Since watchOS 2.0’s announcement I’ve known that I would want to use the Photo Album watch face. The ability to have my favorite photos display every time I looked at my Apple Watch’s display made me think the device was about to get more personal. Facer’s launch today takes that personality one step further.
Hound, a voice search application from the creators behind SoundHound, has been released today for iOS. Hound’s application focuses on bringing users quick, accurate voice driven search results in a way I only wish Siri could. Implementing Google Now-style cards, Hound’s interface is direct and to the point. Users are presented with a list of similar topics they can search for, and even given examples of the complex queries Hound can handle.
Image Credit: Christina Samuelson
Last week, the Silicon Valley Forum held a Visionary Salon Dinner event with Tony Fadell. Kevin Surace, Appvance’s CEO, interviewed Fadell on his past accomplishments and journey through technology. An edited transcript of the conversation shows just how in-depth the conversation went. Fadell’s interview is a personal look at what drove the creator forward while building the iPod, the iPhone, and the Nest Thermostat.
Square Cash, Square’s app that allows users to send money to each other for free, saw a new update today that puts it more inline with competitors. With Cash Drawer, Square Cash now let’s users hold money within the app instead of transferring it immediately out to their own accounts. This behavior directly mimics functionality that Venmo and PayPal bolster.
If you’re keeping score at home, add San Bernardino’s police chief as the latest to take sides in the ongoing battle between Apple and the FBI. Jarrod Burguan, the local police chief, joined NPR to share his views on the current FBI and Apple privacy battle. In the interview, Burguan admits that there is “a good chance that there is nothing of any value on the phone”, but believes there is the possibility that “maybe there was some information on there that would lead to a larger plot or larger network.”
We’ve seen DIY solutions in building a Mac Pro-style Hackintosh out of actual trash cans, but others who aren’t as inclined to follow a DIY route may be excited to hear about the Dune Case. Dune Case is currently running a Kickstarter campaign of its Mac Pro-inspired PC case. The case would allow anyone to get a Mac Pro look at a fraction of the cost at only $189. Boasting a design that helps support airflow, strikingly similar to the Mac Pro, the Dune Case comes in either a black or gold color options.
Only months after Apple officially open-sourced Swift, IBM today is announcing that they are bringing Apple’s Swift programming language to the cloud. This makes IBM the first cloud provider enabling Swift application development server-side. IBM has also introduced a preview to a Swift runtime and a Swift Package Catalog to help with code sharing, and distribution.
In his security and privacy post regarding iOS’s current music library, Ben Dodson adds a small addendum explaining that with iOS 9.3 apps can now add music that currently exists in the Apple Music catalog directly to a user’s music library. While a small and under-discussed feature, it opens up further possibilities for many different kinds of apps and application developers.
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On Wednesday, Google released their aptly named UI testing framework, EarlGrey. Having been using the framework in a few of their current iOS apps already for functional testing, it’s good to hear that the product has been validated before an initial public release.
Thanks to JW Player’s new tvOS app framework, Tasting Table was able to successfully build and submit an Apple TV app for review in less than 24 hours. JW Player’s new beta open-source product allows content makers on its platform to utilize what they already have created to build a fully branded Apple TV app.
Panic has released their new 2.5 update for Prompt, the popular SSH application for iOS. Introducing split-screen views on the iPad and 3D Touch on the latest iPhones, this brings Prompt to the forefront with the latest features available in iOS 9.
New details on Apple’s ‘Reuse and Recycle’ trade-in program have surfaced in a new Bloomberg report. Tim Culpan details the break down and destruction process that each iPhone, Mac, and iPad receives at one of the many Apple recycling contractors’ plants. With over 50 agreed upon regulations and requirements, the contractors have a heavily imposed process to adhere to.
Bring a little bit of nostalgia to your wrist today with the new Apple Watch game, A Tiny Game of Pong. Based on the 1970’s classic game, A Tiny Game of Pong lets players compete to beat the computer or against friends through Game Center leaderboard integrations. But how do you fit Pong on a tiny display?
A new report French website iGen indicates that France could be seeing an Apple Pay announcement in as early as the first half of this year. While Apple announced the UnionPay partnership for China two months ago, there has yet to be any signs that other additional countries outside the US and UK (aside from Australia and Canada’s American Express arrangement) would be seeing Apple Pay any time soon. Other reports believe that China could be seeing Apple Pay, which is promised to go live in early 2016, activated as soon as this Thursday at 5 AM (Beijing time).
The 58th Annual Grammys are broadcasting tonight and thanks to CBS All Access, nearly anyone can watch it for free without a cable subscription or TV set. The show starts at 8PM ET, with a pre-telecast red carpet show at 7PM ET. Viewers can catch the show on CBS’s site, or by using the iOS or Apple TV app. Here’s how to do it for free:
John Gruber surprised podcast listeners today by getting Apple’s own Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi on The Talk Show to discuss a variety of topics behind Apple. Since Tim Cook took leadership at Apple, it hasn’t been unheard of for Apple execs to appear on Gruber’s show. The first occurrence was last June when Phil Schiller met John Gruber on stage during WWDC to discuss Apple’s recent announcements and decisions over the past few years. This marks the second time that Federighi has been on the The Talk Show, and Cue’s first.
Apple’s TestFlight iOS app has received an updated today with support for watchOS 2.2 and iOS 9.3, as well as the standard “stability and performance improvements.” Upon first glance, users who were having trouble installing beta apps from TestFlight onto the latest watchOS 2.2 betas won’t see much more success with today’s TestFlight update.
Learning chefs that want to get a start on cooking sous-vide and get restaurant quality results, take a look at Amazon’s Gold Box deal today with the Anova Culinary Bluetooth Precision Cooker currently available at $139 (normally $179). Anova’s precision cooker clamps to the side of any deep pot or tank and continuously circulates the water inside to ensure that food is cooked evenly throughout. Connect the Anova to an iPhone via Bluetooth, and you can then wirelessly control and monitor food easily, even finding new recipes to use.
For anyone looking to get better tracking and a bird’s eye view of your sleep habits, be sure to check out Sleep++ 2.0 available today. This latest version brings in a major sleep analysis algorithm overhaul to help users get a better understanding of nightly sleep patterns.
For users who frequently forget to stop their sleep tracking, the app’s update also introduces the ability to trim time off any extra hours accidentally accrued.
If you’ve been following any of the Swift mailing lists and have begun to feel overwhelmed with the amount of conversations passing through, take a look at Benedikt Terhechte’s new beta app Hirundo. The app focuses on creating a comfortable reading experience for the multitude of mailing lists out there and allows users to easily find, bookmark, and mute messages they desire.
The first official implementation of BitTorrent’s peer-to-peer technology hits iOS and the Apple TV today, but not in the way you may have expected. OTT News, a small team bringing a different perspective to the election coverage, has launched an app in partnership with BitTorrent to livestream coverage of the New Hampshire primaries and beyond.
Apple is set to open its largest Florida-based Apple Store yet in Greater Downtown Miami, according to a new report. Sources close to The Real Deal and South Florida Business Journal have confirmed that Apple has signed a lease with Miami’s new Brickell City Centre to open the new retail location.
Instagram today has officially announced support for mutliple accounts. After a slow roll out to multiple users, users are now able to add up to 5 different Instagram accounts and quickly switch between them all. Multiple account support has been added as of Instagram’s 7.15 version for iOS.
Attendees at this year’s Tommy Hilfiger New York Fashion Week show won’t have to be pulling out any physical invitations or even their smartphones to check-in to events this year thanks to a partnership with GPS Radar. Attendees instead will be able to use the newly updated GPS Radar Apple Watch app to view event invitations, RSVP to the events, and get a view on the fashion week’s calendar.