The Skype app for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch has now been updated with support for iOS 8. Unfortunately, this does not include support for iPhone 6 and 6 Plus screen sizes, meaning Skype still renders at a scaled iPhone 5s resolution.

However, the update does add interactive notifications which helps streamline responding to content. Hence, new Skype notifications have buttons attached to the alert which can perform various actions. For voice calls, you can answer or decline. For video calls, you can choose between voice or video responses. For missed calls, you can respond with a message or call the person straight back.

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Twitter shared in a blog post today that it will begin rolling out improvements to the user profile design for iPhone users in addition to new features for iOS 8.

The previous user profile design featured the user’s avatar centered over the cover photo with a swipe required to reveal the bio and photos further down in a carousel view. The refreshed design now presents all of this information in a more traditional layout with buttons distinguishing tweets, favorites, and photos. Each of these sections can be explored with an endless scrolling feed.

The update also offers up users interactive notifications, a feature introduced with iOS 8 but not readily available in many apps just yet.
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Apple has today released iAd Producer 5.0, the latest revision to its advertisement development environment. The headline addition for this update is support for iTunes Radio ad creation on desktop iTunes for Mac and Windows. This helps increase the possible reach of iAds to more eyeballs.

In addition, Apple has overhauled the coding aspects of the app (even though Apple amusingly claims you don’t “need any programming”) with code completion, syntax highlighting themes, inline syntax error warnings and more.

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Update: Apple seems to have temporarily pulled this update in order to fix widely-reported crashes. It will likely be available again soon.
Update 2: It’s back now.

Apple has pushed out an updated version of iMovie for iOS (version 2.1) today that features support for the newly-released iOS 8 software and several other new features. The update includes 10 new Apple-designed filters that can be applied to your clips, speed settings for projects on newer iOS devices (iPhone 5s, iPad Air, and Retina iPad mini), as well as iCloud Drive support.

You can also now export your videos to other apps using iOS 8’s inter-app connectivity features. An iMovie extension for the Photos application allows you to enhance the videos in your camera roll without leaving the app. Titles can now be created with bi-directional text, and support for five languages has been added.

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The Apple Watch may be able to share your heartbeat with someone across the world, but I think we all know that the future of communication actually lies in those little smiling faces called emoji that are usually tucked away in a secondary keyboard on our phones. To ensure that the future of interpersonal conversation is not hindered by the relative difficulty of tracking down just the right icon to express your feelings, one iOS development team has released a keyboard that translates everything you say into emoji.

The keyboard is called Keymoji, and it uses a crowdsourced database of emoji combinations that can then be substituted for words in your text messages, emails, tweets, and other communications (via Re/code). As you type, Keymoji will figure out what you want to say and translate it into a collection of icons that properly convey your message.

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In March we reported on a new jailbreak tweak called ProWidgets that introduced a whole suite of widgets to the iOS 7 Notification Center. With today’s release of iOS 8, Avanio Labs, the company created by Alan Yip, has released several native widgets for the new operating system. These new add-ons will help you keep track of your calendar and to-do list, monitor the weather, and perform a ton of useful actions on the text stored in your clipboard.

The first of these is Agenda+, which you can see in the screenshots above. Agenda+ combines a list view of your calendar events with a summary of your iOS Reminders. iOS typically breaks these two up into separate widgets, with the Calendar widget showing a full timeline of your day (which can take up a lot of space depending on how many events you have and how late in the day they are).

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As part of iOS 8’s new Extensibility features, developers can now create app extensions throughout the system for sharing information and performing actions without actually launching their apps.

What this means for users is that the familiar action or share button (the upward arrow in a box) will now contain way more options than ever before. Remember when Apple added Facebook and Twitter sharing, for example directly to Safari and Photos on iOS? Starting with iOS 8, Apple is allowing all app makers to create similar buttons for sharing and actions. An example of an action (like copy or add to Reading List) shared by Apple at WWDC was native language translation directly in Safari using Bing Translate. Extension support also includes photo filters allowing photo editing apps that provide filter extensions to work inside of the native Photos app.

A year after introducing Touch ID, the secure fingerprint scanner first introduced with the iPhone 5s, Apple is also now allowing apps to take advantage of Touch ID for the first time. Touch ID users can now authenticate log-ins and more in supported apps using the secure fingerprint scanner. Below we’ll tell you about the latest apps already taking advantage of extensions and Touch ID support for iOS 8.

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In iOS 8, Apple is adding support for third-party keyboards. This means that iOS users can finally replace the default stock Apple keyboard with a myriad of choices already available on the App Store.

Keyboards are tied with an app. There is not a separate ‘keyboard store’. To find a keyboard, you search in the iOS App Store like any other app. Once you have downloaded an app that contains a custom keyboard, you must then enable it in Settings. Go to Settings -> General -> Keyboards -> Add New Keyboard and select the new app. This is kind of annoying, since it forces every app to instruct you how to install their keyboard in case you are new to the concept.

With that out of the way, what are the best keyboards available for iOS 8 to download today? Read on for 9to5Mac’s comprehensive roundup.

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Apple introduced a new concept for developers with iOS 8 called Extensibility. This allows users to use services from apps throughout the system without actually being in the app itself, and widgets in Notification Center’s Today view are a major example of this feature in action.

Widgets from supported apps can be enabled by swiping down to the Today view in Notification Center, scrolling down to the “edit” button at the bottom, and tapping the “+” icon next to any supported apps. When you install a new app that supports a Today view widget, a badge will appear on the edit button to subtly notify you of the widget. You can also rearrange widgets as well as remove Apple’s own Notification Center widgets.

Many of these widgets present up-to-date information like the number of steps you’ve taken today, upcoming tasks or events on your third-party task management app or calendar, and much, much more. Below we’ll show you several of the latest apps offering widgets right now in Notification Center’s Today view.
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Paper by FiftyThree is getting a whole lot more social today as the popular sketching app for iPad launches Mix, a community platform for sharing creations made in Paper. Mix allows users to share and view other sketches made in Paper on the web or right in the app.

With Mix, Paper uses can follow other creators, adding sketches to your own journal, view iterations of sketches, “star” ideas for viewing in a collection, and open sketches on the web. Probably the best feature of Mix is being able to use someone else’s sketch for inspiration for your own. You can jump right into a sketch found on Mix and add your own ideas and creations.

As part of the debut of Mix, 9to5Mac and FiftyThree will be giving away two Pencils by FiftyThree, the company’s stylus made specifically for Paper for iPad with surface pressure detection coming with iOS 8, blending, erasing, and palm rejection. Read more about Mix in Paper by FiftyThree and how to enter the giveaway below.
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Apple tried to get social with the iTunes Ping network in 2010. Things didn’t work out so well. (Image via Wired)

Apple and social networking don’t have such a great history, but the Cupertino tech firm is ready to give it another go, if new rumors regarding a potential acquisition of the Path social app are true. According to PandoDaily, Apple is already in talks with the mobile social network and the merger is “essentially a done deal.”

Path, for the uninitiated, is a mobile-only social networking app launched in 2010 that features photo sharing, private messaging, and other features you’d expect from a basic social service. It isn’t as widely popular as something like Facebook or Twitter, but it’s estimated to have somewhere around 25 million users and could provide Apple with a decent platform to create its own network.

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iTunes 11.4 has been released following Apple’s announcement that iOS 8 will be available next week. The GM seed of the software is available now for developers, and the new iTunes update enables syncing with devices running the mobile update.

Many users on OS X Yosemite trying to install the iOS 8 GM seed have run into a serious issue, however. The current version of iTunes 12 crashes after erasing a user’s device, leaving them stranded in DFU mode with no way to actually get back to a usable state (unless they have a Mavericks machine handy). If you are running Yosemite exclusively, it’s probably best to wait for an iTunes 12 update before attempting to install the GM.

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The latest update to the popular, Facebook-owned WhatsApp Messenger app for iPhone hit the App Store with a long list of new features for users including the ability to share slow-mo videos from the iPhone 5s and trim clips down right in the app without having to edit the video in the Photos app.

Chatting with photos also received improvements with the ability to add captions and snap and share photos even faster added. Improvements and changes to location sharing, app wallpapers, and new notification tones are included. The latest version also allows users to move chat logs and contact groups away to an archive. Complete list of changes below…
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