Following in the footsteps of Facebook, Instagram today announced in a blog post that it will soon adjust the way in which content is presented in its iOS and Android apps. While content is currently shown in chronological order, Instagram will soon switch to new personalized algorithms based on each user…
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.
Wikipedia today has released an update to its iOS app that adds a host of new features and capabilities. The latest version of the app offers a redesigned interface that places a focus on “exploration” as opposed to the normal quick fact-checking that we’ve come to use Wikipedia for. The update also adds features like 3D Touch support, Handoff support, and more.
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.
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.
In a blog post today, Snapchat has announced that it is expanding its geofilter feature to be open to all users, businesses, and brands. Previously, Snapchat’s geofilters were available to public places, such as cities, colleges, and neighborhoods. With today’s expansion, however, anyone can pay to create a custom geofilter.
At long last PayPal has updated its iOS app with a completely redesigned interface that optimizes the experience for iPhone 6/iPhone 6s and 6 Plus/6s Plus users. PayPal announced the update in a post on its blog, detailing all of the new features, including a new start screen, improved Send and Request interface, new account info details, and much more.
Twitter has toady announced long-awaited support for native GIF search with partners Giphy and Riffsy. The addition of GIF search means that users will now be able to search for GIFs from a library of thousands and instantly insert them into their direct message or tweet.
1Password, the popular service that allows users to securely store their various passwords, has today announced a new plan for families that makes it considerably more affordable. In a blog post, AgileBits, the company behind the service, detailed 1Password for Families, explaining that the service costs $5 per month for a family of five, while additional people can be added for $1 per month.
DJs will be well familiar with the name Serato. It’s one of the — if not the — leading software products around for DJs that make the hop from vinyl to digital sets (and that’s most of them these days). But the company hasn’t had a huge presence on iOS devices outside of that world — save for its Remote companion app for users of a Serato desktop setup. That’s where Serato’s new Pyro app comes in, but it’s not exactly the scaled back version of the company’s desktop offering you might have been hoping for.
Instead, rather than act as a suite for mostly professional DJs and their mixing and controller hardware like on the desktop, Pyro is aimed at all users and meant to act like the DJ for you, using Serato’s technology to automatically mix songs from one to the next by changing the tempo and doing a real mix like a professional DJ would:
iDevices, a company that makes many popular iPhone connected household products, today announced that it’s selling its iGrill and Kitchen Thermometer brands to Weber, a longtime leader manufacturing grills and grilling accessories. The two product lines include Bluetooth, smartphone-controlled thermometer, grilling, and cooking accessories and companion apps.
Apple Watch competitor Pebble has today announced a hefty update to its smartwatch experience. The update, which bumps the company’s Pebble Time smartphone app for iPhone to version 3.6 and the watch firmware to version 3.9, includes a variety of enhancements to Health, Messages, and more.
Apple has dipped its toes in original content with projects like the Beats 1 radio station, but there has been a lot of speculation around whether the company will ever produce its own media content, as both Amazon and Netflix have shown it can be very lucrative, launching many successful independent television series in recent years.
According to a contributor report from The Street, Apple is now looking to take that jump. It wants to produce original TV shows as exclusive content for its iTunes library offerings, according to the report, having spoken to ‘members of the Hollywood creative community’ late in 2015. These new TV shows could form part of a future Apple TV cable subscription service.
Facebook today is rolling out a new update to its iOS app that brings a handful of new features to iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus users. As usual, the actual changelog provided in the App Store by Facebook doesn’t detail any of the changes, but rather states that Facebook periodically updates its app to add new features and performance and reliability improvements. Today’s new features come in the form of new 3D Touch capabilities for the app on iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus devices.
Today, WhatsApp has announced a pretty major shift in its business model. The popular chat client is going completely free. Facebook-owned WhatsApp used to run on a trial model: users could use the app for free for a year. Subsequent years would cost $0.99 cents each. The paid model notably made WhatsApp stand out from the crowd, as almost every other social networking is free to use from the customer perspective. Although WhatsApp will stop charging customers from today, it will take a few weeks for the payment UI in apps to go away as app updates roll out to the store.
WhatsApp says although a 0.99 cent charge is not onerous, it prevented growth as a lot of customers do not have access to credit cards. This is its major motivation for taking out the annual revenue model. Naturally, users of WhatsApp will wonder how the application plans to monetize going forward ….
It may not be available for long, but a new screen recording utility has appeared on the App Store for iPhone and iPad. The app, called Vidyo, costs $4.99 and allows users to record their device’s display by simulating an AirPlay Mirroring connection (via MacStories).
Hulu gets a major update today with an all-new design for iPhone alongside a few new features in version 4.7.0.
The new iPhone design looks a lot like the design Hulu was already using on the iPad with navigation tucked under a menu button in the upper left section instead of tabs along the bottom. You’ll also find mostly grid layouts with larger images when the app is displaying lists of content.
Here’s a look at the old Hulu iPhone app (left) versus the new design in today’s update (right):
And in addition to the updated design, iPhone users will find Hulu’s Kid Lock functionality now available. The parental control feature can be enabled through settings to restrict content for children using the service.
The updated Hulu app for iPhone is available on the App Store now.
Google today has pushed a beefy update to its Play Movies & TV app on iOS that bumps it to version 2.0.7910 and brings several new features. The update gives the app a refreshed interface, AirPlay support, recommendations, and more.
Pixelmator for iPhone and iPad today received another big update with several milestone features for the mobile image editor. Perhaps most importantly, Pixelmator for iOS now fully integrates with iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil. This includes highly responsive brushes taking advantage of the Apple Pencil’s low latency drawing as well as palm rejection support. The Apple Pencil brushes adapt to pressure and tilt of the Apple Pencil accessory.
For the iPhone app, Pixelmator has added 3D Touch support throughout the application …
Update 12/10: Steady Square has now released an update that removes the “Training Mode” in the app that allowed the scale functionality.
[tweet https://twitter.com/walderston/status/675095598874365953 align=’center’]
When Apple released the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus with 3D Touch, developers quickly started to realize that 3D Touch could be used for much more than what Apple had originally revealed. It was revealed that the 3D Touch display technology can be used to create a real digital scale app, allowing users to place items on the screen of their iPhone and discover how much they weighed.
The first attempt at releasing a digital scale app onto the App Store, however, failed thanks to Apple rejecting it due to it not being “appropriate” for the App Store. There are several reasons one can speculate as to why Apple feels a digital scale app is not appropriate, but now one developer has gotten around Apple’s ban on the scale apps.
Deezer Music, the music streaming service with around six million subscribers, is today launching support for Apple’s CarPlay platform.
The service has both free, ad-supported and paid plans, but the CarPlay feature will be limited to its Premium+ and Elite subscribers. Premium+ is the company’s paid monthly plan that removes advertising and adds a few features, while Elite is an upgraded plan with high definition audio available only to Sonos users currently.
Some features you’ll find in the app for CarPlay include:
Deezer has around 35 millions songs and 40,000 podcasts and it’s available in 180 countries. In the US the service is currently only available for Cricket Wireless subscribers, and Sonos and Bose customers.
The updated Deezer Music iOS app with CarPlay support should hit the App Store sometime today.
Infuse, a popular video library and playback application for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, is making its way to tvOS on the new Apple TV today. As with its iOS counterpart, Infuse on the Apple TV will serve as a way for users to store multiple video file types in a single library.
The application can stream video content from a computer, external wireless storage drives as well as apps like Plex, Kodi, and Servioo. This differentiating feature is handy for users who want a single view of all their video content stored across numerous devices and services.
Because the tvOS version of Infuse is tied to the iOS counterpart, the download is free for users of Infuse 3 on iOS devices. The tvOS version is labeled as Infuse 4.0, and the iOS client will be upgraded to the new version later this year, the developers tell us.
Infuse 4.0 on tvOS (and in the upcoming iOS version) adds automatically downloaded artwork and movie ratings, support for syncing how far along a user is into a video between devices, and support for downloadable subtitles.
Earlier this year, popular speech recognition company Nuance announced that it was launching a new iOS app with a plethora of new voice recognition. We covered the new app in detail in August, but now, Nuance’s Dragon Anywhere app is available on the App Store.
Dragon Anywhere on iOS offers incredibly accurate dictation, all based in the cloud. Nuance touts that the app allows for full documents to be composed on the go, all with your voice, and subsequently shared via services like Dropbox and Evernote.
With the required cloud-based subscriptions, your transcriptions are constantly syncing to the cloud and are always update to date on all of your devices. There’s no time limit on dictation and users can talk uninterrupted throughout the process.
One of the new features of the app is auto-text. This is essentially pre-set document formats. Nuance has demonstrated this with corporations especially. For instance, an insurance company could share a text setup of a claim form with all of their employees. Then, employees could seamlessly dictate the claim into the pre-developed form without having to take anytime to format the document itself.
Dragon Anywhere is available now on the App Store. There’s a one week free trial, after which you’ll need to register for a subscription. Subscriptions range from $15/month to $150/year. The app currently supports US English, although it will be updated “later this year” with UK English and German support.
Nuance Dragon Anywhere Now Available for iOS
iPhone and iPad Users Can Leverage Cloud-Based, Professional-Grade Dictation for Mobile Productivity
Burlington, Mass. – December 3, 2015 – Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) today announced the availability of Dragon Anywhere for iOS mobile devices. Already available for Android devices, Dragon Anywhere offers continuous, cloud-based dictation – no time or length limits – robust voice formatting and editing, and synchronization of custom features with supported Dragon software for PCs and Macs.
Ideal for field workers, lawyers, social workers, public safety officers, and other professionals who often work outside of an office, Dragon Anywhere allows full documents to be composed, edited, formatted, and distributed via voice, directly from a mobile device. Completed or drafted documents can be shared via email, a cloud-sharing service like Dropbox, or as a note through Evernote, all by voice.
With nearly three-quarters of the total U.S. workforce driving towards mobility by 2020, as forecasted by IDC, maintaining consistent workflows across devices like PCs and Macs with smartphones and tablets will remain central to mobile workforce productivity. Dragon Anywhere offers individuals who need to document and report on-the-go simple ways to continue working, while synchronizing custom words and auto-text commands with desktop devices running Nuance’s Dragon software. Workers who often dictate specialized words, phrases, and customer and product names specific to their business will have the ability to add customized terminology on all of their supported devices, be it a PC, a Mac or an iOS or Android device.
“We are excited to expand the availability of Dragon Anywhere to iOS, further empowering the mobile workforce to more easily complete time-consuming documentation and achieve greater levels of productivity away from the office,” said Peter Mahoney, senior vice president and general manager of Dragon.
Availability
Dragon Anywhere is available as a subscription service in the United States and Canada on the Nuance online store, with multiple subscription options available, including a one-week free trial. Subscriptions range from $15.00 per month to $150.00 per year.
Once Dragon Anywhere is purchased through the Nuance online store, the app can be downloaded from the App Store.
Dragon Anywhere is currently available in US English and will be available in UK English and German on iOS and Android devices later this year.
Dragon Anywhere requires iOS 8.1or higher (iPad 3+, iPhone 5+, iPad Mini 1+) or Android 4.4+ phones and tablets.
Media information and multimedia collateral are available via the Dragon Press Kit.
Join the conversation by liking Dragon on Facebook, following Dragon on Twitter at @DragonTweets and @NuanceInc, and subscribing to the What’s next blog.
About Nuance Communications, Inc.
Nuance Communications, Inc. is a leading provider of voice and language solutions for businesses and consumers around the world. Its technologies, applications and services make the user experience more compelling by transforming the way people interact with devices and systems. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses experience Nuance’s proven applications. For more information, please visit www.nuance.com.
Nuance and the Nuance logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Nuance Communications, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States of America and/or other countries. All other company names or product names may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
From 9to5toys.com:
As we approach Black Friday we are at the Nexus of the Mac application bundle universe with not 1, not 2, but 3 impressive Mac Bundles happening at the same time.
First up is MacHeist’s “Hall of Fame Bundle” which includes greats such as TechTool Pro, Graphic Converter, Stuffit Deluxe, Nisus Writer Pro, Poser, Fetch FTP and more for $15 (or choose the bottom row for “Name your own price”. This one has sold over 10,000 copies but ends in a day so you might want to get hopping.
Next up is Bundlehunt which costs a little more but they let you pick out any 10 of a selection of 30 apps which I love as a concept. This includes ForkLift, Pixa, Flux V, RapidWeaver, Boom 2, Secret Folders Pro, Jump Desktop + 23 great Mac apps. Even if you only need a few of these, the $19.99 price tag means you are getting a steal.
And finally probably the most impressive array of apps is from our own specials.9to5toys.com which using $5 code 9TO5BFMB at checkout drops the bundle price down to $34.99. A great price for most of these Mac Apps on their own. PDF Pen, Aftershot Pro 2, Drive Genius, Mixtape Pro, MacXDVD Ripper, Busy Contacts, Prizmo 3, Motion Composer and more.
