iOS

Last week Apple’s open sourcing of Swift naturally saw the spotlight thrown over Apple’s open source pages. This included a paragraph that claimed Apple was “the first major computer company to make Open Source a key part of its strategy”. Unsurprisingly, this riled some members of the developer community as being disingenuous and untrue.

So Apple has since changed the text to retract the rather outlandish statement with something a bit more muted. Although this statement is technically qualitative and open to many interpretations, Apple isn’t exactly known for its open source contributions. The page now reads as follows:

‘Open source software is at the heart of Apple platforms and developer tools, and Apple continues to contribute and release significant quantities of open source code’.

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As promised by Eddy Cue earlier in the year, Apple has now raised the limits on iTunes Match and Apple Music library for matched songs from 25,000 to 100,000 songs.

Cue had previously announced on Twitter that Apple was aiming for 100k for iOS 9 and just in time for the holidays, that promise has been fulfilled. This means users with larger music libraries can now enjoy the benefits of matching songs in the iTunes Cloud to make them available on all their devices. Matching songs gives another option for people who cannot afford the more expensive 64 GB and 128 GB iPhone models by offloading local music storage to the cloud.

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IBM has today unveiled their first public effort towards Swift, with the introduction of the IBM Swift Sandbox website. You can type lines of Swift code into the text editor on the left and then run the code on a Linux server, posting the output in the right column. This is all made possible by the fact that Swift is now open source, supporting Linux alongside iOS and OS X.

You can use the core Swift language as well as the standard library functions, so writing a formulaic mathematical problem (like the Fibonacci example above) is well within the scope of the web application. The concept is similar to the CodeRunner app from the Mac App Store, except it runs entirely off a cloud infrastructure.

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As promised earlier in the year, Apple’s Swift team has now posted source code for the Swift compiler and standard library functions and objects. Open-sourcing Swift is a big win for the developer community as it means Swift can now be setup to run on a server and many other use cases, bringing Apple programming talent and expertise beyond ‘just’ making apps iOS devices and Macs.

Making Swift open-source also gives the developer community as a whole more confidence in the language. Theoretically, if Apple ever decided to move away from Swift (which is unlikely), the language could be picked up by others and continue development and existing codebases could continue to be supported.

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Yahoo Messenger has long taken a back seat to other Yahoo products on mobile devices, but today the company is finally unveiling a revamped app that brings its messaging platform into this decade with a completely redesigned user experience and new features.
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Following his interviews centered around the new Apple TV, Apple’s SVP of software and services Eddy Cue has now sat down with CNN’s Brian Stelter to discuss the News app the company launched alongside iOS 9. In the interview, Cue and Stelter discuss a variety of points surrounding News, including Apple’s main goal with the app, the expansion to additional countries, and revenue sharing.

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Welcome to our iPad Holiday Gift Guide! There’s currently a lot of excitement around the world of iPad, and rightfully so.

On the software side, Apple injected new life into prior models by adding side-by-side apps and picture-in-picture video with iOS 9. In hardware, the smaller 7.9″ iPad mini family got major speed and notable display quality improvements with the iPad mini 4, while brand new 9.7″ iPad Air 2’s are being sold at prices lower than minis, and a completely new class of iPad debuted in the just-launched 12.9″ iPad Pro.

There are essential accessories in all price ranges for every iPad regardless of which size you’re addressing, and we’ve tested a lot of products over the years. Read on and please share our iPad Holiday Gift Guide so you and your loved ones can buy the best iPad accessories for the holidays.

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This year’s Black Friday games and apps deals are now in full swing. We have rounded up all the best console bundles, games/amiibo and packed our daily roundups full of some of the best deals of the year. Along with the new Free App of the Week, Apple has now launched a 50% off holiday apps sale and we have been seeing very notable price drops on popular titles all week long. So we thought we would bring all the best deals into one helpful roundup.

Below you’ll find all the best freebies/discounts that we have seen on the App Stores thus far, plus a few more notable sales on Mac games and productivity apps:
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The idea of a smart home is a long running meme in technological circles. Apple has made the biggest stride recently with HomeKit and there is now a significant ecosystem of lights, switches, and other accessories to buy for your home. That being said, smart home accessories are still novelties and quite pricey: they aren’t must-have purchases. However, this makes them great gifts for the holiday season — uncommon presents that are fun to play with and have some long-lasting usefulness. We’ve rounded up our favorite HomeKit accessories below …

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Feature Request is a new regular 9to5Mac series where authors offer their opinion on how to improve popular hardware or software products.

With the introduction of iPad Pro, now is the time for Apple to finally bring Logic Pro to its tablet. Apple has long had Garageband available for iOS devices, offering what is essentially a feature for feature companion for the desktop Mac app, albeit with a user interface tweaked for the smaller touch display. But it’s not much help to pros that have their workflow in Apple’s professional audio editing suite for Mac, Logic Pro.

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Feature Request is a new regular 9to5Mac series where authors offer their opinion on how to improve popular hardware or software products.

Before Apple even announced the oft-rumored iPad Pro, it unveiled a new version of iPad software, iOS 9, that included several new features that seemed perfect for a device with a larger screen. Sure enough, those features foreshadowed the launch of the larger, 12.9-inch iPad Pro. Zac did an excellent job last week of highlighting some of these enhancement that are great on the larger-screened device.

As Zac noted, iOS 9 includes a handful of really nice optimizations for iPad Pro. These include things such as Picture in Picture support for video and FaceTime calls, Split View and Slide Over multitasking, an enhanced keyboard, and more. While these features truly shine and highlight how much potential the iPad Pro has for professional use, I still feel like there’s a lot more Apple can do to take advantage of the larger 12.9-inch Retina display…

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Google today has updated its Drive app on iOS with a handful of notable new features and enhancements. First off, today’s update to Drive, which bumps the app to version 4.4, adds 3D Touch support for iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus users. Now, pushing with more pressure on the Drive app icon will bring up two options, one to quickly upload photos and another to quickly search the contents of your Drive.

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[UPDATE: Apple Pencil now supports the 9.7-inch iPad Pro as well.]

Aside from its larger 12.9-inch display and faster A9X processor, the iPad Pro stands out from all other iPads to date thanks primarily to a new accessory: the Apple Pencil. For now, the Apple Pencil can only be used with the iPad Pro, and offers quantifiable differences in both good and bad ways compared with third-party styluses that have previously been sold for iPads.

While Pencil is not required to use the iPad Pro, it’s especially interesting because it’s Apple’s first official solution for handwriting, drawing, and precision input on iPads beyond finger touches and gestures. By contrast, Apple’s Smart Keyboard for iPad Pro is the company’s second or third typing solution for iPads; the company offered an official solution for physical keyboard input on iPads way back when the original iPad launched in 2010 with the short-lived Keyboard Dock, and has sold Wireless/Magic Keyboards as well. What does Apple’s first digital stylus bring to the iPad? Read on…

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The iPad Pro accessories, Apple Pencil and Smart Keyboard, may be in short supply worldwide but that doesn’t stop iFixit from tearing them down. The Apple Pencil teardown demonstrated some clever internal component miniaturization and the Smart Keyboard has similar tricks. Most notably, the teardown shows Apple’s “conductive fabric material” that runs down the length of the accessory. Rather than trailing wire or a ribbon cable inside the keyboard, Apple is using special fabric that can send power and data in both directions. iFixit believes this has durability benefits too, claiming it should be less likely to break than normal wiring would over the course of the product’s lifetime.

In fact, in general, the Smart Keyboard is praised for its durability here. The entire product is encased in a rich fabric for water and stain resistance leaving no visible holes; iFixit literally had to cut their way inside the keyboard. Inside, there are a lot of protective layers to keep the components in place. The less good news is that iFixit scored the Smart Keyboard a 0/10 for repairability as any attempt to get to the internals involves damaging the device permanently.

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Yesterday I mentioned a useful tip for using physical keyboards with iPads in my guide to unlocking the full potential of the iPad Pro. The tip actually works with all iOS 9 iPads connected to external keyboards over Bluetooth, Lightning, or the Smart Connector: hold Command (⌘) to see a list of supported keyboard shortcuts for the Home screen or app you’re in.

This works in most of Apple’s built-in apps and plenty of popular third-party apps as well, but it can be monotonous prompting that sheet in each app to get a sense of what keyboard shortcuts work. Instead, I’ve compiled a cheat sheet of which keyboard shortcuts work in all the system apps and several popular third-party apps. Whether you’re using Apple’s Smart Keyboard for the iPad Pro, Magic Keyboard, Logitech’s excellent K811, or any other physical keyboard, these will make you more efficient when working on your iPad.

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The new Nanoleaf Smarter Kit with HomeKit support comes with a Smart Hub and two Nanoleaf Smart Ivy Light Bulbs to get you started. Like other popular connected lighting systems including the Philips Hue, you can purchase more bulbs individually once you’ve bought the Smarter Kit with the hub that allows a wirelesses connection for control from your iPhone or iPad and support for connecting up to 50 bulbs (the standard limitation among these types of products). But the Nanoleaf Ivy bulbs have a lot to offer in a package unlike anything else I’ve tested. The bulb is made entirely from a foldable printed circuit board with embedded LEDs…
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