Apple’s gaming service focuses more on lighter fare, but Friday brought the release of Neversong. Players take on the role of Peet, a boy just awoken from a coma as he searches for his missing girlfriend through an asylum while battling monsters and zombies.
Running out of things to watch during lockdown? Streaming service Crackle is bringing “thousands” of free movies and TV shows to Plex, the digital media and organizational app that launched its ad-supported streaming service in December.
Having initially rolled out movies by Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM), Lionsgate and Legendary, it’s now introducing a plethora of free titles from Crackle. These include the likes of hit movies Captain Phillips, Patriot Games and The Illusionist, alongside TV shows like Hell’s Kitchen and Roseanne.
Smartphone shipments took a major tumble in the first quarter of 2020 as coronavirus wreaked havoc on the supply chain and demand. That’s the conclusion drawn by three of the top mobile-tracking research firms, Strategy Analytics, Canalys, and IDC.
While their numbers don’t all tally perfectly they tell the same overall picture. While Apple wasn’t immune to the decline, however, it fared better than some of its rivals.
iPad app downloads had their first positive quarterly growth in four years during the first three months of 2020, app analytics platform Sensor Tower claims.
In a new report, the firm says that quarterly downloads of apps for the iPad surpassed 1.1 billion worldwide in Q1. Meanwhile, consumer spending in iPad apps crossed $2 billion for the first time ever. Not bad for a time when the world is in the midst of coronavirus lockdown.
On Trevor Noah’s Daily Social Distancing Show, the comedian addressed Apple’s decision to make it easier for users to skip Face ID for passcodes on their iPhone, due to the challenges of unlocking them while wearing a protective mask.
“This is the genius of Apple,” he said. “They’re trying to take us back in time. Because if we’re back in time, there’s no corona.” Check out the clip below.
Cynthia Hogan, Apple’s VP for public policy and government affairs, is helping pick Joe Biden’s running mate for the U.S. presidential campaign.
Hogan previously worked as Biden’s White House and Senate counsel. Now she’s working alongside former U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd, congresswoman Lisa Blunt and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti to find Biden’s pick for vice president.
With coronavirus lockdown, new streaming TV content is more appreciated than ever. Fortunately, Apple TV+ has loaded up on new content for another packed week of new shows. Debuting Friday are all eight episodes of the first season of new comedy series Trying.
There’s also episode four of the excellent Chris Evans-starring drama series Defending Jacob. That should be enough to fill at least part of the weekend!
While COVID-19 certainly overshadowed Apple’s most recent financial quarter, the company actually saw an annual increase in revenue, with the growth primarily coming from services and wearables.
Looking ahead, the company predicts that Mac and iPad sales will be strong. And CEO Tim Cook remains confidant about Apple’s future.
Apple plans to reopen its retail stores in Austria and Australia sometime in the next one to two weeks, Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said Thursday.
Cook told Blooomberg he believes that “just a few, not a large number” of stores in the United States will re-open in the first half of May.
Apple released three new advertisements for its streaming video service on Thursday. These highlight the big stars that appear on Apple TV+, as well as the original stories told by the over two dozen shows and movies that have debuted since autumn.
Watch them now:
OtterBox’s latest screen protectors not only prevent scratches, they also contain an antimicrobial agent. The Amplify Glass line is registered with the Environmental Protection Agency and manufactured by Corning. These screen protectors debuted Thursday for the iPhone 11 series as well as earlier models.
Apple designed a workable system to let people edit text messages after they send them. But now we have to hope it’ll be implemented.
This is potentially great news for everyone who ever wished they could fix an embarrassing text.
Warren Buffett may be one of the shrewdest financial minds of our time, but don’t expect him to be able to use an iPhone. Despite receiving a personal lesson from Apple CEO Tim Cook.
“I went out to California, and Tim Cook very patiently spent hours trying to move me up to the level of the average two-year-old,” Buffett told Yahoo Finance editor-in-chief Andy Serwer. “And didn’t quite make it.”
iPadOS 13 introduced native support for opening multiple windows of the same app side by side. Now, seven months after iPadOS 13.1 officially shipped to users, Microsoft has started beta-testing the ability for iPad users to do this on Word and PowerPoint for iPad.
Microsoft shared the news in a blog post detailing how users can “take advantage” of the new (for Microsoft) feature. Here’s how you do it:
Pricing on Apple’s expected 5G-ready iPhones will remain mostly the same, even though they are predicted to include OLED screens, according to a new report.
Front Page Tech analyst Jon Prosser tweeted Thursday base pricing on what Cult of Mac has reported as four new iPhone 12 models coming later this year.
A group of app developers have set up a new lobbyist association called the App Coalition. This independent group will lobby Congress regarding issues relating to app developers.
A Bloomberg report, published Wednesday, notes that nine mobile app developers have banded together for the new organization. The new lobbying group is distinct from the App Association, already sponsored by Apple, Microsoft, and others.
Global smartphone production could see a record fall of up to 16.5 percent in the second quarter of this year thanks in large part to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new research report.
What could be better than a mobile app that lets you play masses of games, like an old-school arcade squeezed onto your iPhone? A mobile app that lets you play masses of games and make your own new ones.
That’s what Swedish developer Martin Magni created with Fancade, a new iOS app launching Thursday. It offers a huge collection of mini-games, all created using the app itself, along with a drag-and-drop game-maker that lets you create your own.
According to a new report from Digitimes Research, global tablet shipments will climb 45.5% sequentially and 9.9% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2020, reflecting the recovery of China’s supply chain and backed-up demand for tablets for e-learning.
Apple, which retained its position as the world’s no. 1 tablet maker in early 2020, is reported to “significantly increase” iPad orders for Q2.
Social video app TikTok isn’t just a big hit on iOS. According to new data published Wednesday by app analytics platform Sensor Tower, it’s an unprecedented hit — having enjoyed the best quarter of any app ever.
The firm says that TikTok has now been downloaded more than 2 billion times globally across both the App Store and Google Play Store. This comes just five months after it passed the 1.5 billion downloads milestone.
Chipmaker Qualcomm said Wednesday it expects the smartphone industry to ship 30% fewer mobile phones in the second quarter as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, but predicted the demand for 5G smartphones will accelerate from the second half of 2020 into the new year.
As a provider of modem chips to Apple, the predictions give further evidence that the Cupertino-based high-tech giant is on track to release it’s first 5G-ready iPhone lineup later this year simply based on Qualcomm’s estimates of product demand.
The popular utility CleanMyMac debuted way back in 2008, but MacPaw is finally bringing it to the Mac App Store all these years later. This will make it easier to find, buy and install.
The developer admits it did only direct sales of this product for business reasons. But the App Store version will also lack some features of the version sold on the MacPaw website for technical reasons.
A Group FaceTime feature some people find irritating can be disabled in the upcoming iOS version. Currently, the tile showing the face of the person speaking gets larger, pushing everyone else aside. The iOS 13.5 beta introduced Wednesday gives users the option to turn this off.
Unlocking your iPhone while wearing a protective mask might get a little quicker in iOS 13.5. Apple released a new beta of this upcoming version Wednesday, and it includes a neat trick that skips Face ID to immediately ask for a passcode if it detects the user is wearing a mask.