‘Tis the Season for icy corpses and carnivorous reindeer. Okay, maybe not the reindeer part, but there’s definitely a legion of undead terrorizing the North Pole and spreading Christmas fear. That’s right, our favorite zombie shooter title Dead Trigger has received a freakishly festive holiday update full of cold corpses, new weapons, and a jolly dead soul called Zanta.
Camera+ for iPad just got a brand new update that introduces a high quality setting for snapping — you guessed it — high quality photographs. It comes in addition to the two quality settings already offered by Camera+, and its creators warn that using it will cause your storage to get eaten up a whole lot quicker.
One of the best cloud-based services out there, Dropbox, has gotten its iOS app updated with a shiny new design and photo gallery, which adds its own tab and a scrollable timeline of the automatically uploaded photos from your iOS device of choice.
Have you ever used Google Chrome on your iOS devices to listen to music on YouTube, only to find it stops playing when you close the app? Sometimes that’s a good thing — you don’t always need videos to continue to playing in the background when they’ve been closed. But sometimes it’s annoying, like when you’re listening to music.
Thanks to the app’s latest update, you can prevent that from happening.
Today Facebook released an update to its popular iOS app that brings multiple speed improvements and a new feature. Version 5.3 speeds up the timeline profile view for the iPhone, and the News feed now loads even faster on both iPhone and iPad.
A new addition greatly improves the photo uploading experience in Facebook’s app. You can finally choose a specific album to upload to from your device’s Camera Roll. Finally.
Facebook rebuilt its app from the ground up to optimize it for iOS months ago, and since then the app has been updated with a Share button, redesigned photo uploader, Gifts, and other interface improvements. Today’s update can be downloaded for free in the App Store.
Source: App Store
Apple released iTunes 11 about two weeks ago, and now the software’s first update has been released in the Mac App Store. iTunes 11.0.1 brings back the ability to find duplicate items in a library. Apple excluded the feature in the first version of iTunes 11, but the company promised to add it back in a future update.
Besides the ability to display duplicates, Apple has included some bug fixes for iTunes Match, AirPlay and multiple stability improvements.
Amazon has updated its Instant Video app for iOS today, introducing support for the iPhone and iPod touch. The service has been available on iPad since August, but this is the first time it has come to smaller iOS devices, giving Amazon Prime subscribers more than 30,000 free videos in their pockets.
After rolling out a redesigned Yahoo! Mail on Tuesday, Yahoo! has launched a brand new Flickr app for iPhone this morning that appears to be going head to head with Instagram. It’s a completely redesign of the previous version, and it promises to be easier to use and more beautiful. It also offers new features, including 16 filters for your photographs.
Google is finally getting around to updating the Google News experience for tablet users. While this change most likely has to do with the surge in Nexus tablet sales, it’s a welcomed update for all. Tablet users (yes, even you iPad users) will now enjoy a more intuitive experience when catching up on current news via the Google News website.
In my review of Twitterrific 5, I commended the app’s incredible attention to detail. Today The Iconfactory released its first update to Twitterrific 5, and version 5.0.1 shows how a great app treats the finer details with great importance. There’s nothing groundbreaking included, but there are some wonderfully subtle improvements and a decent handful of bug fixes.
The original Angry Birds game for smartphones, the title that started it all back in 2009, celebrates its third birthday this week. And what better way to do that than with lots of new content. In addition to support for Apple’s new iPhone 5 (finally!), you can look forward to 30 brand new levels and more on Android and iOS.
A big Instagram update is now available for Android and iOS devices. The camera interface of the app has been improved with a quick preview of the last picture you took on your device. Now there’s an optional grid guide for taking pictures and a permanent grid to help you with aligning when you’re scaling and cropping. For iPhone 5 users, Instagram has included an “improved Camera Roll image selector for quick access to your last photograph.”
Today’s update also includes a number of speed enhancements, Foursquare buttons, several design tweaks, and a new filter called “Willow.”
KitCam has quickly become one of my favorite photography apps for the iPhone — featuring in last week’s must-have apps roundup — and it has just been updated to add a number of handy features. In addition to photo importing from the camera roll, KitCam now has a time lapse timer, and better zoom functionality.
As jailbreakers wait with eager expectation for an untethered jailbreak that works on iOS 6 and the iPhone 5, Cydia developers are still hard at work. One of the community’s most popular hackers, Grant “chpwn” Paul, has updated many of his popular tweaks. His most famous tweaks, Infinidock, Infiniboard, and Infinifolders, have all been completely rebuilt and made compatible with iOS 6. Collectively they now form Infiniapps 2.0.
Some of Paul’s other iOS tweaks have also received minor updates, like VoiceActivator and Zephyr.
Today Apple issued a significant update to Final Cut Pro that squashes a number of bugs. The 10.0.7 update addresses “overall stability, performance and compatibility” according to Apple, and it’s a free download for existing users in the Mac App Store.
The last Final Cut Pro update was released back in October, and it brought several key new features, including multichannel audio and RED camera support.
Apple released iTunes 11 last week, which introduced a new look and a number of new features. It also took a couple of features away, including Cover Flow and duplicate song detection. While the former appears to be dead and buried now, it looks like the latter is one its way back in a future update.
Apple has issued some small updates to its iWork suite in the Mac and iOS App Stores. Pages, Keynote and Numbers have been updated to version 9.3 on the Mac, and a 1.7 update is rolling out to the iOS versions.
The only thing Apple has said about the minor 9.3 update on the Mac is that it adds support for the 1.7 versions of the iOS apps. All updates are recommended for iWork users on both platforms.
Amazon has issued an update to its Kindle app for iOS today, introducing its excellent X-Ray for Books feature which has been a big selling point for the company’s own Kindle hardware. If you’re not already familiar with it, X-Ray allows you to see the “bones of the book,” Amazon says, helping you learn more about its characters, places, and phrases.
One of the things I’ve always appreciated about Apple is how they approach upgrades. While companies like Microsoft sell their operating systems at an exorbitant licensing cost, Apple has favored an approach in which they release their operating system upgrades either for free (as with iOS) or at a low cost that anyone can afford.
The benefits are big. Updated versions of operating systems tend to be more secure, which helps guarantee OS X’s lead over Windows when it comes to malware. Naturally, then, Mac users tend to adopt new versions of OS X faster than Windows users upgrade, but the statistical disparity might surprise you.
Skype has issued an update to its iOS app that introduces support for Microsoft accounts, and a number of new features. Users can now login to the app using their Messenger, Hotmail, and Outlook.com credentials and then merge their accounts. And if you’ve got an iOS device with a Retina display, you can enjoy animated emoticons. Finally!
Adobe pushed out a big update to its Ideas app for iOS today, introducing a number of news tools and features that promise to give you “more creative options and control.” There are enhanced tools for drawing, working with color, and managing layers, Adobe says — in addition to support for the iPhone 5, iPad mini, and iOS 6.
Amazon’s popular mobile app for iOS received a significant update today. Version 2.3.1 brings the ability to receive push notifications when a package has shipped and been delivered. Amazon can also send daily alerts for its “Lightning Deals.”
The app’s iPad interface has also been updated with pinch/double-tap-to-zoom for product images and descriptions.
Apple today released its second supplemental update to OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.2. Supplemental Update 2.0 addresses a bug in OS X’s Keychain, the database that stores saved passwords and logins.
We received a couple tips yesterday about 2012 Macs being unable to update to 10.8.2 due to a password-related bug. It appears that today’s update resolves that issue.
“This update addresses an issue with Keychain that can affect 2012 Mac systems,” according to Apple. If you bought a new Mac this year, then grab this 27MB update now in the Mac App Store.
Source: Apple
If you’re a Comcast subscriber and have been using the XFINITY TV Player app on Android or iOS, there’s a sweet little update waiting for in your respective app market. Sometimes the only thing getting in the way of enjoying one of your favorite TV shows or movies on your mobile device is a bad connection or no WiFi. Thankfully, Comcast is taking care of this issue by allowing users to download some of their favorite content straight to their device to be viewed at a time when a connection may not be available.
Loren Britcher’s hit word game Letterpress has received its first major update in the iOS App Store. The game that forced us all to actually use Game Center has been given a number of improvements and bug fixes, including the ability to request a rematch.
