Earlier this year Yahoo introduced a new version of its Mail app for iPhone that added additional content like web search, sports scores, weather information, and news events to the email client making the experience more like the web experience in terms of consuming content. Today Yahoo released an updated version which extends the web-like experience to the iPad version as well: Expand Expanding Close
The Weather Channel app for iPad gets a nice update today that brings an overhauled design that the company says is closely aligned to the iOS 7 aesthetic. It also introduces new background photos that display the current weather conditions of the location you’re viewing and tweaked navigation that makes moving around the app easier.
Design— Beautiful and easy-to-use. This app is closely aligned to the iOS 7 aesthetic, and our amazing background photos match your current weather conditions.
When Apple unveiled iOS 8 earlier this month, it didn’t take long for beta testers to notice it had replaced Yahoo with The Weather Channel as the source of data in the stock iOS Weather app. While recent reports suggested Yahoo was trying to get Apple to put even more of its services on the iPhone including search, we now have a bit more of the story behind why exactly Yahoo got the boot for weather in iOS 8. Re/code reports that the deal was made by Weather Channel CEO David Kenny who also happened to be a former Yahoo board member:
The situation Yahoo finds itself in is due to a very crafty deal engineered by former Yahoo board member and Weather Channel CEO David Kenny, who has essentially shoved Yahoo off the key smartphone to be replaced by a new offering that he has been developing since he took over the weather news and information service last year. With it, he has unseated Yahoo from its important perch.
It’s worth pointing out that Yahoo has always powered its weather services with data from The Weather Channel. With that in mind, it’s unclear if Apple possibly had plans to drop Yahoo and go straight to the source before Kenny started developing the new and improved weather service referenced above. More from Re/code on why Apple made the switch: Expand Expanding Close
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today published its annual “Who Has Your Back?” report that rates and compares how major corporations deal with government data requests. The EFF’s ranking of technology company data request transparency is notable because the organization is the “leading nonprofit organization defending civil liberties in the digital world.” The report ranks companies based on six categories: requires a warrant for content, tells users about data requests, publishes transparency reports, publishes law enforcement guidelines, fights for users’ privacy in courts, fights for users’ privacy for rights in Congress. This year, Apple received a star for each of the six categories.
This compares to many other technology companies, including Google, Yahoo, and Facebook, that received stars across the board:
Jony Ive and Marissa Mayer (right) eat pizza with other industry executives
Re/code reports that Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer is planning an attempt at persuading Apple to switch its default iOS search engine from Google to her company’s own offering. According to Re/code’s sources, Mayer has built what she hopes will be a convincing arguement in favor of the change.
Yahoo! current powers the weather and stocks apps and Notification Center widgets found in iOS 7 as well as a few Siri functions, such as sports, but lost out on the chance to power Siri’s web search to Microsoft’s Bing. Both Yahoo! and Bing are included as optional search engines in the Safari browser, but the default selection is Google.
After launching a new ad campaign on Tumblr for the iPhone 5c a few weeks ago, Apple has today attempted to bring the campaign to a more mainstream audience on the Yahoo! homepage. The ads were also run on the New York Times homepage this week, though they seem to have disappeared now.
The new ad features an interactive grid of eight patterns, each of which plays a different video that uses the design of the iPhone 5c and its case to create an animated scene. In one, red circles on a yellow background bounce around like dodgeballs until they form the grid of circles seen on the back of the iPhone 5c case. The iPhone is revealed and a tagline associated with the scene, such as “gotcha” on the dodgeball version, appears with an iPhone 5c logo.
Those ongoing analyst predictions that Apple would buy Tesla may have been based on some sort of reality. According the the SF Chronicle, Adrian Perica, Apple’s head of mergers and acquisitions, met with Tesla CEO Elon Musk last spring.
A source tells The Chronicle that Perica met with Tesla CEO Elon Musk in Cupertino last spring around the same time analysts suggested Apple acquire the electric car giant…
Six months before Ahmad’s letter, Musk met with Perica and probably Cook at Apple headquarters, said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect business relationships. While a megadeal has yet to emerge (for all of its cash, Apple still plays hardball on valuation), such a high-level meeting between the two Silicon Valley giants involving their top dealmakers suggests Apple was very much interested in buying the electric car pioneer.
But it is unlikely that Apple wanted to buy the car company and even more unlikely that Musk would sell it. In response to the acquisition rumors at the time, he tweeted the following:
Forgot to say one thing at Tesla annual shareholders meeting: just as my money was the first in, it will be the last out.
During its CES keynote, Yahoo announced a new iOS app that it hopes will help people stay informed on the big news of the day. Dubbed News Digest, the app will send out updates twice a day with the big news. The information comes from several different sources and Yahoo calls each individual story an “atom.” The app focuses on all news categories, not just technology.
Each story is created from multiple sources to present the essential bits and pieces of information, known as “Atoms”. Atoms are key quotes, images, videos, stock tickers, maps, infographs, and Wikipedia excerpts among others. These atomic units provide a unique context to the news. Our stories are both algorithmically and hand curated to ensure high quality, and come with a textual summary.
Just in time for the NFL playoffs, the Yahoo Sports iOS app has been updated with a plethora of new features, the biggest of which are a totally new iOS 7 design and a new “Loops” service (via TechCrunch). Loops allows users to search through a game, select a short portion of it, and create an animated gif with that footage, along with captions, effects, and looping. Right now, Loops is compatible with the NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB, and NCCAB, though Yahoo says it plans to expand support to other leagues soon. Expand Expanding Close
At WWDC, Yahoo received an Apple Design Award for Yahoo Weather. This coincided with the unveiling of iOS 7 and its Weather app, which displayed striking similarities to Yahoo’s effort.
With the latest update to the app, Yahoo has brought the same award-winning design to the iPad. The full-bleed imagery from Flickr really shines on a larger display. The layout for iPad is largely a port of the iPhone design with upgraded icons and assets but refinements have been made for the iPad where necessary. For example, forecast information can be much larger because of the additional real-estate.
The companies allegedly involved in the “PRISM” program denied turning over any user data to the government, but a leaked NSA slidedeck (seen above) seemed to imply the opposite.
The new collaborative campaign, called Reform Government Surveillance, cites five driving principles in its drive to curb excessive government spying:
Back in September Yahoo launched a new Yahoo Screen iOS app, a TV remote-like experience for browsing content from Yahoo and sending content to your TV via AirPlay. Today the company announced that it is launching the Yahoo Screen experience directly on the Apple TV.
Yahoo Screen on Apple TV helps you quickly find all the great video Yahoo has to offer —Saturday Night Live, The Colbert Report, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, live news and events, music and original Yahoo programs — so you can enjoy on your big screen.
The app appears to be a similar experience as the iOS app, allowing users to browse through content hosted on Yahoo across categories such as news, sports, food and entertainment and instantly stream content to their TV. Yahoo! has made new deals with Viacom that will bring content from Comedy Central and elsewhere, and it will also live stream original Yahoo programs, news, and live events. A few of the shows already available on Yahoo Screen include Saturday Night Live, The Colbert Report, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. You’ll also find content from MLB, UFC, The Onion, ABC News, Martha Stewart, and more.
The apps are being pushed out over the air to the Apple TV in the U.S. now, and we’ve also discovered that a new PBS channel has arrived today (pictured above). The app doesn’t require users to have a TV subscription to access content, but it does require users to sign in using Google+, Facebook, or the app’s registration in order to access PBS broadcasts for their location. The app doesn’t have live content, but it does have many of the network’s new shows shortly after they’ve aired.
Apple has released the first seed of iOS 7.1 beta (build number 11D5099e) to registered developers today. Check below for a comprehensive overview of changes and iOS 7.1 Release Notes below:
If the lack of features in Apple’s stock Stocks app on iOS (also powered by Yahoo) just isn’t cutting it, Yahoo announced today the release of a completely redesigned Yahoo Finance iOS app with push notifications and much more.
The new app introduces a revamped UI alongside a number of new features. Perhaps the most notable feature is the ability to follow specific stocks and receive push notifications for breaking stories:
The Yahoo Finance app for iPhone and iPad was reimagined to deliver a beautiful personalized experience with a stream of top news and data based on your favorite stocks and interests. We’ve added Push Notifications to keep you in the know as important stories break — so you can make quick and informed decisions on the stocks and companies you follow.
Yahoo has also added new interactive charts that users can pan and pinch to manipulate and use to compare any stock, market or index to see related price changes. Expand Expanding Close
Yahoo Screen, the iOS app the company launched back in September as a TV remote-like experience for browsing content from Yahoo, gets updated today to version 1.0.2. With the update, users can now AirPlay content from the app to an Apple TV and receive push notifications for live content like “breaking news and concerts.”
The updated app also brings the usual bug fixes and performance enhancements.
Yahoo Screen is available on the App Store for free on iPhone and iPad and includes Yahoo content from Comedy Central, MLB, UFC, The Onion, Martha Stewart, and more.
What’s New in Version 1.0.2
* Now with AirPlay support! Send a video to your TV while still browsing others in the app.
* Push notifications for live and featured videos, such as breaking news and concerts.
* Bug fixes and performance improvements
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: Expand Expanding Close
Apple announced on Tuesday that iOS 7 will be publicly available on September 18th. The revamped OS moves completely away from the realistic designs of the past six generations, dropping almost all “artificial shadows” (as Apple SVP Craig Federighi called them), gloss, and even button borders. Instead, the Jony Ive-inspired interface features an entirely rethought design language that focuses heavily on large icons, lightweight fonts, whitespace, transparency, and conservative use of color.
We previously took a look at what some of Apple’s own in-house apps could look like when redesigned for iOS 7. During Apple’s September 10th event, Federighi flashed up a slide displaying the upcoming iOS 7 updates for many third-party applications. None of the apps were labeled, but we’ve tracked down names for most of them.
Yahoo has updated its official app for iPhone and iPod touch with a refreshed interface that is easier to navigate. The new update also includes improved integration with Yahoo’s own Mail service and the ability to conduct multi-tap gestures to navigate through the application.
The new update also is more visual, includes new, simpler content sharing functionality, and improved accessibility options for searching the web. Also included are “sponsored stories” in the stream, which seems to be Yahoo’s method of monetizing its main iPhone app.
Yahoo’s iPhone app includes summarized versions of stories, based on Summly technology, and works to provide users with stories of interest based on what the user has read and accessed in the app in the past. Today’s update is free on the App Store.
In the upcoming overhaul of its iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch operating system, iOS 7, Apple plans to include an increased presence of third-party social networks, including Flickr and Vimeo, according to a person familiar with the software. Since the new software is yet to be even officially announced, there is a very real possibility that any feature in testing could be removed prior to the announcement, this person said (much like Facebook integration was removed from iOS 4). More details below:
Photos tell the stories — stories we’re inspired to relive, share with our friends, or capture simply to express ourselves. Collecting these moments is a part of our everyday. Since 2005, Flickr has become synonymous with inspiring imagery. Today, we’re thrilled to take Flickr even further with a beautiful, completely re-imagined experience that puts photos front and center. When it comes to photography, technology and its limits shouldn’t hinder the experience. So we’re also giving our Flickr users one terabyte of space — for free. That’s enough for a lifetime of photos — more than 500,000 original, full-resolution, pixel-perfect, brilliant photos. Flickr users will never have to worry about running out of space.
1TB is “I no longer have to think about where to store photos,” and full res quality means no compromise. Oh, and we’ve heard there will be some even bigger things coming up from Yahoo/Flickr for iOS users next month. Flickr is currently integrated into OS X and Apple TV software.
Yahoo! Mail for iOS received an update that brings support for printing attachments via AirPrint on compatible printers. The update also includes improvements to the performance of the app as well as bug fixes.
Yahoo continues to rebrand itself under the leadership of former Google executive Marissa Mayer, proving it can be just as innovative as its competitors.
