It’s been six years since Apple first unleashed its App Store onto the world and to celebrate several popular paid apps are going on sale for a limited time. As MacRumors documents, you can now get popular apps such as Monument Valley, Threes!, Lost Toys and Drafts for iPad at big discounts of between 50% and 80%. MacRumors also directs our attention to AppShopper’s big list of discounts that will give you a comprehensive look at which apps are getting their prices cut and for how long. In the six years since its launch, the App Store has paid out more than $15 billion to developers and has served as the blueprint for other app stores such as Google Play. We can’t think of a better way to celebrate its birthday by getting some super-cheap apps of our own.

Read more here: Boy Genius Report

Samsung again has to face child labor allegations in China, The Wall Street Journal reports, where China Labor Watch said it found several cases of underage workers being hired by at least one Samsung supplier in the country – Shinyang Electronics. Samsung on Thursday said it’s looking into these findings, adding that according to its previous audits – both internal and external – no underage workers were found at more than 100 Samsung suppliers that were inspected in China.

…

Read more here: Boy Genius Report

T-Mobile and its chief executive John Legere have given numerous indications that the carrier’s sales of Apple devices are much slower than they would like, and we now have another one to toss on the pile: A newly announced special offer will see T-Mobile pay $100 to customers who purchase a new iPhone and iPad at the same time.

…

Read more here: Boy Genius Report

This is something we’ve certainly never thought of before: What if Netflix is intentionally make its own streaming services slow for some inexplicable reason? That’s what Verizon is telling us in a new blog post that was written in response to a customer who complained about getting poor Netflix performance on his home connection even though it was a 75Mbps FiOS connection. Verizon says that there was absolutely no congestion in its last-mile infrastructure, which only leaves one plausible explanation: Netflix and its transit provider partners were intentionally choosing suboptimal connections through which to send traffic.

…

Read more here: Boy Genius Report

If you play guitar, then you’ll definitely want to check out an incredible new iOS app that can transcribe chords for just about any song you have in your iTunes library. Per 9to5Mac, music software company SuperMegaUltraGroovy, Inc. has just released its Capo touch app for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch that comes with brilliant software that’s capable of picking out chords as they’re being played in a song. This way, you won’t have to use unreliable guitar tabs on the web that are often either written in the incorrect key or that don’t correctly transcribe songs that use more complex harmonies than those found in the standard major and minor chord progressions.

…

Read more here: Boy Genius Report

It’s been a dim couple of years for Motorola, a company that has had badly misfiring high-end smartphone strategy. Just two months ago, the company decided to shut down its vaunted U.S. manufacturing plant in Texas. Google grew tired of the issues last January, offloading Motorola to Chinese electronics giant Lenovo, and many questioned what Lenovo could possibly gain by buying the old warhorse.

We now have an answer.

…

Read more here: Boy Genius Report

When the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One launched last November, everyone expected it to be a close race. If anything, Microsoft had a slight advantage coming off of an enormously successful near-decade with the Xbox 360, but eight months later, Sony is so far out in front that the lead seems insurmountable. So how did the PS4 become an international smash hit, doubling the sales of the Xbox One month after month?

…

Read more here: Boy Genius Report

As we’ve noticed in the past, EA is a widely disliked company among many gamers not just because they make mistakes but that its executives can never own up to their mistakes in a remotely honest manner. Case in point: In an interview with Games Industry International, EA mobile boss Frank Gibeau admits that EA botched the launch of Dungeon Keeper for mobile phones and tablets but he offers the single most ridiculous explanation for why it failed.

…

Read more here: Boy Genius Report

Motorola is apparently working on a few new Android handsets including phablet-sized devices, a couple of new videos posted on TK Tech News reveal. The publication has supposedly gotten in touch with a person who’s actually using such a device, which doesn’t have a commercial name yet, but which appears to be running Android L or some sort of Android L-like launcher on top of stock Android.

…

Read more here: Boy Genius Report

One of the keys to the early success of the PlayStation 4 was its release date. When Sony took the stage in February last year to reveal the PS4, everyone was a bit taken aback, Sony included. Speaking at the Develop Conference in Brighton, SCEI President Andrew House admitted that although Sony wasn’t prepared to show off the new console at the time, the company knew that it wanted to be the first on the scene.

…

Read more here: Boy Genius Report