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Users Spent $1.1 Billion on App Store During the Holidays

users paid $20 billion on apps in 2015

According to an Apple report, users spent $1.1 billion on App Store during the holiday’s season. This is the total sum spent during a period of two weeks ending Jan. 3.

Of all the days, users spent the most during the New Year’s Day when they purchased apps costing a total of $144 million in just 24 hours. The second single-day record was set only a week before, on Christmas Day.

According to Apple’s senior V.P. Philip Schiller who leads the App Store, users spent over $20 billion on apps during 2015, a figure that is more than double compared to 2013. Schiller said he is grateful to all the amazing developers who have created the exciting and innovative apps for the customers.

Since 2008 App Store has brought developers almost $40 billion of which more than one third has been generated during the last year.

App Store’s success has created almost 2 million jobs just in the United States. About three quarters of them (more than 1.4 million jobs) are app creators, entrepreneurs and software engineers creating apps and also non-IT jobs created and sustained by the app economy.

Besides the United States, Apple’s app economy has created about 1.4 million jobs in China and about 1.2 million jobs throughout Europe.

The most popular categories of apps in 2015 were Gaming, Entertainment and Networking. Of the gaming category the most popular games were Minecraft: Pocket Edition, Heads Up!, Monster Strike, Clash of Clans and Trivia Crack. The most famous social network apps were Facebook Messenfer, Snapchat and WeChat.

This year has been full of innovations for Apple, who has also launched Apple Watch and Apple TV which offered users completely new experiences and changed the way people were used to consume TV content. Apple TV has been launched in October and since then the most popular of its apps are HBO Now, Beat Sports and Rayman Adventures.

When it comes to the Apple watch, users preferred fitness apps such as Lifesum and Nike + Running but the travel category worked just fine with popular apps like Citymapper and iTranslate.

Schiller is excited about last year’s sales and looks forward into the future hoping that this year is going to be at least as better as the one that just passed. Apple products, from iPhone, iPad and Mac to Apple TV and Apple Watch will probably continue to lead the market.

Image source: pixabay

Make sure not to Get iCloud Documents Deleted by iOS 8 Bug

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After a disastrous iOS 8.0.1 rollout, Apple seems to continue experiencing problems. MacRumors has reported a particularly pesky iOS 8 bug that has the potential of erasing iWork documents stored on iCloud.

Although iOS users don’t generally need to use their “Reset All Settings” button, some unforeseen situations connected to a new OS may force you to reconsider. However, tread lightly, as this new bug makes the reset quite problematic if you are a iCloud Drive user. Some other bugs might force users to resort to a settings restore (the bug preventing phones from syncing via Bluetooth to the Ford MyTouch system or the one preventing phones from sending files via Bluetooth or NFC to other devices).

According to the “Reset All Settings” description, the action does not erase media or data. The description wasn’t accurate for many Apple users who upgraded to iOS 8 and were also using iCloud Drive. They noticed that after they reset their device to factory settings, their iWork documents on the iClould Drive also vanished.

MacRumors first identified the issue and noticed that the entire deletion expanded from the user’s iPhone and web to Yosemite-running desktops as well. The only files that aren’t affected are Textedit and Preview documents since they can’t be viewed on iPhone.

Documents can be seen on OS X Yosemite devices, on iCloudl.com and on iOS devices if you chose iCloud Drive when you installed iOS 8. If not, you can still see the files on iOS 7-running devices as well as Mavericks-running desktops.

Granted, this bug in itself isn’t one that affects a great deal of people: generally, the general reset is needed only because of install woes or because users decide to give away or sell their device. However, for someone who is dependent on iCloud and isn’t aware of this bug, finding your iWork files erased is certainly not a laughing matter.

Apple support may be able to help restore your files after such an unfortunate reset that also took iWork documents down with it. Some Apple users said that they succeeded in restoring their files doing so. Another option is to use Time Machine so that your files are safely backed up.

Until Apple solves this issue, make sure to postpone your device reset if you’re an iCloud Drive user. If the reset is something that can’t be put on hold, make sure to backup all important files to other storage services such as Dropbox.

Apple hasn’t publicly acknowledged the bug yet.

Apple’s redesigned Mac Pro available tomorrow for $2,999

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Apple has never been one to cower away from the high-price and the Mac Pro is the top of the top end when it comes to desktop computing, it is the feature list every professional desktop user dreams about and Apple is about to release it into the wild tomorrow.

The redesigned Mac Pro has a ton of new features to make it a more impactful and powerful desktop computer. The major feature is actually not in the specs, but in the way Apple has made the Mac Pro, cutting down the size to an eighth of its former self.

Many Mac Pro owners will describe how the high-end desktop is literally unable to move from one place to another – Apple made the machine to be the core power behind every professionals work, but they did not think about when the user wanted to move from the office to home to work.

The new Mac Pro is incredibly portable and the new redesigned model is being made here in the US, something Apple will brag about from now until the next Mac Pro is out in shops- this is a move many US companies have been trying to get on board, Motorola is the most notable example with the Moto X.

Inside the Mac Pro sits a 3.7GHz quad-core Intel Xeon E5 processor, dual AMD FirePro D300 GPUs with 2GB of VRAM each, 12GB of RAM, 256GB of internal flash storage and an impressive new three way cooling system to make the Mac Pro both quiet and cool.

Apple will also ship out a higher end version, running a 3.5 GHz 6-core Intel Xeon E5 processor, dual AMD FirePro D500 GPUs with 3GB of VRAM each, 16GB of RAM and the same 256GB of flash storage, this model will start at $3,999.

The lack of storage is quite a sad thing, we would have loved to see 1TB of flash storage, but we guess neither Apple nor the storage manufacturers are capable of pulling this off at a reasonable price at the moment.

Mac Sales Dip Due to iMac Complications

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Apple CEO Tim Cook has said in a recent interview that the drop on sales that Apple has suffered this past quarter is due to iMacs not selling as fast as they had in previous years. This was due to a number of factors, Cook said.
In the 4th quarter of 2012, Apple sold 4.1 million iMacs. This figure is down a million units when compared to the previous years 4th quarter total, 5.2 million units. iMac units have been selling around 700,000 less every year for the past three years. The dramatic drop that was seen in this past quarter was due to a number of things, says Tim Cook.

One reason the drop in sales occurred was that there were less weeks in the 4th quarter of 2012 than there were in the same quarter of 2011. In just one week, Apples sells an average of 370,000 iMacs. Another factor that slowed sales in the fourth quarter of 2012 was that the newest version of the PC was released late, not giving amble time for the computer to become popular and make good sales.

Yet another reason sales were slowed, Cook said, was that Apples was experiencing an inventory issue and was short 100,000 units for the 4th quarter of 2012. All of these things combined slowed sales considerably, and the outcome was a significant drop in sales.
Cook added that the iPad and iPad mini may have drawn some of the consumer base of the iMac away from the PC and onto a tablet. The cannibalization of Apples customers from one product to another may reflect badly at first, as sales drop, but will pick up as those same customers change over to an iPad. Cook stated that Apple sold 23 million iPads last year and was unable to keep up with demands for the iPad mini. When they are able to produce enough units, Cook is confident these figures will rise even higher.