Weekly Mobile News Roundup – 3 May 2013

  Once again the week is coming to an end and that means it’s time for a roundup of the past weeks news!

Smart Food Scale Makes iPad Even More Kitchen-Friendly – The Smart Food Scale is a Kickstarter project and comes from Chef Sleeve, the folks behind the Chef Sleeve, the ultimate wipe-clean iPad prophylactic.

Apple counts down to 50 billion app downloads with all-time best sellers, $10,000 gift card – Apple’s doing another iTunes countdown, this time to the 50 billionth app downloaded. Along with the chance to win a $10,000 iTunes gift card, Apple also greets you with the all time most downloaded free and paid apps.

Apple Releases iOS 6.1.4 for iPhone 5 With New Speakerphone Audio Profile – Apple today released a minor iOS 6.1.4 update, bringing an updated audio profile for speakerphone. The new version, which arrives as Build 10B350, appears to only be for the iPhone 5.

Rare Apple-1 to be auctioned off this month for expected $261K to $392K – One of only six known working Apple-1 computers will be put up for auction later this month by German auction house Breker, which expects the unit to fetch between $261,000 and $392,000.

How to Troubleshoot the Four Most Common “Oh Sh*t” Mac Problems – For the most part, the problems you run into on a Mac are pretty universal across all versions of OS X, but we’ll stick to the most modern operating systems here: Lion and Mountain Lion (most of these tips should also work with Snow Leopard though)

iOS app flagged for malware, and why you shouldn’t worry – An iOS game called Simply Find It, when run through BitDefender’s virus scanner, reportedly returns a positive result for Trojan.JS.iframe.BKD. This has drawn into question the effectiveness of Apple’s App Store approval process. Is this something that Apple should have caught, and is it something App Store customers should be worried about?

Apple’s bond plan estimated to save $9.2 billion in taxes – Just how much is Apple’s new, six-part, $17 billion bond plan going to end up saving the company in taxes it would have needed to pay if it used its overseas cash pile?

Is Apple doing enough to help prevent iPhone thefts? – Last fall, the U.S. national database for stolen cell phones went live. The goal of the database, which was a joint venture between several carriers, was to make it harder for stolen handsets to be activated on US networks.

Apple’s iOS 7 said to be visually different, flat – It’s no secret Apple plans to show off the next major version of iOS at its annual developers conference in June, though what exactly will be different about the new software has been fuzzy.

Songza 3.0 update available now – We mentioned Songza’s iOS app last year around when it came out, and the music sharing service has just updated the app to version 3.0.

Ive’s iOS 7 Overhaul Reportedly Borrows OS X Engineers, Risks Delays – Remember how we announced earlier this week that Apple chief designer Jony Ive aims to strip iOS 7 of the operating system’s skeuomorphic elements?

Creating complex smart playlists in iTunes – Creating playlists in iTunes can be as simple as dragging a few songs, or as complex as creating smart playlists that refer to other playlists and use nested conditions to pick songs that meet specific criteria.