How To Spend A $25 iTunes Gift Card For July 4, 2014

Civilization Revolution Civilization Revolution 2 day oneHow To Spend A $25 iTunes Gift Card life itself MTN Roger Ebertyummly for ipad

This week’s list features Civilization Revolution 2, and much more.

“Life Itself,” $6.99, Movie Rental

This documentary tells the story of Roger Ebert, the legendary film critic at the Chicago Sun-Times. It’s based on Ebert’s bestselling memoir of the same name.

Civilization Revolution 2, $14.99, Universal game

The sequel to one of the most challenging and successful strategy games in recent years is finally on the App Store. Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution 2 offers a number of key features, including:

New Units –  strengthen your military might with brand new combat units including Aircraft Carriers, Jet Fighters and Special Forces.

New Technology – race to science supremacy with new technology such as: Lasers, Modern Medicine and Information Technology

New Buildings & Wonders – grow and expand your civilization like never before with new buildings and wonders including Nuclear Power Plant, The Red Cross and Silicon Valley

Enhanced 3D Graphics – updated 3D graphics taking full advantage of iOS devices graphical capability

Scenario Challenges  – reenact historic events and battles in the Scenario Mode

MTN, $0.99, Universal game

In this procedural game, “you are mountain – you are god.” Got that? Very good.

Freebies of the Week

Day One is arguably one of the best diary apps on the App Store, which keeps getting better with each new release. For a limited time, the universal app is available for free.

Yummly Recipes & Grocery Shopping List for iPad features plenty of recipes for making this Independence Day a success. Best of all, the app is entirely free.

We hope you enjoy this week’s list. Another edition of “How to Spend a $25 iTunes Gift Card” will be published next week.

Disney iTunes sales briefly halted in Japan over licensing dispute

Folks in Japan may have noticed that newer Disney movies like Frozen and Thor: The Dark World have been unavailable for purchase in iTunes over the past few days. You could rent the titles, but the option to buy them had been removed.

Good news this morning though, as it looks like Disney has resumed iTunes sales in the country. Variety is reporting that the temporary halt was due to difficulties in negotiations over the renewal of the old contract between the two firms…A Disney spokesman in Tokyo told Variety that both services were restarted Wednesday. An Apple rep declined to comment.

The Disney spokesman explained that the interruption was due to difficulties negotiating the renewal of the old contract between Apple and Disney Japan. The new contract was signed on Wednesday, after which both rentals and electronic-sell-through options returned to normal.

The original contract took effect in November 2010 and expired July 8, 2014. The dispute affected online sales of films including “Frozen” and “Thor: The Dark World.” But the Disney spokesman denied that the contract negotiations were affected by the ongoing theatrical release of “Frozen.”While everything seems to be back to normal now, the instance once again highlights how complex these content deals can be—something that has been brought up many times in Apple TV discussions. Even for companies as close as these two.

Apple and Disney share quite the history. Disney’s CEO Bob Iger has been a board member at Apple since 2011, and his entertainment company was the first major studio to sign on for the iTunes Video service when it launched back in 2006.

Additionally, before his passing Steve Jobs was a director at Disney, and its largest shareholder thanks to the Pixar acquisition. His 130+ million shares are now a part of the Steven P. Jobs Trust, which is owned by his wife, Laurene Powell Jobs.