It's the weekend again, and you know what that means: it's time for another edition of our Apps of the Week roundup. This week we have some awesome selections, including a video editing app that makes stop-animation a breeze, a fun new group video chat platform, a new app for listening to music with friends, and two great new games.
Apple on Friday threatened to pull Phoneys, a 99-cent sticker pack which lets you prank friends by putting words in their mouth. The #1 Top Paid item in the Messages App Store, Phoneys employs a simple trick to make the illusion work: it provides stickers that look exactly like the blue iMessage bubbles. Phoneys developer Adam Howell says Apple told him it would be pulling the app next Thursday unless it's fundamentally changed so that the stickers looked nothing like iMessage bubbles.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC), which builds Apple's in-house designed A10 Fusion chip that powers the iPhone 7, has confirmed mass production of ten-nanometer chips for clients will kick off by year-end, beating Intel by almost a year in terms of high-performance silicon.
Chip maker Intel's own ten-nanometer chips are due in second half of 2017.
A pair of new flyover videos from YouTubers Duncan Sinfield and Matthew Roberts reveal that Apple has installed exterior lights at Apple Campus 2 site, showing the iSpaceship building facade glowing at night. It's quite a spectacular sight given the enormous scale of the flying saucer-shaped structure.
Apple Campus 2, as it's officially called, will become home to more than 12,000 employees when it's completed some time in early 2017.
Could Apple be working on next-generation Mac hardware that would be powered by an in-house designed processor based on CPU blueprints from British fabless semiconductor maker ARM Holdings plc? That's exactly the conclusion one could reach by looking closely at code strings in the macOS Sierra kernel, discovered by Dutch outlet TechTastic.nl.
As confirmed by various news reports, authorized resellers and local Apple websites around the world, the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus will be expanding in additional markets beginning October 7. The handsets will be available for purchase in India and Ukraine starting October 7.
A week later, on October 14, the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus will arrive in Macao, Macedonia, Malaysia, Montenegro, South Africa and Turkey.
Bloomberg is reporting that Apple is in negotiations with Japanese consumer electronics maker Sharp to supply organic LED displays (OLED) for future iPhones. Any potential agreement is contingent upon Sharp’s production capability. The rumored discussions reportedly stem from Apple’s desire to secure multiple suppliers for organic LED screens and minimize exposure to any single supplier.
Text editing can be so cumbersome on the iOS platform, mostly because of having to tap and hold on text to select it and then having to wait for the editing menu to appear on the screen afterwards.
Fortunately, a new free jailbreak tweak called PreditctionShortcuts adds cut, copy, and paste options right to the QuickType section of the keyboard for ease of access. Best of all, it doesn't even impede on your ability to use the predictive typing features.
While Apple might be trying to attract high profile hackers to help secure iOS through its bug bounty program, Zerodium appears to be once again trying to poach the talent of jailbreaking iOS for an even larger bounty.
Apple on Thursday updated its App of the Week promotion with the app Flowing. This means that for the next 7 days, you can get the popular meditation and mindfulness app for free on both iPhone and iPad—a solid savings of $3.
For those who aren't familiar with Flowing, it's a health and fitness app that promises to help you upgrade your sleep, focus, and productivity. Its features include guided meditation, 3D parallax scenes, and customizable white noise.
Accessory maker SteelSeries designs some pretty cool Apple-compatible accessories. I use their Nimbus Wireless Gaming Controller to play games on my Apple TV and couldn't be happier with it. Today, the company said in an email blast to customers that they'll be “changing the gaming headset” next Tuesday.
“On October 4, we’re releasing our love letter to gamers,” teases the firm. The email offers a sneak peek at the upcoming on-ear wired headset said to provide comfort and high-quality sound.
Microsoft today announced availability of freshly updated Skype for iOS apps. Bumped to version 6.25, both Skype for iPhone and Skype for iPad now include SiriKit support that lets them integrate with Siri so you can call people and send messages using just your voice. The apps also take advantage of CallKit, which allows VoIP Skype calls to behave like normal cellular calls with fullscreen contact images on the Lock screen and integration with Phone's Recents and Favorites on iSO 10 devices.