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Review: Hours, the world’s simplest time-tracking app from former Apple Design Award winner Tapity

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Anyone who has ever had the misfortune to have to use a corporate hours-tracking/billing system will know that they typically give every impression of being designed by an enraged gorilla working to a spec provided by a sadistic accountant.

Tapity, which won an Apple Design Award back in 2011 for “the ultimate app for students” Grade, has today launched Hours, a simple color-coded app it says aims to take the pain out of time-tracking. I’ve been using a pre-release version for the past week so that I could let you know my thoughts on the day it launched …


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HBO’s Game of Thrones Ascent game arrives on iPhone

Following a release for iPad back in March, HBO’s Game of Thrones Ascent game developed by Disruptor Beam & Kongregate is now available for iPhone. The game already racked up around 2,500,000 players on Facebook and the web before making its way to iPad in March, and it comes to the App Store with new art, optimized imagery for Retina displays, and Game Center leaderboards.

With Game of Thrones Ascent, fans can immerse themselves beyond the books and show, living the life of a noble in Westeros, working with (or against) each other in a persistent, authentic game world. Taking part in thousands of story-driven quests, players delve deeply into the lore and develop their own lands and reputation among the Great Houses. Players explore an expansive world filled with deep political and social play involving diplomatic agreements, pacts, marriages, and betrothals. Through Alliance challenges, players work with hundreds of others to accomplish great tasks and rise to the top of the Power Rankings.

The developers update the game weekly and alongside new episodes of the TV show when it’s airing. That includes new quests, in-game items and more that follow the storyline of the show.

Game of Thrones Ascent is available for iPhone now as a free download on the App Store.

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Google releases official Analytics app for iPhone with Real Time reports

Google has added yet another official application to its iOS App Store portfolio: Google Analytics. Analytics is Google’s popular service that allows website owners to manage and view data such as page views, demographics, and the technologies users utilize to access the website. The iPhone app also has the neat Real Time reports feature that allows website owners to view how many people are on the website at the current time. Google launched an optimized version of the Analytics app last year on Android and debuted a related AdWords app on iOS just last week. Like all Google apps, the Analytics program is on the the App Store for free.


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New iTunes Pass credit refill service now available in United States and several other countries

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Yesterday Apple rolled out its new iTunes Pass service to Japan, allowing users to use a Passbook card to add credit to an iTunes account from an Apple Retail Store. Starting today, the offer is also available in the United States and Australia. Users in Canada, Germany, and the UK are also reporting seeing the feature, though it’s not officially listed on Apple’s website for those countries just yet.

To take advantage of this new program, you need to use the iTunes Store app on an iOS device to obtain an iTunes Pass. You can get one of these by tapping the “Redeem” button at the bottom of the home page within the app. To use the card, you can visit an Apple Retail Store and ask a specialist to help you add credit to your account. The specialist can then scan the barcode on the Passbook card to immediately add credit to your account.


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Jawbone’s UP iPhone app gets new weight management & food-tracking features

Jawbone today announced new weight management and food-tracking features via an update for the UP by Jawbone fitness tracking app that pairs with its UP wearables.

Jawbone’s entirely new food-tracking interface for UP helps you simply log food and water, quickly assess the healthiness of foods, and easily track progress toward your target weight… The UP Insight Engine™ provides intelligent guidance around your food choices, calorie consumption and weight goals, helping you understand how each of those is related to activity and sleep.

Highlights for the version 3.2 update include the ability to set goals for weight and calorie intake while using new tools for logging and tracking food consumption. It’s also teaming up with food apps like HealthyOut, Munchery, Nutrisystem, and PlateJoy to sync data and automatically track food ordered through those services.

The updated iPhone app is available on the App Store now.

More details on the new features are in the company’s press release below:

Jawbone Launches New Weight Management Features For UP

After Steps and Sleep, Jawbone’s UP App Now Offers an Easier, Smarter Way to Track Food and Manage Weight

SAN FRANCISCO, July 16, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — Jawbone® today unveiled new weight management features for UP® , the system that helps you manage your weight, sleep better and stay fit.

Jawbone’s entirely new food-tracking interface for UP helps you simply log food and water, quickly assess the healthiness of foods, and easily track progress toward your target weight.

The UP Insight Engine™ provides intelligent guidance around your food choices, calorie consumption and weight goals, helping you understand how each of those is related to activity and sleep.

“UP and UP24 have inspired millions of people to get engaged in their own health – we’ve shown that living better really is a universally popular proposition,” said Travis Bogard, vice president of product management and strategy at Jawbone. “For the nearly three out of four Americans that are overweight or obese*, living better often includes weight loss. Our new food and weight features for UP, combined with some exciting new food apps we’ve added to the platform, make UP the most complete solution for weight management and a healthy lifestyle.”

Simplified Weight Management

Jawbone’s new and intuitive food-tracking interface for UP delivers an easier, smarter way to track what you eat and manage your weight:

  • Personalized Food Library: Quickly see and select from the foods you eat most frequently, right from the front and center of your food-logging screen. More than a quarter of meals logged in UP include regularly consumed items, making easy access to them a time-saving shortcut. UP also surfaces foods that are commonly paired with the items you’re eating via Jawbone’s intelligent food database. Enter eggs, and UP will show you other items that may be included in your meal, like bacon, toast, or potatoes.
  • Access to Restaurant Menus: With half of meals in the US eaten outside of the home**, UP now lists dining establishments nearby based on your location and lets you quickly log menu items from many restaurants you visit. Quick access to menus lets you instantly select what you’re eating and automatically import calorie information when available. At local restaurants where nutrition information may not be on hand, add nutrition details and UP will save it in your library for future visits. Jawbone’s data science team will aggregate data entered from multiple users, making it available to the entire UP community for a more complete restaurant menu database.
  • Food Score: Use UP’s food detail screen to quickly evaluate how healthy a dish is at a glance. UP shows you the breakdown of healthy nutrients to less healthy nutrients for any given item, along with a new Food Score to help you quickly asses the overall healthiness of individual items and full meals. You’ll also see a rolling average of the score throughout your entire day.
  • Weight Goal: Log your weight and set a personal goal in the app to see your progress toward your target weight. UP will recommend a daily calorie goal and balance calories burned versus calories consumed to show you your remaining allowance for the day. And as you log new meals, a convenient progress meter shows you the number of calories you’ve already consumed – and how many you’ll be adding with each new item.
  • Insights: A completely redesigned Insight Engine for UP makes its intelligent guidance and useful health tips even more accessible and intuitive. Complete with new food-specific insights and opt-in “Today I Will” commitments, you’ll be motivated to try original recipes, reinforce your diet with fiber and protein, and start building new food habits to keep you on track.

New Food Apps on the UP Platform

Jawbone teamed up with several meal planning and delivery services to take the UP system a step closer toward the promise of automatic logging and customized meal recommendations:

  • Order a fresh, chef-prepared meal from the daily menu of Munchery , now in San Francisco and Seattle, and have it delivered that night When you connect your Munchery account with UP, each meal ordered will be automatically entered for you in UP’s food-logging system, including detailed nutrition information.
  • Use HealthyOut to order healthy meals from nearby restaurants nationwide, at any time.
  • Use the Prep Pad WiFi connected scale from The Orange Chef Co. ™  to create recipes that can be automatically logged in UP. Prep Pad can also factor in your activity from UP to provide more personalized meal recommendations.
  • Get meal plans and recipes from PlateJoy that are tailored to your preferences and customized based on your activity and sleep from UP – complete with ingredients delivered to your home.
  • And coming soon, you’ll be able to choose recipe recommendations from NuMi™ by Nutrisystem® that are personalized based on your calorie goals, lifestyle preferences, and the time of day. UP will automatically log the recipes you select, and NuMi will use your activity and calorie information to make even smarter recommendations.

Backed by Industry-Leading Experts

Jawbone’s new weight management system and food tracking tools have been backed by leading dietitian Ashley Koff, RD, an international nutrition expert and regular commentator on health and food issues.

“Food journaling is proven to be an effective method for weight management and weight loss, but writing everything you eat down with pen and paper isn’t convenient for most people. What Jawbone has developed is a really simple solution to this challenge,” said Koff. “While calorie counting is a key part of weight management, the balance of your nutrient intake is equally, if not more, important. It’s great to see a simple Food Score –  intelligently developed using several nutrient ratios – alongside calorie counts in the UP system to show you at a glance how well-balanced your food is.”

Development of the new features has been led by Laura Borel, a product manager at Jawbone and founder and former CEO of Nutrivise, a consumer nutrition company acquired by Jawbone last year. Nutrivise delivered personalized and automated meal recommendations based on a user’s unique biometrics and dietary preferences, and was voted “most promising health company” by Stanford Medicine X in 2012.

Available on July 16

UP by Jawbone™ 3.2 for iOS is available today as a free download from the App Store. The UP or UP24™ wristband is required for the app.

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Weep for humanity, Kim Kardashian: Hollywood app reportedly set to take in $200 million this year

According to a report from TMZ, Kim Kardashian’s latest game for iPhone and iPad is set to take in $200 million with Kardashian’s share coming in somewhere in the neighborhood of $85 million.

Sources familiar with the deal tell TMZ … Kim’s cut is 45% of net profits.  The game — “Kim Kardashian: Hollywood” — is set to gross a reported $200 million this year alone.

We’re told the actual expenses associated with the business are relatively low.  A straight 45% cut of $200 million totals a whopping $90 million. To put this in context … according to Forbes, Kim made $28 million last year.

Keep in mind that the app itself is free. All of that revenue is from in-app purchases like a $59 “Huge Star Pack” and other in-game items users purchase while playing celebrity in the Glu developed game. Expenses for the games are reportedly somewhere around $10 million, but there’s no word on if these numbers take Apple’s 30 percent cut into account. The revenue estimate of $200 million is reportedly for this year alone after the title launched back in May.

The Kim Kardashian: Hollywood app is available for iPhone and iPad on the App Store.

Paul McCartney releases five classic albums as iPad apps – more content, lower cost

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The Guardian reports that Paul McCartney has released five of his classic albums as iPad apps, offering remastered audio tracks, videos, interviews, photos, and artwork from both albums and singles.

Five of his classic albums – Band on the Run, McCartney, McCartney II, RAM and Wings over America – have been turned into iPad apps by label Concord Music Group, and released through Apple’s App Store.

Surprisingly, despite the additional content, the cost of the apps is lower than buying just the albums alone… 
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Apple debuts iTunes Pass in Japan, allows Passbook-based iTunes credit refills at Apple Stores

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Apple today has launched an interesting new service for iTunes Store, App Store, and iBookstore users in Japan with iPhones and iPod touches. The new service, called iTunes Pass (no, not that iTunes Pass), allows users to go to an Apple Store in Japan, purchase credit in-store for the iTunes Store, App Store, and iBookstore, and have that money immediately applied to the Apple ID account instead of needing to receive a gift card and enter a redemption code…


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Nike’s latest iOS app is a hub for all things Nike football/soccer

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[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZPupLRu6ZU]

Nike is today launching a brand new app called Nike Football (or Nike Soccer in the US), that will act as a hub for all things Nike Football from exclusive content and Q&A sessions with athletes to the latest product launches for the company’s line of football products. Nike is also including some social features that let users organize their own pick-up games, trash talk among friends and teammates, and more:
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The App Store’s 6th anniversary by the numbers

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Steve Jobs introducing the App Store in 2008

As Apple celebrates the 6th anniversary of the App Store today, let’s take a look at the most recent numbers Apple has announced regarding App Store statistics. During the WWDC keynote on June 2nd, Apple CEO Tim Cook shared that the App Store then featured more than 1.2 million apps and counting.

Out of that catalog, App Store customers have downloaded apps more than 75 billion times since the digital store debuted on July 10, 2008. Apple also noted that its platform is home to more than 9 million developers with registered accounts through the Developer Program, a number which was up 47% from the previous year…
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Minecraft Pocket Edition gets biggest update yet w/ infinite worlds & much more

Minecraft Pocket Edition, the iOS version of the popular Minecraft PC game, is getting what developer Mojang says is the app’s biggest update yet today. Version 0.9.0 introduces a number of new features carried over from the original game including infinite worlds, much improved caves, wolves, new items, and much, much more.

In addition, Mojang is bringing over new biomes from the PC version of the game with mesas, jungles, swamps and extreme hills, and you’ll also notice abandoned mineshafts, villages and “new feature generation, including lakes, vines and monster rooms.” That doesn’t even include a fraction of what’s actually included in today’s update. A full list of new features from new blocks to new and updated features for biomes, mobs, AI and feature generation is below.

The game also receives some welcomed UI tweaks in the update including a new “interaction” button that Mojang hopes will cut down on accidental sheep punches.

Infinite worlds!
Caves!
Loads of new blocks and items including Monster Eggs and huge mushroom blocks.
Wolves! Tame a loyal companion.
Loads of new flowers! So pretty.
New mobs, including the spooky endermen and less spooky Mooshrooms.
New biomes from the PC version, including mesas, jungles, swamps and extreme hills.
Abandoned mineshafts, villages, and many other cool places to explore.
A brand-new “interaction” button. Never accidentally punch a sheep again!
New feature generation, including lakes, vines and monster rooms.
Many bugs fixed, and possibly a few added.

The updated Minecraft Pocket Edition version 0.9.0 is available now on the App Store for iPhone and iPad.

The full huge list of what’s new via Mojang is below:

New features

  • Unlimited worlds!
  • New culling algorithm
  • New culling of clouds
  • Tile entities are saved differently
  • New falling mechanics for gravel and sand
  • New insta ticking of water and lava

New blocks

  • Podzol
  • Mycelium
  • Huge mushroom blocks
  • Cocoa
  • End portal frame
  • Double plants
  • More stairs/slabs for new wood types
  • New log types (savanna tree and dark oak)
  • New leafs (savanna tree)
  • Monster egg
  • Stained clay
  • Waterlily
  • New flowers
  • Red sand
  • Hardened clay
  • End stone
  • Granite
  • Diorite
  • Andesite
  • Emerald block
  • Emerald ore
  • New leveldb based saving format
  • New entity handling
  • New crafting screen
  • Remade network code (mostly the same packages but new system).
  • New interact button (to make the game easier for new players)

New mobs

  • Slimes
  • Endermen
  • Wolves
  • Mooshrooms
  • Silverfish

New and updated biomes

  • Deserts
  • Extreme hills
  • Forests
  • Redwood taiga
  • Roofed forests
  • Frozen
  • Jungle
  • Savanna
  • Mesa
  • Mushroom island
  • Taiga
  • Deep ocean
  • Swamps

New world feature generation

  • Sand
  • Boulders
  • Ice patch
  • Ice spike
  • Spike
  • Lake
  • Double plants
  • Ground bushes
  • Fancy oaks
  • Jungle tree
  • Mega jungle tree
  • Mega pine tree
  • Savanna tree
  • Swamp tree
  • Huge mushroom
  • Tallgrass
  • Waterlily
  • Vines
  • Melons
  • Pumpkin
  • Dead bush
  • Monster rooms
  • Desert well
  • Fallen logs
  • Emerald ore

Tweaks to caves

  • Lava at the bottom of caves
  • Caves in desert and mesa
  • Strongholds
  • Villages
  • Villagers
  • Abandoned mine shafts
  • Flat world generation
  • Limited world generation
  • “New” mob spawning
  • Updated light generation
  • Grass color for different biomes
  • Foliage color for different biomes
  • Water color for swamps

New AI

  • Spiders
  • New leaf rendering
  • Added more spawn eggs in Creative Mode
  • Added immersive mode for Android
  • Added drip particles for water and lava
  • Updated create world screen

Tweaks and bug fixes

  • Correct name for stairs, slabs and spawn eggs
  • Beds no longer gives full health in normal difficulty
  • Smooth lighting added for:
  • Beds
  • Fences
  • Walls
  • Cobwebs
  • Chests
  • Leaves
  • Smooth lighting removed for:
  • Glowstone
  • Glass
  • Jack ‘o’ lanterns
  • Improved performance of TNT
  • Prettier clouds
  • The fog is darker underground

Known Bugs

  • The block highlight flickers (z-fights) when more than 10k blocks distant from spawn
  • Changing the view distance while in a world might crash the game
  • If players walk too far from each other in multiplayer, they can’t see each other

Known bugs requiring attention

  • Multiplayer is a bit fragile. Please test it and report all issues to us!
  • The LevelDB save format + upgrading of old maps. Please report any data corruption!
  • Crashes in general – uncommon and random crashes might still happen

Apple launches iTunes U 2.0 with iPad-based course creation, student discussions, more

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Apple today issued a significant update to its iTunes U application for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. The application focuses on enhancements for both teachers and students, and the application was first announced by Apple last week alongside the new Back to School retail initiatives.

Here’s what is new for students:


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Apple bolsters iOS 8 Health app with on-device steps, distance tracking & caffeine monitoring

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Apple has made significant enhancements to its upcoming Health application for iOS 8 in the latest beta of the new iPhone operating system. Most notably, the Health application can now utilize the iPhone’s own M7 motion tracking hardware for data sourcing.

The Health app’s Steps counter tab can now report steps without connecting to any third party applications or hardware devices. Because this feature likely uses the M7 processor, an iPhone 5s is required to get the steps data directly from the device…


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Google Play Music for iOS updated w/ gapless playback, ability to download subscribed playlists, more

Google this afternoon started rolling out an update to its Play Music app on iOS with a handful of new features. The update bumps the app to version 1.3.0.2190. Firstly, the update finally adds support for gapless playback, which means that there is no pause between the end of one song and the beginning of another. The update also adds the ability to download subscribed playlists in one tap, allowing you to listen to them without a data connection.


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Korean Fair Trade Commission rules that Apple must change App Store refund policy

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Apple has been ordered by the South Korean government to revise its App Store refund policy, the Korea Herald reports. The company’s current policy requires users to submit a request for a refund and have the case reviewed by an Apple employee before a refund will be considered.

The practice was ruled “unfair” by the Fair Trade Commission after numerous requests from the Citizens’ Coalition for Economic Justice. Apple told the Fair Trade Commission that it would create a new, automated refund system for the Korean App Store, and consider rolling the change out worldwide.


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Mophie debuts 64GB iPhone 5/5s Space Pack storage case, ships in late July for $250

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Back in March, we reviewed Mophie’s Space Pack storage case for the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5s. The case is both a battery pack that boosts the battery life of the iPhone as well as an external storage drive. Mophie has shipped variants that add 16GB and 32GB of storage to your iPhone, and today the company has announced a new 64GB version. That means with this case, you can technically have an iPhone that can store approximately 128GB of data. Data on the Space Pack is managed via a free Space app on the App Store. The app can store and access many types of files including songs, videos, and photos. The new 64GB model costs $249.95 and Mophie is quoting a ship date of July 22nd. As of now, pre-orders for the 64GB model are only available in the black color, while the lower-end versions are also available in white (shown above) and red finishes.

9to5Toys: As part of its 4-day Sale for the 4th of July, Best Buy offers the Mophie Juice Pack Helium iPhone 5/5s battery pack in silver for $39.99 with free shipping.


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Hands-on: 1Password beta highlights iOS 8’s Touch ID & Extensions APIs (video)

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Besides new user features such as health tracking, user interface optimizations, and improved messaging, iOS 8 introduces several new APIs for developers that will result in improved App Store apps that tie even deeper into the system. Two of the most notable API additions in iOS 8 are Touch ID and Extensions. The Touch ID feature will allow developers to design applications that can use the iPhone 5s’s fingerprint scanner, and Extensions will allow them to integrate their own software into share sheets within other apps.

1Password, a popular password management program, is testing an updated version of its iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch application that taps into both of these APIs. We’ve gone hands-on with the beta version—which developer AgileBits stresses is still a pre-release build with functionality and interface elements that can and will change—and both features feel right at home in a third-party app. You can find tours of both the Touch ID and Extensions features below:


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Twitter’s mobile app install advertising feature comes out of beta, goes global

Twitter has taken its mobile application install advertising feature out of beta and it has also taken the service global. Twitter talked about the feature, which allows companies to advertise mobile apps within the Twitter mobile app timeline, earlier this year. The video above explains how the service works. The app install feature can show apps from the App Store and Google Play based on “interest, keyword, TV targeting and tailored audiences” as well as based on “gender, geo, language and mobile platform targeting.” The service allows apps to be installed on smartphones directly via the Twitter app and the Twitter app will even notify users when the app is ready to use.

Twitter explains how advertisers can use the functionality:


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The Weather Channel iPad app gets new iOS 7-style redesign

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.

The Weather Channel will officially be replacing Yahoo as the source for Apple’s stock Weather app in the upcoming release of iOS 8 this fall. Part of that decision, according to a recent report, was due to some new enhancements made to The Weather Channel service over the last year.

The Weather Channel app version 4.0 for iPad is available for free on the App Store.

What’s New in Version 4.0.0

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.

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MacUpdate app keeps your non-Mac App Store software up-to-date – at a price

While your Mac should automatically alert you to updates downloaded from the Mac App Store, you may not be aware of updates available for software purchased elsewhere. MacUpdate Desktop 6 alerts you to updates on thousands of software titles, as well as enabling one-click installation of new apps.

The software and corresponding MacUpdate account are free – for up to five updates a month. Unlimited updates will cost you $20 a year.

The video below gives an overview of how it works, and you can download the software here.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4MaYixgKhA]

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SoundCloud iPhone app gets complete redesign, iPad update coming in future release

SoundCloud, the popular music and audio uploading and discovery service, today released an update to its iPhone app that introduces a completely new design. For users of the previous version, the updated design is instantly noticeable with a much cleaner and more streamlined look and feel throughout the app.

There are also a number of navigation and user experience enhancements included in the update:

– Beautifully simple design. Cleaner look. Simpler controls
– ‘One thumb’ interface. Play, pause, skip and explore on the go
– Open another user’s profile straight from a track or playlist
– Your likes and playlists are now all in one place, making it easier to play more of your favorite tracks and artists

While the iPad version of the app isn’t getting the same treatment today, the company says “iPad updates are being worked on for a future release.”

The updated SoundCloud app for iPhone, version 3.0, is available for free on the App Store.

Significant enhancements coming to AppleCare+, Apple IDs, iOS support

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Apple’s vice president of AppleCare and technical support initiatives, Tara Bunch, held a Town Hall meeting for for AppleCare employees earlier this week, according to several employees in attendance who asked to remain anonymous. During the meeting, Bunch, along with a few other Apple executives, spoke about Apple’s progress in customer service and support over the past few years, improvements from 2013 to 2014, and future plans.

Throughout the meeting, Bunch noted that customer satisfaction numbers from AppleCare and Apple product users are at the top of the industry. Going into the 15th year of AppleCare, Bunch asked employees to celebrate and be proud of their accomplishments, but she also noted that Apple still has room to improve its support practices. Employees in attendance during the meeting have shared some details regarding Apple’s future plans for its support initiatives…


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Skype 5.1 for iOS rolling out with improvements to conversations and favorites

Approximately a week after releasing Skype 5.0 with a completely revamped design and new features, Microsoft is now rolling out version 5.1 with various improvements. Notably, there are enhancements to managing conversations, favorites, and finding the status of Skype contacts. From the Skype blog:

  • You can now delete a conversation from the recent list with a long press on recents. You can also edit messages you’ve recently sent with a long press on the message. (Just as you can long press on an individual message to delete it.)
  • Tap the “add favorites” link to easily fill your favorites screen with the people you contact the most.
  • The People list now matches the desktop better: we have added the “Skype” filter; the “online” filter now includes users set to online, away and do not disturb; and best of all your filter settings are saved.

The update also includes improvements to VoiceOver. The update is rolling out on the App Store today for free. Skype says more improvements are coming in the future. Be sure to check out our look at the new Skype design along with an interview with the lead designer of the software.


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Disney launches ‘Star Wars Scene Maker’ iPad app

With hype building surrounding the filming of the latest Star Wars reboot, Disney is taking advantage by launching a new iPad app called ‘Star Wars Scene Maker’. The app allows users to create Star Wars scenes by selecting from various 3D assets like characters and environments, camera angles, dialogue (you can also record your own), musical scores, and more:

MAKE STAR WARS YOUR OWN!

Become the master of your own Star Wars video universe! Create your own scenes, choose your favorite characters, control their actions and dialogue, record your masterpiece, and share your Star Wars story! The Force of your imagination is with you!

FEATURES:

· Create your own Star Wars universe and bring it to life with imaginative play and countless options.

· Select from 3D environments with 3D models of your favorite characters, weapons, and ships.

· Use dialogue straight from the Star Wars films, or record your voice and apply a Darth Vader, Rebel Pilot, or Storm Trooper filter to put your words into any character’s mouth!

· Switch between three cameras, each of which can track or follow the action, to record your scene from multiple angles!

· Chooose a musical score taken from the Star Wars films, write your own iconic Star Wars “Title Crawl” and end credits, and share your finished scene with your friends!

Star Wars Scene Maker is available as a free download for iPads running iOS 7 and up (Disney says it’s “most compatible with the newest generation of iPad”), but you will find some paid in-app purchases and Disney ads within.