You can now share your crazy World Cup goal celebrations with your friends via Facebook Messenger for iPhone. A new update rolling out today introduces the ability to record and send 15-second video clips without ever having to leave the app.
Purchasing media across iTunes accounts can fuel household arguments. Add in parents having to share their Apple IDs and passwords with children, and you’ve got a perfect recipe for irritation. In today’s hands-on video, we’ll give you a look at a new iOS 8 feature called Family Sharing, which remedies these common problems.
Family Sharing lets up to six people share movies, music, TV shows, books and apps purchased from iTunes, iBooks and the App Store. It also offers other useful features, like photo and calendar sharing. See how it all works in the video above.
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iOS 8 packs in a bunch of great new photo features, in both the Camera app and the Photos app. You now get a lot more control over your photography at the front end, with manual exposure and even a time-lapse mode, and you can edit and find your photos with a little more precision than before.
iOS 8 is still a few months out, but you don’t have to wait: Use these currently available apps to add all these new functions to your iPhone (or iPad) today.
Swipeable keyboards are finally coming to iOS thanks to Apple’s addition of third-party keyboards in iOS 8. We’ve already seen teasers of Fleksy’s wicked fast keyboard in development, but now TouchPal is giving us a taste of what gesture-based keyboards will be like with it’s working demo of the TouchPal Keyboard.
TouchPal’s captures texts as you slide your finger over the letters to form a word. Sliding up for numbers, or down for a symbol. It’s super fast and convenient, especially if you’re a sloppy texter like me.
Checkout the full demo:
With the release of iOS 8 just months away, there is plenty for users to look forward to. While fitness fanatics have had to rely on third-party apps, the upcoming version of iOS introduces a dedicated Health app. Today’s video brings an inside look at the new app and how you can anticipate using it later this year.
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For years Apple has taken the view that you tell customers what they want, rather than waiting for them to ask. In terms of UI, this meant picking out the “right” option for interface elements, as opposed to allowing users the ability to edit them themselves.
That may be changing in iOS 8, as the beta code of Apple’s new mobile operating system suggests that Apple may also be including a funky variant UI — complete with alternate font and orange and purple color scheme.
Apple will be working closely with the Food and Drug Administration on future products related to the health industry, according to new information provided by the government.
Back in January, The New York Times reported that Apple had met with the FDA to discuss “mobile medical applications.” The talk was believed to center on the company’s rumored plans for health-tracking software in iOS 8 and maybe even the iWatch. HealthKit and the new Health app were announced at WWDC last week, and an iWatch announcement is expected in October.
Now more of the details from Apple’s meeting with the FDA have been disclosed. Apple said it may have a “moral obligation” to do more with health-related sensors on mobile devices.
With all the new features coming to iOS 8 this fall, many Android users have commented that Apple’s upcoming update acts a lot like KitKat. In today’s video, see some of the new features of iOS 8 go head-to-head with similar iterations in Android to see which comes out on top.
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WWDC came and went without a single breath mentioning the split-screen multitasking mode in iOS 8 that was rumored to be on the way, but iPad users hoping for more productivity features might be in luck after all.
Developer Steve Stroughton Smith says he’s been digging around in the iOS 8 beta files and noticed a new “main-screen-canvas-sizes” option that wasn’t in iOS 7, but will add multi-tasking to the iOS 8 SpringBoard, and it’s more advanced that we hoped for.
Starting with iOS 8, Apple is making it impossible for marketers to track you based on your iPhone’s MAC address.
When you walk around a store with your iPhone’s WiFi on, you’re are unknowingly transmitting your MAC address, a unique identifier for your device. Routers need the identifier to join you to a network. Ad agencies and retailers have been tracking these addresses to help offer personalized advertisements to customers based on where they’ve been.
Apple is putting a stop to this practice with MAC address scrambling in iOS 8, which could turn out to be a big win for iBeacon.
The code was written. The world (possibly) changed. The banners are gone and Apple is nowhere to be seen at Moscone West after a marathon week of coding and partying with the top software engineers in the world.
If you weren’t lucky enough to make it to this year’s WWDC you can still enjoy all the coding education that came with the show now that all 107 video sessions have been posted on Apple’s developer site. It’s a world class coding education that rivals anything you can pay for at university.
Here are some notable session to get you primed for iOS 8 and Yosemite:
While iOS 8 has seen tons of improvements — from FaceTime call waiting to the ability to purchase iTunes content using Siri — there’s one area that hasn’t seen a major overhaul: Apple Maps.
Although the new version of Maps does now offer vector maps and other improvements in China, as well as a feature designed to give owners the ability to add more indoor positioning data, this was reportedly nowhere near what Apple originally had planned for the next version of its mobile OS.
Over the past year we’ve reported on various map-related patents which seemed like they would land on iOS before long, related to innovations such as user customizable maps. There’s also been plenty of talk regarding major under-the-hood changes to improve map accuracy; adding more points of interest; overhauling labels to make locations like airports, highways and parks easier to find; changing the overall map interface to make it cleaner; and adding public transit directions.
So why didn’t anything like this happen? According to sources the problems may have been the result of internal politics and generally chaotic project management.
Wow! This year’s WWDC keynote was one of the most important in years, and on this week’s CultCast, we unpack all the new features announced for Yosemite and iOS 8, and tell you which ones we can’t believe we ever lived without. Plus, with so many new developer APIs and a whole new programming language, we think Apple in on the verge of something big, and if you thought they had cool products before… well, hold on to your butts.
Snicker your way through each week’s best Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the uproarious good time commence.
And thanks to Lynda.com for supporting this episode! Learn at your own pace from expert-taught video tutorials at Lynda.com.
Click on for the show notes.
As months have passed since Apple’s last keynote revealing any official news to look forward to, this week they’ve broken their silence. Apple CEO, Tim Cook, and many other official representatives revealed details on upcoming software, in the forms of OS X Yosemite and iOS 8. Take a look at the video to see a complete guide to of all of this week’s news and be sure to return next week for another.
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Six years after Apple pioneered what it means to be a mobile app, the company has reinvented the concept in iOS 8.
Thanks to what the company calls Extensibility, iOS 8 can let apps talk to one another and work together like never before. Once developers figure out how to implement their newfound flexibility, apps won’t just be apps anymore. They will become tools and services. Not just silos that can’t communicate, but pipes feeding into each other.
“Extensibility is tremendously interesting, and it’s fair to say developers have hoped for something like this practically since day one,” said David Chariter of AgileBits, makers of 1Password. Developers like AgileBits see iOS 8 as a sign that mobile apps will become not only smarter, but more powerful in their ability to aid users.
Apple’s long awaited and heavily rumored iWatch is set to land in stores and on wrists this October, according to a new report from Japanese business newspaper Nikkei.
Unnamed sources tell the paper that Apple has begun finalizing specs for the device, which will feature a curved OLED touchscreen and run a version of iOS 8. In keeping with Apple’s push into fitness and health tracking, as seen through the announcement of its upcoming Health app and API for iOS 8, the device will allegedly use biometric sensors to collect health-related data such as calorie consumption, sleep activity, blood oxygen levels, and more.
How many times have you allowed a friend to use your iPhone and then experienced that sudden sinking feeling when you realize they might stumble across “personal” snaps in the Photos app? Well, with iOS 8, that’s something you won’t need to worry about quite so much.
Apple has added a new feature to the built-in Photos app that allows you to hide images you don’t want others to see — but hidden photos aren’t exactly hard to find.
Apple and Google aren’t the good friends they used to be thanks to the rise of Android as the iPhone’s main competitor. Ever since Apple axed Google Maps in iOS 6, it has been clear that Google’s days in Apple’s software are numbered.
The hardest Google service for Apple to replace is undoubtedly search. Siri is slowly becoming its own search engine of sorts that draws from multiple services like Wolfram Alpha and Wikipedia, but Google has remained the standard for traditional web search.
In iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, Google is still set as Safari’s default search engine. But with the introduction of more search partners in Apple’s new software, it’s hard to believe that Google search will enjoy its prominence for much longer.
Apple’s WWDC keynote just days ago brought us many new iOS 8 features to look forward to downloading this Fall. Thanks to an immediate downloadable beta version open for developers, many have found even more useful features and changes not mentioned on Apple’s big stage. In today’s video your host Joshua Smith introduces eight of his top hidden iOS 8 features.
Take a look at the video to see what you think.
Apple is finally going to open OS X Yosemite betas to the public, but when it comes to iOS 8, Apple fanboys desperate for a sneak peek at Cupertino’s upcoming software have been left out in the cold.
Luckily, if you’re willing to give a little info and some cash to certain “developers” you too can become an official iOS 8 beta testers and reap all the new benefits and bugs of iOS 8 as Apple puts the finishing touches on the biggest iOS release ever.
Here’s how to do it:
The world’s fastest keyboard is speeding onto iOS 8 faster than Jony Ive’s fabulous Bentley.
Third-party keyboards were only revealed two days ago for iOS 8 but it is taking developers no time at all to piece together some working betas amid the coding-fest at WWDC.
First up to the plate is Fleksy, who has already started teasing their upcoming keyboard for iOS 8, and if you’re lucky, they’ll might let you take it for a spin.
Apple has made yet more improvements to AirPlay in iOS 8 by enabling compatible devices to make direct connections with each other for content streaming. This eliminates AirPlay’s reliance on a Wi-Fi network and fixes one of its biggest limitations.
Given that it’s only been around since Monday, it’s still early days for iOS 8. But that doesn’t mean the jailbreak community is resting — and if early indicators are to be believed, we might see a jailbreak for Apple’s latest mobile operating system sooner than expected.
While there are still no concrete examples of someone jailbreaking their device on iOS 8, well-known hacker i0n1c claimed in a recent tweet that the first beta of iOS 8 “doesn’t fix anything” and should therefore be breakable.
Buzzwords fly in this 90-second recap of Apple’s impressive WWDC 2014 keynote, which offered a tantalizing glimpse at where the company plans to take us with iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite.
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As Apple has finally announced the long-awaited iOS 8, it’s only natural for users to be curious how it will affect their daily routines. With all new features and enhancements for your iOS device, in today’s video see what’s coming this fall, and what we think about it.
Take a look at the video to see what you think.