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Learn about the latest news for iOS, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV apps

Apps for iOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS power our modern world. 9to5Mac will update you on the latest news, review, and updates for all types of apps. “There’s an App for that”.

The term came became part of our vocabulary when Steve Jobs announced The App Store as part of the iPhone 2.0 software update in 2008.

Over the years, the term has become as common as kleenex for describing applications on all of our devices. Apple’s platforms have apps for just about anything from finance, banking, sports, social media, podcasting, music, and more. We have a guide for helping you discover the best ones as well. Apps are now on everything from our TV, to our smartphones, on our laptops, and all the way down to our wrists.

As new ones are released or existing ones have major updates, the team here at 9to5Mac will bring you the latest news and reviews. If you want to follow along with video footage, be sure to follow 9to5Mac on YouTube. Scroll down below our latest updates on all things relating to applications on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and Apple Watch.

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Windows Phone 8.1 update lets users add Passbook cards to Microsoft Wallet

WPcentral notes that the upcoming Windows Phone 8.1 update introduces support for Apple’s Passbook iOS app, allowing users to load coupons, tickets, boarding passes, etc, designed for Passbook into the Microsoft Wallet app.

While the Microsoft Wallet app will be able to load the various coupons and loyalty cards usually reserved for Passbook, it’s still a little unclear exactly what’s going on behind the scenes. Microsoft appears to be allowing users to download the Passbook files and rendering its own card for Microsoft Wallet, but the report speculates Windows Phone won’t be able to tap into the push notifications Apple’s uses to update cards like on iOS.

There seems to be some confusion over whether or not Mircosoft is officially supporting Passbook in one way or another, but with a developer preview of Windows Phone 8.1 rolling out today, I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about this soon.

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Pandora adds alarm clock feature for iPad, new app for Pebble users

After introducing a new alarm clock feature for iPhone users back in December, streaming music service Pandora today updated its iPad app with the same functionality. The app already let users fall asleep to music using a Sleep Timer feature, and with today’s update to version 5.3 iPad users will now be able to set song or artist stations as alarm clocks.

The alarm clock feature also packs in the usual snooze feature and can be configured from Settings inside the Pandora app. The update also includes “other improvements and bug fixes” for both iPhone and iPad users. 

Also available starting today is a Pandora app for Pebble smartwatch users available through the app store within the Pebble Smartwatch app for iOS. Pandora announced the new feature on its blog today and noted Pebble is the first wearable platform that Pandora is debuting on:

Using the Pebble, you can view and change stations, thumb songs up and down, skip, play and pause tracks – all from your wrist!   If you already have a Pebble that is paired to your mobile device, you should get a notification that you can install Pandora, or you can start the install process at any time from the Pebble Settings Page.

Pandora version 5.3 is available on the App Store now.

What’s New in Version 5.3

Start waking up to music you love – the Pandora alarm clock is now available for iPad
• Pick your your favorite station to play as your alarm
• Not ready to wake up? Adjust the snooze time to catch more zzz’s
• Use with the sleep timer to hear your music morning and night

Other improvements and bug fixes to give you the best listening experience

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Readdle’s Calendar apps get new iPad UI, custom reminders on iPhone, & more

Readdle, the developer behind popular Calendar apps for iPhone and iPad, today updated both its free Calendars by Readdle and the $2.99 Calendars 5 with a number of notable new features.

First up, both apps get an updated iPad UI that includes a number of tweaks for improved navigation and layout. For iPhone users, version 5.4 of the apps brings the ability to create custom reminders, while both iPhone and iPad users gain Smart Input support in new languages including Italian, French, and Spanish. Those new features are in addition to a handful of other improvements and fixes that you’ll notice throughout both apps.

Calendars by Readdle is available for free on the App Store, while the more feature filled Calendars 5 sells for $2.99.

Yesterday Readdle’s popular Print Pro for iPhone app went free for 24 hours and quickly became the #1 free app in 15 countries.

What’s New in Version 5.4

– updated iPad UI
– Smart Input now supports French, Italian, and Spanish.
– custom reminders on the iPhone
– lots of minor improvements

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Digital design app Sketch 3 released for Mac

Introducing Sketch 3 from Bohemian Coding on Vimeo.

This will be good news for a lot of graphic designers on the Mac. Bohemian Coding today released version 3.0 of its digital design app Sketch bringing new features and improvements. Here’s the list of features from Sketch 3:

NEW IN VERSION 3:
– Symbols, for reusing elements in your design
– Text Styles and Layer Styles, redesigned and unified for a better experience
– Redesigned inspector, giving you quicker access to everything
– Automatic Slices, export layers directly, without needing to set up manual slices
– Export multiple resolutions from a single slice, at any scale
– Improved PDF, EPS and SVG importing and exporting
– Speed, bug fixes and polish all around
– Presentation Mode, go full screen and hide all controls, perfect for showing off designs
– Improved bitmap editing with Magic Wand, Crop, Invert and Vectorize tools

The app is a paid upgrade so you won’t be able to move from Sketch 2 to Sketch 3 for free. Customers who bought Sketch 2 on the Mac App Store after March 1st, however, can email Bohemian Coding with their receipt and receive Sketch 3 at no cost.

Sketch 3 will be on sale from today until April 21st at $49.99 on the Mac App Store before it returns to its full price of $79.99.

Play Nintendo DS games on non-jailbroken devices with the nds4ios emulator

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nds4ios has released a special version of the app that runs on non-jailbroken devices using a sneaky workaround. As the app is not available in the App Store, previously the app could only be installed on jailbroken devices, such as through the Cydia jailbreak app store. The app gets around Apple’s restrictions by using an enterprise provisioning profile reports TourchArcade. This is normally meant for businesses to distribute apps to company employees, but nds4ios is exploiting it as a way to enable widespread app distribution. Find install instructions after the break.


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Readdle’s Printer Pro for iPhone adds new languages, goes free for 24 hours (Reg. $4.99)

Printer Pro by Readdle from Readdle Inc. on Vimeo.

After recently adding support for eight additional languages, Readdles’ Printer Pro app for iPhone is going free for the next 24 hours.

If you haven’t already tried Printer Pro, then now is a great time. The app allows you to print content content and files from a number of apps on iOS to several WiFi printers without AirPrint and any printer connected to a Mac or PC.

Printer Pro is localized in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and Portuguese. Regular $4.99, Printer Pro is available for free for 24 hours on the App Store. (Printer Pro for iPad is also available for $2.99.)

For more deals, follow @9to5Toys and check out 9to5Toys.com for updates.

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9to5Toys Weekend: 1Password 50% off, iPad Air 16GB WiFi $400, Intel SSDs 120GB $80/240GB $136, more

Be sure to follow 9to5Toys to keep up with the best gear and deals on the web: TwitterRSS Feed,FacebookGoogle+ and subscribe to the new Safari push notifications feature.

This weekend’s can’t miss deals:

Updates:

Heartbleed Sale: 1Password for Mac/iOS/PC/Android is 50% off

Apple iPad 4th generation 128GB WiFi (black or white) $500 shipped (Reg. $799) (Sold out)

Intel 530 Series 120GB 2.5″ SATA III Solid State Drive $80 shipped (Reg. $170), 240GB $136 shipped (Reg. $300)

Yamaha YAS-201 Soundbar with Wireless Subwoofer $200 shipped (Reg. $450)

Other deals from today:

More deals still alive:

New products/useful info:

Microsoft/Google/Android:

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Apple updates standalone FaceTime app for Snow Leopard users with connection bug fix

Remember the good ol’ days when FaceTime wasn’t included with each Mac? Back then, you had to download a bit of software from the Mac App Store in order to make video calls to iPhone owners (though iChat could still do Mac-to-Mac calls). Even today, that standalone app is still available on the Mac App Store for $.99—and for some reason it’s still the #5 paid app on the entire store.

Given its apparent popularity three years after its launch, it makes at least a little sense that Apple updated the app today to fix a bug that could prevent users from connecting to FaceTime calls. Of course, if you’re on anything newer than Snow Leopard, you don’t need this update, but anyone still running OS X 10.6 who already purchased the app can get the free update to resolve the problem.

For Snow Leopard users who haven’t already made the purchase, the app is $.99 on the Mac App Store.

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Popular RSS client Reeder 2 for Mac hits first public beta

Popular RSS client Reeder was largely affected by Google’s abrupt shutdown of Google Reader earlier last year as it raced to update its various apps support for alternative RSS subscription services.

Reeder for iOS gained support for services like Feedly and Feed Wrangler pretty quickly last year, but Reeder for Mac has taken a bit longer than had originally been anticipated.

Today, Reeder 2 for Mac is available in its first public beta for free ahead of its final development.
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App.io brings its HTML5 iOS app demos to interactive ads on mobile devices

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[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu9pt9QG4gA]

I’ve covered App.io a few times in the past. The service, which allows app devs to deploy fully useable HTML5 demo versions of their native iOS apps on the web, first launched under the name “Kickfolio” back in 2012. The goal for the company was originally to let devs bring demos of their apps to promotional webpages and it eventually expanded the platform to include Facebook and other channels. Today, and around 2 million interactive app demos later, the company is announcing that it’s bringing those same app demos directly to mobile devices as interactive ads.

The ads go a step beyond the interactive app-like experience that Apple promised, but never quite delivered, with iAd, and allows users to play a demo of the app before deciding to purchase/download or even visit the App Store at all. The ad starts off as a banner or like any other ad but turns into a demo version of a native iOS app that is fully playable for a set period of time before prompting the user to visit the App Store. The company tells me in its initial tests it saw “3-5x higher conversion rates than normal mobile ads.”
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SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition incorporates Rush Hour expansion pack, exclusively in Mac App Store

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The Deluxe Edition of Sim City 4 is now exclusively available on the Mac App Store, some weeks ahead of availability elsewhere, priced at $19.99.

The special edition includes the functionality of the Rush Hour expansion pack, which includes a monorail system and a ferry, along with two new disaster scenarios … 
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Apple releases iMovie for Mac 10.0.3 with new sorting options, improved titles, and more

Apple has just published its third update to the revamped Mac version of iMovie launched last year. The update, version 10.0.3, makes changes to the default font in the new titles first added to last year’s release. It also includes the ability to sort events by date to quickly find clips by when they were recorded.

Other improvements include the ability to rotate and crop clips within events rather than projects, an easier method of accessing transition duration settings, faster access to clip speed controls, improvements to how speed changes are handled, and various bugs that could cause the app to crash or not do what was expected.

You can grab the update for free in the Updates tab of the Mac App Store if you already own iMovie 10. Users on previous versions of iMovie can buy the current version for $14.99. The full change log is below:


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9to5Toys Lunch Break: iPad Air Bluetooth keyboard cases from $20, AKG K44 headphones $20, Ooma VoIP $85, more

Be sure to follow 9to5Toys to keep up with the best gear and deals on the web: TwitterRSS Feed,FacebookGoogle+ and subscribe to the new Safari push notifications feature.

Today’s can’t miss deals:

 

iPad Air Bluetooth Keyboard Cases: New Trent Airbender 2.0 $20 (Reg. $40), Anker Ultra-thin $24 (Reg. $40)

AKG K44 over-the-ear studio headphones or Ultimate Ears 500vm for phones: $20 shipped ($60 off)

Ooma Telo VoIP Home Phone System (Refurb.) $85 shipped (Reg. $150 new)

Apps:


Other deals from today:

More deals still alive:

New products/useful info:

 

Apple reportedly considering “dramatic overhaul” of iTunes to help fight rising competition

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Billboard has a report out today claiming Apple is considering “the most dramatic overhaul of its iTunes music store in more than a decade” due to lack of traction with its new iTunes Radio service launched in September of last year.

According to the report, which cites executives close to the project at Apple, some of things Apple is considering include new types of on-demand streaming services and “negotiating download sales windows that favor Apple.” It also mentioned the possibility of an iTunes store for Android devices, something the publication has reported previously. 
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Dropbox launches new “Carousel” photo & video gallery app

Dropbox is introducing its latest product today, a photo and video management app called Carousel that integrates many of the features from the photo storage service Snapjoy acquired by Dropbox back in 2012.

The company unveiled the app at an event today in San Francisco as a gallery to store and share all of your photos and videos. The app is built for quick and easy sharing of one or multiple photos to phone contacts or email addresses (even if the recipient doesn’t have a Dropbox account), allowing you to get around the upload limitations usually associated with sharing photos. With everything backed up in full resolution directly to Dropbox, it essentially becomes a standalone app to manage just photos and videos that you want to store in Dropbox.

With Dropbox, we built a home for your photos and videos but never gave you a great way to experience them. We’d like you to meet Carousel, the newest member of the Dropbox family. It’s a gallery that houses your entire life’s memories. Even more, Carousel lets you share and relive these memories in private conversations with friends and family.

Carousel is now available as a free download on the App Store for iOS and the Play Store for Android.

[tweet https://twitter.com/carouselapp/status/453949761830154240]

The company also made some other product announcements today including news regarding versions of its Mailbox app for Android and Mac OS X.

Mailbox goes beyond iOS, now available on Android and coming soon to OS X

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Dropbox announced today that Mailbox, the popular gesture-heavy email client it bought last year, will soon be launching a desktop version of its software.

The company also announced a set of new features like Dropbox account sign in and syncing and delete automation coming soon to the iPhone and iPad versions that will debut first in a version available for Android; this marks the first time the email software will be available on another platform aside from iOS as Mailbox is available on the Google Play Store today.

Users interested in using the beta version of Mailbox for OS X (screenshot preview below), which is said to be very minimal and rely on the trackpad for gesture-based interactions, can sign up on Mailbox’s website to learn more about the upcoming beta.
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9to5Toys Last Call: OtterBox iON iPhone battery case $40, Jaybird Bluetooth earbuds $40, app deals galore, more

Be sure to follow 9to5Toys to keep up with the best gear and deals on the web: TwitterRSS Feed,FacebookGoogle+ and subscribe to the new Safari push notifications feature.

Today’s can’t miss deals:

Last Call updates:

  • Download 10 popular country music songs from iTunes for free

Smartphone Battery Cases: OtterBox iON for iPhone 4/4s $40 (Reg. $130), uNu ultra-slim for Galaxy S4 $39 (Reg. $69)

Jaybird Freedom Bluetooth Earbuds with microphone $40 shipped (Reg. $70)

Apps:

ASUS RT-AC56U Dual-Band Wireless AC1200 Gigabit Router $90 shipped (Reg. $180)

Other great deals from this weekend:

More great deals still alive:

New products/useful info:

 

Microsoft’s Office for iPad team talks development process, Ballmer, and more during Reddit AMA

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As Microsoft continues its Office for iPad marketing campaign, the team that developed the productivity software has taken to Reddit for an AMA, or Ask Me Anything, to answer questions and discuss the development process behind Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for iPad. By measure of upvotes, the most popular question as of the time of this writing asked when Office for iPad would gain the ability to print, something Apple’s iWork suite and many of apps already offer, to which the team replied “in due course” while noting the high demand of the feature.

But the team didn’t stop there; Microsoft’s Office for iPad team also shared photos of their lab (as seen in the above photo), talked about the development process for bringing Office to the iPad, and even addressed the notion that former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer held Office back from the iPad…
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9to5Toys Last Call: Jabra Solemate Mini BT speaker $65, Titanfall for Xbox One $45, hard drives, Beats headphones, more

Be sure to follow 9to5Toys to keep up with the best gear and deals on the web: TwitterRSS Feed,FacebookGoogle+ and subscribe to the new Safari push notifications feature.

Today’s can’t miss deals:

Last Call updates:

Games/Apps: Titanfall on Xbox One $44 shipped (Reg. $60), 5-15% off XBL/PSN/Steam gift cards, iDownloader Pro $1 (Reg. $3), iOS freebiesmore

Hard Drives:

Other great deals from this weekend:

More great deals still alive:

New products/useful info:

NBC iOS app finally lets you AirPlay its free full-length episodes to Apple TV

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NBC updated its mobile app for iPhone and iPad today with one big update for iOS and Apple TV users: the ability to AirPlay content from the mobile app to your TV via Apple TV.

The update is a big deal for a couple of reasons. The most notable being the fact that NBC offers full TV episodes for free through its mobile app, without the requirement of signing into your existing cable subscription like many other popular network apps. NBC has always been one of the go to apps for cord cutters, and now they’ll be able to beam that content onto the big screen using an Apple TV and AirPlay. Getting a lot of this content on the Apple TV previously required a subscription to Hulu or signing into a cable subscription. 
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Adobe debuts Lightroom Mobile for iPad with powerful, on-the-go photo editing

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After briefly leaking earlier this year, Adobe is finally ready to show off its Lightroom Mobile for iPad software for photographers and photo editors. The iPad application borrows many of the essential features from the powerful desktop software and is optimized for the touch input user experience key to the tablet. We’ve taken a sneak peek at Lightroom Mobile for iPad, and we have all the details on Adobe’s latest Lightroom update.
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9to5Toys Last Call: Seagate 2TB desktop HDD $70, OtterBox Defender for iPad mini $28, PNY 32GB USB3 flash drive $14, more

Be sure to follow 9to5Toys to keep up with the best gear and deals on the web: TwitterRSS Feed,FacebookGoogle+ and subscribe to the new Safari push notifications feature.

Today’s can’t miss deals:

Last Call updates:

Amazon Gold Box: 50% off PC Components/Peripherals: Seagate 4TB USB 3 Hard Drive $130, more

Network Laser Printers: Canon all-in-one monochrome $95 (Reg. $199), Brother color $266 (Reg. $400+)more

 

Daily Deals: Apple iPad Air 32GB WiFi $540, Buffalo AirStation Extreme AC 1200 Gigabit Dual-Band Wireless Router $75, Beats Tour headphones $39, more

 

Logitech PowerShell MFi iPhone game controller w/ built-in battery $50 shipped (Reg. $100)


Other great deals from this weekend:

    • New! Games/Apps: Battlefield 4 $40, FIFA 14 $40, 1 month free Xbox Live Gold, 75% off Feral Mac games, iOS freebies, more
    • New! Microsoft Surface Pro Tablets: Refurbished 64GB $399 (Reg. $499 new), 128GB $500 for .EDU emails (Reg. $600)
    • New! Google Nexus 7 16GB (2nd gen) and Chromecast media player: $199 for .EDU emails ($265 value)
    • New! Headphones: Parrot Zik Wireless (White): $320 shipped (Reg. $400), MEElectronics D1P in-ears: $25 shipped (Reg. $50), more

More great deals still alive:

New products/useful info: