Google Street View is no longer hidden away inside Google Maps; it now has its very own app on Android and iOS, which offers immersive 360-degree imagery, and allows you to contribute your own.
A connected home security system that you can run right from your iPhone sounds like a fantastic idea. But which system should you pick up?
We’ve taken a look at the Skylink Alarm System Starter Kit to see what it can do. It includes a security hub, various window and door sensors, and a slick Wi-Fi-connected camera that you can set up and use from your iPhone no matter where you are in the world.
Check out our fun video review of this iOS-controlled home security system below.
Apple’s iPhones might be on the verge of a big refresh this month, but that doesn’t make them any less appealing to those looking to take a break from Android.
In Europe, 27 percent of smartphone shoppers swapped their Android for an iPhone last quarter, while 9 percent of consumers made the same switch in the U.S.
Photo-sharing service Instagram takes another step closer to becoming its own self-contained social network today with features aimed at the 85 million folks using Instagram Direct, which lets you send direct messages to individual users or groups of up to 15 people.
The new features include threaded messaging and a new way to share Instagram videos or photos within those direct messages.
Instagram is no longer a photo sharing service just for squares. The company today announced that it will finally support portrait and landscape photos and videos with its latest updates on Android and iOS.
Swiping a finger across a smartphone screen to unlock it may soon become a universal gesture, even on devices not made by Apple, because Germany’s top civil court has decided Apple didn’t invent “slide to unlock.”
It’s the weekend, which means that it’s time to relax, kick off your shoes, and download some great apps. And, man, have we got some picks for you this week!
Check below for our list of the best of the apps of the past 7 days, which demand a place on your Apple device right this moment:
Sony’s second-generation SmartBand 2 is here, and it’s a big improvement over its predecessor. The wearable’s new design packs an intelligent heart rate monitor that constantly measures your excitement and stress levels throughout the day.
Close to two decades after it first burst onto our PlayStations and PCs, Square Enix’s RPG masterpiece Final Fantasy VII has finally landed on iOS in its original form.
Celebrate the great news by checking out the trailer below:
Making games can be as fun as playing them, and the key to mastering both is practice. After working through this bundle of lessons, you’ll be ready for the iOS game-making equivalent of Carnegie Hall. Covering the how-tos with over 20 games in four different genres, this package from StackSkills usually goes for over $2,000. But right now the whole thing is just $20 at Cult of Mac Deals.
An Apple patent application describes a way of identifying people in digital images using face-recognition technology and then making it easy to send copies of the image to everyone in it.
The concept is highly reminiscent of Facebook’s Moments app, which identifies people and places in images and then allows users to easily share with friends, without having to post the pictures to Facebook.
No-one wanted to love last year’s RollerCoaster Tycoon 4 Mobile more than I did. And no-one was therefore more crushed when the “game” turned out to be the soulless, cash-demanding corpse of a once-great franchise-turned-freemium nightmare.
If you join me in that opinion, you can rest easy since RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 just hit the App Store — bringing iOS gamers the straight-up port of the PC classic they deserve, complete with touch controls and not an in-app purchase in sight.
Apple Metal, introduced at last year’s WWDC, gives developers low-level access to the GPU to maximize the graphics and performance potential of their games. Now Android gamers are going to get a taste of that, too.
No, Apple isn’t bringing Metal to Android — but Google is adopting an alternative called Vulkan.
Disappearing photo and video sharing app, Snapchat, has just updated to include a couple of great new features, including a data-reducing Travel Mode, an emoji button called Sticker Picker, and a way to see who’s viewing your posts, called Stories, in the app itself.
The brand-new beta of iOS 9 brings an entirely new set of wallpapers, some welcome improvements to Apple Music and more new treasures. These are some of the most exciting changes yet to Apple’s upcoming mobile operating system (the previous beta brought back Home Sharing and delivered lots of tiny design tweaks).
Let’s run through all the changes in iOS 9 beta 5, which was made available to developers today.
The latest update to HBO Now on Android and iOS gives subscribers the ability to stream their favorite shows to their TV via a Chromecast. The new feature comes less than a month after HBO Now made its debut on Android following Apple’s exclusive three-month deal.
A brain-training iOS game can reportedly help improve the memory of patients with schizophrenia, thereby letting them lead more independent lives.
Anyone who enjoyed last year’s smash hit Flappy Bird should take a minute to check out the excellently (if ironically) titled new iOS puzzler, Red Game Without a Great Name.
Putting you in control of a mechanical bird maneuvering its way through 60 levels of steampunk-inspired obstacles, the game takes a page from the Flappy Bird playbook, but tacks on the challenging addition of swipe-based teleportation for a genuinely original proposition.
Trust me, it’s a lot of fun!
Those of us old-school instant messaging warriors remember the day when Yahoo! Messenger was the king of the IM clients. The purple search giant is hoping that day may well be at hand again.
Every mobile platform now ships with its very own virtual assistant, and while they all offer a similar set of basic features, Google Now and Siri are way ahead of their rivals. Google Now knows what you want and when you want it, but Siri has sass and personality, and is about to get a whole lot better with the help of Proactive.
If you were to pit the two against each other in a virtual ring, which one would come out wearing the belt? Join us as we find out in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac!
Looking for an innovative, immersive app experience to entertain your buddies with this weekend? Then you may be interested in 360-degree animated film app Spotlight Stories, which just landed on iOS after a couple of years as an Android exclusive.
Using a combination of 2D and 3D animations, the app lets you move your body and mobile device to check out what’s happening in different parts of the video — essentially letting a story unfold around you. If you’re remotely interested in seeing the potential of the iPhone and iPad as a way of telling stories in a totally new way, you won’t regret it.
When it comes to the App Store and the Mac App Store, the two software dispensing platforms are not treated equally.
Not only do top 10 Mac App Store apps make a whole lot less than the chart toppers on iOS, but developers are noticing that Apple’s not even giving Mac app developers some of the same critical tools their counterparts enjoy on the App Store.
“What you don’t know won’t hurt you” is a common phrase that unfortunately does not apply to the apps on your phone. It turns out that thousands of apps on Android and iOS secretly have ads in them that you can’t see, and they very well might be what’s causing a number of problems that plague smartphones today.
In what will surely be met with a sigh of relief from developers, Apple has stopped people running beta versions of iOS from writing reviews of apps in the App Store.
Many of these reviews tend to be negative because developers have yet to optimize their apps to run the latest prerelease software version. As a result, apps run on a beta version of iOS are far more likely to crash, or feature bugs.
Square continues to add to its lineup of small business tools, especially for owners and managers who want an overall better grip on their businesses. It’s introducing a new Dashboard app that does just that: it lets owners track sales in real-time right from an iPhone. Still, the only requirement is a free Square account.