Microsoft is bringing its predictive Windows Phone keyboard, called Word Flow, to the iPhone. The third-party keyboard is now available for free in the US App Store. The keyboard features traditional keycap input as well as the popular swiping-between-letters gesture input method popularized by Swype.
An update to the Snapchat app today expands on the popular Face Swap feature in a big way. You can now use the face swap effect with pictures taken or downloaded into your Camera Roll. Until now, two people had to be side-by-side in the same photo to Face Swap.
Now, anyone can face swap with any face detected in their iPhone photo library. This opens up some new ‘creative opportunities’, as pictured above, as the face does not have to be in the real world.
Here’s how to activate the new Snapchat feature …
At long last, Apple today has started rolling out web links and iTunes web previews for tvOS apps, similar to how links to iOS/Mac apps and iTunes content has worked for years now. As reported by MacStories, users will now be able to easily share links to fourth-gen Apple TV apps on their computer and subsequently be able to view app details, as well.
For both Google and Apple, the operations on their virtual stores are hugely important, as they account for millions of dollars. However, there has historically been a disparity between the number of downloaded applications and the actual money generated by them, a trend that seems to have peaked in the first quarter of this year.
According to App Annie‘s Index Market for Q1 of 2016, in fact, Google’s Play Store saw a number of downloads that roughly doubles that of the iOS App Store, which in turns represents the platform with the highest profitability, with over 90% more revenue generated over its counterpart…
The new Ghostbusters movie reboot is set for release in theatres this July, and alongside the film Activision and Sony announced today they will release Ghostbusters: Slime City for mobile devices, including iOS. The companies just sent over a first look at the game including a trailer with brief gameplay shots and some screenshots below.
The storyline in the game will take place after the events that unfold in the new movie, and the characters will not be clones of the film’s cast but rather a new selection of heroes. The new Ghostbusters movie is a reboot of the original film and features an all female cast in the main roles, including: Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wig, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones.
The rundown on gameplay in Ghostbusters: Slime City from the press release:
One qualm many have had about the iOS App Store is that the search functionality is currently a less-than-stellar way to peruse through the millions of apps available for users. According to a new report from Bloomberg, however, Apple is working behind-the-scenes to explore a handful of changes for App Store search.
[UPDATE: Full collection of all 27 ‘Apps for Earth’ here.]
Earth Day is just over a week away and it appears Apple plans to highlight it this year with a campaign to raise money for the World Wide Fund for Nature. WWF and Apple teamed up this time last year on an environmental initiative in China, and this year it’s an App Store campaign that brings to two groups and developers together. Several iOS apps have updated today to highlight money from app sales and in-app purchases going toward WWF through April 24th. The App Store will likely update later today to feature these apps, but we’ve collected apps we’ve found so far below:
Periodically, Apple updates App Store prices in certain regions to account for global changes in exchange rates. Today, Apple has notified developers that it will be raising app prices for customers in Norway in response to currency fluctuations.
Popular commenting service Disqus today has announced its first ever iOS app. The app is available now in the App Store for free and allows users to track notifications relating to their comments as well as discussions from channels and websites they follow. The app’s interface is pretty standard, with home, channel, notification, and profile tabs along the bottom.
Apple has started collecting some of the research data that users submit through apps using the company’s ResearchKit platform for the first time.
The Waze maps app— the one Google acquired a few years back to improve its own mapping services—today announced a new features that will warn drivers when they are driving over the speed limit.
Now when you’re using the Waze app to navigate, you’ll automatically see a visual warning (pictured above) if you go over the speed limit, and you can also manually set audio warnings for reaching the limit or hitting 5, 10 or 15% over.
It’s 2016, billions of smartphones are in use across the globe, and traditional video game companies are only just coming around to the idea that there’s some money to be made from smartphone gaming. Nintendo only recently launched its first mobile app, and plans to release a more familiar character-based game soon. Sony, likewise is about to make another foray in to the world of smartphone-based gaming with its newly-formed corporation, ForwardWorks.
Popular note taking and annotation app Notability is getting an update today for both iPad and Mac that includes improved Apple Pencil support, new themes, copy & paste for pages, and more.
For the iOS app, version 6.2.0 brings enhanced Apple Pencil integration that adds supports for improved palm rejection and one finger scrolling. “With these improvements, Notability offers the most fluid writing experience on iPad Pro, so customers can focus more easily on their ideas and notes. In addition, the update supports copy and pasting pages between notes, saving time.”
In addition, the updated iOS app is receiving some refreshed themes today for the spring season that users can find tucked under settings, and a new “define” button for non-English languages.
And Mac users are also getting the ability to copy and paste pages between notes with today’s update to version 2.2.0 of the Mac app. Other new features in the update include an “improved text box insertion on PDFs” and the same Define button for non-English languages that the updated iOS app received.
The updated Notability apps for iPad and for Mac are available on the App Store now.
– Copy and paste individual pages into another note.
– One finger scrolling when using Apple Pencil.
– New Spring theme in settings.
– Define button for non-English languages.
– Bug fixes.
– Copy and paste pages into another note.
– Define button for non-English languages.
– Improved Text Box insertion on PDFs.
– Bug fixes.
Non-jailbroken iPhones are usually close to immune from malware thanks to Apple vetting every app before it’s made available in the App Store. So far, malware has relied on abusing enterprise certificates designed to allow companies to distribute apps to their own phones. But security company Palo Alto Networks has discovered a new piece of malware that can infect iPhones by exploiting a vulnerability in Apple’s DRM mechanism.
AceDeceiver is the first iOS malware we’ve seen that abuses certain design flaws in Apple’s DRM protection mechanism — namely FairPlay — to install malicious apps on iOS devices regardless of whether they are jailbroken.
AceDeceiver currently uses a geotag so that it is only activated when a user is located in China, but a simple switch could allow it to infect iPhones elsewhere …
Waze, the popular Google-owned mapping app with a focus on community-based features, is today adding a new feature called “Planned Drives” for iOS users.
TomTom used to have a handful of paid apps, each specific to a region. The app covering just the U.S., for example, was $45. But today it’s making its premium navigation services free for iPhone users everywhere for the first 50 miles or 75km of use. The new freemium model comes as the company consolidates its TomTom apps for each region under a new, redesigned app simply called TomTom Go Mobile.
Complaints that Apple’s App Store algorithms are broken, often returning nonsensical results for highlighted categories like ‘New’ and ‘Hot,’ have finally caught the company’s attention. Phil Schiller yesterday responded to tweeted complaints by Mozilla’s Lisa Brewster and Screenshot++ developer Wesley Dyson.
App Store editors, you had one job https://t.co/uLLOuXTDvb
— Lisa Brewster (@Adora) March 12, 2016
Both drew attention to the fact that highlighted app categories in Canada and other countries (though seemingly not the U.S.) were filled with a whole range of similarly-named apps, and that apps whose names put them at the top of alphanumeric sorting remain in the ‘New’ category forever …
Alphabet-owned Nest is best known for its smart thermostat, but the company works on a number of devices which, albeit being generally good at their given task, do not communicate with each other particularly well. And that’s mostly due to the fact that said devices have always had a hard time detecting whether you are actually at home or not.
With the upcoming implementation of GPS support via the Nest app, however, it looks like your house is about to become decidedly more efficient – and smart…
Somehow, it has become a part of mainstream culture for iPhone and iPad users to quit all their apps in multitasking as some kind of regular tech maintenance ritual to improve battery life or speed up the hardware. An understanding of how iOS multitasking works however, shows that this is completely unnecessary to close every app in the multitasking view frequently. A 9to5Mac reader decided to ask Tim Cook for an official stance on whether he quits all his apps and if it’s necessary. Although Cook didn’t answer, Apple iOS chief Craig Federighi did with an unambiguous answer ‘no and no’ …
Apple is adding a convenient new feature for developers today in iTunes Connect. Following a refresh to the Payments and Financial Reports pages a fortnight ago, Apple is now letting developers opt-in to a weekly summary report email of their apps. The email will summarize important business metrics for the developer’s apps, including information on App Store views, unit sales, sessions and crash rates. The email will also show the comparisons of these statistics to the previous seven-day period.
Pebble Time smartwatch users are getting a few notable updates today including a redesigned iOS app alongside the latest firmware for the watch itself that brings new features, fixes and enhancements.
Signs of change are beginning to surface on the App Store after December 17th’s notable leadership changes involving Apple’s Worldwide Marketing SVP Phil Schiller. That move happened after growing discontent from Mac App Store developers, who noted communication breakdowns and overall frustration with the direction that the Mac App Store was headed in.
Schiller is now in charge of all App Stores, taking over responsibilities from Eddy Cue, which most prominently include the iOS App Store and the Mac App Store.
It’s been less than three months since the move occurred, but we’re already beginning to see a change in the way the App Store operates. For example, we’re now seeing more regular updates of the Best New Apps section at the top of the App Store’s Featured page. In a tweet today, Schiller acknowledged the changes and indicated that more changes were on the way.
Popular productivity app Todoist is giving its six million users a huge update today with a completely rewritten app for iOS alongside a new Safari plug-in and notable updates for Apple Watch and Mac.
SoundCloud today announced that it’s launching an iPhone version of the ‘Pulse’ app for creators that it first launched back in November for Android users.
