS devices (i.e. the iPad and iPod touch).

Apple hits new milestone: 15 billion App Store downloads

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Apple recently announced that over 15 billion apps have been downloaded from its App Store by the more than 200 million iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch users worldwide. Wowzers is the reaction you’re looking for. Apple’s tallied ’em up, and currently the App Store is now home to over 425,000 apps; additionally 100,000 native iPad apps exist. Thanks to Apple’s generosity the people who make the apps are getting paid, too; Apple has paid developers over $2.5 billion to date (there’s a 70/30 split, the devs receive the smaller sampling, naturally).

Says Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing: “In just three years, the revolutionary App Store has grown to become the most exciting and successful software marketplace the world has ever seen. Thank you to all of our amazing developers who have filled it with over 425,000 of the coolest apps and to our over 200 million iOS users for surpassing 15 billion downloads.”

Jump after the break to read the official PR which contains more quotes from excitable Apple employees.

[Via Apple] Continue reading Apple hits new milestone: 15 billion App Store downloads →

Evernote Peek makes flashcards obsolete

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It’s mid-June which means it’s finals time for students in middle and high school. It’s proven that making flashcards is a great way to study for a test. If you use this method and happen to own an iPad, you’ll want to learn more about Evernote Peek. The folks at Evernote have designed a new app around the iPad 2’s smart cover accessory. So you know how the smart cover works, right? When you attach the accessory to the iPad, it automatically aligns to the screen (magnets). The cover instantly wakes up and puts to sleep the iPad when it’s applied and removed thanks to the built-in ambient light sensor. Evernote figured out a way to take advantage of this simple yet intriguing behavior.

You have a vocabulary test coming up. Goodbye flashcards, hello iPad. Lift up the smart cover flap to peek at a definition. Close it and think about what the word might be. Lift the cover again and you’ll be presented with the correct answer. The app will track which definitions you remember; the ones you get wrong will be saved so you can study them again later. Designing your own study guides using Evernote Peek is easy. All you have to do is create a free Evernote account and connect it to the app. Text and visual clues can be used to help you study. See it in action in the video above.

All in all Peek gives students yet another way to study for tests, albeit one that brings them one tap closer to accessing distractions like Facebook and Angry Birds. But it’s not like flashcard studying doesn’t take place in front of the computer screen. Download Evernote Peek for free in the App Store today.

[Via Gizmodo]

Apple teases iOS 5 and iCloud service days before WWDC; iWork comes to iPhone & iPod touch

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This Monday, June 6 Steve Jobs and company will take the stage at the annual Worldwide Developers Conference. It had previously been hinted that Apple would be diving into the worlds of iOS and Mac OS at the event, but now thanks to a brief but promising press release we know this: Apple will be unveiling the eighth major release of Mac OS X called Lion, the next version of their mobile operating system dubbed iOS 5, and iCloud, “Apple’s upcoming cloud services offering.” All signs point to the company demonstrating a music locker service similar to Google and Amazon’s recent offerings, but this is Apple and you know Jobs has something magical up his sleeve. Per usual, keep it here for the breaking news come Monday. Though it might not feature the next iPhone, this keynote looks like it’ll be a memorable one. Apple–to the cloud! Full PR after the break.

In related Apple news, the iWork suite is now available for all iOS devices. Pages, Keynote, and Numbers can now be installed and run on iPhones and iPod touches, in addition to the iPad. Specifically they are universal apps that run on iPad and iPad 2, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4, and iPod touch (3rd & 4th generation). They sell for $9.99 in the App Store, and if you currently own one or more of the apps on your iPad you can port them over to your other iOS device(s) for free. PR goodness after the break.

[Via Apple] Continue reading Apple teases iOS 5 and iCloud service days before WWDC; iWork comes to iPhone & iPod touch →

3D head-tracking comes to iOS

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i3D is now available in the App Store! But what is it? It’s a simple app that takes advantage of the Head-Coupled Perspective, or HCP, to track the face of a user in real time. The app makes your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch’s front-facing camera lock into your face and updates the perspective of a 3D scene accordingly. The app relies solely on head-tracking; the built-in accelerometer and gyroscope are not utilized. The developers note that HCP “does not create a stereoscopic display. It provides a kind of monocular 3D display: the same picture is seen by both eyes. In the future, it might be combined with a stereoscopic display for a better 3D effect.” The app comes preloaded with several 3D scenes for you to experiment with. It’s free, so there’s no reason not to try it out. Sure, i3D is a glorified demo of sorts but hopefully such experimentation will one day lead to full-fledged games that take advantage of the 3D illusion.

iPad 2 coming March 11: faster, lighter, thinner w/ iOS 4.3 & cameras

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On Wednesday Apple revealed the next generation iPad. The iPad 2 is very much an evolutionary iterative device. It is faster, lighter, and thinner than its predecessor, packs back and front-facing cameras, and comes preloaded with a new version of iOS. Take my hand and let’s discover everything that makes iPad 2 the next extraordinary tablet, or as Steve Jobs calls it the “third blockbuster post-PC product” joining the iPod and iPhone.

Specs are important to you, hm? Then let’s start there. iPad 2 is faster. It features Apple’s new 1GHz dual-core A5 processor that is up to 2X faster than the A4; it boasts up to 9X faster graphics and somehow still maintains the same low power as the A4. Battery life remains the same at 10 hours with over a month of standby. iPad 2 is lighter and thinner. It is a mere 8.8mm thick, that’s 33% thinner than the original iPad (13.4mm). In fact, it is even thinner than iPhone 4 (9.3mm). It also lost some weight dropping from 1.5 to 1.3 pounds. On the front you’ll find a VGA camera that takes pictures and records video at 30fps; the camera around back shoots video in 720p HD also at 30fps and can do 5x digital zoom. The built-in gyroscope will assist the device in locating itself in space and orientation; higher precision in gaming will result. Last, Apple has hooked up with AT&T and Verizon to bring 3G data to the tablet.

iPad 2 is coming sooner than you think. It will be made available for purchasing March 11 in two color options: black and white (thankfully the latter ships “from day one”, teehee). Pricing remains the same, too; iPad 2 will come in various capacities (16, 32, 64GB) and models (WiFi, WiFi + 3G) starting at $499. After releasing on the 11th in the U.S., the new iPad will make its way to an additional 26 countries (including Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, and the UK) on March 25.

Learn all about iPad 2’s accessories, iOS 4.3, and new apps after the break. Continue reading iPad 2 coming March 11: faster, lighter, thinner w/ iOS 4.3 & cameras →