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.
A dedicated Store button has begun appearing in the Newsstand app to some iPad owners with iOS 5 GM installed. Clicking the button brings up a new iTunes section listing all digital magazines that have been updated for Newsstand. This is a built-in store in much the same way the iBookstore is integrated right within the app. You can filter the list by Featured or Release Date. The initial selection included about 120 digital publications optimized for Newsstand at press time. Apple yesterday began populating the iOS 5 Newsstand app with first digital magazines.
Newsstand is a special folder on your iOS 5 device sporting a nice-looking wooden shelf that keeps all your digital publications in one place. Note that publishers are required to update their digital publications with Newsstand functionality. Otherwise, “old” digital publications will still populate your home screen and your iPad won’t be able to automatically download new issues for you.
After updating your digital publications using the App Store mobile client or desktop iTunes, your device will automatically move the icons of compatible publications inside the Newsstand folder. There have been some questions about how Newsstand functions, including why can’t one simply drag a publication’s app icon into the Newsstand folder. More info and two iPhone screenshots after the break…
With a ton of iOS apps inevitably getting updates with iCloud and iOS 5 support today and over the next little while, we also expect to see Mac App Store apps incorporate the cloud functionality. While there doesn’t appear to be many live just yet, we did spot SingleText, which was just released and designed specifically for iCloud.
SingleText is essentially just a simple text box, allowing you to take notes and have them automatically stored in iCloud. The app doesn’t actually have any settings, simply enter your iCloud login and you’re good to go. You can then retrieve any text entered into the SingleText text box through the iOS app companion or any Mac with the app installed.
Both the Mac and iOS apps go for $0.99 each and are available to download now. We expect to see many more iCloud compatible apps popping up shortly.
Apple has just released a new section in the iTunes Store that lets users buy text and alert tones. While the store has always featured ringtones, the alert tones feature is new and requested among many users. You can access this new store by going to Settings > Sounds > Buy More Tones. This was hinted at a few weeks ago.
Ringtones are listed for $1.29 and alert tones for $0.99.
Finding the perfect instant messaging client on the App Store is a pretty big challenge, but a new app called Verbs is pretty close to it. Verbs is available on both the iPhone and iPad and includes support for Google Talk, AIM, MobileMe, and Facebook. With all of these services bundled in one, Verbs becomes the perfect place to chat with friends. Instant messaging is really direct and sleek and the WebOS cards-like feature (seen after the break) makes switching between chats easy. But, Verbs has a lot more to offer.
Other supported services included in Verbs are CloudApp and Droplr for sending images, an iWork and Office document viewer, Instapaper, and the ability to link your AIM and Gtalk buddies with your Address Book.
Verbs Pro in-app update costs a one time fee of $5 and includes Push Notifications (a biggie while chatting) and encryption.
This app blows every other IM app out of the water, because it’s simple, but yet feature packed. Verbs is available on the iTunes App Store for $.99. If it makes you feel better, most of the 9to5 Staff uses this app on a daily basis. Two promo codes are after the break (get them while they last):
Last week, we detailed the internal docs Apple uses to tell its employees how to sell the iPhone 4S, the new iPods and the new Cards app. Today a tipster added to the trove two more internal docs. iCloud and iOS 5 First looks. These are the cheat sheets that Apple employees use to sell customers these products. Both below:
Update: It is live, we’ve taken a walkthrough below.
According toThe Verge (formerly known as This is my next), the elusive Facebook for iPad app is about to go live “momentarily” on the App Store. The iPhone app will also get updated, the publication has it, with bookmarks to apps, a new Requests dialog that will display app notifications, and support for Facebook Credits for in-app payments. VentureBeatquoted Facebook engineer Leon Dubinsky as describing the software on the Facebook blog, but no such post had gone live at press time. While the social networking giant has yet to formally announce the program, they already have a dedicated URL up and running at facebook.com/mobile/ipad.
The page invites users to download the free Facebook for iPad app here. That URL actually leads to the existing iPhone app, which indicates that both the new iPad app and the existing iPhone client have been merged into a universal binary. The official list of features doesn’t disappoint: You can chat on the iPad’s beautiful 9.7-inch canvas, browse and flip through your friends’ photos, as well as play games and watch high-definition movies in full screen mode.
What’s best, it supports AirPlay technology so you can easily and wirelessly beam your videos and snaps to that big telly in your living room through the Apple TV set-top box, which is also up for an update with 1080p video output via the A5 chip. At post time, the US App Store still had the iPhone app hosted at the URL, but it shouldn’t take too long before changes propagate throughout regional App Stores. Go past the break for release notes, more screenies and a hands on video.
The App Store has no shortage of music-creation apps that let you play virtual instruments, beginning with Apple’s excellent GarageBand for iPad which supports Mac projects and AirPlay technology. But if you really want to impress your friends, here’s a $2 download that taps iPad 2’s built-in FaceTime camera and clever programming to actually track the movement of your hands and reproduce guitar sounds as if you were playing the strings for real.
You can pick among several guitars, use effect pedals and even fret chords with your left hand. It’s the closest thing to the air guitar gimmickry – heck, it’s even better than the real thing. We’ve seen creative uses of iPad 2’s front-facing camera before, but nothing like the GhostGuitar app. Here’s to the hoping that developers will focus more on developing Kinect-like apps for Apple’s tablet.
The store button in the Audible app (left) and the new version acknowledging the removal of the button to comply with Apple’s rules (right).
UPDATE: [Monday, October 10, 2011 at 12:40am ET]: Well, that sure was quick. A new version of the Audible app has just gone live on the App Store, without the link to Audible’s Mobile Store from the app. The development actually means someone at Apple’s App Store team messed up. We’re still bewildered how anyone could have missed the big orange button.
Back this summer, Apple instituted a change to the App Store rules which prohibited in-app links leading to external content stores. The controversial move forced the makers of programs such as WSJ, Kobo and Google Books to remove the offending store links, which essentially meant demanding users needed to find out about web stores on their own. People had been especially concerned about Amazon, even after the online retailer released an elegant workaround solution, a web-based application entitled Kindle Cloud Reader. And now, ZDNetdiscovers an interesting anomaly in the App Store: the updated Audible app proudly sports a button which yanks you out of the app right to their store on the web.
It could be a slip up by the App Store review team, but how could that be possible with such a large and prominently placed button? Oddly enough, release notes fail to acknowledge the addition of the button, but surely Apple’s testers actually run and test apps rather than approve them based on their iTunes description. What’s interesting about this is that Audible is an Amazon property. Perhaps this signals a store-wide change to the App Store rules. And if so, could this change be due to Amazon’s $199 seven-inch Kindle Fire tablet?
Android apps running on your iPad? Alien Dalvik makes it possible.
In case you’re not familiar with Alien Dalvik, it’s a port of the Dalvik virtual machine, which is the software layer in Google’s Android operating system responsible for executing Android apps. According toSlashGear, the Myriad Group (the brains behind the Alien Dalvik project) announced support for Apple’s iPad in Alien Dalvik version 2.0.
As a result, the unimaginable (even unholy) becomes possible: You’ll be able to download, install and run Android software on your Apple-branded tablet. Alien Dalvik wraps each Android app file in its own virtual machine so it kinda feels as if you were running a native iPad app. The Myriad Group explains:
From a user perspective, Alien Dalvik 2.0 is completely transparent and installed without user disruption. Users simply enjoy the same rich Android ecosystem they have become accustomed to via mobile on other key screens, such as playing Angry Birds on HDTV. This all while gaining faster access to a wider range of apps, thus encouraging a higher frequency of downloads and increased ARPU.
We assume performance isn’t comparable to the experience of running native iOS apps on an iPad 2 and we’re surely expecting some hiccups and likely compatibility issues. With that in mind, this development begs the question: Why would you want to run Android apps on your iPad?
Apple’s iOS software boss Scott Forstall said at Monday’s iPhone 4S introduction that about 140,000 out of the 500,000 apps available on the App Store have been specifically created with iPad in mind. Android apps also aren’t as pretty or delightful as their iOS counterparts. But the fact that most are either free or ad-supported should mean something so we expect some folks will give Alien Dalvik a try. Stay tuned as the team promised to show off Alien Dalvik 2.0 running third-party Android apps on iPad 2 at CTIA 2011 next week. Expand Expanding Close
Siri, an intelligent virtual personal assistant, is being advertised as the iPhone 4S’s killer feature. A live demonstration that Apple’s iOS software chief Scott Forstall gave yesterday (video after the break) wowed the crowd of tech journalists who’ve seen it all. Rightfully, though – Siri is nothing short of breathtaking. Siri can be seen in Apple’s onstage demo accomplishing a wide variety of complex tasks with incredible ease. It delights with conversational responses to inputs: You can tell Siri to move your appointments around, read aloud a text message from Dad and reply with spoken content turned into text, ask it about afternoon weather conditions and latest stock quotes, have it remind you to call Mom when you arrive at Starbucks and much, much more.
Remember how Samsung threatened to ban sales of Apple’s next iPhone the second it becomes official? They are keeping good on that promise by filing two separate motions for preliminary injunctions in Paris and Milano in an attempt to bar sales of the iPhone 4S in France and Italy. From Samsung’s corporate blog:
Samsung Electronics will file separate preliminary injunction motions in Paris, France and Milano, Italy on October 5 local time requesting the courts block the sale of Apple’s iPhone 4S in the respective markets.
Samsung’s preliminary injunction requests in France and Italy will each cite two patent infringements related to wireless telecommunications technology, specifically Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) standards for 3G mobile handsets.
The infringed technology is essential to the reliable functioning of telecom networks and devices and Samsung believes that Apple’s violation as being too severe and that the iPhone 4S should be barred from sales.
Apple has continued to flagrantly violate our intellectual property rights and free ride on our technology. We believe it is now necessary to take legal action to protect our innovation.
Samsung plans to file preliminary injunctions in other countries after further review.
Table courtesy of The Verge. Go past the fold for the full version.
Our friends over at The Verge have beaten everyone to the comparison punch by creating this fine table offering an at-the-glance overview of the key hardware features of the newly introduced iPhone 4S and the eighteen months old iPhone 4. Hope you don’t mind that the new iPhone 4S is a tad heavier than its predecessor, full three grams to be precise. We take it you’ll also appreciate Siri, an iPhone 4S exclusive personal assistant based on software which “helps you get things done just by asking”. It’s also our belief you’ll appreciate an hour longer talk time on the iPhone 4S and the new 64GB model costing $399. The full table is right below the fold.
Despite Phil Shiller’s remark that it may not be such a good idea to demo Siri, iOS chief Scott Forstall took the stage to demo the feature previously known as Assistant, which 9to5Mac exclusively revealed (here and here). “Siri is your intelligent assistant that helps you get things done just by asking”, says the official tagline. It’s activated just by holding down the home button briefly and understands natural-language queries in English, German and French, with more languages possibly following at later time.
For starters, you can, say, tell Siri to set an alarm clock just by saying “wake me up at 6 AM”. Or, you could ask Siri something like “What time is it in Paris?” and it will speak aloud “The time in Paris, France is 8:16 PM” How nice is that?
How about asking Siri “Do I need a raincoat today”? Sure, you can do that and it’ll respond “It sure looks like rain today”. That’s the power of the DARPA-funded military project striving to create an artificial intelligence-backed personal assistant that learns.
Siri is omni-present throughout the entire operating system so you can issue complex voice commands that include core functionalities. Siri can text messages for you, set calendar appointments, compose and dictate email, look up contacts, create notes, search the web, create geolocation-based reminders such as “remind me to call my wife when I leave work” and lots, lots more.
If there ever was such a thing as a software-based killer feature on a mobile phone, this is it. Also worth noting, the amount of user interface work Apple’s done around Siri is just mind-blowing, as you can see on the included screenshots. It’s not a pretty interface, great speech recognition/synthesis and clever artificial intelligence: Siri taps the power of the web to deliver mash ups that will blow your mind. More examples below the fold:
You can rent movies and television shows on iTunes, but not apps for your iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. That could change as compelling evidence surfaces just a day before Apple’s “Let’s talk iPhone” event that app rentals might be in the works.
The Tech Errapoints to some code strings, uncovered by Sonny Dickson from iTunes 10.5 Beta 9, that strongly suggest such a feature could be unveiled at tomorrow’s press conference. The contents of the strings (seen below) clearly points to the app rental ability. Any rented app will be automatically removed from your devices, including your computer, after the rental period expires, one of the string reads:
Apps are automatically removed from your iTunes library at the end of the rental period.
This could be an interesting twist to today’s App Store rules that make a clear distinction between paid and free apps, here’s why.
2K Sports chose the iPhone 5 day to launch its multi-platform basketball series on iOS devices. NBA2K12 will be hitting Apple’s iPhone and iPad for the first time next Tuesday, October 4. CNETplayed the game and walked away pretty impressed. Animations are great and console-like, down to the Signature Style shooting moves. NBA2K12 supports Apple’s Game Center and sports Michael Jordan classic battles. In fact, it’s the first time the famous basketball player has adorned any mobile gaming platform. As for playing modes:
You have the standard Quick Game; there’s a full 82-game Season Mode with player transactions; Playoff Mode, where you’ll skip the regular season and jump right into the games that count; and Situation Mode, which allows you to create custom scenarios where you can try to comeback from 5 points down with a minute left.
Following-up on a Mashablestory that Facebook will launch its long-awaited iPad app at Apple’s ‘Let’s talk iPhone’ media event next Tuesday, TechCrunch has just reported that Facebook’s iPad app is “about to launch”. It’s been ready to go for a while, writes author MG Siegler, and that goes for Project Spartan, too, an HTML5 web app store for Facebook apps. The Facebook for iPad app and Project Spartan are now “joined at the hip”, Siegler writes, noting “one will not launch without the other” (and Apple is cool with that).
Facebook’s iPad app is about to launch. That too has been ready to go for a while now, but it has been held up by some internal back-and-forth between Apple and Facebook. And Project Spartan has been waiting on that iPad app. […] Earlier this week, Mashable reported that Facebook’s iPad app would launch at Apple’s iPhone event this coming Tuesday. For what it’s worth, we’ve heard Facebook is actually planning to launch the iPad app at their own iPad/Spartan event on Monday. But they’re still discussing all of this with Apple. And Apple has been well known to change things at the last second. It is possible that they want Facebook to launch this on stage at their event to showcase some of the new HTML5 capabilities of iOS 5 (which will also be formally unveiled at the event).
Apple is understood to have partnered with Facebook on Project Spartan and the social networking giant is said to tap tens of millions of iPhone users to get the word out.
Nuance released Dragon Go! for the iPhone back in July and we praised the program’s combination of intelligent search capabilities coupled with Nuance’s phenomenal voice recognition technology. Today, Dragon Go! (free download) has been updated with a number of new services that the app taps to deliver accurate results based on your natural-language voice input. Specifically, they added support for Google+ public posts, media content on Netflix and Spotify and search engines Ask.com and Wolfram|Alpha.
Additionally, improved Yelp support now means you can access a map view right within Yelp. You will recall that Nuance powers speech-to-text integration in iOS 5 where a user just taps the microphone icon on the virtual keyboard, speaks aloud and the speech becomes text. The feature ties nicely to the Assistant, a surprise feature allegedly exclusive to iPhone 5 that lets you ask the handset to perform complex operations simply by speaking natural-language commands. Release notes after the break.
MacRumorspoints to a thread on the Apple Discussion Forums where Apple posted a firmware fix for the flickering issue on the Apple 24-inch LED Cinema Display stemming from Thunderbolt. The problem is specifically related to the 24-inch LED Cinema Displays connected to your Thunderbolt-enabled Mac rather than the glitches on the 2011 MacBook Pro causing flickering and lock ups under heavy load. It should be applied only when the display is connected to a Thunderbolt-enabled Mac. It is interesting that Apple decided to release the fix on the forum rather than its Support Downloads page. From the release notes accompanying the 926KB download:
The iPad application Take One – Movie Clapper is a great solution for anyone into film or making movies that wants a cheap and simple way to keep track takes, which assists in keeping filmed video and audio in synchronization. The major difference between Take One and its competitors is price and ease of use. Take One costs $2.99, compared to its $9.99 and $24.99 competitors – but offers an easy-to-use solution and all the necessary features one would expect from a Movie Clapper.
UPDATE [Thursday, September 29, 2011 at 5:35am ET]: Based on numerous reports and tips from our readers, iTunes music as well as movie rentals and purchases are now available in these twelve European Union countries: Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.
Additionally, iBookstore is also live in 25 new EU countries (was only available in the U.S., UK, France, Germany, Australia and Canada before): Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden and Switzerland.
Licensing complications and the fragmented European Union market have proved thus far too tough a nut to crack for Apple’s iTunes Store which lacks the presence in twelve of the 27 EU member countries. If Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolitais to be believed, things could change “soon” as Apple allegedly gears up to launch the iTunes Music Store in ten new countries in the European Union. This comes from “a person associated with the music industry”. Apple is “technically ready to take off” and another source hinted at an October launch.
The EU member states allegedly getting Apple’s music store include Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary which have a combined population of 60 million. As for the other seven EU member states getting iTunes, it’s anyone’s guess, but it’s worth mentioning that the UE markets where iTunes does not operate include Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.
Perhaps Apple will announce the iTunes Music Store expansion at its iPhone-related event next Tuesday. Meanwhile, reader Juri tipped us that iTunes movie rentals have just gone online in Finland, as you can see in the below screenshot. The Finnish iTunes store has no specific category for movie rentals yet, but it is possible to use the search feature to find and rent flicks for €3.99 (€4.99 for HD rentals, €13.99 per SD purchase).
It also looks like Apple is prepping to launch its movie store in Scandinavia and another reader, Frederik, says movie rentals and purchases hit the iTunes Denmark store. OneMoreThing.nlalso spotted movies in the Dutch and Belgian iTunes Stores. Currently there are about 270 titles from 20th Century Fox, Universal and Buena Vista. Most movies are available for purchase or rent. No sign of TV shows yet. With that in mind, it’s easy to speculate that Apple TV may be showing up in those countries soon.
If you’re still on Firefox (Google’s Chrome is now #2 in the UK and some other countries), you’ll be delighted to learn that Mozilla today release Firefox 7, a major new update. Disregarding the obligatory housekeeping, under-the-hood tweaks, optimizations and bug fixes, Firefox 7 drastically reduces memory consumption over its infamous predecessors which have always been criticized for memory leakage problems. This, in turn, has particularly been a pain in the you-know-what on Mac OS X.
Well, according to Mozilla, a non-profit organization behind Firefox, a MemShrink project used in the browser reduces memory use by 20 to 50 percent. As a result, the browser boots faster, your Mac will have more free RAM when skimming through dozens of web sites in Firefox 7 and there’s a lower likelihood of crashing. A Mozilla representative said last week:
Among the Firefox 7 changes are some amazing memory improvements. When this makes it to users in just under 6 weeks, Mozilla will re-take the memory efficiency crown and give our users the highly responsive Firefox they deserve.
Other perks outlined in Mozilla’s blog post include an improved hardware-accelerated Canvas handling which offloads HTML5 animations to your graphics card, making games such as Angry Birds or Runfield run smoother. Firefox 7 also supports W3C’s navigation timing spec, allowing developers to test their page’s load speed remotely. Mozilla also announced the Android mobile version of Firefox which now includes copy and paste.
Firefox 7 is available in more than 70 languages on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. Grab your copy over at the Firefox download page or wait for the auto-updated mechanism to kick in and prompt you to update your existing Firefox 6 installation. Changelog is after the break.
AllThingsDtakes a look at an interesting line of upcoming toys from Disney which take advantage of Apple’s iPad in unusual ways. Writer Tricia Duryee explains that AppMATes, as they call those toys, interact with the iPad’s display:
In a live demonstration, Bart Decrem, general manager of Disney Mobile, showed me how it works. First, he placed a miniature car on the iPad’s screen to create a bond with the game — no Bluetooth or wires needed. As Decrem moved the toy car across the screen, the game reacted: Cars skidded out in the mud, knocked over buildings and honked their horns, startling tractor-shaped cows.
There are areas to explore, per-toy achievements to unlock, a bunch of upgrades and power-ups and what not. The idea is likely to appeal to six-year olds, especially if the popularity of Apple’s tablet amongst youngsters is anything to go by. AppMATes are arriving on store shelves October 1, including the Apple Store and Disney Store.
The game will be a free download and toys will cost twenty bucks a pop. Disney will initially sell four characters from their animated movie “Cars 2”: Lightning McQueen, Tow Mater, Finn McMissile and Holley Shiftwell. By the way, Disney, you may wanna consider changing the name – it sounds a lot like Playmates. Just a thought. Another video right after the break.
