Apple has been going big into the shopping space as of late. As retailers follow their customers to mobile, the fingerprint-activated Apple Pay service can be seen as a conscious effort to cut through the pain points of buying things on a pocket-sized phone. While the new service is perhaps best known for letting users scan their iPhone or Apple Watch instead of whipping out a credit card in a store, its in-app shopping experience is arguably a bigger deal. After all, pressing your finger against a Touch ID scanner is demonstrably easier than repeatedly typing credit card info into a tiny touchscreen. And if there’s one truism in the retail world, it’s that the easier it is to spend money, the more money people will spend. Now, Apple is planting a new flag in the e-commerce soil, with the launch of a “Shopping” category in the App Store. And it’s coming just in time for the holidays. Up until now, iOS shopping apps have lived in App Store verticals such as “Lifestyle”, which are crowded with all sorts of other apps that made it difficult for would-be buyers to discover new ways to spend cash. By separating these shopping apps, Apple is creating a sort of mall within the App Store—a place spenders and gift-hunters can go when they need to stuff a stocking in a pinch. Naturally, the new category also offers Apple an opportunity to highlight apps that take advantage of Apple Pay.

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Embargoes are nothing new in the video game world, and though they’ve been the source of a lot of controversy the past few years, I fundamentally understand the need for their existence. Without the informal rules embargoes put in place, reviewing games would be a race to the bottom, with journalists scrambling to be the first ones done with a game in order to get their score out before everyone else. That would be awful for the press, the publishers and fans, for obvious reasons.

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The mobile market is awash with transaction, interaction, and network performance data.

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Pipelines are among the safest modes of transporting hazardous materials across long distances and the rules regarding construction are clearly mandated through regulations. In the case of the Keystone XL pipeline, we have seen a routine infrastructure project turned into a political farce.

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Need to resize an image or crop something out of a picture; but don’t have Photoshop? Don’t worry, use Apple OS X Preview instead!

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