Iphone App, Ipad App | featured news

App developers have turned cellphones and tablets into powerful tools, spawning a multibillion-dollar industry but making huge sacrifices in the process.

YouTube is being reprogrammed for the iPhone and iPad amid the latest fallout from the growing hostility between Google and Apple. The changes are being made because Google Inc. and Apple Inc. didn't renew a five-year licensing agreement that established YouTube's video service as one of the built-in applications in the operating system that runs the iPhone and iPad.

In Steve Jobs fashion, Apple CEO Tim Cook kicked off the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco with a handful of key stats about its app ecosystem, which Cook called “an economy in itself.”

Skype WiFi is a new app for iPhone and iPad that lets you pay for internet access by the minute rather than by the hour or day.

The computer giant Apple Inc. agreed Wednesday to remove an application called the "The 3rd Intifada" from its popular App Store for iPads and iPhones.

While publishers are grumbling about Apple’s new enforcement of in-app purchases for content, parents and one lawmaker are also raising questions about the way Apple handles in-app payments in apps aimed at children. According to the Washington Post, Rep. Edward J. Markey (D – MA) on Tuesday urged the Federal Trade Commission to review the way Apple markets its apps because of questions about the ease with which children are buying items in games.

An Adobe complaint is the main cause behind reported federal interest in antitrust charges against Apple, according to Bloomberg sources. Apple recently changed the rules for developers, forbidding the use of third-party tools in the creation of iPhone and iPad apps.

Apple is attempting to avoid an antitrust probe into its trade practices by revising some of the terms of its developer agreement. It's not clear which parts would be revised, but government regulators are interested in provisions in Apple's iAd advertising program, and Apple's decision to reject apps built with cross-platform applications.

Regulators are considering an inquiry into whether Apple Inc violates antitrust law by requiring that its programing tools be used to write applications for the iPad and iPhone, a source familiar with the matter said on Monday.