When Apple first launched the App Store, anyone could submit a review for an application. Users weren’t required to actually purchase an application before being allowed to review it. Due to this system, almost every application seen a hefty drop in their overall rating. In September 2008, Apple put an end to all of that nonsense, and only allowed customers who purchased an application to review it, but for some reason they left the offending reviews in place. According to MacRumors , Apple has now finally removed the non-customer reviews. They cite a few long standing applications receiving a large decrease in their review counts such as SEGA’s Super Monkey Ball . According to their forum members, the reviews that were removed were only old, non-customer reviews. It’s odd that it took this long to remove the non-customer reviews. Maybe Apple didn’t want to cause a fuss by removing the non-customer reviews immediately after putting a stop to them. Whatever their reason was is irrelevant, the review system is now the way it should have been in the first place. This is as fair as it’s probably going to get.

Developers who’ve either made a dedicated emoji-enabler or included the functionality as a feature in their apps have received notification that they need to remove or update their apps related to this as of now. Here it is, summarized by one of the guys who makes TypingGenius: As of today, Apple has informed us that they are

$2.5 million. That’s what someone is going to pay for what could be the most expensive iPhone mod ever, the iPhone 3G “Kings Button”. It’s covered in gold and diamonds, and its the latest tacky mod for the iPhone, no doubt adorned by some millionaire with little else to do with their cash. Why people would

Apple’s very lucrative fee sharing arrangement with AT&T over iPhone fees may be coming to an end in favor of a new carrier … Verizon Wireless. The rumors are flying in avid Apple inner circles. If Apple’s interim CEO Tim Cook considers what to do with the current carrier arrangement over the iPhone, rumors are

CBS recently released a new streaming video application for the iPhone titled TV.com . The application allows users to view streaming videos from all CBS owned media including the CW, Showtime, Cnet among others. If you seen Showtime on the list and like me, got overly giddy at the thought of watching full streaming episodes of Dexter, you will be disappointed because there isn’t any. Most of the content available consists of older shows, promos and interviews. The videos are streaming so the quality is average at best, and the full episodes of shows are not one single video, but a series of short-length clips. It is also quite difficult to find the coveted full length episodes. There isn’t a tab or a setting to filter through all of the throwaway content to find just full length videos. Users must utilize the search toolbar or filter the content by shows, channels or categories and just hope there is a full episode to watch. Users can set favorites so there is no need to keep searching once you do finally find your content of choice. A shake to shuffle feature exists for people who are bored and searching for anything at all to watch. The feature will randomly pick a specific category or show and display all related programming. My first attempt resulted in videos showing how to core a pepper from the CHOW network. Good stuff. The application seems to be a work in progress. Sometimes it would randomly quit, or bog down heavily when searching for content so be patient. The content isn’t all bad, there are some pretty good videos available, and it’s hard to complain when all of this is absolutely free. I recommend giving it a try, especially if you are a MacGyver fan, it’s just one of the many older shows with tons of full streaming episodes.

By now, everyone is probably aware of the cute Japanese Emoji icons that have been made available to the rest of us by Emoji-enabling applications. Well, you better get them while you can because they are about to go away very quickly. Gary Fung, creator of Typing Genius , has informed us that Apple has asked him to immediately remove any trace of Emoji from his application. Of course, Fung’s application isn’t the only one available at the App Store that can enable Emoji icons. Apple has reportedly already removed Emoji specific applications, and has asked all developers with applications that include Emoji-enablers to immediately submit an update with the enablers removed. Apple hasn’t made a statement about why they suddenly decided to remove the applications. Emoji icons aren’t enabled by default for users outside of Japan, and the only way to unlock them is through a loophole in the iPhones software so you can understand why they probably don’t feel the need to say anything. If you already have enabled Emoji icons on your iPhone, this doesn’t really concern you. Everything will remain the same unless Apple decides to issue some sort of an update to fix the loophole. We recommend checking out our How-To on enabling Emoji icons for free. The application won’t be around for long so don’t delay, get it today!

With all the incredible things developers have made the iPhone do, card counting was bound to come along at some point - and according to some of its reviews, Card Counter apparently does it very well. And to be fair, the slant of the program seems very much to be teaching you to count cards (which

While the likelihood of Apple releasing new iPhones this year is all but a certain thing, a discussion between analysts and Apple’s top brass has also dropped clues that the iPhone’s pricing may not be static this year. Perhaps a $99 iPhone of some kind? Toni Sacconaghi of Bernstein Research mentions in a research note that

A report issued on the flash RAM market indicates that Apple is grabbing up supplies of memory components in preparation for the next generation iPhone, causing part shortages and raising the spot price for memory. The ThinkEquity Partners’ report centered on SanDisk, which is not one of the four companies Apple actually buys its memory components

The majority of apps downloaded from the App Store are in use by less than 5% of users after one month has passed since the download, according to an analytics firm that is also shedding light on other aspects of the business that are pretty interesting to read. The data was collected from more than 30