WhatsApp Messenger, the popular cross-platform chatting service, released a major update to its iPhone app today introducing some long-rumored features and new ways to share content with friends and family…
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Apple has just released the first iOS 8.4 beta, which includes Apple’s upcoming revamped Music app. The seed for developers is available via the Apple Developer Center website.
As we reported earlier this year, iOS 8.4 includes an all new Music application. The new software design is present in this beta, while Apple is expected to announce the streaming service component in June at WWDC.
Here are the release notes from Apple for the new app:
– All-New Design. Music app has a beautiful new design that makes exploring your music collection easier and more fun. Personalize playlists by adding your own image and description. Enjoy stunning pictures of your favorite artists in the Artists view. Start playing an album right from the album list. The music you love is never more than a tap away.
– Recently Added. Albums and playlists you’ve recently added are now at the top of your library, making it effortless to find something new to play. Simply tap play on the artwork to listen.
– Streamlined iTunes Radio. Discovering music with iTunes Radio is easier than ever. You can now quickly return to your favorite stations in Recently Played. Choose from a selection of hand-curated stations in Featured Stations, or start a new one from your favorite artist or song.
– New MiniPlayer. With the new MiniPlayer, you can see what’s playing and control playback while browsing your music collection. To open Now Playing, just tap on the MiniPlayer.
– Improved Now Playing. Now Playing has a stunning new design that showcases your album artwork the way it was meant to be. In addition, you can begin wirelessly streaming your music using AirPlay without leaving Now Playing.
– Up Next. It’s now simple to find out which songs from your library will play next — just tap the Up Next icon in Now Playing. You can even reorder, add, or skip songs whenever you like.
– Global Search. You can now search from anywhere in the Music app — just tap the magnifying glass. Search results are conveniently organized to help you quickly find that perfect song. You can even start an iTunes Radio station right from Search.
iOS 8.4’s Music application includes revamped search, the UpNext and MiniPlayer features from iTunes on the desktop, improved iTunes Radio functionality, a new Recently Added page, and more on top of the new design. On the iPad, there’s a new split-screen interface on the iPad, as seen in the screenshots below. On the iPhone, the landscape interface has been removed entirely. The icon for the app remains the same, however. We have a hands-on gallery of several more screenshots below:
Apple CEO Tim Cook with IBM CEO Ginni Rometty
IBM this evening has announced a new dedicated health unit that will deepen its relationship with Apple. The service, called Watson Health, will use the data collected with Apple’s HealthKit and ResearchKit services to provide information to various other companies including Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic. From there, those companies can integrate the data into services they offer to healthcare companies. Apple will work to integrate Watson-based apps into HealthKit and ResearchKit for these purposes (via Forbes).
Apple has seemingly moved to block desktop apps that allow users to manage files on their iOS devices in its recent iOS 8.3 update, as noted by MacRumors. Many popular file transfer apps, such as iFunBox, iTools, iExplorer, iBackupBot and PhoneView, have experienced the issue that prevents users from accessing file directories for apps on iOS devices. The apps were previously a popular way for users to install software on iOS devices that Apple does not allow in the App Store, like game emulators.
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If you use iMessage, it’s possible to receive junk messages due to the fact that spammers only need the email address associated with your Apple ID. You’ve always been able to report spam messages to Apple by sending an email containing a screenshot of the spam, the phone number or email address of the spammer, and the date and time it was sent. But let’s face it, most of us probably didn’t bother reporting the spam or going through that much trouble to do so. With iOS 7, Apple added the ability to block numbers, which helped to some extent. Now with today’s update of iOS 8.3, however, the process of reporting spam received through iMessage has become even easier. iOS 8.3 also added the ability to organize messages between Unknown Senders and senders already in your contacts.
Apple announced Photos last year during the WWDC. The Photos app along with iCloud Photo Library will allow you to store all of your photos in the cloud with iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, provided you upgrade your iCloud storage space to accommodate your iCloud Photo Library. Photos will end up replacing Aperture and iPhoto. You can upload your pictures to iCloud Photo Library via iCloud.com. Currently this feature is in a public beta and this how-to article will discuss how to get a head start and upload your pictures to iCloud Photo Library before Photos becomes available for the Mac to the public.
Sometimes searching the App Store can be an overwhelming task. You might already know what you want to download, or other times you might get distracted when you open the store and forget why you were there, and typing in what you want to download is old fashioned now. With iOS 8, you can use Siri to search the App Store, iTunes Store, iBooks Store, and more for you. It’s all a matter of asking Siri with the right commands.
Press down and hold on the home button for two seconds for Siri to appear.
For example you can say something like, “Search the App Store for sports apps,” and Siri will open up the App Store and bring you to the search results of sports.
Some things are blindingly obvious in hindsight, and Iconfactory principal Craig Hockenberry and Daring Fireball’s John Gruber made one of these points about the flattening of iOS.
“The flattening of Apple’s user interface that began in iOS 7 was as much a strategic move as an aesthetic one,” says Hockenberry, with Gruber adding that “iOS 6-style skeuomorphism would’ve felt downright gauche on the watch.”
Not just gauche, but also hard to read on such a small display. I think both are right: while Ive may have preferred the minimalism of iOS 7 and 8 on the larger devices, what was a preference for the iPhone and iPad was a necessity for the Apple Watch.
Have you ever wanted to create an iOS gaming video or a tutorial of how to use your iOS device? Now, with Yosemite and iOS 8 you can record and make a video of what you are doing on your iOS device using your Mac. Here’s how:
Apple SVP Jeff Williams announcing ResearchKit
Following the introduction of ResearchKit at this month’s Apple event, Apple executives Jeff Williams and Bud Tribble held a question and answer session with Apple employees regarding the new initiative, according to a source who provided a transcript of the conversation. Williams, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Operations, is the top executive in charge of Apple’s health engineering initiatives, including the Apple Watch, HealthKit, ResearchKit, and fitness software. Tribble is a Software Engineering Vice President with a medical background as a doctor, and he organized many of the partnerships for both HealthKit and ResearchKit…
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MucM1Cwe3t8]
Update: Some of the websites shown in the video cannot be explained by the hypothesis posted below about adverts redirecting to the App Store. The large amount of corroboration by readers about this happening to them suggests there is a mechanism, somewhere along the line, causing a real problem.
Website advertisement companies have found a way to circumvent the protections introduced in iOS 8 to stop users from being kicked to the App Store because of certain cleverly-coded JavaScript advertisements.
I am now experiencing this myself, and it makes browsing on the iPhone unusable. Browsing to websites such as Reddit and Reuters and others now automatically open the App Store. In many cases, there is no way for me to read the actual content on the pages. You can see this happen in the video above.
This flared up as a serious issue last year, when users found they were being taken to random App Store pages without granting any kind of permission…
In iOS 8 beta 2, Apple supposedly had remedied the issue: “Safari now blocks ads from automatically redirecting to the App Store without user interaction.”. However, it seems that ad companies have now managed to work around these safeguards.
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Launcher is coming back to the App Store, after a fracas with Apple late last year over the rules regarding widgets in the Today view of Notification Center. According to the developer, Greg Gardner, Apple has changed its mind on how widgets in Notification can function—something we’ve seen before. Launcher will be back in the App Store tomorrow.
It’s worth noting that the app was originally pulled because Apple said apps were not allowed to have widgets that launched other applications. Apple has seemingly had a change of heart, because the application is returning with the exact same features as six months ago. Read on for the full rundown on what happened.
Update 3/31: Apple’s latest data reflects 78% as measured on the App Store on March 30th.
Update 4/14: Two weeks and one iOS 8.3 update later, the App Store now reports 79% iOS 8 adoption.
Apple now says that 77% of active iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches are now running some version of iOS 8. The remainder of active devices running older software than what was released last September include one out of five devices still running iOS 7, and a small 3% running iOS 6 or earlier. The data comes from Apple’s App Store Distribution dashboard, which captured the adoption rate earlier this week.
While the information does show the steady climb of active devices upgrading to iOS 8 at a steady, gradual rate, it does not reveal how many users are running the very latest version, iOS 8.2, which is required for iPhone users to pair with the upcoming Apple Watch, which will be released on April 24th…
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What happens if you are out and about and happen to find an iPhone? You happen to be a good person and want to return the iPhone to the original owner, but the phone is locked with a passcode. You might think you are stuck, but actually you can use Siri to find out who owns the device.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ti0KdXrgSE]
A user experience expert has put together a video showing that the longer animations introduced in iOS 7 and continued in iOS 8 have a small usability cost: user input is ignored while the animation is running, making the user interface seem slower. The video compares it to iOS 3 running on the original iPhone.
While William Van Hecke believed that the issue was that animations used to be interruptible, this isn’t actually the case except for Springboard. In other cases, iOS has always ignored input until animations are complete, it’s just that they used to be shorter. If you’re fast with your fingers, there will now be times when you’re trying to do something while the animation is still doing its thing.
The new spring-based animations also make it less clear when the animation has ended, so the device seems unresponsive to input, but in reality it’s that the animation hasn’t quite finished.
Do you see this as an issue in real-life use? Let us know in the comments.
Find My iPhone was first released in June 2010 initially for the iPhone. Now, Find My iPhone allows you to track the location of your device, be it an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, in case it gets lost or stolen. This is a great benefit because when you locate your device using Find My iPhone, the device makes noise until it is found and will show you were it is located using Apple Maps. Recently, the police used Find My iPhone to track and save a woman’s life. However, Find My iPhone did require the device to be turned on and connected to the internet in order for it to work completely. New with iOS 8, you have the option to automatically send the location of the device to Apple when the battery is critically low. In this how-to I will discuss how to set up Find My iPhone, and how to use Find My iPhone.
New channels added to Numerous for iOS
Numerous, a dashboard app for tracking a wide range of numbers, is an iOS app gem in terms of taking advantage of Apple technologies and one of my favorite lesser known apps for that reason. Today a new version of Numerous is being released adding new channels including a Tesla channel for Model S owners as well as a Google Sheets channel for tracking numbers from spreadsheets…
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Facebook is out with a useful update to its Messenger app for iPhone and iPad today adding an action extension for sharing content from other apps on iOS 8. This adds the ability to have deep Facebook Messenger integration with other apps including Safari and Photos just like Apple’s own Messages app.
Once enabled, you can do things like share images and videos from the Photos app or links from Safari directly to your contacts on Facebook Messenger without having to jump back and forth between apps. Facebook Messenger version 22.0 is rolling out now on the App Store.
WordPress’s mobile blogging app for iPhone and iPad also received a new update bringing the experience closer to that on the desktop …
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Dropbox for iPhone and iPad users is getting a lot more powerful today as the latest version includes a new action extension for iOS 8. This allows you to save information from various apps to Dropbox on iOS without having to open the cloud-syncing app.
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Nike today released a long-awaited update to its FuelBand app for iPhone users with the fitness tracking FuelBand wearable adding support for sharing NikeFuel points with Apple’s Health app on iOS 8. The update also adds support for motion tracking right from the iPhone for iPhone 5s users and up and no longer requires a Nike FuelBand to use.
The new version uses HealthKit, a framework introduced with iOS 8, to let Nike’s FuelBand app share data easily and with your permission to Apple’s built-in Health app and other apps that integrate with HealthKit. NikeFuel, the fitness company’s metric for tracking movement throughout the day, is featured as a supported fitness metric in Apple’s own Health app.
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If you were thinking about buying a fitness band, a university study suggests you probably shouldn’t bother: it found that the iPhone 5s and Samsung Galaxy S4 measure activity more reliably than most current fitness bands.
The study by the University of Pennsylvania (via EurekAlert!) tested the ability of the phones to measure steps on a treadmill and compared the results to six dedicated fitness bands. The two smartphones had a margin of error of 12.9%, while the error rates of the fitness bands ranged up to 22.7%.
The study tested the iPhone 5s and Galaxy S4 against the Nike Fuelband, Jawbone UP24, Digi-Walker SW-200, Fitbit Flex, Fitbit One and Fitbit Zip. Only the FitBit One and Zip performed significantly better than the two smartphones. While the iPhone apps all delivered similar levels of accuracy, Health Mate out-performed the others.
Tim Cook took a dig at existing smartwatches at yesterday’s Goldman Sachs conference, saying that “there are several things that are called smartwatches, but I’m not sure you could name any.” The Apple Watch would, he said, “change the way people live their lives.”
Via Gizmodo
Officials in three major cities have reported dramatic reductions in iPhone thefts since Apple introduced Activation Lock as part of iOS 7, preventing devices being re-activated without the original owner’s iCloud login. Reuters reports that the number of reported iPhone thefts has fallen year-on-year by 25% in New York, 40% in San Francisco and 50% in London …
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Earlier today, Apple seeded the first iOS 8.3 build to developers alongside Xcode 6.3 beta with Swift 1.2. Readers have discovered that the new operating system brings a new wireless CarPlay feature to the iPhone. This means that users can now wirelessly connect their iPhone to the car to bring an iOS-like experience the dashboard. Previously, users would have to connect their iPhone to the car via a USB Lightning cable. We first reported in March 2014 that Apple has been working on wireless CarPlay. It’s yet to be seen how long the wireless CarPlay rollout takes and which cars support it in the future. The new update also, like with OS X 10.10.3, brings easier Google login functionality for users with two-factor accounts:
Twitter CFO Anthony Noto announced today that the social network was placing the blame for 4 million lost users squarely on Apple’s shoulders, saying that the company had “lost approximately 4 million net users due to rollouts of iOS 8” during an earnings call.
The logic here, Business Insider explains, is that the Shared Links section in iOS 7’s version of Safari automatically updated to pull in the latest links from a users Twitter feed. In iOS 8 this feature has been shifted to use a manual refresh. As a result, users who were previously counted when their phones checked for those shared links were no longer listed among the service’s monthly active users.
But Twitter wasn’t done playing the blame game just yet. The microblogging service went on to say that as many as 1 million users had upgraded their iPhones and simply forgotten their passwords or failed to reinstall the Twitter app, leading to even fewer active users thanks to Apple.
Overall Twitter reported 288 million monthly active users for Q4 2014.
Update: Probably with a little push from Apple, Twitter now says:
https://twitter.com/twitterir/status/563757798224171009
