store

Microsoft's Windows Store has hit the 100,000 apps mark in short order.

"Thanks for a great \\build! Just passed 100k apps in the Windows Store," Microsoft tweeted earlier today.

That was fast. Windows 8 was launched only last October.

How fast? Google took longer to reach that point -- roughly two years after the Android Market formally opened for business.

And it took about a year and a half for the iPad to garner 100,000 iPad-specific apps. "The platform has been out for 453 days, with developers getting access to its software development kit … Read more

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which I answer Mac-related questions sent in by our readers.

This week, readers asked questions about whether or not a memory upgrade will result in more power draw and affect battery life, managing a nonfunctional SD card after a crash, how to dismiss update notifications for one application vs. another in the Mac App Store, and how to undo a command that forces the system to boot to Safe Mode at each start-up.

I welcome contributions from readers, so if you have any suggestions or alternative approaches to these problems, please post them in … Read more

Apple has made good on its promise to bring its official online store to Russia.

The online marketplace became available recently, allowing Russian consumers to buy Apple's Macs, iPhones, iPads, and accessories. Apple offers free shipping and returns and asks for payment by cash on delivery.

For months, Apple has been rumored to be working on bringing its store to Russia. The company's devices have been floating around the country's gray market for years, with some devices, like the iPhone 5, fetching as much as $3,700.

Apple's first step toward an official presence was the … Read more

Apple's online store was very recently hit with some partial outages in countries around the world.

When customers browsed to the company's online stores in the U.S., U.K., and Germany, they found that several images and page elements were missing. 9to5Mac, which reported on the issue earlier Monday, posted an image of an entirely text-based German Apple Store; no images were displayed.

According to 9to5Mac's report, the partial outage was due to a Content Delivery Network error that nixed Apple's many design elements and left only the page's text.

It didn't take … Read more

Apple has begun notifying the parents how they will be compensated for large bills racked up by their children through unauthorized use of in-app purchases in games and apps sold through the App Store.

An e-mail sent by the "Apple In-App Purchase Litigation Administrator" describes how the approximately 23 million people, as part of a class-action lawsuit, can apply for compensation. Parents have until January 13, 2014, to claim a $5 iTunes gift cards for charges less than $30, according to the e-mail. The maximum compensation parents can expect is the total amount charged during a single 45-day … Read more

Apple uses its Mac App Store program as the means for providing not only third-party software, but also OS X system software and updates. When you choose Software Update from the Apple menu, the system will open the App Store, which will check the computer for all software purchased and managed through the store. However, in some instances the download doesn't complete and the program may even hang, showing a spinning pinwheel cursor. You may not even be able to restart your computer, which obviously can be frustrating to deal with.

There are a couple of approaches you can … Read more

Last summer I covered an easy-to-create recipe on IFTTT that would send an e-mail or alert of your choosing once the App Store Twitter account posted a tweet announcing the latest freebie. Since that time there have been some changes to Twitter 's API policy, and IFTTT (name based on "If this, then that") has had to change how it uses Twitter within its service.

As such, the recipe demonstrated in my post last June no longer works. While browsing through public IFTTT Recipes today I found a solution that uses posts on the App Store's official … Read more

Adobe's Photoshop Express is a basic photo-editing app for your mobile device. With Photoshop Express, you can correct photo properties like contrast, exposure, and white balance, or use the autofix feature to let Photoshop try to fix everything for you. You can also crop your photos, apply creative filters, and share them to Facebook directly from the app.

Previously only available for iOS and Android devices, it's now ready to be downloaded for free to your Windows 8 tablet or hybrid device from the Windows Store. Here's how to get started with Adobe Photoshop Express for Windows 8:… Read more