Apple has refunded the parents of five-year-old boy in the UK after he managed to spend a whopping £1,700 (approx $2555) on in-app purchases without their knowledge, reports the BBC. Apparently, the spending spree was achieved after Danny Kitchen asked his father to enter his iTunes password into the family iPad, so he could download a free game from the App Store.
Apple has claimed the top spot in Fortune’s world’s most admired companies list for the sixth year in a row. Once again, the Cupertino company is joined in the top five by two of its biggest competitors – Google and Amazon, who took the second and third places respectively. Coca-Cola and Starbucks were placed fourth and fifth.
Apple today announced that content downloads from iTunes U have now topped one billion. Launched in 2006, the service features the world’s biggest online catalogue of free educational content, which is provided by leading universities, libraries, museums and organisations around the world.
Apple has today extended its iTunes in the Cloud service for movies to an additional 11 European countries. The feature, which was first launched in the US back in 2012, allows customers to re-download previous iTunes movie purchases on all of their devices – wirelessly and without syncing.
According to a report from Gigaom, Apple has offered to pay compensation to US parents who claim their children bought in-app items without their permission. The proposed settlement comes just under two years after the company was sued by Garen Meguerian after his daughter made a series of purchases without his knowledge.
Over the weekend, Mophie announced the launch of a version of its popular Juice Pack Air battery case for Apple’s latest smartphone. According to the California-based company, the accessory is thinner and lighter than previous generations, and its 1,700 mAh battery offers up to 100% extra battery life for the iPhone 5.
Apple aired a new iPad TV advert during last night’s 85th Academy Awards broadcast. The ad, which is appropriately titled ‘Hollywood’, features a number of movie-themed apps including Apple’s own iMovie, Action Movie FX, and MovieSlate, plus clips from Apollo 13, Back to the Future, and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
If you picked up a Retina MacBook Pro as soon as they went on sale, you may have been a little disappointed when Apple announced a few improvements to them last week. But don’t feel too downhearted; according to the latest benchmarks, the new models are only 3-5% faster than their predecessors.
Recent reports have claimed Apple has a team of around 100 people working on the upcoming “iWatch,” a smart device that users will wear on their wrist. But we’ve seen no evidence of it — there’s been no leaked prototypes, and no mention of it within Apple’s iOS code. Until the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office just granted Apple a patent for it.