iPhone Applications

Major League Baseball has released the 2012 update to its popular MLB.com At Bat mobile application. Now iPhone and iPad users can download and install the same app, which also means users with multiple iOS devices need only pay once. When it comes to paying for live content, MLB 2012 adds more options over last year's app.

Baseball fans can still grab the app for free, which provides live score updates. To hear live radio of games and watch the Gameday summary there are now two options, paying $14.99 once for the whole season or subscribing to the service for $2.99 per month. This also comes with a Live Game of the Day, stats, highlights and more.

Apple, Google, Amazon, HP, RIM, and Microsoft have agreed to implement new rules for mobile applications in an effort to protect user privacy. California Attorney General Kamala D. announced that the six companies will improve privacy protections by falling in line with a California law that requires apps that collect personal information to have privacy policies.

"Your personal privacy should not be the cost of using mobile apps, but all too often it is," said Attorney General Harris.

"This agreement strengthens the privacy protections of California consumers and of millions of people around the globe who use mobile apps," Attorney General Harris continued. "By ensuring that mobile apps have privacy policies, we create more transparency and give mobile users more informed control over who accesses their personal information and how it is used."

Once again, Apple is offering one lucky winner a $10,000 iTunes gift card for simply downloading an iOS app. Of course timing will determine who wins, with the 25 billionth app marking the winner and another milestone in the 3.5 year history of the App Store.

Apple ran a similar contest when the App Store hit 10 billion downloads in January of last year. As of this writing there are less than 700 million apps remaining to be downloaded according to the Apple contest page.

Screenshots of the next iOS version 5.1 pre-GM have leaked and show some minor changes in the works for Apple's next iPhone firmware update. One of the notable changes highlighted by Blog do iPhone is a lock screen camera button that never disappears. Instead of clicking the home button twice to bring up the camera button, the process is simplified.

When the iPhone is locked, to take a photo quickly with iOS 5.1 you can just swipe the camera button up. This saves the step of having to double click the home button then tap the camera button. Apple added the lock screen camera button to provide quick access to the photo and video app, while protecting photo albums and the camera roll until the device is fully unlocked with a passcode.

Apple has finally responded to several reports that apps are accessing and storing user contact data without permission. The problem started when blogger Arun Thampi uncovered that the iOS app Path was storing people's contact info without their knowledge. Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr told AllThingsD that this behavior is a violation of their guidelines.

“Apps that collect or transmit a user’s contact data without their prior permission are in violation of our guidelines. We’re working to make this even better for our customers, and as we have done with location services, any app wishing to access contact data will require explicit user approval in a future software release.”