SimpleReach lends additional flexibility to Reachability

SimpleReach is a new tweak that lets you use Reachability in new ways. Instead of just pulling down the interface with a double-tap on the iPhone's Touch ID-enabled Home button, SimpleReach lets you access Reachability at varying degrees. By tapping and swiping from the Home button, users can pull down the iPhone's interface beyond what's possible with stock Reachability, making app interface elements even easier to reach.

Twitterrific for iOS improves accessibility, tag autocompletion, muting, translation and more

Twitterrific, The Iconfactory's freemium Twitter client for the iPhone and iPad, was refreshed in the App Store this morning with a bevy of enhancements, including improvements to username and hash tag autocompletion, a feature introduced in Twitterrific's previous update.

Among other changes, this edition of Twitterrific includes some new quick actions, support for quoted tweets in muffle and muting rules and much more.

Former Apple Music lead Ian Rogers joins French luxury multinational LVMH

Following his resignation from Apple, a move said to have left his colleagues scratching their head, former Apple Music executive and Beats 1 director Ian Rogers has joined LVMH, a French luxury goods conglomerate headquartered in Paris, Re/code said on Tuesday.

This is especially interesting considering Apple itself poached executives from LVMH, including the sales director for watch brand TAG Heuer in July 2014, Heuer Patrick Pruniaux.

Bing for iPhone picks up Interests and News, gains private searching, Apple Watch app and more

Microsoft's Bing for iPhone app was updated last evening with several new features such as Bing Interests, Bing News, a private searching mode, the Popular Now section on your Apple Watch and other enhancements.

I typically use Google's native search app on my iPhone, but Bing saw some rather interesting improvements in recent months. In my personal opinion, Microsoft's search-based app is better designed than Google's with richer descriptions and prettier images.

More importunely, Bing's popular searches feature produces way more relevant results than Google, at least for me.

Amazon Video app updated to allow offline playback for Prime movies and TV shows

Amazon Video received a fairly significant update today, which brings a compelling new feature to its video streaming app—offline viewing for Prime movies and TV shows. In version version 3.2 of the app, users can now download videos for offline viewing, which means that you can queue up TV shows and movies for watching when you're low on signal, using airplane mode, or for the purpose of saving on mobile data usage.

The addition of offline viewing may not seem like a huge deal to some, but it could signal a change for mainstream video streaming apps in general, which for the most part, have only been capable off online viewing. 

Samsung unveils Gear S2 smartwatch lineup with up to 3 days of battery life

After teasing its new Gear smartwatch ahead of Apple's upcoming media event, South Korea-based Samsung last evening formally announced a second-generation Gear S family. The Galaxy Gear S2, as it's called, augments the round display of its predecessor with a rotating bezel for navigating the user interface.

The internals have been refreshed, too, so the Gear S2 has NFC. While it has less storage space than the Apple Watch's 8GB, the Gear S2 uses a stronger battery that Samsung claims runs up to three days on a single charge.

Apple Pay transaction limit in UK raises to £30

When Apple Pay launched in the United Kingdom in mid-July, it was limited to transactions up to £20 without entering in a PIN number or signature, a cap imposed on almost all contactless payments in the country. Tuesday, the cap rose to £30 per touchless payment without entering a PIN number or providing your signature.

As noted by The Verge, the new £30 cap is applied to all contactless payments in the United Kingdom, including those made via contactless cards that work without any other authentication.

Dungeon of the Endless is a roguelike and dungeon defense mash-up

Roguelike games are just about the hardest games to play because of the whole permadeath aspect. What if you were to add a heavy dose of tower defense and action role-playing adventure to your dungeon crawl?

Well, you'd get Dungeon of the Endless, a roguelike that has you sending a party out to protect against waves of incoming enemies. In the meantime, collect goods and upgrade your heroes. The game was previously only on Steam, but is now available on the iPad.

Brookstone’s 100-lumen pocket projector is about the size of Apple TV

One of my favorite summer activities involves watching movies in the backyard on a projector with a group of friends. Sometimes, however, you need a projector that super portable and doesn't need to be plugged into a power source to work.

Brookstone makes a 100-lumen pocket projector that is smaller than the average external hard drive and runs for two hours on a rechargeable battery. So, you can throw it into your backpack and take it with you on your next road trip.

Apple said to be exploring original programming

Apple is exploring getting into the original programming business, reports Variety. Citing sources familiar with the matter, the outlet claims the company has held "preliminary conversations" in recent weeks with Hollywood executives to suss out their interest in producing entertainment content.

It's unclear how large Apple's ambitions are at the moment, but one source says the endgame is to set up development and production divisions that would churn out long-form content in a bid to compete with Netflix, and the like. They say these divisions could be operational as early as next year.

Next-generation Apple TV gaming prowess detailed in a new report

Just as the iPhone and iPad have been chipping away mercilessly at Nintendo's dominance in the handheld gaming market, Apple's next-generation set-top box should give dedicated game consoles a good run for their money.

A report by 9to5Mac's well-informed writer Mark Gurman lays out a few upcoming features for a rumored fourth-generation Apple TV that are bound to prompt gamers, casual and hardcore alike, to jump with joy.

Unreal Engine 4.9 hits with push notifications, CloudKit support and ton more goodies

Epic Games' widely used Unreal Engine that powers countless graphics-rich games like the Infinity Blade trilogy was bumped to version 4.9 today. New features include better graphics in iPhone and iPad games, the ability to use remote push notifications, support for Apple's CloudKit framework which provides authentication, databases and storage services to developers, and many other perks.

Unreal Engine 4.9 can be downloaded through the official website.