Apps, Android | featured news

The furor over Apple's faulty mapping software reached the Silicon Valley company's highest echelons Friday, prompting an apology from Chief Executive Tim Cook and opening the way for rival Google to capitalize on the misstep.

Hours after it was highlighted by a security firm, Russian-language malware on the iOS App Store was removed by Apple and is no longer available for download. Apple confirmed on Thursday to Jim Dalrymple of The Loop that it removed the malware, an application named "Find and Call," once it was alerted to its presence on the App Store. The company said the software was pulled for violating App Store guidelines by accessing a user's Address Book data without authorization.

Google has launched Google Now, a new search interface which improves the search results based on the time and location of the search. It is available as part of Android Jelly Bean, the latest iteration of its mobile OS, and works by using the time, search history and location data to provide better search results.

Over the weekend, Facebook added a stalkerish feature called "Find Friends Nearby" to its mobile website; on Monday, it was gone. "Find Friends Nearby" let users of iOS and Android devices locate BFFs — and perhaps nBFFs (never BFFS) — who were within range.

Poor Instagram users. First, their beloved photo-sharing application moves from iPhone-only exclusivity to the Android phone masses. A week later, Facebook swallows up the tiny startup behind the app for $1 billion. The purchase sparked worries that Facebook might shutter Instagram or change it for the worse by harvesting their personal information or shoving ads into their carefully curated photo streams.

At the moment, one of the chief unmet needs is simplicity, says Guenther, who was president of TiVo before joining NIM. While iPad users, for instance, can find most of the magazines they might want to buy in Apple‘s Newsstand app, they still have to download each magazine’s reader app individually and manage their subscriptions separately. NIM’s answer, which it’s unveiling Wednesday, is a unified tablet newsstand in which users can jump between dozens of different titles. At launch, it will be available on Android tablets running the Honeycomb operating system or higher, but Morgan says the company plans to submit its iOS app to Apple for approval in the next few weeks.

Google has beefed up security on its Android mobile-device software to better prevent "malicious" software from residing in its app store.