For the first time, Apple has made it possible for those without an App Store developer membership to use iOS betas. Anyone can legitimately download and install today’s iOS 8.3 beta by joining Apple’s official Beta Testing Program.
OS X Yosemite was the first software release that could be beta tested by non-devs, and now that Apple has flung open the gates on iOS, many more people will likely opt-in to be on the cutting edge of where the operating system is headed.
Google’s gorgeous redesign of the Calendar app has finally made its way to iPhone. The Android version of Google Calendar’s redesign was released last fall, but iPhone users can now get their fingers on the official Google Calendar app too.
Like on the new Android version, you get new features like Events from Gmail, to turn emails into events on your calendar. Assists makes adding events quicker by recommending information to insert, and the new Schedule View makes it easier to scan your calendar and see what events you have coming up.
Take a tour of the new app below:
The CIA has been been involved in a multi-year effort to crack iOS security, according to new information provided to The Intercept by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The attempts have been the focal point of multiple yearly CIA conferences called “The Jamboree.”
Among the possible solutions proposed include a means of “whacking” Xcode, the software used to create apps for iOS and Macs. Researchers claimed they had discovered a means by which Xcode could be manipulated to allow devices to be infected, so as to allow for the extraction of private data — thereby creating a “remote backdoor” that would disable core security features and allow undetected access to Apple devices.
Now that we know more about the long-awaited Apple Watch, it’s time to find out how it stacks up against Google’s Android Wear platform and the growing number of wearables that support it.
There are lots of similarities between the two, but there also some big differences in software, hardware, and price that will likely help you decide which one is right for you.
A newly discovered security bug has secretly left Safari users on both iOS and OS X vulnerable to attacks on hundreds of thousands of websites for years.
The ‘FREAK’ security flaw was exposed today by a group of nine researchers who discovered web browsers could be forced to use an intentionally-weakened form of encryption. FREAK effects iPhones, Macs, and Android browsers, but Apple’s spokesman says the company will release a fix next week.
Google’s efforts to counter the threat of the Apple Watch will begin with bringing Android Wear support to iPhone. Sources claim the search giant is now “preparing” an Android Wear app for iOS, and it could be announced at Google I/O in May.
Apple and IBM’s partnership to bring iOS apps into the workplace produced 10 apps last year. Today at Mobile World Congress, IBM announced that it is launching three more MobileFirst apps aimed at the banking, airline, and retail industries.
The three new iOS apps are available for deployment and customization starting today. The apps are part of Tim Cook’s initiative to change the way people work by giving companies access to high-quality iOS apps. IBM says its clients for the MobileFirst apps include American Eagle Outfitters, Sprint, Air Canada, Banorte, and more than 50 others.
Here’s a quick look at the three new apps:
Last year around 1.4 Million U.S. households reportedly threw in the towel on Pay TV and embraced the cord-cutting revolution. And it seems that the idea of consuming media in non-traditional ways starts young, with Nickelodeon this week announcing its plans to launch a subscription video service aimed at preschoolers.
Called Noggin, the service takes the form of an iOS app set to launch on March 5. Costing just $5.99 per month, it will be advertising-free, and will boast a range of kids’ shows, such as “Blue’s Clues” and “Little Bear” that are not currently part of Nickelodeon’s assorted TV networks.
République Remastered is the gorgeously rebooted Mac and PC version of Seattle-based Camoflaj’s intriguing episodic stealth video game that originally came out for iPad and iPhone in December of 2013.
The development team took the opportunity to completely revamp the game within the updated game engine, Unity, moving the entire project from Unity 4 to Unity 5. By making this the first game release ever with the Unity 5 engine, they got early access to the engine in return for documenting their process.
“When Unity 5 was announced we saw our chance to make good on our two-year old promise to make a PC and Mac version of République,” writes the team on the Unity blog. “In addition to spending months completely reworking the game’s controls and UI, we knew we’d benefit from an increased wow factor on this new platform. From our dumpy office in downtown Bellevue (surrounded by industry titans like Bungie and Valve), we’ve put our heart and soul into this ambitious and at times, difficult, project.”
Check out the official game trailer below to see how they succeeded in making this already stunning game even more gorgeous.
BlackBerry’s smartphone business is imploding in a big way in the U.K., where the company is currently losing around 56,000 users every month to Android, iOS, and Windows Phone, new research shows.
Just two years ago, the Canadian company had around 8 million non-business users in the U.K., but that figure is expected to fall below 1 million by the end of this year.
You may have noticed recently that the Facebook app makes sounds. Like a post? Chirp. Refresh the news feed? Swoosh. It’s like your iPhone got suddenly chatty and wants you to know that you’re tapping on the screen with every blip and bloop.
Surely you’d like to turn these things off. You could just mute your whole iPhone with the sound toggle button, but if you want to have other audio come through, like video, music, or (gasp) phone calls, you can dip into your Facebook app settings and soon experience the bliss of a blip-free Facebook browsing experience.
Here’s how.
IFTTT is ready to become more than just a standalone service in 2015. Hoping to transition to a company with multiple products, IFTTT revealed today that it has created three entirely new ‘Do’ apps — Do Button, Do Camera, and Do Note — that let you personalize and execute your favorite IFTTT recipes with one tap.
To go along with the new apps that make it simply to automate your most common Internet tasks, IFTTT has rebranded its original app to just IF. The three new apps are kind of a mixture between Yo and Workflow, giving you a new level of control for favorite services and applications.
Here’s a quick look at each new app.
Saturday Night Live turns forty this year, and what better way to celebrate than by making a sizeable portion of the show’s most classic sketches available to enjoy whenever you want? With that in mind, a newly-launched iOS app boats more than 5,500 freely-available sketches, spanning the show’s entire four-decade (and counting) run.
Although SNL is already available on Netflix, the free app not only allows you to easily enjoy classic sketches on your subway ride to work, but also lets you search for appearances by individual cast members or characters — as opposed to having to trawl through entire episodes to get there.
Anyone who enjoys old-school games will most likely have experienced the crushing disappointment of finding a favorite title in the App Store — only to discover that whichever company ported the game to iOS took no care whatsoever in doing so.
Fortunately, one game series you could absolutely never throw that accusation at is the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, thanks to the remastering efforts of fans Christian Whitehead and Simon Thomley. For anyone interested in game restoration and porting, their story is kind of inspirational.
As many of us use Google calendar to manage our daily lives, it’s an important thing to get this wondrous scheduling solution on our iPhones and iPads to better able to access it on the go.
Several third-party calendars, like the ever-useful and visually stunning Fantastical 2, use the iOS system for connecting to and synchronizing your calendars from Google to your mobile device.
Usually this works without a hitch, especially with newer iOS versions; you simply add an account and the calendar events you input on the web will show up on your iPhone, and vice versa.
When that doesn’t work, however, the settings you need to tweak can be a bit unintuitive. Here’s what they should look like for the best two-way Google to iOS sync.
Update: This story has been modified to more accurately describe the sync capabilities of Fantastical 2, and we’ll have a how-to up on getting Google and iOS to play nice soon.
Readdle’s calendar app, Calendars 5, brings all the natural-language and sync goodness of other high-end calendar apps, along with support for your Google or iOS calendar, to your iPhone and iPad at the same time in one $3 app. Plus? When you add an event to Calendars 5, it shows up on your Google Calendar (or iOS Calendar if you roll that way).
Two-way sync? Natural-language event creation? iOS Reminders support? Recurring events? Invitations? Apple or Google Maps integration? Works offline or online?
This is gonna be your new favorite calendar app, if it isn’t already.
Apple may eventually merge OS X and iOS, but I can’t see it happening any time soon. In an interview last year, Phil Schiller dismissed the idea of combining both (exactly what Microsoft recently announced plans to do with Windows 10) as an enormous “waste of energy.”
If you’d like to see what an iOS/OS X mashup could look like, however — and you have a jailbroken iOS device, to boot — you can check out the latest tweak from jailbreak developer Evan Swick.
Called Harbor, the tweak is described by Swick as “the ultimate dock tweak” and brings the OS X Yosemite dock to any device running iOS 8 — offering you a whole new way of launching apps on your iPhone or iPad.
And you know what? It’s actually pretty great.
How would you like an app that transforms your regular 8-megapixel iPhone 6 camera into a 32-megapixel one?
Okay, so it’s not exactly as miraculous as it sounds, but photography app Hydra is a worthy tool to add to your virtual camera bag. It works by taking a series of up to 60 small images and then stitching them together to form one super high-resolution picture.
While it isn’t true 32-megapixel photography, it’s still an altogether impressive app that only serves to underline just why the iPhone camera has been so embraced by users.
I don’t care who you are. I don’t care if you don’t even like Batman. This beautiful, remote-controlled, iPhone-compatible Batmobile? It’s the toy that Gotham — hell, everybody! — deserves.
Every gamer over a certain age has a fondness for the 8- and 16-bit titles they grew up with, so it’s no surprise developers born in the 1980s are now creating nostalgia-infused iOS games harking back to the glory days of the Genesis and S.N.E.S. But which of these should you be playing? Fortunately, Cult of Mac can be your guide.
Pop in another quarter, click the button below, and find out what you need to download to truly be down with the kids thirty-somethings.
What is it with Apple and the gaming-related patents as of late?
Just weeks after the publishing of an Apple patent showing a concealed gaming joystick capable of being hidden in future iPhones, today the U.S. Patent and Trademarks Office has revealed another Apple invention related to a snap-on gaming controller for iOS devices.
As with the joystick patent, the idea here is to allow gamers to fully capitalize on the present golden age of iOS gaming, without having to block parts of the screen using their fingers for multitouch controls.
With their rise, fall and ascent to global cultural dominance, Apple and LEGO are not entirely dissimilar as brands. I’m not sure whether their similar philosophies toward business have any bearing on my appreciation for both companies, but I do know that I absolutely loved last year’s LEGO Movie.
Having recently been robbed of an Oscar nom, fellow LEGO Movie fans can at least get some of their brick-fix today thanks to the news that The LEGO Movie Video Game has arrived on iOS — giving you a chance to play what is a very fun game on your iPhone or iPad.
Apple has agreed to accept the Chinese government’s demands to run network safety evaluations on all Apple products before they can be imported into the country.
Tim Cook met with the country’s Internet and Information office last December to discuss Apple’s plans in China, and has since consented to the government’s demands that they be allowed screen products for the fabled NSA backdoor. According to a spokesperson who was also present at the meeting, Cook has assured Chinese officials that Apple will fully cooperate with the governments wishes to have products inspected for security concerns.
Rdio may be the underdog in the streaming media wars when compared to Spotify, but for my money, they still have the best software around. And it’s just gotten even better.
Today, Rdio for iOS was updated to version 3.1, bringing a new station for just-released music, enhanced sharing abilities and a load of other features and bug fixes.
There was a time before iPhones, when BlackBerry was the go-to name when it came to high quality smartphones. Those days are now well and truly over, although BlackBerry is still on the lookout for ways to even the playing field.
In a new blogpost over on the official BlackBerry website, CEO John Chen argues for a net neutrality-style “app neutrality,” which would see Apple legally compelled to make its popular iMessage service for BB10 handsets.
“Unfortunately, not all content and applications providers have embraced openness and neutrality,” Chen writes. “Unlike BlackBerry, which allows iPhone users to download and use our BBM service, Apple does not allow BlackBerry or Android users to download Apple’s iMessage messaging service.”