Live tweeting aficionados and tweet storm lovers may welcome Tweetbot’s latest update for iOS, and coming soon to the Mac. The app has introduced ‘Topics’, an intuitive way to link tweets together with an optional hashtag without having to reply to each one of your previous tweets. A very small, but welcome feature for those who find themselves easily surpassing Twitter’s 140-character limit.
SoundShare has released a major update to their iOS app today that looks to bridge the divide between multiple music streaming services. By combining multiple music streaming services (Spotify, Deezer, and Apple Music), SoundShare creates a social network that takes out any hassles in sharing and discovering music. Even users who may not be using any premium streaming services can take advantage of the app. Thanks to iOS 9.3’s Apple Music API, apps like SoundShare can exist to create a better overall music discovery experience.
Apple has released the fourth beta of its iOS 9.3.2 update to both developers and public beta testers today. OS X El Capitan 10.11.5 and tvOS 9.2.1 also saw a fourth beta release for developers today. The latest developer and public betas haven’t seen any major changes as it appears they are turning out to be more bug fix releases than anything. Simultaneous use of Low Power Mode and Night Shift had been reactivated as of iOS 9.3.2 beta 2.
eBay has begun rolling out major UI and overall app improvements to its mobile applications today. Most notable will be both iOS and Android apps seeing a redesign of the main navigation menu. Previous versions of both mobile apps utilized a custom navigation menu: a mix between a top navigation bar and hamburger menu. The app update rolling out from today utilizes standard UI navigation elements for both iOS and Android. Android will be seeing the update released today, and the iOS update will be available in the coming days.
Apple today has officially released more information on the Apple Music API available in iOS 9.3. Entitled Apple Music Best Practices for App Developers, the documentation today solidifies what the Apple Music API can do and sets a precedent that developers of music apps should follow. At the original release of iOS 9.3, there seemed to be some confusion as to what the Apple Music API would entail exactly. We had reached out to Ben Dodson, developer of Music Tracker, to better understand the limitations and new features the API could introduce. Today’s document verifies our original thoughts.
Apple has begun seeding the third update to its Safari Technology Preview, iOS 9.3.2 public beta 3, and OS X 10.11.5 developer beta 3. Safari’s update today includes changes in the way it works with JavaScript, CSS, web APIs, Web Inspector, rendering, security, networking and accessibility. iOS 9.3.2’s latest developer and public betas haven’t seen any major changes as it appears that this release is turning out to be more of a small bug fix release. Simultaneous use of Low Power Mode and Night Shift has been reactivated as of iOS 9.3.2 beta 2.
KTVU has reported that a law enforcement source stated an investigation has begun after a person was found dead in a conference room on Apple’s Cupertino campus. Information from any sources is extremely limited at this point, so we’ll withhold speculation until further confirmed reporting is released.
Email apps are a dime a dozen at this point, and each one is continuously attempting to compete with others in any way they can. Today, CloudMagic takes their app one step further in a small, but significant way. With Sender Profile, CloudMagic will now be able to quickly show you more information on the contact emailing you using various social media sources.
A little under a week after releasing its second beta, Apple has released the third developer beta of iOS 9.3.2 for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. iOS 9.3.2 appears to be a smaller update compared to the past significant iOS 9.3 update that brought about features such as Night Shift and Touch ID notes.
After reading Zac’s opinion piece on how the iPhone SE could actually tempt him not to upgrade to the iPhone 7, I realized that I hadn’t even begun to think what Apple could do to get me to want to upgrade to an iPhone 7. Overall I’ve been happy with the iPhone since its iPhone 5 iteration. It was the device I felt Apple really hit its stride with the hardware. I only upgraded to an iPhone 6 because I wanted a better camera and needed more storage space, but the larger form factor was a serious drawback for me. So what could possibly make me even want to upgrade from my current iPhone 6 to another phone later this year?
Apple has just released the latest public builds of its iOS 9.3.2 and OS X 10.11.5 updates out to beta testers. Both platforms saw developer builds released yesterday, with small bug fixes noted in the release notes. Most interesting to note is that Apple once again has allowed a combination of Low Power Mode and Night Shift to be enabled simultaneously on iOS devices.
We’ve seen our fair share of iOS concept videos, but Federico Viticci and Sam Beckett today released possibly one of the best…
Stanford has released the latest semester of its iOS development course today. Entitled “Developing Apps for iOS 9 with Swift“, professor Paul Hegarty takes students and iTunes U subscribers through the intricacies of developing for one of the world’s most popular mobile operating systems. The first lecture is available today as an introduction to the course.
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Even though nobody has gotten their hands on the new 12-inch MacBook released today, Apple has already gone ahead and released a new software update. The update focuses on bluetooth compatibility with third-party devices. Weighing in at 157.8 MB, it will be a relatively small update to download once configuring your new machine.
Not soon after the news of Apple potentially opening MapKit as a web API, creative developer Tim Broddin has gone ahead and developed a proof of concept showing what that experience might look like in the future. Fruity Maps mimics a very basic Apple Maps view similar to what you’ve likely encountered with embedded web versions of Google Maps. While it’s missing most features that would make it fully usable (such as pins and searching), it gives us a very nice idea of the extent that Apple Maps might be utilized by developers on a desktop experience.
We’re nearing the one year mark of the Apple Watch’s original release. When Apple first announced the Watch I was excited to see all the creative applications, tools, and games developers would make for it. The watch was a new product category begging for creative development. After a full year, I believe we’re finally starting to see what that means, starting with Rafael Conde’s Break this Safe Apple Watch game.
Sony Corporation has issued an official news release in regards to the status of their manufacturing companies in Japan after the Kumamoto earthquakes. Having confirmed the safety of their employees in the affected regions, Sony has listed out a few details of the manufacturing sites that have been impacted as result of the earthquake.
We’ve previously reported that the Samsung Gear S2 would be gaining support for iOS later this year, and it looks like that support is coming soon. A member of the XDA-Developers forums has shared a link to a potentially early version of a Samsung Gear S2 specific app that would allows iOS to pair with the device. While the app appears to be in the early stages (indications of the app’s creation dates back to March 2nd), it could potentially show us what the final app will look like.
Based on discussions in the forum, users looking to attempt the pair the devices may have to restore their S2 to factory settings before having it pair with the leaked iOS application. This may require having another Android device on hand, but the results seem to be mixed at this point. Some forum members are also indicating that they are able to receive notifications pushed from iOS, but have no way to reply.
The Samsung Gear S2 Lite iOS application can be installed through iTunes, or by side-loading through Xcode. Before launching the application, a Samsung specific enterprise profile must be accepted through settings. We cannot stress this enough, installing applications from unverified sources is not guaranteed safe. Proceed with extreme caution.
The Samsung Gear S2 is available refurbished from Best Buy for $159.99, or new from Amazon at $249.
Apple has released its first update and second release to its Safari Technology Preview browser. The browser puts an emphasis on releasing stable, technology preview ready builds. With updates coming every two weeks, Apple is showing a commitment to bringing stability to developers on the cutting edge of web technologies.
Snapchat has been on a roll lately introducing bigger and more creative updates to their social network. From introducing custom geofilters, to a massive overhaul in their chat system, they show no signs of slowing down. Today’s update takes video interactions a step further by allowing you to “pin” stickers and emojis to moving objects in video. The update will be rolling out to Android today and soon to iOS.
Facebook held its annual F8 developer’s conference today that laid out the foundation for what the company plans to accomplish as far out as the next ten years. Today’s keynote presentation focused more on what the next year at Facebook and its products would look like for customers. Putting a heavy emphasis on Messenger and Facebook Live, it’s fair to say that you’ll be seeing a lot of these changes coming to mobile very soon.
Apple’s recently open-sourced programming language, Swift, may be seeing itself get adopted into Google’s Android platform in the future. Sources have told The Next Web that Google is “considering making Swift a ‘first class’ language for Android”.
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Microsoft Garage, Microsoft’s experimental projects team, has finally released their much anticipated Hub Keyboard for iOS today. This specific keyboard lacks the expected special one-handed typing mode, along with the previously reported Swype-like typing functionality. The latter feature may have been related to Microsoft’s recent purchase of SwiftKey, although it appears some of SwiftKey’s features made its way into Hub Keyboard in the form of autocompletion suggestions.
It looks like Apple’s Developer Center is getting a visual refresh as the developer center account page has been updated today with some notable changes. The main view after signing in has gone through a reorganization, making accessing various sections much easier. Moving primary links into a left sidebar view, developer’s can now quickly access their CloudKit Dashboard, Documentation, and even the Bug Reporter.