New figures released by app analytics firm App Annie show that mobile users are more likely than ever to pay for music services by way of in-app purchases.
Looking at figures from August, streaming music offerings from Spotify, Pandora and Beats Music were among the top earning apps in terms of revenue.
Photos on iOS 8 are so good that you will be able to ditch a whole home-screen folder’s worth of editing and organizing apps. That’s not an exaggeration: Apple’s new mobile OS packs in so many great new features that – even without the extending abilities of iOS 8’s new plug-ins – you can do pretty much any edit right there in the photos app.
The camera, too, has gotten an upgrade, and – maybe the most important for some – so has the iCloud Photo Stream, which will now give access to all your photos, from any device, whenever you want.
Sounds pretty good huh?
iOS 8 is about to be unleash on the world today after debuting earlier this summer at WWDC. Tim Cook is calling it the biggest iOS update ever and for good reason, as the new OS has been packed with hundreds of new tools for developers, as well as new features that make iOS devices, quicker, more productive, and more seamlessly integrated with Mac than ever before.
You won’t see huge visual changes like Apple made with iOS 7 last year, but there’s plenty of features for everyone to be excited about in iOS 8, whether its the new messaging tools, improved camera features, family sharing, Hand-off, or the sleek new Spotlight.
Before you jump headfirst into the biggest iOS release ever, get acquainted with the most important new features in this Cult of Mac guide to iOS 8:
With Apple now accepting iOS 8 apps in the App Store, more third-party developers are starting to show off their use of Extensibility and Touch ID integration.
Day One, an app that won a coveted Apple Design Award at WWDC in June, is readying its iOS 8 update with a Notification Center widget, Share extension, and Touch ID support.
We love Unread, an RSS reader by developer Jared Sinclair. We’re also big fans of Castro, an exquisitely beautiful podcasting app by Supertop. So we’re delighted to hear that both apps are under the same roof, saving one developer from poverty and frustration while making another developer’s catalog ever stronger.
Thousands of angry iPhone users have found an album they weren’t looking for: U2’s Songs of Innocence.
Instead of making the band’s mediocre new album an opt-in freebie, Apple jammed it down the throats of a half-billion iTunes Store customers, enraging some of the company’s most loyal fans. Whether they wanted the album or not, it’s now showing up as “purchased” in individuals’ iTunes libraries on their computers and phones.
When Tim Cook trotted out the Irish rockers for a limp finale to Tuesday’s big Apple Watch announcement, he called giving away the band’s new record “the largest album release of all time” — but now it looks like one of the dumbest.
We’ve had a couple of days to let the massive announcements of Apple’s September 9 keynote sink in, but if you want to relive the event you might want to check out this new video from Jonathan Mann.
Who is Jonathan Mann, you may ask? The brilliant YouTube musician who created the celebrated Mario Opera close to a decade ago is the answer. An unabashed Apple fan, Mann was previously responsible for composing the iPhone Antenna song which Steve Jobs publicly danced to, and earlier this year composed a great WWDC ear worm which is still rattling around my brain months later.
Following Apple’s Tuesday keynote Mann is back in Apple territory with a new musical tour-de-force entitled “Apple Watch: The Musical,” which somehow manages to compress Apple’s entire Tuesday event into just 3 minutes and 13 seconds.
Tim Cook and company brought down the house at the Flint Center in Cupertino, and while investors haven’t reacted positively, Apple fanboys are still trying to recover from the hurricane of incredible new products Apple just announced.
The Apple Watch, big iPhones, Apple Pay and even some new software features were previewed at Apple’s first fashion-forward event. But there were a couple of disappointments hiding in the dark corners of the Flint Center as well. Like, where was the talk about the Apple Watch’s battery life? And why is there no sapphire glass on the iPhone 6?
Here are the biggest disappointments from today’s Apple keynote:
The Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic is set to be at Apple’s special media event this morning to help demonstrate the benefit of Apple’s Health app to medical professionals, according to the Star Tribune.
Mayo Clinic is one of the best-known names in U.S. healthcare and partnering with Apple will benefit both organizations: Apple with legitimacy for its new mobile health push, and Mayo Clinic in terms of using technology to better provide health and fitness tracking for patients.
As per the Star Tribune, Mayo Clinic’s role at Apple’s event will involve demonstrating how data can flow into the more sophisticated management system of a major health center.
Beta testing apps is about to get ridiculously easy for developers and users alike now that Apple’s new version of TestFlight has landed on the App Store.
Testflight has been used by developers for years, but the app has never been available on the App Store until today because it violated app review guidelines. Adding it as an official app should increase the popularity of beta testing among iOS users by letting you sign up with just your email address, rather than forcing devs to manage UDIDs for you.