Alex Heath is a journalist who works for Tech Insider. He's the former co-host of The CultCast. He has been quoted by the likes of the BBC, KRON 4 News, and books like "ICONIC: A Photographic Tribute to Apple Innovation." He lives in Lexington, Kentucky. If you want to pitch a story, share a tip, or just get in touch, additional contact information is available on his personal site. Follow him on Twitter.
Edovia makes the most polished VNC client for iOS, but its Mac app has been needing some attention for quite some time, especially in the design department. Screens 3 for Mac was released today, and it has been rebuilt from the group up for Mountain Lion. It also looks much cleaner and promises to be faster.
In the world of mobile design, Sketch is a household name on the Mac. Apple gave it a design award in 2012, and it has been featured numerous times in the Mac App Store The highly anticipated 3.0 update to Sketch was released yesterday by Bohemian Coding as a separate purchase, and it’s currently the top paid app in the Mac App Store.
Why all the hype? Sketch 3 is being hailed as a better design tool on the Mac than Photoshop. And at $50, it’s a lot cheaper too.
Let’s face it, touchscreen controls just aren’t the same as old fashioned, plastic buttons. Free emulators on the iPhone make it easy to play classic games, but the D-pad doesn’t translate very well to a touchscreen.
If you’re feeling particularly nostalgic for the days of the Game Boy, an iPhone accessory called the G-pad hopes to give you the best of both worlds.
Most Apple fans would undoubtedly love to have CarPlay in their vehicles. But unless you shell out for a brand new whip from the likes of Ferrari and Mercedes, you’re out of luck.
Well, at least for now.
A new report claims that Apple and Alpine Electronics are working on an aftermarket version of CarPlay that will go on sale this fall.
David Fincher, who was previously rumored to direct Sony’s movie about Steve Jobs, is now out of the picture. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Fincher and Sony have parted ways due to disagreements over “compensation and control.”
And if Fincher is out, that means his top pick to play Jobs, Christian Bale, will probably not be involved with the project either.
Dear Apple, please make something like this for iOS 8.
My biggest qualm with the stock Messages app is its lack of a quick reply feature.
A new jailbreak tweak called Auki was released yesterday at JailbreakCon, and it works like the Messages app Apple should have made in iOS 7. In terms of elegance and simplicity, Auki leapfrogs tweaks like biteSMS that came before. It’s quick reply done right, then some.
Imagine a world where you can summon a drone from your iPhone like an Uber car. Flying minions help you navigate traffic and find where to eat. It’s a futuristic kind of reality that feels pretty cool and scary at the same time.
Gofor was created as a concept to explore what an on-demand drone service would look like for normal people. While the service is obviously not real, the finished product is packaged together so well that it almost seems possible.
It has been months since I opened Reeder, my longtime app of choice for RSS. I don’t have anything personal against Reeder, it’s just that RSS has lost a lot of its appeal for me. Twitter is where I mainly get my news now.
Reeder 2 for Mac, which launches as a public beta today, might just make me give RSS a second chance.
T-Mobile’s new deal on LTE iPads is a doozy. The ‘Uncarrier’ is shaking things up again by offering LTE iPads for the price of their WiFi-only counterparts. And on top of that, more free data is involved.
Apple has confirmed that none of its products, including web services like iCloud.com, are vulnerable to the nasty Heartbleed web bug that was recently uncovered.
Heartbleed allows hackers to intercept sensitive traffic and steal information like logins from websites using OpenSSL encryption. So when you visit a website with a little padlock in the address bar and think you’re safe, you maybe aren’t.
When iTunes Radio was introduced, it was clear that Apple hadn’t made the true Spotify competitor everyone had hoped for. Instead, it was designed to get people to buy more music from the iTunes Store—hence the buy button at the top right of every song.
Sadly, iTunes Radio hasn’t helped drive music downloads for Apple, so the company is considering a “dramatic overhaul” of the iTunes Store.
A key executive within Apple is reportedly leaving the company due to a fallout with design chief Jony Ive. The result is that Ive will directly control even more of how Apple designs its software.
Greg Christie has been getting a lot of attention lately in the Apple vs. Samsung patent trial for his role as an engineer for the original iPhone. And that’s not all he’s known for; the guy has also patented nearly a hundred ideas for Apple, including the iconic “Slide to unlock” patent Apple is using as evidence in the ongoing case with Samsung.
Christie has been heading up Apple’s software design under Craig Federighi. But according to a new report, Ive is basically pushing Christie out because the two haven’t been getting along.
Alongside Mailbox for Mac and Android, Dropbox announced an entirely new app today at an event in San Francisco. It’s called Carousel, and it’s coming to the App Store and Google Play later today. Think of it like a Photo Stream replacement that might actually work.
At an event today in San Francisco, Dropbox made several announcements about Mailbox, the popular email app for iOS that it bought a little over a year ago. Things have been busy around Dropbox since then, because Mailbox is coming to not one, but two new platforms.
Mailbox for Mac was unveiled today alongside an Android app, the latter of which is out now in Google Play. But that’s not what we’re really interested in. What’s important is that Mac users can now sign up to get access to the private beta of Mailbox on the desktop. There are some new Mailbox features that should also get you excited.
Office for iPad hasn’t been in the App Store for very long, and it has already done surprisingly well. Microsoft recently bragged that Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote have been downloaded 12 million times combined in a week.
Microsoft won’t say how many Office 365 subscriptions have been bought through its new apps. Anyone can download them for free to view documents, but the editing features have to be unlocked with an in-app purchase.
The team behind Office for iPad took to Reddit today to answer questions about how the suite of apps was made, what took so long, and what’s planned for the future. Here are the five most interesting revelations:
You may have heard that Comcast wants to buy Time Warner. In a proposal published today that pitches the merger to the FCC, Comcast drops a hint about Apple’s future plans for the TV.
Although by no means a definite indication beyond the previous rumors that something new is coming, Comcast says that Apple is working on a set-top box. Given that Apple and Comcast have been in talks, the cable giant would be in a position to know.
Let’s be honest, searching in the iTunes Store sucks, especially on the desktop. It’s often slow, and the results are difficult to navigate. Apple has tried to simplify things by displaying one result at a time in the App Store on iOS, but that approach also means that it can take longer to find the specific app you want in a sea of knockoffs.
A new web tool called “fnd” makes it easier to quickly search and navigate not just the App Store, but the iTunes Store in general.
Like Nests’s futuristic thermostat, its iPhone-controlled smoke/carbon monoxide detector looked like the perfect replacement for the antiquated systems used in most homes today. It turns out that the Nest Protect was a little too good to be true.
Since the device went on sale in November of last year, Nest has discovered that one of the Protect’s hallmark features can malfunction. And that happens to create big safety concerns. Until the issue is resolved, Nest Protect sales have halted.
For those who thought Office for iPad was too late to the party, the numbers tell a different story. Today Microsoft announced that Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote combined have been downloaded a staggering 12 million times in one week.
If you doubt that number, then just take a look at the App Store charts.
Vine has added video messaging. After today’s update, video messages (or VMs) can be sent to friends on Vine or through SMS and email.
A six-second message can be sent to more than one person, but not as cleanly as Instagram Direct works. A new conversation thread will be opened for each person you send to, meaning you have to send the same video multiple times.
Today Facebook Messenger was updated with the ability to make free voice calls over WiFi both domestically and internationally. Making calls over a cellular connection uses data. The features works similar to FaceTime Audio, which is natively baked into all iOS devices and Macs.
Facebook Messenger technically added VOIP (voice over IP) calling in January 2013, but the feature has been limited to the US, UK, and Canada until now. Facebook users with the Messenger iOS app installed can be called with a new phone icon at the top right of a conversation thread. The calling interface looks almost identical to Apple’s stock Phone app in iOS 7.1.
Messenger was recently updated with group messaging and forwarding. After WhatsApp was bought by Facebook earlier this year, it was revealed that VOIP calling is coming to that app as well in the coming months.
The jailbreak tweak called Auxo did card-based app switching in iOS 6, and then Apple came along and fully implemented the idea in iOS 7. Auxo, which started as a concept that went viral online, was suddenly obsolete.
A successor to Auxo has been in the works for quite some time, and now it’s available for jailbreakers to install in Cydia. Auxo 2 doesn’t reinvent iOS 7 multitasking, but the tweak builds upon it by adding more controls and customization.
I may not be able to say that Fantastical is the best calendar app for everyone, but I think it’s safe to say that it’s the best option for most people. What started on the Mac and made its way to the iPhone is now on the iPad. Fantastical 2 for iPad is here, and it’s great.
iWork’s web apps have lagged behind Apple’s iOS and Mac apps in terms of design and functionality, but no more! Apple has redesigned the iWork for iCloud suite to make it look more like its iOS 7 counterpart.
Available to use now on iCloud.com, today’s updates to Pages, Numbers, and Keynote brings a unified look and feel to the iWork suite across all platforms.