Popular iOS Apps Now Free or Discounted for the Holidays

Each year during the holidays, app developers offer deals on a wide variety of apps and games, giving customers a chance to purchase popular content at a significant discount. This year is no exception, with a slew of fantastic apps and games available at low prices.

Our sister site AppShopper tracks prices in real-time and is a great resource to use to keep an eye on app sales during the holiday. We’ve also listed some of the best deals on apps below:

– Fantastical 2 for iPhone ($1.99, down from $3.99): Popular calendar app, at its lowest price ever [Direct Link]
– Fantastical for Mac ($9.99, down from $19.99): Popular Mac calendar app that syncs with Fantastical 2 for iPhone [Direct Link]
– djay 2 ($4.99, down from $9.99): Popular DJ iPad app [Direct Link]
– vjay (Free, down from $9.99): Video and music remixing app [Direct Link]

– Inspire Pro (Free, down from $4.99): App for drawing and sketching [Direct Link]
– The Elements: A Visual Exploration (Free, down from $13.99): Limited time sale on a popular periodic table app [Direct Link]
– ArtRage ($2.99, down from $4.99): Popular iPad painting app [Direct Link]

Along with the apps listed above, several developers have teamed up to offer an App Santa promotion, offering discounts of up to 60 percent off apps like Twitter client Tweetbot, scanning app Scanner Pro, package tracking app Delivery Status Touch, password management app 1Password, and note taking app Vesper.

A forum member on our sister site TouchArcade has aggregated an extensive list of all the games on sale. Multiple studios, including Electronic Arts, Taito, CAPCOM, Square Enix, and Warner Bros. are offering deep discounts on their entire game catalogs. We’ve listed some of the more notable sales below:

– Angry Birds Star Wars II (Free, down from $0.99) [Direct Link]
– LostWinds (Free, down from $3.99) [Direct Link]
– Infinity Blade III ($2.99, down from $6.99) [Direct Link]
– XCOM: Enemy Unknown ($9.99, down from $19.99) [Direct Link]
– Final Fantasy V ($7.99, down from $15.99) [Direct Link]
– Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 ($0.99, down from $4.99) [Direct Link]
– Bastion ($0.99, down from $4.99) [Direct Link]
– Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga ($9.99 Full Unlock, down from $14.99) [Direct Link]
– Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic ($4.99, down from $9.99) [Direct Link]
– The World Ends With You: Solo Remix HD ($8.99/9.99, down from $17.99/$19.99) [Direct Link: iPhone/iPad]

Discount pricing on many of these apps will be in place for at least a week, as Apple will shut down iTunes Connect from December 21 to December 27, preventing developers from implementing app changes. For more sales, check out AppShopper’s price drop section.

New Mac Pro: Simultaneous Real-Time 4K Effect Rendering, +900MB/s Read/Write

With the new Mac Pro in the hands of reviewers for more than a day now, the first impressions focused on performance are being published and they are impressive.

FCP.co posted a 24-hour hands on with the new Mac Pro. They found read speeds of 880MB/s from the Mac Pro’s solid state storage, with impressive write numbers of 985.5MB/s. Further, the team discovered that new machine could post full 4K video with multiple color corrections, effects and transitions playing back all in real time.

Macworld saw even more impressive SSD performance, with Black Magic reporting 952.8MB/s writes and 920.5MB/s reads. Black Magic‘s speed test app reports that the new Mac Pro can easily handle all video formats it currently tracks, with FCP.co adding that its Mac Pro was able to play back 16 simultaneous streams of 4K video.

On overall performance, FCP.co writes:

I can quite honestly say that, despite working with these huge file sizes and frame sizes, the editing experience has been silky smooth. Skimming, playback, shuttling, jogging and trimming are all responsive. In fact, editing 4K on the Mac Pro feels like editing HD on my current MacBook Pro – except I can see large numbers for the frame sizes where normally I’d expect to see the reassuringly familiar “1920×1080″.

They went on to push the machine by adding real-time effects to a 4K stream to see the breaking point.

I started slowly, adding a simple Dry Heat look. That played back in real time, no dropped frames. How about a Gaussian Blur? That’s usually a bit more intensive, especially with the huge numbers of pixels we’re dealing with here. No dropped frames. Nice. How about a Gaussian blur with a Bleach Bypass look? Still in real time… ok, let’s get serious…

And so it went on… Multiple colour corrections, effects, transitions. This thing keeps playing back! In fact at one point I took a RED RAW 4K clip into a 4K project and just started working through the list of video effects (many of which are 4K ready). Watch the result for yourself.

Back in September, GeekBench scores for the new 8-core 3.0Ghz Mac Pro appeared, giving the unit a single- and multi-core scores of 3349 and 24429. Now, on production hardware, Macworld got scores of 3599 and 25997, a modest improvement.

Both Macworld and FCP.co mentioned a gentle but notable current of warm air rising from the machine, but that the Mac Pro’s fan was barely noticeable. If something is placed on top of the machine’s vent hole, like a book, the Mac Pro will shut itself off before any damage can occur.

The new Mac Pro is available for order now, but shipments are not expected until well into the new year. An Apple spokesperson said yesterday that “demand for the all new Mac Pro is great and it will take time before supply catches up with demand”.

An Inside Look at Google’s Reaction to the Original iPhone Introduction

Last month, longtime technology journalist Fred Vogelstein released his new book Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution, offering an inside look at the development of both the iPhone and Android ecosystems. An excerpt from the book sharing a behind-the-scenes look at the original iPhone introduction had been published in October, and a newly released excerpt from The Atlantic is now gaining attention for its description of Google’s reaction to the iPhone unveiling in January 2007.

Among the most quotable bits comes from former Google engineer Chris DeSalvo, who related his reaction to seeing the iPhone shown for the first time. At the time, Google had been working on its “Sooner” reference device for Android, and it was clear that the iPhone represented a significant departure from that concept.

Chris DeSalvo’s reaction to the iPhone was immediate and visceral. “As a consumer I was blown away. I wanted one immediately. But as a Google engineer, I thought ‘We’re going to have to start over.’” […]

“What we had suddenly looked just so . . . nineties,” DeSalvo said. “It’s just one of those things that are obvious when you see it.”

Google Sooner (Source: Steven Troughton-Smith)
Android chief Andy Rubin reportedly had a similar reaction:

On the day Jobs announced the iPhone, the director of the Android team, Andy Rubin, was six hundred miles away in Las Vegas, on his way to a meeting with one of the myriad handset makers and carriers that descend on the city for the Consumer Electronics Show. He reacted exactly as DeSalvo predicted. Rubin was so astonished by what Jobs was unveiling that, on his way to a meeting, he had his driver pull over so that he could finish watching the webcast.

“Holy crap,” he said to one of his colleagues in the car. “I guess we’re not going to ship that phone.”

Not all of those close to the Android development process remember the history in that same way, as OS News points back to a 2012 comment from longtime Android engineer Dianne Hackborn claiming that the “Sooner” concept had already been dropped prior to the iPhone introduction. According to Hackborn, Sooner did, however, continue to be used for software development purposes for its stability relative to the “Dream” touchscreen concept that was also under development.

From a software perspective, Sooner and Dream were basically the same — different form-factors, one without a touch screen — but they were not so different as this article indicates and the switch between them was not such a huge upheaval. […]

I don’t recall the exact dates, but I believe the decision to drop Sooner was well before the iPhone announcement… though we continued to use it for quite a while internally for development, since it was the only semi-stable hardware platform we had. If nothing else, it helped remove significant risk from the schedule since software development could be done on a relatively stable device while the systems team brought up the new hardware in parallel.

The differences in recollections may hinge to some degree on whether the subjects related more to the hardware or software aspects of the iPhone and Android. As Vogelstein notes, Android itself remained an ambitious attempt to bring multi-tasking access to Google’s services and other apps to any device, as opposed to Apple’s locked-down iPhone hardware-software combination. So while those comparing the iPhone’s hardware to Google’s Sooner work immediately saw that Apple was changing the game, those focused more on the platform still saw that Android had the flexibility to adapt to the future of hardware.

Weak iPhone 5c Demand May Be Slowing China Mobile iPhone Deal [iOS Blog]

With China Mobile, the world’s largest carrier, having launched its new 4G LTE network without announcing an iPhone deal, questions have arisen about why an agreement has not yet been reached after many years of negotiations and evidence indicating that the necessary hardware is available and approved for sale.

According to a new report from KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the deal may have been slowed by the unexpectedly weak demand for the iPhone 5c relative to the iPhone 5s among China Mobile customers. According to Kuo’s survey numbers, interest in the iPhone 5c from China Mobile customers has fallen precipitously from earlier expectations while iPhone 5s interest has remained high, and that unexpected mix of customer preference may be leading China Mobile and Apple to a renegotiation of an agreement that was nearly settled.

While previously we estimated that Apple originally planned the TD-LTE version would account for 30% of total iPhone 5C shipments, our latest survey indicates that demand for the TD-LTE iPhone 5C has declined dramatically due to 5S being far more popular than 5C among China Mobile subscribers. As such, we estimate iPhone 5C shipments of the TD-LTE version for China Mobile at 1.0-1.5mn units in 4Q13 and under 1.0mn units in 1Q14, well below Apple’s original production plan.

We believe this would necessitate a re-negotiation of the Apple-China Mobile deal and therefore defer its finalization.

Kuo also remains conservative in his predictions of the impact of a China Mobile deal on Apple’s iPhone shipment numbers for the first quarter of 2014, believing that the launch of the new TD-LTE model for China Mobile will be offset by falling sales in other markets around the world as momentum slows in the months following the iPhone 5s and 5c launches in those countries.

FaceTime Audio Coming to Macs With Next OS X Update

The OS X 10.9.2 beta first distributed to developers this afternoon includes Apple’s FaceTime audio, a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) feature that was originally introduced to the iPhone with iOS 7. With FaceTime audio on both iOS and OS X, Apple users will be able to seamlessly call one another from any device.

FaceTime audio is designed to allow users to initiate voice-only calls with other FaceTime users without turning on the accompanying video feed. Currently, Macs running Mavericks only have access to the standard FaceTime app, which bundles both video and audio.

Users who are interested in voice-only communications on Macs have to resort to using third-party apps like Skype or switching to Messages, both of which allow for video chats and voice-only chats.

According to 9to5Mac, the FaceTime audio feature is “integrated deeply” into both the Messages and FaceTime apps, making voice communication between Apple users on any device easier than ever. With Messages, FaceTime, and FaceTime audio on iOS and OS X, Apple will have a complete communication system in place.

With a simple way to answer telephone calls and chat requests from all devices, those in Apple’s ecosystem will have little reason to resort to alternative VoIP apps when communicating with other Apple users. FaceTime audio is also a high-quality VoIP choice, as it uses the AAC-ELD codec for Full-HD Voice. AAC-ELD is designed to provide CD-like audio quality for voice calls, delivering high speech and audio quality at a low coding delay.

It is unknown when OS X 10.9.2 will be released to the general public, but OS X 10.9.1 was in development for just over a month before it was distributed earlier this week. While Apple has been known to remove beta features ahead of release, it is likely FaceTime audio will make it to end users as it is already available on iOS.

Apple Seeds First OS X 10.9.2 Build to Developers

Apple today seeded the first test build of OS X 10.9.2 to registered Mac developers, just three days after the public release of OS X 10.9.1. The build, termed 13C32, is available to registered developers through the Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store as well as through the Mac Dev Center.

Apple asks that developers focus their testing on the following areas: Mail, Messages, VPN, Graphics Drivers, and VoiceOver.

There is no word yet on specific fixes and changes included in the update, and a public release target remains unknown.

Apple Releases Software Update for VPN Issues on Mavericks Server [Mac Blog]

Apple today released VPN Update for Mavericks Server, addressing an issue with certain L2TP VPN connections.

This update fixes an issue that could prevent L2TP VPN connections from working with OS X Server, as described in http://support.apple.com/kb/TS5313

This update requires OS X Mavericks 10.9.1 and Server 3.0.1.

Note: the update will only install if you have already launched Server app and used it to set up services.

The issue has been a major problem for a number of users, as reflected by over two-thirds of reviewers giving the 3.0.1 version of OS X Server a one-star rating in the Mac App Store. [Direct Link]

Apple Releases EFI Firmware Update 2.0 for 2013 Mac Pro [Mac Blog]

Apple today released EFI Firmware Update 2.0 for the newly launched 2013 Mac Pro, which improves system reliability during reboot, fixes an issue with memory self-test, and improves graphics power management when using Boot Camp.

Mac Pro EFI Firmware Update v2.0

This update is recommended for all Mac Pro (Late 2013) models.

This update improves system reliability during reboot, resolves an issue with memory self-test, and improves graphics power management when using Boot Camp.

The 5 MB EFI update should be available from the Mac App Store for all late 2013 Mac Pros and it can also be downloaded directly from Apple’s Support site.