Google just launched its very first keyboard for iPhone and iPad — and it’s awesome.
Called Gboard, and designed to look a lot like the default iOS keyboard at first glance, it’s jam-packed with useful features, including the ability to type with glide gestures, send GIFs, and search Google from almost anywhere.
When you’re lost in a foreign country without a data connection, Google Translate can now help you get directions from a local. Its latest update for iPhone and iPad adds the ability to get offline translation in 52 different languages.
Amazon is already battling Netflix and Spotify and plenty of other content providers, but it wants an even bigger challenge. The retail giant today unveiled Amazon Video Direct, a sharing platform that’s taking the fight to YouTube.
We haven’t even gotten an official announcement of the Apple Car yet, but it looks like the company is still working its way into the automotive industry.
That’s according to the staff at car news site The Drive, which placed Apple’s chief design officer Jony Ive and CEO Tim Cook on its list of “The 10 Most Influential People in Automotive Technology.” They didn’t top the list, however; that would be crazy. But they did place higher than some people who are actually in charge of real vehicles that people are driving around right now.
But The Drive backs its decisions up pretty well.
Apple Music’s existing interface is quaking in its boots. In just one month, it could be given its marching orders as Apple looks to make way for a fancy new design that hopes to attract even more subscribers to its streaming service.
But does Apple Music really need a major revamp?
Some say its user interface is already familiar if you’re a long time iOS user — and even if you’re not, it’s arguably still prettier than those offered by rival streaming services. But others say it’s just not friendly enough, and too tricky to learn.
Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac as we battle it out over Apple Music’s rumored redesign!
Apple CEO Tim Cook is set to make another major public appearance in the lead up to WWDC next month.
Startup Fest Europe revealed that Cook will be the opening speaker at the conference on Tuesday May 24th. It’s unknown what Cook’s keynote will focus on, though his remarks may touch on his mastery of streamlining processes for business and possibly enterprise, which has become a bigger focus for the company recently.
As the technology around us gets smarter, many fear it will turn against us. That nightmare comes true in this parody ad for Google’s self-driving car, which mows down poor pedestrians as it tears down the streets of Los Santos.
Google’s autonomous cars have taken to the road with the rest of us normals in our comparatively Flintstones-esque, human-directed rides. And the very small brush-ups are starting to come in.
In fact, the California DMV has created a form just for reporting accidents involving at least one self-driving vehicle, and it publishes these reports on its website. And while the doomsayers and doubters have wrung their hands about cars plowing into trucks filled with baby penguins, the truth is that the dozen or so accidents on the list are so hilariously small that they hardly seem worth the paperwork at all.
They should definitely file the reports; don’t get us wrong. But we imagine an eye-roll or two while it happens.
Apple has added yet another wicked smart talent to its ranks recently by hiring famed robotics expert Yoky Matsuoka.
Yoky was working as the head of technology at Nest before joining Apple. She was also one of the co-founders of Google’s X Lab and is a MacArthur genius award winner.
Having to bid farewell to iMessage is one of the reasons why many iPhone users won’t jump ship to Android. But thanks to a new app called PieMessage, you can now enjoy Apple’s insanely popular messaging platform on a Google-powered smartphone.
Google is on the verge of signing a new deal with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles to build “several dozen” self-driving minivans, according to a new report.
The first models could be on the road sometime this year for the first phase of the self-driving vehicle partnership, but it’s not yet clear what the main objective is.
Silicon Valley campaign donations have poured way more money into the presidential bids of Democrats than Republicans, surprising nobody, ever.
This shocking revelation comes from a report from CrowdPAC, a non-partisan, political crowdfunding organization that has discovered that the companies most likely to donate to campaigns are Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon. And while the findings don’t include fine-grain data like individual amounts or the actual numbers of employees, they do make one overwhelming conclusion:
Techies don’t like Donald Trump.
When you’re excited to watch the latest videos from your favorite YouTube channels, the last thing you want to see before them is ads you can’t skip. Normally, they don’t appear on every video you watch, but Google is planning to change that.
The company today announced that is introducing 6-second “bumper ads” that will play before all videos watched on mobile devices, and you have no choice but to sit through them.
Revolv smart hubs will no longer be supported as of May 15. Even though subscribers have known this was coming since February, there wasn’t a lot of attention until an author’s highly critical piece was published on Medium.
That story has spurred conversations questioning investment in the Internet of Things, or IoT, and prompted Nest to consider compensating users who were early investors in the Revolv hub.
Apple and Google have leant their names to an open letter taking aim at a controversial new anti-encryption bill, which demands that tech companies make their devices breakable at will.
“We write to express our deep concerns about well-intentioned but ultimately unworkable policies around encryption that would weaken the very defenses we need to protect us from people who want to cause economic and physical harm,” the letter opens.
In addition to Apple and Google, other tech giants which signed the missive include Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Netflix, and more.
Hollywood’s top filmmakers held secret meetings with Apple at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, according to a new report that claims Apple is planning to make a big play to take on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video by creating its own original TV shows and movies.
Apple hosted a secret ‘iTunes Lounge’ at Sundance for a number of invitation-only events for film makers, producers, actors, and other A-list talent to hear the company’s pitch on how it plans to create a ton of original content that will be exclusively available on Apple TV.
For most of us, April Fools’ Day is an abomination. It’s like watching your dad crack terrible jokes at a party. But unlike your dad, some tech companies have perfected the art of the April Fools’ prank and come up with some pretty spectacular ones.
Here are some of the best that have made us LOL today.
One of Google’s April Fools’ Day pranks was so unpopular with users that the company was forced to pull it just hours after it rolled out.
The Gmail stunt, which automatically inserted a “mic drop” GIF into users’ emails as they were sent, was greeted by a torrent of complaints and labeled inappropriate.
The world’s biggest search engine is planning a new way to get its software onto Apple products, The Verge is reporting. It’s a Google iPhone keyboard that developers hope will trump the stock iOS one.
Third-party keyboards are nothing new, but very few actually have a shot at replacing Apple’s as the go-to typing tool either because of pointless features or shoddy design. But we think that if anyone’s going to give it a running start, it’s Google.
Apple may be hopping into bed with long-time tech giant frenemy Google, migrating part of its iCloud business over from Amazon Web Services (AWS) to Google’s Cloud Platform.
Apple will reportedly pay Google between $400 and $600 million as part of the deal, which could be around twice the estimated amount Google’s cloud business did in total revenue last year.
Googlebot, the giant webcrawler that Google uses to scan webpages and update its index, is ditching its iPhone disguise to become an Android.
Rather ironically, the tool has been masquerading as an Apple device running iOS 8.3 for years, but it will soon become a Nexus 5X running Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow to become more efficient.
Your Android apps are going to get an iOS-style makeover soon, thanks to new design guidelines from Google.
Mostly concerned with the bottom of Android apps, Google is looking to have its developers place a bar across the bottom of their apps that will let users navigate between different sections of the app, just like iOS currently does.
Google Inbox’s awesome Smart Reply feature, which was launched on mobile back in November, is now available on the web.
The feature is already being used for 10 percent of all replies on Android and iOS — and it’s just as good in your browser.
Google, Facebook, Snapchat, WhatsApp and other tech giants are reportedly working on their own increased privacy measures, as Apple continues to win over the general public during its encryption standoff with the FBI.
Google’s mobile Chrome web browser gets a new update today, which — according to the Chrome team — has “more than a barge full of performance and stability fixes.”
We’re not sure how many software fixes a barge would hold, but we feel confident in saying it’s a whole lot.
