Tapping iOS 8 Extensions to offload Apple Watch app processing to iPhone is a smart move

In conceiving a feasible solution to running third-party apps in the extremely constrained power environment of the Apple Watch, Apple has come up with a rather peculiar yet familiar idea.

Initially, any third-party app processing will be offloaded to an iPhone in your pocket until the Cupertino firm begins accepting fully native Watch apps late next year.

Such an approach leaves only the app's storyboards and user interface resources running directly on the Watch, with everything else happening on an iPhone.

The only exception that proves the rule are Apple's stock apps which get executed on the Watch itself. In addition to acting as a viewport for third-party apps running on na iPhone, the Watch also manages Notifications and Glances and performs other lightweight housekeeping operations that don't tax the battery much.

To accomplish this feat, Apple is leveraging App Extensions in iOS 8 to run third-party Watch apps in a split mode.

Apple partners with Rubicon Project to help sell, automate its iAd inventory

Rubicon Project, a company that focuses on automating the buying and selling of advertising, has announced a partnership with Apple to help the Cupertino-based company move its iAd inventory. Apple hasn't officially commented on the matter, however speaking for the company Rubicon Project says "it had been selected by Apple to help power iAd’s adoption of automated advertising for Apple iAd’s 250,000+ mobile developers."

iH8sn0w shows off untethered iOS 8.1.1 jailbreak

Well known iOS hacker iH8sn0w has posted a new video on his YouTube channel of an iPad 3 (J2a model) running an untethered iOS 8.1.1 jailbreak. This is significant because 8.1.1 patched 3 of the Pangu team's exploits, effectively killing the latest jailbreak.

As usual, just because we have proof that a firmware can be jailbroken, doesn't mean that we're guaranteed to see a public release anytime soon. In fact, it's worth pointing out that iH8sn0w has in the past demonstrated jailbreaks that never saw the light of day.

GT Advanced creditors complain about getting ‘too little’ in proposed Apple settlement

As Apple moves to repurpose the Mesa, Arizona plant it sought to run with the now bankrupt GT Advanced Technology, Reuters is reporting Wednesday that GT's creditors aren't all too happy about the agreement.

Even though the iPhone maker is committed to keeping the Arizona facility alive despite the failed sapphire manufacturing agreement with GT, creditors in a bankruptcy court filing noted that GT “may have gotten too little” in the proposed settlement with Apple.

FT: Apple to bundle Beats Music with iOS next year

As Apple continues to migrate Beats Music to iTunes servers ahead of a major service overhaul, The Financial Times newspaper is reporting that the iPhone maker is looking to bundle the subscription music service into its iOS mobile operating system “early next year”.

If true, Spotify will have plenty to worry about because Beats Music would become instantly available on hundreds of millions of iPhones and iPads without requiring a download.

App Store changes ‘Free’ button to ‘Get’

Apple's App Store in the United States and elsewhere has changed the “Free” button to “Get”, as first noted by Sebastián Salazar on Twitter. The new “Get” button now appears in the App Store on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices, as well as in the App Store section of iTunes for Windows and Mac.

As Salazar noted, the change may be in response to the avalanche of freemium software models that have been dominating mobile application stores for quite some time now.

How to access Google’s Inbox service on Safari

A month ago, Google launched a new iPhone app called Inbox, a different take on email which uses Sparrow-like gestures to help you achieve Inbox Zero nirvana and surface the most relevant items that tend to get lost in an avalanche of unwanted emails users get bombarded with.

Available on iOS, Android and Chrome, Inbox leaves fans of Apple's Safari browser in the dark. It's fortunate that there's a quick workaround to that, let me show you how.

Inbox is available free in the App Store.

WhatsApp starts encrypting instant messages on Android, iOS and other platforms coming soon

WhatsApp, the most popular instant-messaging platform with more than 600 million users which Facebook snapped up for $16 billions earlier this year, has started to protect data with end-to-end encryption, The Wall Street Journal reports.

For the time being, text messages exchanged between Android users of WhatsApp are being encrypted by default.

It shouldn't be too long until the company adds encryption to the iOS app and other mobile platforms. Encryption protects users' communications from governments and hackers alike by making the data unreadable as it travels between servers.

Gameplay video shows SimCity BuildIt in action

Following its confirmation in September that work was underway on SimCity BuildIt for iOS, the latest installment in the popular city-building franchise, Electronic Arts today shared the first gameplay trailer for the forthcoming iPhone and iPad simulation.

“Meet your citizens’ needs to keep them happy, or make questionable choices and feel your citizens’ wrath,” EA Games Mobile said.

The game features countless buildings, quality 3D graphics with a gorgeous 360-degree view of your city that you can zoom, rotate and pan around, a variety of natural disasters, unlockable buildings and much more.

Twitter now lets you search through its entire archive of public tweets sent since 2006

The popular micro-blogging service Twitter yesterday announced that it's finally indexed every tweet, allowing anyone on Twitter to find any public tweet sent since 2006.

Advanced search is now available on the web and mobile, but not in third-party Twitter clients. Once the company opens up the Search API to developers, apps that analyze and map search terms over time will get better.

The biggest benefit of searching through Twitter's public archive: no longer do you have to download your entire Twitter archive periodically just to be able to re-visit your old tweets. Before, Twitter search was limited to tweets from the past couple of weeks.

Noting it's always been its long-standing goal to let people search through every tweet ever published, Twitter shared a number of technical details on the kind of search index infrastructure needed to make the feature a reality, a considerable feat given users have published hundreds of billions of tweets since the first tweet went live over 8 years ago.

64-bit version of Google Chrome for Mac launches

After releasing 64-bit Chrome for Windows and a beta version of Chrome for Mac with 64-bit support back in August, Google today announced that the app is out of beta and available to everyone.

Public release of the 64-bit Chrome for Mac edition marks the end of the road for 32-bit NPAPI (Netscape Plug-in APIs) plugins as the Internet company now requires developers to provide their extensions with 64-bit support.

Most users shouldn’t be affected, however, because the vast majority of plugins and extensions are readily available in both 32-bit and 64-bit form. Chrome 39.0.2171.65 (Google, we need to talk about version numbers!) also includes more than three dozen under the hood changes for stability and performance and comes with a set of new APIs allowing extension developers to take advantage of new features.

Rooster Teeth vs Zombiens Invades the App Store

The whole “aliens versus zombies” thing is way overrated. We all know that zombies would win. They can’t die and they turn you into one of them with just a single bite. If they were fighting aliens, well, they would turn them into “Zombiens.” Or, at least that’s what the protagonist of this game has dubbed them

Rooster Teeth vs Zombiens is a survival game starring the cast members of Rooster Teeth Studios (the guys that created the hilarious web series Red vs. Blue). If you want the RT cast to stay alive, you’d better learn how to fight.