Along with doubling the max file size of apps, Apple introduced something else today for its third-party developer community.
TestFlight, the Apple-owned service devs use to beta test their apps before submitting them to the App Store, can now do controlled group testing.
Since the App Store’s debut in 2008, apps have never been able to be larger than 2GB. Today that changes.
Apple has notified third-party developers that they can now submit apps that are a max of 4GB in size. The change reflects the needs certain apps, namely games, have for larger file sizes as iOS becomes a more mature platform.
Sling TV — the Dish-owned streaming service that does for cable what Netflix did for video tentals — has just announced that it is opening its door to the general public. And if the cable stations it currently has on offer don’t entice you to sign up for its $20 per month subscription, well, some more channels are coming down the pipeline soon.
When the first iPhone came out in 2007, third-party apps were limited affairs: glorified web apps without a lot of access to the iPhone’s more advanced functionality. According to a new blog post from Eleks Labs, a developer working on an Apple Wacth Tesla app, the same could be true of third-party Apple Watch apps when the wearable launches in April.
Apple has really been upping its game with curated app collections, and today a slew of amazing productivity apps were put on sale as part of a new “Get Productive” roundup in the App Store.
It’s the most impressive collection of app deals we’ve ever seen in the store. Many of the included apps have been discounted by more than 50 percent.
Developers trying to update their apps on iTunes got a surprise this morning, when thanks to a weird glitch with iTunes Connect, devs were logged into other users’ accounts.
Not only has the outage prevented developers from being able to log into their own accounts to update apps, but it’s also exposed apps that are secretly in development to competitors.
Developers have taken to Twitter this morning expressing their outrage, with some calling for Apple to just take an ax to any cable leading to the iTunes Connect servers. Apple has yet to release an official statement, but they have finally taken iTunes connect offline, hours after the first reports hit.
Well, there goes Alfred.
That’s the first thought I had when I saw the new Spotlight in OS X Yosemite. I feared Apple had basically made my favorite little app launcher obsolete (we nerds call it “sherlocked”).
I was wrong.
It’s six months later, and Alfred is doing just fine, thanks largely to a vibrant community built around its power features, or workflows. Spotlight may be able to quickly launch an app from anywhere, but Alfred can tell the weather, eject attached hard drives, and control your Nest thermostat.
And now, after five years on the Mac, Alfred is making the leap to iOS with a new companion app called Alfred Remote. Released today, it’s not going to be useful for most people, but serious Alfred users will love it. If anything, it’s evidence that you can still build a great app and community around core features offered by Apple.
Apple acquired TestFlight maker Burtsly last year and quickly added it to iOS in an effort to improve the iOS beta testing experience for both developers and testers. Now Apple plans to close the independent site TestFlightapp.com to Android users and everyone else, forcing iPhone and iPad owners to only test apps through the official TestFlight iOS app.
Rdio may be the underdog in the streaming media wars when compared to Spotify, but for my money, they still have the best software around. And it’s just gotten even better.
Today, Rdio for iOS was updated to version 3.1, bringing a new station for just-released music, enhanced sharing abilities and a load of other features and bug fixes.
In their efforts to trigger mass market adoption, most food-tracking apps and tools go out of the way to be nice to you. After all, who wants an app which publicly shames you for gorging on unhealthy food — or choosing a greasy takeout over five sticks of carrot and a crouton?
Try telling that to the creator of CARROT Hunger, an hilarious new smart calorie counter which rewards you for healthy eating — and brutally punishes you for overindulging.
2014 will go down as one of the biggest years in Apple history. The stock hit record highs. The company’s first wearable was revealed. And Apple dropped $3 billion on its biggest acquisition ever. But of all the huge news Apple dropped in the last 12 months, nothing is likely to have as big an impact as the previously unthinkable announcement that Apple and IBM buried the hatchet and partnered up.
The move was significant not only for the historic aspect of the two rival tech titans uniting, but also for how it will impact all of us in the workplace. In his final note of the year, top Apple analyst Horace Dediu dubbed the IBM partnership “the most significant technology news of 2014.”
That may sound ridiculous considering how much hype Apple Watch is getting ahead of its release, but Dediu points to the first wave of apps created by the partnership. These offer an early indication of just how transformative the relationship could be. For the first time, enterprise apps are being designed for their users (the employees) rather than their employers.
Just take a look at the difference between IBM’s new Expert Tech app compared to the closest equivalent from Oracle, and see which one you’d rather work with:
2015 is nearly upon us, but before you pop the bubbly, listen up for the tech, apps, movies and TV shows that delighted us in 2014. You’ll get it all in this very special, far too long, last-episode-of-the-2014 … CultCast.
Our thanks to lynda.com for sponsoring this episode! Learn virtually any application at your own pace from expert-taught video tutorials at lynda.com.
Click on for the show notes.
App Santa is back for the holidays with a very impressive collection of over 40 discounted iOS and Mac apps. You can score up to 80% off on some real gems, including Clear, Tweetbot, Day One, and Deliveries.
Organized by Realmac Software, App Santa represents an extremely high caliber of indie app developers. And if you’ve been holding out on buying any of their apps, now is the time to pounce. The promotion lasts today through December 26th.
If there’s one thing we humans like to do, it’s make music. Seriously, we’ve been doing it since prehistoric times, so it’s no big surprise that we’d find many ways to bring music to our latest tool: the iPhone and iPad.
While there are a ton of different ways to play or make music on your iOS device of choice, here are nine rather weird ones, plus some fantastic videos to hear and see just how its done.
As promised — and after a tiny storm of controversy over Apple’s initial rejection of the app over so-called pornographic content — the award-winning dystopian document thriller Papers, Please is now available for iOS.
When it comes to video games that will make you think, few are as cerebral as “dystopian document thriller” Papers, Please, a Mac game released in 2013. It casts the player as a passport inspector for a fictional Soviet bloc state who must keep track of increasingly arcane rules to let people in or out of the country … even when a mistake can cost him his life.
We declared Papers, Please one of the best freakin’ Mac games of 2013, but if you didn’t play it then, good news: It’s coming to the iPad this week.
Last year, Apple celebrated the holidays with a fantastic app called 12 Days of Gifts. Like a digital advent calendar, the 12 Days of Gift apps handed out free music, TV shows, movies, books, and apps over the holiday period.
But this year, we haven’t seen the 12 Days of Gifts app, at least so far. Is Apple canceling it? What’s the hold up?
Apple’s new interpretation of a particular iOS 8 feature could severely cripple countless third-party apps like Dropbox and Evernote.
The new interpretation came to light after Panic, a very respected indie developer, was told to remove the ability to send files to iCloud Drive in its file transfer app Transmit. And because of the way iOS 8 is designed, the app can no longer send files to any other storage provider.
What’s worse is that Apple provided little to no explanation for why it was implementing the policy change, and there’s no telling which app will forced to comply next.
Let’s face it – not all of us want every purchase we complete via the iTunes or App stores available to anyone who uses our iPhone, iPad, or Macbook. Some things just need to remain, well, private.
Luckily, it’s pretty easy to hide the evidence from unauthorized users via a quick trip to the iTunes app on your Mac or PC.
If you’ve got an iPhone or an iPad, there are a fair number of apps you can download for free: Pages, Numbers, iMovie, GarageBand and so on.
But did you know there’s a secret cache of Apple apps that no one but Geniuses can download? There is, and they range from a basic flight sim game to a tank battler to an internal newspaper only Apple employees can read!
I love animated GIFs. As far as I’m concerned, they’re the greatest gift God ever bestowed upon the Internet.
While most Mac users probably think making them requires Photoshop and some superior skills, creating GIFs can be dead-easy for your Mom to do, as long as you know which tools to use.
In fact, iOS 8 has made communicating solely through GIFs easier than ever thanks to third-party keyboards. With just a couple apps and some browser extensions, you can become a GIFmaster in no time and blow your friends away with your arsenal of GIFs.
Here’s how to create your own GIFs in minutes on your Mac.
My math-averse daughter wanted to cheat on her algebra homework. So we downloaded PhotoMath, a free app that lets you take a picture of your mathematical and algebraic equations, solving them for you and showing the steps to the solution.
PhotoMath has been at the top of the App Store charts for a couple of weeks, hitting number one on the Education, Kids Games and Top Apps lists. Small wonder, as it seems like a great way to get out of doing homework.
However, despite the concerns of some parents and teachers, apps like PhotoMath just won’t help when it comes to cheating — they’re far too limited. Still, it’s a promising technology that, once it matures, might actually turn into the type of wonder tool for education we’ve long been promised, turning our iOS devices into useful educational tools that will help kids actually learn math, rather than simply giving them a shortcut to homework answers.
I love interactive Notification Center widgets. Widgets that let me use Notification Center like a quick entry form for my best used apps. Stuff like PCalc’s calculator widget that gives functionality to users that Apple seems conflicted about.
That’s why I love Neato. It’s a quick jot notepad for Notification Center that lets you speedily enter notes no matter where you are in iOS 8.
Two years ago, Nick den Engelsman started a band with a couple of friends. As they worked on recording songs, life got in the way, what with getting jobs, getting married, having babies, and the like.
The group decided it would be really nice to have an app that let them record parts of their songs individually, and then combine all the tracks into one song. They couldn’t find one.
Most multi-track recording apps like GarageBand will let you share files across services like Dropbox, but a simple “record and share” app wasn’t available.
This is how Composr was born. Here’s how it works.
A crucial part of making apps involves the beta testing process, and Apple has released a new tool to help streamline the process for everyone.
After initially previewing TestFlight for third-party developers alongside iOS 8 at WWDC in June, Apple made it available for use today. Developers can now invite up to 1,000 beta testers, including non-developers, to try early builds of their apps before they hit the App Store.