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Learn about the latest news for iOS, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV apps

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Apps for iOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS power our modern world. 9to5Mac will update you on the latest news, review, and updates for all types of apps. “There’s an App for that”.

The term came became part of our vocabulary when Steve Jobs announced The App Store as part of the iPhone 2.0 software update in 2008.

Over the years, the term has become as common as kleenex for describing applications on all of our devices. Apple’s platforms have apps for just about anything from finance, banking, sports, social media, podcasting, music, and more. We have a guide for helping you discover the best ones as well. Apps are now on everything from our TV, to our smartphones, on our laptops, and all the way down to our wrists.

As new ones are released or existing ones have major updates, the team here at 9to5Mac will bring you the latest news and reviews. If you want to follow along with video footage, be sure to follow 9to5Mac on YouTube. Scroll down below our latest updates on all things relating to applications on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and Apple Watch.

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Seene for iPhone makes creating interactive 3D photos fun and easy

A new app called Seene popped up on the App Store last night that lets you create interactive 3D photos. If you’ve used Vine before, you’re already familiar with most of Seene’s interface. The apps are laid out mostly the same, even down to the location of the sharing options during seene creation, but the process for taking photos is a little more complicated. The resulting effect is worth a little extra effort though.


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iPhone app turns your iPhone 5c (and case) into ‘Connect Four’ board

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Ever since the iPhone 5c launched along with a specially-designed case, people have compared the case’s design to a the game Connect Four. Now a new app has arrived on the App Store that takes that observation and turns it into a real game. The app is called Flipcase, and the idea is pretty simple: you put your iPhone 5c case on backwards, so that the holes on the back are on top of the screen, and then take turns tapping the columns to try to connect four colored dots.

The app’s description says it’s compatible with other iPhone models, including the iPhone 5 and 5s, though it’s designed specifically with the 5c in mind. Flipcase is available for free on the App Store.

… And another cool use for the 5c case:


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9to5Toys Last Call: OtterBox iPhone 5 cases from $16, Samsung 250GB 840 EVO Series SSD $159, iGrill $40, more

Be sure to follow 9to5Toys to keep up with the best gear and deals on the web: Twitter, RSS Feed, Facebook, Google+.

Today’s can’t miss deals:

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Tough iPhone cases from Otterbox and Lifeproof:

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Solid State Drives: Samsung 840 EVO-Series 250GB $159, Toshiba Q-Series 256GB $150 shipped

Other great deals from today:

The best deals that are still alive:

Mac software bundles:

New product announcements & reviews:

  • LaCie’s new Porsche designed USB 3.0 key drive available now
  • OtterBox begins shipping new Commuter Series Wallet case for iPhone 5/5s and Galaxy S4
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Yelp iOS app replaces Home tab w/ new toolbar for quick access to reviews, photos, and check-ins

Yelp updated its iOS app today with a slightly tweaked UI that makes it easier for users to quickly post reviews, photos and check-in at locations. The app is getting rid of its old Home tab and now by default loads up the “Nearby” tab. In addition, the the tab in the middle along the bottom of the app now launches quick access to Check In, Review, and Photo buttons (as pictured above).

The updated app also includes “larger notification photos, better scrolling performance, updated icons and animations.”

What’s New in Version 7.2.0

New in v7.2
– We said goodbye to our homepage and hello to a beautiful new navigation that makes it even easier for you to discover great places nearby, add photos and reviews, and check in to your favorite businesses.
– We also added tons of polish to our app, including larger notification photos, better scrolling performance, updated icons and animations, and a whole lot more!

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9to5Toys Last Call: 50% off XCOM Enemy Unknown for iOS, SuperStacked Mac app bundle $35, iOttie mounts $15, more

Be sure to follow 9to5Toys to keep up with the best gear and deals on the web: Twitter, RSS Feed, Facebook, Google+.

Today’s can’t miss deals:

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50% off XCOM Enemy Unknown, 34% off 5-game PS3 bundle, iOS freebiesmore

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The SuperStacked Mac Bundle: Over $3,000 Worth Of Premium Developer & Designer Tools – $35 today, but price increases everyday it’s on sale. Don’t hesitate!

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iOttie One-Touch Mobile Mounts starting at just $15 shipped

Other great deals from today:

The best deals that are still alive:

Mac software bundles:

New product announcements & reviews:

Launch Center Pro reinvented for iOS 7

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Launch Center Pro 2

Launch Center Pro 2 <3

David Barnard’s Contrast (previously App Cubby) shipped a massive update to the quick shortcut app Launch Center Pro for iPhone today.

Launch Center Pro 2 delivers an iOS 7-inspired user interface and a gorgeous new icon as well as several new features including Dropbox backing up and restoring, various themes, action sharing, and more.

People often ask why anyone would need a separate app to do what their home screen does, but as Contrast’s tag line explains, it allows you to “Launch actions, not just apps!” I’ll share a few of my favorite actions below.


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Review: Popular translator app iTranslate gets reimagined for iOS 7

Teaser

The popular language translation app iTranslate has been completely reimagined for iOS 7. Just like iOS 7, the app is heavily gesture-based. Because the new version features so many new gestures, a tutorial has been added that walks users through all of the new ways to interact with their translations.

At first glance, iTranslate does not feel as intuitive or as easy to use as the previous version. It takes a while to get acclimated to the changes, and to understand how to properly trigger the gestures, which can be a bit difficult at first. For example, when swiping, you have to swipe to the point where you will see the grey color transition to blue (for a shorter swipe), or purple (for a longer swipe) before the appropriate action will be triggered.

After going through the tutorial, the default languages are set to American English, and Spanish. Tapping on either English or Spanish pulls up the keyboard and you can type the text you want translated.

iTranslate supports text-to-speech, so that you can hear how the translation sounds. You can activate this feature using a swipe gesture. The user can choose from male and female versions of several dialects and adjust the speaking rate. Just tap on the countries’ flag to access the voice options and switch between languages.

iTranslate is available for free in the App Store for new and existing users. There is an in-app purchase for $4.99 that unlocks several premium features, which include removal of the ads at the bottom of the screen, voice recognition, and romanization (the option to convert other writing systems into Roman characters;  an example of this would be converting 你好 into Nǐ hǎo). Voice recognition is powered by Nuance and automatically recognizes forty different languages and dialects regardless of which languages the text input is set to.

iTranslate is a very powerful tool, and I would recommend it for those who are traveling overseas or simply as a supplemental tool for learning a new language.

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9to5Toys Last Call: PlayStation 3 GTA V bundle $230, Lacie Porsche USB drives, Anker power bank $20, BOGO Starbucks, more

From 9to5Toys.com:

Be sure to follow 9to5Toys to keep up with the best gear and deals on the web: Twitter, RSS Feed, Facebook, Google+.

Today’s can’t miss deals:

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Game/App Deals: 500GB PlayStation 3 Grand Theft Auto V bundle $230 (Reg. $270), iOS freebiesmore

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LaCie’s new Porsche designed USB 3.0 key drive available now

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Anker Astro Slim2 4500mAh portable battery charger $20 shipped (Reg. $28)

Other great deals from today:

The best deals that are still alive:

Mac software bundles:

New product announcements & reviews:

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Twitter teams up with Comcast/NBC for ‘See It’ feature to watch and record TV shows

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Twitter is teaming up with Comcast to integrate a new feature called “See It” that will allow Comcast Xfinity subscribers to watch shows and schedule DVR recordings directly from Twitter. The companies announced the partnership today and announced that the new “See It” feature will begin appearing for users on Twitter in next month.

Today, @Comcast and @NBCUniversal are announcing a partnership with Twitter that lets users tune in to a TV show directly from a Tweet. Comcast will give Xfinity TV customers the ability to do several things such as change the channel, set the DVR and play a show On Demand, directly from an expanded Tweet. Called See It, the feature will debut with NBCUniversal offerings including The Voice and Sunday Night Football.

While only Xfinity subscribers will be able to click the See It button embedded in tweets to schedule DVR recordings and view the content on their set-top box, other users can be directed to the NBC website or app. The “See It” technology, which was developed by Comcast, is first rolling out on Twitter with NBC programming, but Comcast is working with others to make See It an industry-standard technology:

See It is designed to integrate with other video distribution partners, television networks and websites. We look forward to working with Comcast to extend this offering to other partners who will connect more great content to Twitter. Ultimately, we want to make watching TV along with Twitter even more fun. We’re looking forward to sharing more details about this experience in the weeks to come. You can find more information about See It here.

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Google Cloud Platform simplifies server-side development for iOS w/ ‘Mobile Backend Starter’

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Google announced today on its Cloud Platform blog that it is rolling out its Google App Engine application called Mobile Backend Starter that first debuted for Android developers back in June. Google says the application helps to simplify the server-side development process for developers adding cloud services through Google Cloud Platform and it does so by providing Mobile Backend and Objective-C client libraries for everything from storing data in the cloud to sending device-to-device push notifications and authenticating Google accounts. In other words, it’s a ready-to-deploy, general purpose cloud backend along with Android and iOS clients with client-side framework classes. This allows devs to implement a number of cloud services into their apps without ever having to worry about coding those features themselves.

  • Optional server-side coding: Control your cloud service using Android and iOS client libraries.
  • Cloud Datastore: Store millions of objects in the cloud and manage them from your app.
  • Push Notifications: Send and broadcast objects as messages via Apple Push Notifications and Google Cloud Messaging.
  • Event Driven Programming: Create real-time interactive user experiences using Continuous Queries.
  • User authentication Authenticate users using Google Accounts.
  • Per-object access: Prevent users from accessing private data using our authentication model.
  • Built to scale: Mobile backend runs on App Engine infrastructure to scale to millions of users within hours (App Engine pricing applies).

Google is making the source code for the app available on Github for developers to freely play with, and that will include the source code for both the backend and iOS and Android clients.

Google walked through the process of getting Mobile Backend Starter setup on an iPhone or iPad:

Getting Started

You can try out the Mobile Backend Starter on an iPhone or iPad in just a few steps (further details here):

1. Provision your backend on App Engine

2. Download the iOS client zip file (or clone from GitHub repository)

3. Run the sample on a physical device (note: the sample does not run on the iOS simulator)

You can learn more about Mobile Backend Starter for iOS here.

Flickr iOS 7 auto-upload app with 1TB of storage blows Photo Stream out of the water

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Photo: engadget.com

Photo: engadget.com

Today’s update to the iOS Flickr app offers auto-uploading of full-res photos to your private Flickr gallery. Couple this to the 1TB of free storage available and you effectively have a Photo Stream style service that can store over half a million photos, rather than simply the last 1,000.

Flickr introduced the 1TB capacity back in May (with parent company Yahoo offering the same free storage to email users yesterday). If you sync iPhoto with Flickr, you effectively get all the benefits of Photo Stream but with 500 times the capacity. You do need to be careful with this, however: the sync is two-way, so if you delete photos from Flickr, they will also be deleted from iPhoto … 
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Facebook prepares major updates to iPhone apps as top engineer returns to Apple

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Screenshots of upcoming Facebook Graph Search for iPhone update

Facebook is preparing a pair of major updates for its most popular iPhone applications, according to a source familiar with the apps. Facebook is testing an updated version of its main iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch client that integrates the social network’s powerful Graph Search tool. Graph Search is a feature that allows Facebook users to locate fellow users that have similar interests. For example, a Graph Search user can search for all friends who “Like” a certain Facebook page, musician, or movie. The upcoming app update incorporates Graph Search into the Facebook app’s main search bar.

In addition to the aforementioned update to the main Facebook for iOS application, Facebook is preparing a redesign of its Messenger app. Facebook is said to be internally testing two new versions of Messenger. The first version is said to look largely similar to the Messages application bundled into iOS. That version includes green interface elements. The second version in testing, which the source says is more likely to ship to end-users, is heavy on white space and very fitting for iOS 7’s design. It is not filled with blue interface elements like the new Facebook app. The new app has tabs for active/recent chats, contacts, and settings across the bottom…


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FireCore announces Infuse 2 with new design coming this fall, 1.5 update available today

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Infuse 1.5

FireCore, the makers of the popular aTV Flash Apple TV software announced today that their media player application Infuse will be receiving a substantial update this fall as it hits version 2.0, with a completely new UI to match iOS 7’s design aesthetic, many new Pro features, and more.


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Microsoft working on touch-optimized Office for iPad according to exiting CEO Ballmer

In what seems like a never ending story, retiring Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has announced that the company plans to introduce a touch optimized version of Microsoft Office to iPad customers (via The Verge) after it completes development.

Microsoft plans to first deliver the tablet version of its productivity suite to the Microsoft Surface, its tablet competitor to the iPad, but this is the first we have heard of such plans.
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Yahoo redesigns Mail on iOS w/ conversations, disposable email addresses & a free 1TB

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Yahoo Mail is officially 16 years old today and to celebrate the company announced on its blog that it is rolling out an entirely new Mail experience on iOS as well as on the desktop and Android. A popular feature of many other mail clients, Yahoo Mail now includes the ability to view email threads as conversations:

We’re introducing “conversations” for those who prefer to view emails grouped in threads. At the end of the day, being able to see an entire conversation can save you quite a bit of time. Context is king.

Perhaps the most notable addition, however, is the features previously only available to Mail Plus customers. That includes a free 1TB of storage for all users:
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9to5Toys Last Call: Up to 70% off PNY memory products, Sony noise-canceling headphones $16, iCade controller, games, more

From 9to5Toys.com:

Be sure to follow 9to5Toys to keep up with the best gear and deals on the web: Twitter, RSS Feed, Facebook, Google+.

Today’s can’t miss deals:

PNY-amazon-gold-box-deal
Up to 70% off PNY SD Cards, USB sticks and batteries: 32GB starting at $16, 64GB: $29, 128GB: $54

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Sony noise-canceling headphones w/ foldable design Black: $16, Silver: $20 (Reg. $50)

Other great deals from today:

The best deals that are still alive:

Mac software bundles:

New product announcements & reviews:

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Camera+ iOS app adds full-resolution burst-mode & new iOS 7 filter pack

Camera-iconThe popular Camera+ iOS app from developer taptaptap gets an update today, jumping from version 4.0.2 to Version 4.2 (just for the fun of it according to the release notes below), and adds a few notable new features.

On top of fixing a bug that crashed the app when using burst-mode, the update includes support for full-resolution bust-mode photos. That includes the iPhone 5, iPhone 5s, and the “unapologetically poorly-selling iPhone 5c,” according to taptaptap.

The app also adds a new effects pack that includes Apple’s new iOS 7 filters:

So we added a new effects pack that includes all the filters that Apple’s standard Camera and Photo apps include (for users on iOS 7). Two hours of coding (and eight trivial Core Image filters later), the Standard Effects Pack was born.

The updated Camera+ is available on the App Store now.

What’s New in Version 4.2

So the previous version of Camera+ had a little bug where burst-mode shooting would crash. We fixed that.

We almost stopped there and just called it version 4.0.3, but then figured that it’d be the perfect time to boost burst-mode snaps to full-resolution on devices that could handle it (like the iPhone 5, iPhone 5s, and the unapologetically poorly-selling iPhone 5c).

That was enough to justify calling it version 4.1. And then we thought about jumping on the bandwagon where we put Camera+ out as a whole new app and let existing customers pay for it all over again. And of course there’d be the ensuing sh__storm where those customers felt cheated and we’d have to backpedal and reverse that shortsighted decision.

So it was Clear that that would’ve been a knuckleheaded move so instead, we decided to treat our lovely customers fairly and make Camera+ 4.1 a free update as we’ve always done. But then we felt like it was all give and no take… so to make us feel better about giving-in too easily, we chose to call it version 4.2. That’ll teach you to mess with us.

Then we felt bad about jumping ahead two version numbers and giving you little for your troubles. So we added a new effects pack that includes all the filters that Apple’s standard Camera and Photo apps include (for users on iOS 7). Two hours of coding (and eight trivial Core Image filters later), the Standard Effects Pack was born.

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Beats Music streaming service launching on iOS in the next few months

600_1341332953_dre_beatsAfter a bit of restructuring and some acquisitions to help accelerate development of its Beats Music streaming service, an executive at the company confirmed to TNW today that the service will officially launch on iOS, as well as on the web and Android, in the next few months.

President and COO Luke Wood also shared some details on how the service will work compared with iTunes Radio and other competitive streaming services. Wood says the service will “focus really heavily on playlists,” but also utilize a “a perfect harmony between the algorithm and human curation”:

Wood emphasized that Beats Music would be different and based around “a very specific idea”. The service is focused on curation, rather than forcing users to search blindly for new tracks or artists that they might like.

“We’re talking about real depth of personalization and knowing who I am, who you are, what we’re listening to, what we like, what we’ve listened to before and then offering up music that is highly relevant to our taste profile,” he added… “You need to start with a great editorial team that has a point of view, but we want to have a situation where we can really scale to the depth of your appetite,” he said. “If you really love music, we want something that can go deep with you for a really long time. And that requires a perfect harmony between the algorithm and human curation. Between the man and the machine.”

The mix of curated playlists and algorithm doesn’t sound unlike Apple’s own iTunes Radio streaming service launched in the US last month alongside iOS 7. Apple announced 11 million unique listeners in just a few days following the service’s launch, and will likely soon expand into other markets.

Beats Music, like iTunes Radio, will first launch in the US.

AT&T now allows Live TV streaming to its iPhone and iPad apps, both at home and on-the-go

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TV To Go

On September 30th, AT&T updated its iPad-optimized U-verse app with the ability to stream live television. Over 100 channels can be streamed to the iPad app while you are in your U-verse connected home, and a growing list of 20 channels can be streamed while you are away from home. Today, AT&T matched its iPad update by enabling the same functionality for its (separate) iPhone application:


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Anti-bullying focused app, book donating sales to charity this month

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This month is National Bullying Prevention Month and creators of an anti-bullying Kindle e-book and an iOS app are hoping to raise $100,000 through their sales during October and donate the revenue to several anti-bullying charities. The charities include Bullying UK, Stomp out Bullying, the Pacer Center and the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network.


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Giveaway: DataMan Pro, a powerful & easy-to use data tracker on sale until tomorrow

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With cellular devices and today’s often-limited data plans, it is important to monitor how much data you are using so you do not either pay for a data cap you don’t need, or you go over your cellular data limit, which results in extra fees. Even though in iOS 7, you can track cellular data usage for each app you have installed on your device, there are limitations to this. It does not reset the data every thirty days so it will coincide with your bill and you have to remember to do it yourself. If you want hassle-free, worry free data monitoring and tracking, this is where DataMan Pro comes into play.


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