Download Bejeweled for Free, Compliments of Apple

After giving away free copies of the popular game Where’s My Water, Apple is feeling generous again as it is offering promo codes for the puzzle game Bejeweled to its loyal Facebook fans.

In order to redeem your free copy of Bejeweled, head over to Apple’s Facebook page, “Like” it if you haven’t yet, and click on “Get Your App Free.”
Bejeweled usually sells for $0.99 in the App Store. It looks like Apple is giving away apps on a regular basis these days, so keep your eyes peeled for more.

Popular Racing Game Asphalt 6 Free for a Limited Time

While we haven’t seen too many app sales yet this month, we have seen quite a few apps go free for short periods of time. There was Where’s My Water, High Caliber Hunting, and EA’s Flight Control to name a few.

Now we can add another one to the list. Gameloft has just made its popular iOS racing title, Asphalt 6: Adrenaline, free for a limited time.
For those who aren’t familiar with the game, Asphalt 6 is the — you guessed it — 6th generation of Gameloft’s hit racing series. The title has been a huge success for its developers, garnering 5 stars in the App Store from nearly 5000 votes.

Here are some of the game’s features:

- Build your dream collection of high end cars and bikes

- Race against your friends online or locally

- Race on real world tracks in cities like L.A. and Tokyo

- Compete in 11 different leagues and 55 events

- Customize your vehicle down to its decals to give it your own style

Between its gorgeous graphics and fluid gameplay, you’re not going to find a better game out there for free. But you better act fast, we’re not sure what Gameloft means by a “limited time.” Download Asphalt 6 from the App Store today

How to See Facebook Timelines on Your iPhone

Back in September of this year, Facebook held its F8 developer conference. Like Apple’s WWDC event, Facebook uses F8 to announce new features and services. The big hit of this year’s conference was the company’s new Timeline feature.

Facebook Timelines allows you to see all of a user’s content on the social networking site in one convenient stream. We’ve already shown you how to access the feature on the iPad, and now we’re going to tell you how to see it on the iPhone…
Facebook recently rolled out some updates to its website that enabled the viewing of the new feature on mobile devices via the web app. This means that if you visit m.facebook.com from your iPhone, you should be able to see everyone’s Timelines.

To make sure yours is activated, visit www.facebook.com/about/timeline and click ‘Get Timeline.’ It’s not showing up in the native iPhone app yet, but since the app is just a frontend to the mobile website, it shouldn’t be too long before it’s available.

Amazing iPhone-Controlled Coffee Maker is From the Future

There’s something special about an iPhone-controlled coffee machine. Think about it: you wake up early in the morning, launch an app on your iPhone, shuffle into the kitchen a few minutes later, and a nice, hot cup of coffee is waiting for you.

The Scanomat Top Brewer sits out of sight under your counter and features a metal pipe that pours delicious coffee into your cup. The machine’s dedicated iPhone and iPad app lets you make your favorite drinks from the comfort of anywhere in your house.
The Top Brewer makes an incredible 4 coffee cups per minute. It also cleans up after itself. The machine claims to have the smallest milk foamer on the market, and the tip of the metal dispenser heats and foams to match the necessary texture of whatever drink you’re making.
You can dispense hot and cold water, milk, fruit juices, and even steam with the Top Brewer. The iPhone app lets you connect to the machine and select from the available drinks, or have your own favorite coffee pre-programmed and dispensed.

Scanomat hasn’t announced a price tag for the Top Brewer, but expect it to cost way more than your typical Bunn coffee maker.

iOS Concept Designer Jan-Michael Cart Announces Apple Internship

If the name Jan-Michael Cart sounds familiar, it’s because you’ve likely seen his work here on iDB. The 20-something mass media arts student from Georgia has practically become an overnight sensation thanks to his popular concept videos.

Cart has re-imagined several components of iOS such as application switching, notifications, and voice recognition. A lot of folks have commented that his work is good enough to earn him a spot at Apple. And apparently Apple thinks so too…
Jan-Michael recently added a blog section to his personal website and posted this message:

“Welcome to the new blog section of my website. Soon I will be embarking to California, where I will be interning at a fruit company for seven months. I will be updating this to chronicle my adventures and misadventures in the Bay Area for my family, friends, and followers online. Stay tuned, I leave in less than a month!”

Of course, it’s no surprise that Apple picked up the talented designer. Just look at his concept video of what he calls “Dynamic Icons.”
Even though it’s only an internship, Cart’s announcement is certainly exciting. iOS is going on 5 years without any major cosmetic changes, and Apple’s recent interests in people like Peter Hajas and Jan-Michael Cart could be a sign that it’s looking to give the OS a facelift.

Angry Birds Updated to Version 2.0 with 15 New Levels

The ever popular Angry Birds has reached yet another milestone, with the bird-flinging game now two years-old. How the time flies (awful pun intended.)

To celebrate the occasion, Angry Birds’ developer Rovio has updated the team’s runaway success to version number 2.0. This 2.0 release of the original game has a few new tricks up its sleeve.

One of the first things you will notice is all-new artwork. But that’s not all…
Fans of the game will now be able to play all Angry Birds episodes, with Rovio unlocking them all from the start. Gamers will also be able to play 15 new “Birdday” levels as part of the birthday celebrations.

In-game, players will now also be able to use a new “expandable” orange bird, which as our screenshot below shows, helps do a lot of damage with just the one throw. Perfect if your aim is as off as ours!
Angry Birds has been a huge hit with gamers since its release two years ago, with various game spin-offs and merchandise turning the game into one of the biggest franchises on the App Store. If you know someone with an iOS device, then chances are they have played Angry Birds at least once.

Those who do not already own Angry Birds – and there cannot be that many of you left – can download the iPhone/iPod touch version here for $0.99 and the HD iPad release here for $4.99.

Time to fling some birds!

Apple Announces 500,000 Apps in the App Store

Apple has announced over 500,000 apps in the App Store. In a press release this morning the Cupertino company also reported that the Mac App Store has seen 100,000 million downloads since its launch in January.

After three years the App Store has become the most successful mobile marketplace to date, and Apple has served over 18 billion downloads to customers.
Full press release:

CUPERTINO, California—December 12, 2011—Apple® today announced that over 100 million apps have been downloaded from the Mac® App Store™ in less than one year. With thousands of free and paid apps, the Mac App Store brings the App Store experience to the Mac so you can find great new apps, buy them using your iTunes® account, and download and install them in just one step. Apple revolutionized the app industry with the App Store, which now has more than 500,000 apps and where customers have downloaded more than 18 billion apps and continue to download more than 1 billion apps per month.

“In just three years the App Store changed how people get mobile apps, and now the Mac App Store is changing the traditional PC software industry,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “With more than 100 million downloads in less than a year, the Mac App Store is the largest and fastest growing PC software store in the world.”

“With Autodesk products in both the App Store and Mac App Store, we can reach hundreds of millions of Apple users around the world,” said Amar Hanspal, senior vice president of Platform Solutions and Emerging Business at Autodesk. “With our free AutoCAD WS and the more powerful professional drafting tools of AutoCAD LT, we’re using the Mac App Store to deliver new products and reach a growing base of new Mac customers.”

“The Mac App Store has unparalleled reach and has completely transformed our distribution and development cycle,” said Saulius Dailide of the Pixelmator Team. “Offering Pixelmator 2.0 exclusively on the Mac App Store allows us to streamline updates to our image editing software and stay ahead of the competition.”

“In less than one year we’ve shifted the distribution of djay for Mac exclusively to the Mac App Store,” said Karim Morsy, CEO of algoriddim. “With just a few clicks, djay for Mac is available to customers in 123 countries worldwide. We could never have that reach through traditional channels.”

The Mac App Store offers thousands of apps in Education, Games, Graphics & Design, Lifestyle, Productivity, Utilities and other categories. Users can browse new and noteworthy apps, find out what’s hot, see staff favorites, search categories and look up top charts for paid and free apps, as well as user ratings and reviews. The Mac App Store is included with Mac OS® X Lion and is available as a software update for any Mac running Mac OS X Snow Leopard®. For more information visit, www.apple.com/mac/app-store.

Mac developers set the prices for their apps, keep 70 percent of the sales revenue, are not charged for free apps and do not have to pay hosting, marketing or credit card fees. To find out more about developing for the Mac App Store visit, developer.apple.com/programs/mac.

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced iPad 2 which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.

Radio Shack Offering $30 Off AT&T iPhone 4 and 4S

Folks that missed out on all of the Black Friday festivities will be happy to hear that retailers aren’t quite done discounting Apple products yet. Yesterday, we told you about some major iPad deals going on over at Apple.com, and now we’ve come across some other specials.

It appears that Radio Shack, one of America’s largest electronics retailers, is discounting most of its AT&T-branded smartphones this month. The sale covers Android handsets by top manufacturers like HTC and Sony, and also includes the iPhone 4 and 4S…
Electronista is reporting that starting today, Radio Shack is offering $30 off both the iPhone 4 and the new iPhone 4S via instant discounts. This makes the 16GB model iPhone 4S just $169.99 with a two year contract, and knocks the 8GB iPhone 4 down to $69.
The sale ends December 17th, and is obviously limited to stock on hand. As most of you know, retailers have had a hard time keeping the iPhone 4S in stock. But if your local store has them, this will likely be the best deal you’ll see this year on Apple’s two most popular handsets.

Apple Gets Final Go-Ahead For iPhone 4S Release in China, Release Imminent

It’s all systems go for Apple in China, after the country’s regulators gave the iPhone 4S the last level approval required before going on sale.

According to reports, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the required network access permit this week, removing the final stumbling block which had prevented the latest iPhone from going on sale in the country. Apple had recently confirmed that the iPhone 4S was indeed ready to be released, and that the company was simply awaiting the go-ahead from the authorities.

The move means that Apple and its wireless partners now have all they need to bring the iPhone 4S to the largest smartphone market on the planet…
Chinese Apple fans won’t have long to wait before they can get their hands on a shiny new iPhone 4S, either, with China Unicom claiming they expect to begin selling the handset as early as this month. The carrier believes a 16GB iPhone 4S will set buyers back 4,999 yuan ($786) unsubsidised.

The iPhone 4S is expected to sell as well in China as it has across the globe, with queues and sell-outs almost a given at this point. When the handset went on sale in Hong Kong last month it was met by hordes of iPhone fans. China, with its considerable Apple fan-base should, easily see a similar turnout for the 4S.

If you’re living in China, we’d love to hear whether you will be picking up an iPhone 4S when it goes on sale.