update - page 7

Forget Spotify, Pandora and Beats Music. I’ve tried them all, and for my money, Rdio is the best streaming music subscription service out there. It has the best app design and, for my tastes, the best music selection. But you have to pay.

An update, though, is trying to make Rdio much more palatable to free users, as well as help all users find new music faster. It’s making the service free to everyone, emphasizing ad-supported stations for free users (with up to 15 times as many tracks as competing services), and new, smart social services for paid users.

We’re huge fans of Adobe Photoshop Mix for the iPad, but as much as we like it, it had some rough edges.

Our own Charlie Sorrel called it more like a proof of concept than a proper app, that needed some work before it became truly indispensible.

A new update to Photoshop Mix has just helped polish some of the app’s rough edges. The new version adds support for a much-needed Undo/Redo function, as well as local saving, Dropbox support, swapping images, and more.

Apple has dropped a new version of its iTunes app, solving a continuing problem for podcast listeners where subscribed podcasts stop updating with new episodes.

The iTunes version 11.3.1 refresh also fixes another podcast related issue, which saw iTunes become unresponsive while browsing through different podcast episodes.

If you have a MacBook Air from mid-2011, you may have noticed intermittent issues where your laptop has a harder time waking up from sleep mode than it normally would have done, and when it does, the fans might loudly blast as if the whole laptop were on fire.

Although rare, these issues have been afflicting customers for at least the last couple of years. But it seems like Apple has finally figured out what’s wrong, as a new update today specifically for mid-2011 MacBook Air owners fixes the longstanding issues.

CloudMagic, the best third-party email client for mobile, just got even better thanks to a major new update that’s available right now on Android and iOS. In addition to adding quick filters for things like unread and starred messages, the release brings customizable alert tones, account nicknames, access to spam folders, and lots more.

Purchased last year by Dropbox, Mailbox is already one of the most intuitive apps on the iPhone and iPad for rapidly reaching inbox zero. Employing a series of swipes, Mailbox users can quickly delete, archive, or save emails for later, without ever leaving the inbox screen.

But after an update yesterday evening, Mailbox got even better. A new swipe action has been added to the app, giving users the ability to swipe a message once, and automatically file away all messages that resemble it.

Readdle today rolled out its biggest update yet for PDF Expert 5, one of the finest PDF editing apps for iOS. It adds support for continuous scrolling and calculations, improves performance, and makes PDF Expert a universal app — so you only have to buy it once to use it on both iPhone and iPad.

If you haven’t been using If This, Then That (IFTTT) on your iPhone or iPad, you really ought to be.

It’s a really amazing way to connect up all the things you do on your devices, putting them together in new ways for new uses.

Want to send all your iOS photos to OneNote or Evernote? There’s a recipe for that. How about making your Phillips Hue lightbulbs flash a specific color when you pull up into your driveway? There’s an IFTTT recipe for that, too.

Chances are, if you can think of it, you can make it happen, connecting different services and apps like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, your iOS Photos app, location services, and the like in fantastically useful new ways.

There’s a new update for the iOS app, and it’s got some pretty spectacular new stuff to check out.

Realmac Software today confirmed that the much-anticipated update that will bring reminders to Clear for iOS will arrive in April. It was originally due to arrive this month, but the company has been working hard to ensure everything’s just right before it goes live.

Immensely popular cross-platform messaging service WhatsApp is gearing up to take on Skype with voice-over-IP (VoIP) calling — and these are the screenshots that prove it. The feature will have a similar interface as the built-in Phone app, and it boasts features like speaker phone and muting.

Realmac Software is throwing in the towel on Clear+ and making its original Clear release the priority. A new update that’s rolling out today brings iPad support to the app at no extra cost, while support for Reminders is coming soon.

Dungeon Keeper for iOS has received its first update, one week after its initial launch in the App Store.

Sadly, the update doesn’t remove some of the game’s worse freemium-associated elements (our review criticized its approach to micro-payments for being “overeager to claim all of your precious gems to get anything done”) but it does add a host of other modifications — including “the power of friendship” which lets you drag in other friends to play through Facebook and Game Center.

VLC, a popular third-party video player for iOS, today received a major update that introduces a swanky new design and lots of new features. The app now looks right at home on devices running iOS 7, and it has the ability to stream videos from Google Drive and Dropbox. You can even download videos from UPnP media multimedia servers on your local network.

For those of us who live the lives of professional bloggers, here’s a common occurence. You wake up in the morning and load up a bunch of tabs of stories you want to read that day. Soon, you have two or three dozen tabs open, one of which has an auto-playing video. And no matter how hard you try, you can’t bloody find the thing!

Yeah. Chrome just fixed that.

Snapchat has today issued a new update for Android and iOS that allows users to opt out of linking their phone number with their username. The move comes after 4.6 million phone numbers were leaked on New Year’s Day following “abuse” of the Snapchat API — which Snapchat has apologized for in a new blog post.

When Xbox Music finally made its debut on the iPhone last September, one of its most notable shortcomings was the lack of ability to store music locally for offline listening. But a new update that hit the App Store today rectifies that, giving subscribers the ability to enjoy their favorite playlists without a data connection.

BBM has been a huge success on Android and iOS, and so although they may be rival platforms, that won’t stop BlackBerry from porting over its biggest and best BBM features to keep its messaging service alive.

In 2014, the Canadian company will rollout major updates that add BBM Channels, BBM Voice, and new sharing features — and you can see them in action in the video below.

Pebble has rolled out a new update to its hugely popular smartwatch, finally adding a Do Not Disturb mode, multiple alarms, better performance on iOS, and numerous new features and improvements. 

At an event in New York City today, Instagram announced Instagram Direct, a new feature that allows users to share private photos and videos with their friends and loved ones. It will be baked into the existing Instagram app for Android and iOS with an update that’s rolling out today.

Facebook Messenger, the standalone app for the social network’s chat system, was updated Tuesday night. The new version of the chat app, which also includes the now-standard bug fixes, adds two new features that can be accessed with a tap to a friend’s chat icon.

All you need to do is tap on a profile picture in any conversation in Messenger to view their Timeline on Facebook. The other option is to call them using Facebook’s voice chat for free.

Google has today announced that an additional ten applications for Android and iOS now support Chromecast streaming. VEVO, Red Bull.TV, Songza, and more have been updated to allow users to enjoy news, sports, and music on their $35 dongle.

Hatch, the cute virtual pet for iPhone from the makers of Clear, has received its first update just one week after making its App Store debut. The release adds some beautiful wallpapers for your iPhone, introduces some new shop items, and makes a long list of fixes, tweaks, and improvements.

Using the latest Tweetbot release in bed will be a much more enjoyable experience after today, thanks to the latest update that introduces a brand new night theme. The version 3.2 release also makes it faster to switch between multiple accounts, and allows you to reorder them for your convenience.

Few companies are better at keeping their games updated than Rovio, who’ve released more updates for its Angry Birds games than one can count. Add another grain of sand to the beaches of infinity, then, because the bird-vs.-pig physics strategy game has just gotten a new update, adding 30 levels to the core game as well as giving the bomb bird a new electric power.

Given that it’s one of the biggest and most successful third-party messaging platforms available on mobile, you might be wondering why WhatsApp still hasn’t been updated for iOS 7 — more than two months after the software’s public release, and over five months after it was first made available to developers. (I certainly am.)

But the update — complete with a fancy redesign — is on its way, and you can get an early glimpse at it in the hands-on video below.