Microsoft is preparing to release a long-awaited update to its Office productivity suite for Mac this year. The current version, Office:mac 2011, lags far behind its Windows counterpart in terms of user interface and functionality.
The news first came from Microsoft's Business Group Lead Thorsten Hübschen and has since been confirmed by a spokesperson, who says the company is indeed working on the update and it will provide further details soon...
Two days ago, Day One journaling app for iOS and OS X by Bloom Built has celebrated its third anniversary.
Having been a user since Day One's inception, I couldn't be happier with its clean and elegant design, rich Markdwon support and carefully balanced set of features letting me keep my personal memories, photos and life's best moments neatly organized in one place.
To this date, virtually not a day has gone by without me firing up Day One on my iPhone to capture my thoughts and feelings or simply snap up a memorable moment in time and spice it up with a punchy caption.
I also love Day One's inline photos, how it integrates location data from Foursquare, pulls weather information for entries and keeps my diary synchronized between iOS and Mac devices through iCloud. These are just some of the factors that prompted Apple to name Day One its 2012 Mac App of the Year and 2011 #1 Best App in the Mac App Store.
And now, Bloom Built has updated the iOS edition with Publish, a major new capability that turns your private entries into attractive web pages, available to anyone or just the people with whom you've shared the URL of the entry - the choice is yours.
Jump past the fold for the full breakdown...
It would appear that the Flappy Bird saga is still far from over. The game's creator Dong Nguyen, who pulled the title from iOS and Android at the height of its popularity, says that he is considering returning the game to app stores.
In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Nguyen talks about a wide range of things, including why he pulled Flappy Bird in the first place, and how it has affected his life. He also says that he has been contemplating bringing the game back...
In the 1980s, handheld electronic games were all the rage. They ranged from clamshell style devices that were later used for Nintendo’s DS, to mini games that you could play on a watch. They featured an LCD screen with pre-set custom designs and a visual output similar to digital watch displays.
Snip & Chu harkens back to the old days with an iPad version of the handheld electronic games that we envied as kids and hoped to see in our Christmas stocking every year…
There have been numerous attempts at envisioning what Apple's next iPhone might look like, especially as the likes of Reuters and The Wall Street Journal jumped on the iPhablet bandwagon calling for two new large-screened iPhones, one with a 4.7-inch display and the other rocking a screen that seemingly measures at least five inches diagonally.
A new report by the rather accurate Japanese blog Macotakara now claims that the upcoming iPhones will expand on rather than replace the current four-inch four factor offered by the iPhone 5/5s/5c, with the bigger model classed as a phablet...
Since it was released in the Mac App Store in 2012, ColorStrokes has been one of the top photo apps with dozens of glowing reviews. Fastforward two years later and ColorStrokes has now been downloaded over 1 million times. To celebrate the event, ColorStrokes developer Macphun (these are the guys behind Snapheal and Intensify for Mac – photo apps named 2012 and 2013 Best of Mac App Store) has decided to give free copies of the app to everybody, and they've also put up a giveaway where lucky winners will be able to grab 1 of 3 awesome Foffa Bikes, plus your ColorStrokes images printed on canvas.
What's the trick, you may ask? There is no trick. All you have to do is head over to Macphun website and get your free copy of ColorStrokes. You will have to enter your name and email address, then a download link and activation code will be emailed to you. Once you've downloaded your free copy of ColorStrokes, go back to Macphun website to enter the giveaway where you will have to like their page on Facebook and retweet a message.
That's all there is to it. If you don't believe in giveaways, you can always get your free copy of ColorStrokes, no strings attached!
Polus—the brand new Control Center QuickLaunch tweak for iOS 7—is available right now on Cydia to download. The tweak, which we covered extensively a few weeks ago, allows you to customize various aspects of the QuickLaunch shortcuts appearing in Control Center, including the amount of shortcuts, size, and shape.
You can even assign Activator actions to each QuickLaunch shortcut, including a single tap and a tap-and-hold gesture. This allows you to do interesting things like assign a tap-and-hold gesture to the Twitter app shortcut in order to launch the compose-new-Tweet sheet. When it comes to Polus your only limit is your imagination. Step inside to review our full video walkthrough of the tweak in action.
Apple's iTunes Festival at SXSW in Austin, Texas is kicking off at 8pm Pacific / 11pm Eastern and the music video service Vevo just announced on its blog that it will live stream all of the performances through through its Apple TV channel and its free mobile apps for the iPhone and iPad.
Select performances will be available following each show, Vevo has noted. The five-day event runs from March 11 through March 15 at ACL Live at the Moody Theater.
In addition to Vevo, Apple itself will provide a free live and on-demand stream via the iTunes Store on the iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac or PC devices, as well as in high-definition through the newly-refreshed iTunes Festival app, available free of charge for iOS devices and as a channel on the Apple TV media-streaming box...
If you've been keeping your ear to the street as of late, you're well aware of the Nintype/Hipjot keyboard tweak that's currently in development for Cydia. Unlike most Cydia releases, the Hipjot keyboard implementation is being worked on by the developer of the App Store version—Jormy Games—so you can expect a release that's about as faithful as possible to the developer's original vision.
Comparable to keyboard technology like Swype, Hipjot adds a keyboard that largely departs from Apple's stock iOS keyboard. It allows you to use swiping gestures to go from one character to the next in order to build full words, sentences, and paragraphs. The unique text entry method allows its users to type much faster than is possible on a standard iOS keyboard, with some users reaching upwards of 70-90 words per minute without breaking much of a sweat.
I've had the chance to go hands-on with the Cydia version of the keyboard, and I can tell you that it makes typing much faster. Being able to use Hipjot with stock iOS apps, and 3rd-party apps makes typing a breeze. Inside we've created a preview video of the beta build so that you can see how the keyboard works in action with stock applications.
Facebook-owned Instagram has introduced the popular Lux filter via a free update back in February 2012. Lux is admittedly a nice new way to enhance your photos, but there's just one slight problem: Instagram's one-touch implementation leaves a lot to be desired.
For starters, the effect has no options to fiddle with. For those unaware of Lux, it reduces overexposure and uses sharpening and fill light tweaks to make your shots warmer and people prettier.
It's quite handy in low-light and low-contrast situations, even more so if you take lots of selfies using the iPhone's sub-par front-facing camera. Realizing folks need more control over Lux, Instagram has updated its free iPhone app with a custom Lux slider...
If you're a proud iPhone 5s owner, I'm sure you'll agree that the experience of using iOS 7 on a daily basis is less stellar than what we've normally come to expect from our favorite fruity company. If anything, iOS 7.0.x has taught iPhone owners, especially iPhone 5s ones, to get used to random crashes at least a couple times a day.
It's not just that Safari crashed a lot on me, I crashed while listening to music, reading books and taking pictures - I even crashed on the iOS app switcher. It was almost as if my iPhone 5s would restart if I looked at it the wrong way.
I'm pleased to report that iOS 7 crashes far less on my iPhone 5s versus any prior iOS 7.0.x version, including the recently released iOS 7.0.6. Of course, your mileage may vary and with less than a day's worth of running newly-released iOS 7.1 not everyone's had a chance to experience just how stabler and snappier the new version is.
Having said that, I'd like you to vote in this non-scientific poll about iOS 7.1 stability and learn about your experience thus far. Go ahead, cast a vote and join the civil discussion down in the comments....
Apple has delivered iOS 7.1 yesterday, its first major iOS update since the software's launch nearly six months ago. We've already detailed some of the noteworthy enhancements like Touch ID reliability improvements, new Siri features, CarPlay support, a bunch of bug fixes - some of which have been credited to prominent iOS hackers like the evad3rs team - and more.
According to developer Mike Piontek, Maps in iOS 7.1 includes a poorly labeled new feature called HFP Prompts which allows the app to play navigation prompts over your car’s speakers, via Bluetooth, even when the iPhone is not selected as the audio source. It's a great addition to Apple's in-car initiative because no longer do you have to fiddle with audio settings as HFP Prompts automatically does the right thing for you.
Jump past the fold for the full breakdown...