Buy a shiny new padlock and hold in your hand something that hasn’t changed much since the Romans used them 500 years before Christ. The ubiquitous lock has a u-shaped shackle that connects to a body containing a mechanism that locks and unlocks with a key or combination wheel.
Keys get lost and combination codes forgotten so the company Dog & Bone put its own stamp on the padlock, or actually, your stamp, by creating a smart lock that is controlled by an app on your smartphone.
A number of developers have reported noticing a difference in the way the iOS App Store now organizes search results. It appears Apple made changes around November 3 to the search algorithm to improve the relevancy of the results. Developers have identified multiple factors that are contributing to the new App Store search and overall, the changes are garnering positive feedback.
InstaAgent, a third-party app for users to track visitors to their Instagram feeds, was pulled out of app stores by both Apple and Google after an iOS developer discovered the app was stealing people’s logins and passwords.
If you have InstaAgent on your smartphone – and reportedly half a million of you do – delete it immediately.
Alloy is the iPhone app that ultimately wants you to spend less time using your iPhone. It lets you create automated tasks and workflows that you can launch with one tap. The automations can upload a selfie to Twitter, convert currency, save your parking location, perform a saved search on Amazon and just about anything else if you’re willing to get creative
Microsoft is merging two of its most popular mobile apps into one: Outlook email and Sunrise calendar. Outlook has always been a favorite among email users while Sunrise rose to fame for being both free and feature-packed. Combined as one, Microsoft is hoping the move enables users to more seamlessly glide between emailing and calendar tasks.
The result isn’t really a huge departure from what Microsoft currently offers in Outlook, since Outlook already has your calendars built in. Instead, it’s more about refining navigation within the app while additionally bringing in some features from Sunrise.
The biggest change is that the sun is setting on Sunrise. After Microsoft bought the calendar app just this year, the company is already pulling the plug on it.
Videos on Snapchat are getting some new special effects today with a big update that adds ‘speed modifiers’ to the app’s toolset on both iOS and Android.
The new speed modifiers are basically video filters that allow snappers to add slo-mo, fast-forward, or rewind effects to a video. If you’re on an iPhone 6s or iPhone 6s Plus the update is even better, bringing 3D Touch support to the app for the first time.
As developers race to embrace 3D Touch, more and more third-party apps are utilizing iOS 9’s killer feature to make common tasks faster and easier.
Employed properly, 3D Touch’s Quick Actions lists can put many tasks at your fingertips — assuming you’re using an iPhone 6s or 6s Plus, the only models with the hardware to us the new technology. 3D Touch’s new Peek and Pop features also let you preview certain items (Peek), then press deeper if you want to open them (Pop).
With more and more apps adding 3D Touch, developers are clearly hell-bent on creating more stimulating experiences. Here are more third-party apps that are doing big things with 3D Touch.
SoundKey is a clever keyboard app that plays instruments as you type to create melodies from your words.
Developed by two French students who wanted to incorporate music directly into people’s daily use of the iPhone, it’s an unusual twist on the custom iOS keyboards we’ve come to know and love.
The latest entry to the Beats line of speakers and the first one under Apple’s supervision, the Beats Pill+ is now available. At $229, it’s $30 more expensive than its predecessor, the Beats Pill 2.0, but it has much more to offer. This Bluetooth speaker apparently has improved sound quality, a tweaked design, and unsurprisingly charges via Lightning cable.
Instagram’s new app Boomerang lets users create one-second videos of everyday moments, then share them to Instagram, Facebook or Twitter.
The new app is a lot like the new Live Photos feature Apple introduced on the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. Boomerang takes a burst of five photos, stitches them together into a mini-video, then plays the clip in forward and then reverse — you know, just like a boomerang!
Here’s how it works:
Millennials are a generation of “digital natives” with strong opinions and they’re losing interest in social media that only allows them to register a Like on posts.
The creators of a new social media app called exacly.me believe they can give Millennials a platform for meaningful sharing with the honest self-expression that so defines them. The community of users can rate each other’s content with “Me” or “Not Me.” Gasp at a picture of a friend rock climbing? There’s even an option to say “So Not Me.”
Where can you buy weed legally? What kind of marijuana is best for you? What are the laws concerning pot use in your neck of the woods? Potent new marijuana apps make it easy to answer all your sticky weed questions.
We’ve harvested the best marijuana apps so you don’t have to pick through the seeds and stems yourself.
The iPhone 6s’ new Live Photos feature created a new media format, but there’s one major problem with the new moving pictures: You have to own an iPhone 6s to see them.
Most of your friends probably haven’t upgraded yet, which means those cool Live Photos you’ve snapped are only viewable by you. However, there is a way to transform your favorite Live Photo into a shareable GIF or video file, allowing everyone to see the movement in your picture, no matter what device they’re on.
Here’s how to do it:
Apple banned over 250 apps from the App Store that were using software to access users’ personal information. These apps managed to get through the App Store approval process with private APIs, which are against the rules. Apple took action shortly after news broke this morning that a security firm discovered these apps.
All-knowing soothsayers, there are a pair of apps that will let you register your predictions and even gloat when they come true. Then again, you probably saw this coming.
Called It! and Sage both appeared in the iTunes store this month as social networking apps. Each lets people make predictions on everything from the next big game (the World Series is right around the corner) to the 2016 presidential election. Followers comment on your visions of the future, affirming you or calling you plain nuts.
There are greats apps for groups to complete tasks and great apps for group communication. In Pingpad, the group has a single app that allows for both.
Pingpad is a stew of many different first generation apps for notes, lists, calendars and instant messaging. In one space, a group can work across platforms on documents, chat back and forth and post pertinent links all in real time. Think Google Docs meets Whatsapp.
Some Apple Watch users are apparently confused over what types of exercise the wearable’s Workout app can track. Many people are using it to log weightlifting or stretching sessions, even though Apple only claims the app is suitable for “dedicated cardio workouts.”
Fortunately, a new breed of fitness apps is emerging that uses the accelerometer access enabled by the recently released watchOS 2 to track strength and flexibility workouts more effectively.
Flexibits updated its popular Fantastical apps for iPhone and iPad this morning to take advantage of a number of new features in iOS 9 and on the iPhone 6s. Arguably the biggest improvement to productivity comes in the form of multitasking support for the iPad. Fantastical also threw in a dash of the new iPhone’s 3D Touch as well.
So, you’re one of 13 million people to get a brand new iPhone 6S over the launch weekend. Congratulations, you now have access to a faster phone — potentially a rose gold one, better cameras, stronger aluminum and of course, 3D Touch. The latter is actually extremely useful, but it’s only as useful as developers allow.
Since the feature is brand new, 3D Touch mostly works with Apple’s stock iOS apps for quick application shortcuts on the Home screen, plus Peek and Pop inside apps to preview different types of content. A few productive developers saw the light and quickly updated their apps to support this drastically new way to use an iPhone.
You can tell that the future is very bright for 3D Touch as developers are just getting started figuring out how to unlock all of its potential. Until we reach that 3D utopia, here are five terrific apps that already do Apple’s latest innovation plenty of justice.
reTXT is a radical new messaging app that wants to fix everything wrong with online communication as it exists now. It landed back in April and includes a number of unique features — like being able to edit a message you already sent — all of which are currently patent pending. The app just updated today for iOS and Android with support for voice calling with end-to-end encryption as well.
Sticking out from the crowd of third-party messaging apps, I decided to take a closer look.
Developer Marco Arment pulled his iOS 9 content blocker from the App Store two days after launching it. He says it “just doesn’t feel good” to be profiting from his app Peace while taking money away from advertisers and publishers. He’s even offering refunds to anyone who already bought Peace expecting updates and support down the line, which they now won’t be getting.
This post is brought to you by Lucid Software, maker of Lucidchart.
Visual diagrams are one of the best ways of conveying complex ideas to audiences and collaborators. Making them is also an invitation to get frustrated by how little diagramming software has apparently advanced in recent years (people still use Visio?).
We live in an age of sleek design and intuitive user interfaces, so why is it still easier to scrawl a simple chart on a napkin than to draft one on a computer or iPad?
Have you ever found yourself staring at the Netflix or Amazon Prime Video screen on your TV, or drooling a bit while you page through the Redbox screens at a red kiosk near you?
It’s frustrating, especially when you’re always hearing about movies that you must see right now, but can’t seem to remember when you’re on the couch (or sofa, get it?) with a remote in hand.
The developers of Sofa have you covered, though, with a new app aimed at helping you find and track all those flicks you haven’t seen, but want to.
The golf industry is loaded with gadgets that promise to make your drive explode off the tee and turn bogeys into birdies. And there are plenty of golfers who pay handsomely for these promises in hopes of shaving a stroke or two off their average.
Most get suckered.
But a tiny device by Blast Motion, coupled with the iPhone, is slowly gaining approval among golf’s teaching professionals. It makes no promises, but it does provide numbers and video proof to support what your teacher’s been telling you all along – your game’s got problems.
It’s been a long ride, but Mozilla confirmed that Firefox is in fact almost ready for its official launch on iPhone and iPad. The company announced a limited release of the browser in the New Zealand App Store.
It’s appreciable that Firefox is finally hopping on board with iOS, but at this point it seems Mozilla is far too late to the game to give Firefox a meaningful opportunity for reemergence.