FiftyThree’s Paper app is probably the best drawing app out there for the iPad. If it’s not the best, it’s certainly the sexiest. Artists have created some stunning drawings with Paper since it was released last year. Today, a big update to the app highlights the work of its users and adds a much needed feature: pinch-to-zoom.
Twitter-like social network App.net has released a new app in the iOS App Store called Passport. Unlike apps like Netbot, Passport can’t be used to actually read an App.net feed. The app is designed to manage accounts and help discover third-party clients.
iTunes 11 has a nifty MiniPlayer that lets you quickly access music controls and queue up more tunes on OS X. The point of the MiniPlayer is that it stays out of your way, but also readily available anywhere on your Mac’s screen.
Since we don’t have desktop-like widget functionality in iOS, something like a MiniPlayer can’t float between apps. But thanks to jailbreaking, you can get a slick, iTunes-inspired MiniPlayer on your jailbroken iPhone or iPad.
This is the single most important bit of news you will read all day: the artist formerly known as Snoop Dogg has a new game coming out for the iPhone. The d-o-double-g, who now calls himself “Snoop Lion” and pretends to be from Jamaica, will be releasing Way of the Dogg in an App Store near you very soon.
I often forget that the Do Not Disturb toggle in iOS 6 exists. It’s a great feature for quickly shutting out the noise, but the problem is that you have to open the Settings app to enable. Do Not Disturb feels like something that should immediately accessible.
Luna is a new jailbreak tweak based on a concept we showed you at the beginning of the year. From the iPhone’s lockscreen, pull down on the time to enable Do Not Disturb. Pull down again to disable. It’s that simple.
I don’t use Do Not Disturb that often, but this tweak makes toggling it on and off incredibly fluid. When you want the notifications to stop pouring in, just swipe on the lockscreen. Genius.
Luna is available in Cydia now for $2.
Since the dawn of the App Store, and by extension, gaming on smartphones and tablets, one iconic brand has remained absent from the revolution: Nintendo. Perhaps the most beloved and historically innovative game maker in the world will have nothing to do with the idea of Super Mario Bros. for iOS.
The daring decision to not ride the success of the App Store is starting to come at a cost. Nintendo is bleeding money as sales of living room consoles like the Wii U plummet. And now the Japanese company is wanting mobile game developers to port their titles to the Wii U. Nintendo understands that mobile-centric games could help sell its traditional consoles, and yet we still aren’t getting any of Nintendo’s own games in the App Store. It’s a frustrating conundrum.
Velox is a highly anticipated jailbreak tweak that arrived in Cydia over the weekend. It has been a long time coming, and it’s finally here. This is one of the most original and well done jailbreak tweaks I’ve seen in quite awhile. Your iOS app icons will never be the same, and it has the potential to change the way you use your jailbroken iPhone.
Facebook has updated its Messenger iOS app with the ability to send and receive stickers, which are basically large emojis that are proprietary to the Facebook platform. Stickers were added to the main Facebook app last month.
Another feature has been added back to Facebook Messenger by popular request: swiping back to remove a conversation.
Source: App Store
App Store apps that recommend other apps are getting pulled left and right. Following the removal of popular titles like AppShopper and AppGratis, it was reported last month that Apple was beginning a widespread crackdown on apps that work similarly to the App Store itself.
Now another instance of Apple targeting app sharing services has been reported.
Adobe made a slew of announcements at its MAX conference today, most notably the plans to make its Creative Suite (now Creative Cloud) entirely subscription based. Alongside all of the restructuring and price changes, Adobe also unveiled a new Bluetooth stylus designed to work with its iPad apps.
It’s sill in the development stage, but “Project Mighty” looks pretty cool for designers. The pressure-sensitive pen tightly integrates with Adobe software, and it stores user preferences in the Creative Cloud.
Briefs is a new Mac app that allows designers to create interactive mockups of iOS apps. Developed by MartianCraft, Briefs can build iPhone and iPad app mockups without a single line of code. It looks like the ultimate tool for prototyping app ideas to clients and developers.
Different elements of an app can be assembled on the desktop and sent to the Briefscase iOS client via a shared WiFi network. From there, the mockup can be used like a real app on an iOS device.
There are 10 Apple stores in Germany, and another was opened today in the nation’s capital. After two years of construction, Berlin’s first Apple store was welcomed by thousands of eager customers and nearly 200 cheering employees. Lines started wrapping around the block 10 hours before the doors opened.
The Apple Pop-Up Museum showcases the history of Apple from its inception to today. The exhibit is run by Lonnie Mimms, a tech junkie who has been collecting every bit of Apple gear he can get his hands on for decades.
The museum opened last month, and if you’re in the Atlanta, Georgia area on May 18th or June 8th, Mimms will be opening the doors again.
Hackers want your web logins, especially ones that have sensitive banking info, like your Apple ID. A fresh round of phishing attacks that ask for Apple IDs and passwords has surfaced.
“Phishers appear to have concentrated their fire on a relatively new target: Apple IDs,” according to Trend Micro. “In recent days, we’ve seen a spike in phishing sites that try to steal Apple IDs.”
Jony Ive has been working hard on revamping iOS 7 with a “flatter,” less skeuomorphic design, and Apple is trying to get everything together in time for WWDC in June. iOS 7 is rumored to be a pretty big departure from past versions due to Ive’s involvement. Many of former iOS chief Scott Forstall’s design choices have reportedly been undone by Ive, who prefers a more minimalist aesthetic than Game Center’s green felt.
We haven’t seen OS X 10.9 yet because Apple has been pulling engineers off the project to finish iOS 7 in time for this summer, according to multiple reports. But don’t fret, iOS 7 should still “should ship on time” later this year.
The patent war between Apple and Samsung has no end in sight. After Apple won a landmark victory against Samsung for patent infringement last summer to the tune of about $1 billion in damages, the court later deducted $450 million from what Samsung owes Apple. The California judge presiding over the case, Lucy Koh, said that the jury miscalculated what the damages should be for the 14 included Samsung devices.
All of the various charges and reexaminations being thrown around mean that Apple and Samsung will be heading to trial in the U.S. again not once, but twice in the coming year.
Apple executives have a long history of appearing at the All Things Digital (or “D”) conference every year. Steve Jobs gave some of his most revealing public interviews at D over the years, and Tim Cook’s first major interview as Apple’s newly-appointed CEO was at D10 last year.
For D11, Tim Cook will be headlining once again with an interview on the conference’s opening night, May 28th.
Path was recently fined $800,000 by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission for deceiving its users “by collecting personal information from their mobile device address books without their knowledge and consent.” Last year, the social network was caught storing all of its users’ contacts on its servers under the radar. Now users have started accusing Path of spamming friends to join the service via text message.
When the VLC iOS app was pulled from the App Store in 2011, a little part of me died inside. I own a large collection of movies in different file formats, and VLC is my go-to media player for files that aren’t supported by QuickTime and iTunes. While there’s hope that VLC will return to the App Store, I’m not holding my breath. And I don’t really care anymore because I’ve found something better.
For several months I’ve been beta testing an iOS app called Infuse. Support for 14+ file formats, an intuitive interface, and some slick details make Infuse the best third-party media player out there.
JailbreakCon, the only convention dedicated solely to the iOS jailbreak community, took place last summer in San Francisco, California. We brought you on-the-ground reporting from the convention floor, including profiles of people like pod2g, the luckiest jailbreak hacker in the world.
Now JailbreakCon is coming to New York City on August 23rd-24th.
Last week, Apple announced its plans to return $100 billion in stock to investors over the next few years. The increase more than doubled Apple’s original capital return program of $45 billion. Quarterly dividend payments also increased 15%, or $3.05 per common share.
Apple may have a huge cash pile, but even the world’s most valuable company will have to go into debt to finance a return program of this size. It’s the first time Apple has borrowed since 1996.
Donald Trump thinks Apple should increase the iPhone’s screen size… or else. The real estate tycoon talked about how much he wants a larger iPhone on his Facebook page today. If Apple doesn’t wise up and release a phablet, The Trump says the company will “lose a lot of business.”
Popular RSS app Reeder received a pretty big update in the App Store today. The iPhone version of Reeder has been updated to version 3.1 with support for Feedbin, a paid Google Reader alternative. RSS feeds can now be manually entered and stored locally in the app as well.
When Google declared that Google Reader is set to shut down on July 1st, Reeder announced that it would be adding Feedbin support in an upcoming update. The app already supports Fever, a Google Reader-like paid service that aggregates articles from multiple feeds and determines the most important stories of the day.
Feedbin is still in its early stages, and because the company doesn’t have Google’s deep pockets, it costs $2 per month. Reeder for iPhone costs $3 in the App Store. The Mac and iPad versions of Reeder will be receiving major overhauls in the coming months.
Source: App Store
Chat Heads. They made their grand debut in Facebook Home for Android, and Facebook added them later to its official iOS app. Now they are venturing out of Facebook’s iPhone app and into the rest of iOS, thanks to a jailbreak developer.
Marco Arment has sold his popular read-it-later service Instapaper to Betaworks, the company that recently acquired and rebranded Digg. For years, Instapaper has been a widely-used web service and iOS app for saving links to read later in a clean layout without ads.
Don’t worry, Instapaper won’t be going anywhere. Arment and Betaworks plan to keep developing and maturing the service.
