iOS

When Apple released Apple TV software update 7.0 earlier this month, it came with support for new iOS 8 features including the new Peer-to-Peer AirPlay feature. First announced when Apple unveiled iOS 8 earlier this year, Peer-to-Peer AirPlay allows users on iOS 8 and the upcoming OS X Yosemite release to stream content to an Apple TV without having to connect to the same wireless network. What we didn’t know at the time, however, is that the feature is limited to only the latest Apple TV hardware:
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Although dozens of custom keyboards have been launching left and right just in time for iOS 8, most of them have stayed rather traditional. Yes, there’s new features here and there that are firsts for iOS like the ability to swipe to type using Swype and SwiftKey, but these are still just keyboards for typing letters. A new keyboard from Riffsy called GIF Keyboard, on the other hand, isn’t really a keyboard—it’s a great way to quickly and easily send GIFs to friends using your favorite apps.

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Following a report in July that Apple was planning on adding a new FX Now channel to Apple TV within 12 months, today the channel has officially arrived for users in the US. Like the FX Now app that was already available on iOS devices via an app for iPhone and iPad, the channel offers on-demand video streaming with content from the FX, FXX, and FXM networks. 
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Some iPhone 6 owners have found that Apple’s latest and greatest phone comes with an unexpected (but patented!) new feature: flexibility. According to reports, the iPhone 6 is slightly bending beyond repair while in pockets. Some users say that the bending occurred after normal sitting, while other people have had more active lifestyles. Unfortunately, it does not appear that Apple will replace these more fragile-than-expected units at no cost. Some users are reporting that replacement costs are in the hundreds of dollars range. Additional bending pictures below:

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The Bing Search app has been updated to include the translation feature first demoed at WWDC, as part of the initial unveiling of iOS 8 extensions.

Very simply, downloading the update adds a Bing Translate action to your Activities list in Safari. Enable the action and then visit a website in a foreign language. Pressing the Translate action in the share sheet will machine translate the webpage’s text to the system language, by default. The text content changes inline and happens very quickly.

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Apple isn’t bragging on its iOS 8 adoption numbers like it has in years past because it appears uptake has been slightly slower. The reason? The much bigger iOS 8 download doesn’t fit on many people’s devices which are often stuffed to capacity with music, movies, photos and apps.

(Hint: Here’s how to slim some GBs off your iOS 8 device or install via iTunes on a Mac/PC which doesn’t require extra space)

Apple’s latest numbers are for Sunday September 21, 2014 and show that from people who visited the App Store on their iOS device, 46% were already on the new iOS 8.  On one hand this number is skewed higher because most of the early adopter nature of frequent App Store visitors but on the other hand many people visit the App Store from older devices that can’t be updated to iOS 8.

Apple’s own numbers show something else slightly troubling. App Store app submissions are being delayed slightly as of iOS 8 launch with only 74% of app updates and 53% of new apps being reviewed. Apple is usually in the high 90% range on iOS as it is with Mac.

As for 9to5Mac readers’ iOS adoption, the numbers are much much higher than the general audience as you’d probably expect. This morning, we’re close to 80% iOS 8 adoption. The pie chart from Google Analytics taken at 5:30 am ET is below:

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While iOS 8 adoption was lagging behind last year’s release at just 15% before the official launch of the new iPhones on Friday, it’s now hovering at approximately 30% after record first weekend sales for the new iPhones. That stat, which comes from research and analytics firms Fiksu, Mixpanel, Appsee, & Chitika is below the almost 50% of users iOS 7 had this many days into launch last year.

Fiksu and Mixpanel also offered data on iPhone 6 vs iPhone 6 Plus adoption following the first weekend of sales. Both show that iPhone 6 is outpacing iPhone 6 Plus quite significantly after the first few days in customers’ hands, but it’s quite likely that could be due to a much tighter supply of iPhone 6 Plus.
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With the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus now officially in customers’ hands after a record opening weekend of iPhone sales, today we get a look at various benchmark results for the devices compared to the competition from AnandTech. Ahead of the site’s full technical review of the new iPhones, today it posted several benchmark results showing the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus win out by just about every metric.
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Apple has today announced that it sold 10 million iPhone 6 and 6 Plus units in the first three days of sales. This includes the 4 million units sold in the first 24 hours of preorder sales. Apple’s newest iPhones have consistently been out of stock across the world, particularly the iPhone 6 Plus which is believed to have faced production issues, limiting the number of available devices for sale.

For comparison, Apple reported 9 million iPhone 5s and 5c sales in the first three days. This means the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus set a new record by over a million units. Apple is unlikely to give any more color regarding iPhone sales performance until its quarterly earnings call in October. As usual, Apple has opted to not share the breakdown of sales between the two new devices.

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Climate Week NYC is an annual conference about environmental sustainability. For 2014, there is a particular focus on lowering carbon emission across business, government and individuals. Apple CEO Tim Cook is scheduled to speak at the event, for the first time, at 12 PM EST. The livestream for the event is embedded below.

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Keeping your home screen organized can sometimes be a difficult task. Folders are great, but what if you’re looking for a deeper level of order? Luckily, we’ve seen a few glitches over time that have helped.

Hidden in iOS 8 is a glitch that allows you to nest folders within folders. This can be helpful if you’d like to sub-categorize apps within folders or hide various stock apps in iOS 8 (because there are a lot of them). Nesting folders on iOS 8 is easy to do and completely reversible…

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With iPhone 6 and 6 Plus officially going on sale today through Apple retail and partners, a lot of you on the hunt for a new case. We’ve been keeping track of announcements from the notable case makers and below put together our updated list of the nicest cases we’ve seen yet.

As we always do, we’ve stuck to the case manufacturers we know and trust (like Apple, Griffin, Otterbox, Grovemade, & Cygnett) and also included a wide selection of different products from hard to soft, plastic to aluminum, and wallets to gun-style holster cases. We’ll add more to the list below as we find more iPhone 6 and 6 Plus cases.

Head below for the full list:

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With the iPhone 6 Plus teardown complete, iFixit has commenced work on disassembling the iPhone 6. Unsurprisingly, the internals are similar to that of the 6 Plus, but adjusted to fit in a smaller space. Whereas the 6 Plus can contain a humongous 2915 mAH battery, the iPhone 6 has a 1810 mAH rated battery. This is still an improvement over the ~1500 mAh component in the iPhone 5s, but is roughly inline with relative increases in screen size. Apple’s official battery life tests indicate that the iPhone 6 performs roughly as well (in some instances, better) than the iPhone 5s in terms of battery longevity.

Elsewhere, images of the components is sort of de ja vu from all the component leaks leading up to the phone’s unveiling. The larger speaker assembly makes an appearance, first leaked in August. Like its larger brother, the NFC tag in the phone is a modified version of a standard component.

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Research firm Deepfield reports that Apple has for the first time relied on its own content delivery network for the distribution of iOS 8 to users (via WSJ):
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Apple has today released iAd Producer 5.0, the latest revision to its advertisement development environment. The headline addition for this update is support for iTunes Radio ad creation on desktop iTunes for Mac and Windows. This helps increase the possible reach of iAds to more eyeballs.

In addition, Apple has overhauled the coding aspects of the app (even though Apple amusingly claims you don’t “need any programming”) with code completion, syntax highlighting themes, inline syntax error warnings and more.

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So it’s finally here. Apple has released iOS 8 to the masses and as you would expect, a decent amount of features come along with that. We’ve previously detailed our favorite hidden features in iOS 8, but today we’re letting it all out. We’ve put together a list of our top 20 favorite iOS 8 features that you can look forward to after updating…

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Over 60% of 9to5Mac readers are on iOS 8 following yesterday’s public release, but that’s not surprisingly representative of all users. In fact, adoption of iOS 8 this year seems to be lagging further behind previous releases, especially last year’s record setting adoption rate for iOS 7. A quick look at the various advertisers and research firms tracking adoption through apps and device usage on their platforms shows iOS 8 is sitting at around half of what iOS 7 had during the same time period.
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