A brilliant iPad port of one of the greatest turn-based strategy games of 2016, Civilization VI, is just of one of our picks for this week’s “Awesome Apps of the Week” roundup. In addition, we’ve got neat updates for the official Reddit and Shazam apps, plus a game that you control… using your eyebrows?
Check out our picks below — and have a very happy holidays!
One of the most popular third-party apps on the App Store has officially been purchased by Apple.
London-based Shazam has long dominated the App Store charts with its ability to recognize any song, movie or TV show. Now Apple is bringing that tech in-house by purchasing the startup for nearly half a billion dollars.
Apple is adding another key weapon to its war chest in the battle against Spotify, based on a new report that claims the company plans to acquire the app Shazam.
The popular app helps users identify any song, TV show or movie in seconds just by listening to it via a smartphone’s microphone. iOS integrated Siri with Shazam a few years ago, but it appears that Apple’s looking to bring the entire operation in-house.
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.
iOS 8 includes Shazam — a magical technology that gives your iPhone the power to listen to a song and tell you what it is. In the car, at a movie theater, or even at a crowded bar, you can just ask Siri, “What song is playing?” or hold your home button for a few seconds, and your iPhone will use Shazam tech to tell you exactly what song is in your environment. You can also (surprise) buy the song you just recognized via a little button in the results screen.
But what if you want to buy it later? Or remember what song was playing at the bar last night when that cute girl gave you her number? You can easily do just that with a quick trip to iTunes on your iPhone.
Shazam got a cool update today.
The song-recognition app that Apple is baking into Siri in iOS 8 can now play back full tracks thanks to a partnership with Rdio. Users with the Rdio app installed will be able to listen to a whole song tagged in Shazam without having to the leave the app.
Your Facebook app is about get a lot smarter at knowing what you’re listening to and watching on TV.
In an upcoming update in the App Store, Facebook will add the ability to automatically tag music and TV shows within a status update. The Shazam-like feature will have to be manually enabled by the user, and links to songs and shows will be attached to statuses in the News Feed. Facebook hopes the feature encourages people to share more, while it’s sure to cause some users to worry about sharing too much.
Want to ask Siri what song is playing and get a definitive answer? In iOS 8 you might be able to, according to a new report.
Apple will reportedly partner with Shazam for a song-recognition feature in the next version of its mobile operating system. For those who don’t know, Shazam has been operating its own song-identification app (a personal favorite of mine) for years.
The app pulls in data from an iPhone or iPad’s microphone, sends it to the cloud for processing, and then returns results to users — allowing you to track down those hard-to-find tracks, without having to spend ages googling lyric fragments.
Sure, it’s nice to know you have a bunch of unread email messages. And it’s understandable that iOS apps notify you about every little activity. But after a while, all the little numbers in the red circles on my iPhone’s home screen start to feel like a chore.
I hate having to open up apps just to clear out the taunting little numbers. I could ignore them, but they’re designed to bother me (or, more politely, to get my attention). I mean, I have healthy emotional boundaries, but this is getting ridiculous.
So I turned them off — and you can, too.
Shazam has been a favorite iOS app of mine for years. Have you ever been out and about, heard a song, and wondered what it was? That’s what Shazam is for. It’s always felt like magic to me, and the app’s developers have even added the ability to identify TV shows.
The most recent update to Shazam adds a feature I’m not sure I like, the ability to listen and identify music/TV without the user asking. In the past, you’ve always had to tap the button in the center of the screen, but now an auto switch makes it possible for the app to be listening in the background even when it’s not open or the iPhone is locked.
Shazam, Shazam Encore, and Shazam RED for iOS have today been updated with a number of new features and improvements. In addition to faster recognition on older iOS devices, and improved recognition in “difficult” environments, the release also brings Twitter previews and new TV experiences for those in the United States.
Shazam released version 6.1 of its iOS today on the App Store. The new version comes with a special feature called ‘Pulse’ that can be used to discover new music that is trending on Shazam’s charts.
Included in the big update is a new look for the tab bar, better chart updates, improved Friends page loading, and of course some bug fixes. The new version is available on both iPhone and iPad in the App Store for free.
Here are the release notes:
Shazam has today launched a universal app offering iPad support for the very first time. The release boasts a number of nifty new features, including auto tagging, a dynamic home screen, the ability to flip through recent matches, and more.
Last year, Twitter acquired a small music discovery service called We Are Hunted. The site was shut down, and now Twitter might be ready to use it in a big way.
A new report claims that Twitter will launch its own music discovery app for iOS called Twitter Music. If things go well, we might even get the app as soon as this month.
If you’ve ever heard a snatch of a song in a bar and found yourself tormented for not knowing who it was by, you should probably know about Shazam, an awesome iOS app that analyzes music around you and tells you who the heck it’s by and how to buy it.
Are you one of the 300 million users who already knows about Shazam? Great! Shazam’s just announced some mean new updates to its iPad app, including much faster tagging with automatic resubmissions, better sharing features and Shazam Friends interactions, a revamped home screen, and more.
Curious about who, exactly, is behind the growing number of TV ads for and against this or that political candidate, this or that political issue? Well, wonder no longer, as the developers behind Super PAC App bring Shazam-like audio recognition technology to the political advertisement space.
Popular music recognition app Shazam released a standalone music player for the iPhone back in January. The app lets you scan your iPhone’s library and play back tracks with Shazam’s lyric service, LyricPlay. You can also queue tracks and create playlists specifically for the Shazam Player.
As of today Shazam has updated its music player app for the iPad. The latest update packs LyricPlay and Retina graphics.
Popular music service Shazam has released a free iPhone app today called Shazam Player. The application is meant to serve as a replacement for the stock iOS 5 Music app, and Shazam is hoping to set itself apart with several marque features.
Firstly, Shazam Player brings LyricPlay to your iPhone’s music library, meaning that you can get fullscreen lyrics for tracks as you listen. You can also watch music videos on YouTube in-app, get tour information, read artist bios, and share what you’re listening to on Twitter and Facebook.