Apps

Google Earth for iOS gains 3D imagery, guided tours, 64-bit support & more

Christian Zibreg ∙ August 2, 2017

Google today announced a major update for its popular Earth app for iPhone and iPad, bringing many new features that debuted on the desktop and web app in April of this year.

Importantly, it's received much needed support for 64-bit iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices to ensure that it will continue to run on iOS 11 which does not support 32-bit apps at all.

But first, check out the key highlights of this release:

Choose your own adventure with Voyager—Experience interactive stories from around the world. Discover new places with Knowledge Cards—Flip through cards and learn about local landmarks. Orbit the world in 3D—Use the new 3D button or tilt the map with two fingers. Snap and share a Postcard—Capture snapshots of locations and share them with your friends. Feeling Lucky?—Roll the dice and see where the world takes you.

If you like the Flyover feature on Apple Maps, you'll love 3D imagery in Google Earth for iPhone and iPad. To switch to the three-dimensional view, tap a new 3D button and use two fingers to rotate and tilt your vantage point (hint: use this mode to explore Apple Park in all its glory).

You can also capture snapshots of the various locations you find in Earth and share them with your friends. To snap a virtual postcard, tap a new camera icon in the app's toolbar section.

And to help you plan your trip, Google Earth for iOS allows you to experience interactive stories from around the world. Called Voyager, this feature is available Under the Travel category.

There, you’ll find detailed multi-day itineraries for seventeen major cities around the world, including tours like “Paris with Kids”, “Beyond the Beaches of Rio de Janeiro” and many more.

Here are a few other Voyager tours worth checking out:

Natural Treasures from BBC Earth—Journey to six habitats, from islands to mountains to jungles, and learn about the unique and thrilling wildlife in each. Gombe National Park in Tanzania—Hear from Jane Goodall about her team’s chimpanzee research and conservation efforts. Mexico with Lola—Check out the little monsters featured in Sesame Street’s Girl Muppets Around the World, and learn about modern Mayan cultures.

If you'd like to jump to someplace new, you should try Google's “I'm Feeling Lucky” feature by tapping a new dice icon in the toolbar. Lastly, Knowledge Cards, another new feature in Google Earth for iPhone and iPad, makes it easy to see related facts for a place.

Just pull up from the bottom of the screen to bring up a card with rich information about the thousands of places and landmarks around the world. As I mentioned before, the app now supports 64-bit hardware and comes with a brand new icon for your Home screen.

Grab Google Earth for iOS for free from App Store.

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Plant a tree and get things done with Forest

Steffen Reich ∙ August 2, 2017

Living in a time where mindless entertainment is only one touch (or app) away can make it incredibly hard to focus on the simplest tasks and really get your head down for uninterrupted, productive work. If you can relate to the struggle, Forest, an app best described as a good-natured trojan horse inside the world of apps, could be a service to tickle your fancy.

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Teleport, Turf, Tasty, and other apps to check out this weekend

Cody Lee ∙ Updated October 17, 2018

This week's edition of our Apps of the week roundup features a new AI-based photo editor, an app for quickly finding your group at a large event, and a new twist on the digital recipe book. And as always, we've selected two great new games for you to check out.

Teleport

Teleport is a new, interesting app that allows you to edit live photos using artificial intelligence. No, we're not talking about adding animal ears or swapping faces—this app lets you change your hair color, alter your backdrop, blur the background and more. The interface is intuitive and well-designed, and as far as I can tell, the AI-based effects are impressive. Teleport is available for free.

Turf

Turf is a simple, but smart app that acts as a compass towards where you want to go. Imagine you're meeting a friend at a ballgame, or a musical festival. Well instead of sending countless texts back and forth, or making hard-to-hear phone calls, the people can simply send a point-of-interest using Turf, and your app will take you straight to it. I know other, more robust maps apps allow you to share your location, but this is more straight-to-the-point (no pun intended). Plus no account is required. Turf is available for free.

Tasty

BuzzFeed's new Tasty app features all 1,700+ Tasty videos and a new Step-By-Step instruction mode that explains how to cook every recipe. The "My Recipes" page serves as your own personal cookbook and an innovative Search tool allows you to filter recipes by ingredient, cuisine, and social occasion. You can even filter out recipes with restrictions like vegan, gluten-free, low carb, healthy and comfort food. Easy is available for free.

NEO Scavenger

Play the acclaimed PC survival RPG on your iPhone or iPad. NEO Scavenger is a game where you must survive in the wasteland long enough to figure out who you are. Each turn, you must decide where to go, how to scavenge for supplies, and how to deal with anything and anyone you encounter. And with each passing minute, the pit in your stomach grows, your dehydration worsens, your muscles tire, and your body temperature drops in the cold autumn air. Choose your starting abilities carefully, because they and your wit are the only tools you have in the apocalypse! NEO Scavenger is available free (with a single IAP to unlock the full game).

Vista Golf

Vista Golf is a simple but elegant mini golf game, defined by crisp controls and the endless competition of new courses every week. We wanted to create the purest form of mini golf in your pocket, so if you seek both fun an frustration, this is the game for you. Features include Competitive Mode, Infinite (arcade) Mode, leaderboards, and weekly updates. I know there are a ton of golf games out there already, but this one seems worth checking out. Vista Golf is available for free.

More apps to check out Apple’s free app of the week: Domino Drop Google launches Trusted Contacts iOS app with Find My Friends-like features Image search and discovery coming to eBay’s iOS app this fall
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Adobe will kill off Flash in 2020

Christian Zibreg ∙ July 26, 2017

Flash's demise continues unabated with yesterday's news that its maker Adobe will be winding down development and distribution of the Flash plugin and related software at the end of 2020.

Acknowledging that most browser vendors today are integrating capabilities once provided by the resource-hungry Flash and Shockwave plugins directly into their browsers and deprecating plugins, Adobe's confirmed it's now planning to end-of-life Flash.

“Specifically, we will stop updating and distributing Flash Player at the end of 2020 and encourage content creators to migrate any existing Flash content to the open formats” such as HTML5, WebGL and WebAssembly, reads Adobe's statement.

The company will continue issuing regular security patches through the end of 2020 to maintain compatibility while adding features and capabilities “as needed”.

So, how does this affect you?

Folks who regularly visit websites that have migrated from Flash to open web standards shouldn’t notice much difference. If a website continues to use Adobe's plugin, and you give it explicit permission to run Flash, it will continue working through the end of 2020.

Apple wrote on its WebKit blog that for its users the transition from Flash began in 2010 when Flash was no longer pre-installed on Macs. “Apple is working with Adobe, industry partners and developers to complete this transition,” wrote the iPhone maker.

Flash Player poses a major security risk due to a bunch of vulnerabilities that expose your Mac to malware and other attacks. Thankfully, you can safely remove Flash Player from your computer because most websites do not use it anymore.

TUTORIAL: How to remove Adobe Flash from your Mac

Apple reminded developers that Safari's WebKit rendering engine features a number of modern technologies for interactive experiences that don't require a plugin, like:

HTML Video and Media Source Extensions support a wide range of video experiences, including short clips, longer content and live streaming. HTML Canvas and WebGL provide fast, dynamic graphics for games and interactive experiences. CSS Transitions and Animations add polished animations to web interfaces. WebRTC enables real-time peer-to-peer video. WebAssembly allows games and other compute-intensive applications to run faster.

Facebook said it's working with its partners to come up with a migration path for developers that use Flash to power their games on Facebook.

Google said that three years ago, 80 percent of desktop Chrome users visited a site with Flash each day. Today, usage is only 17 percent and continues to decline, the search giant added.

Microsoft called it the end of an era, saying it will gradually phase out Flash support across its Edge and Internet Explorer browsers ahead of the cutoff date. The process began already for Edge with Click-to-Run for Flash in Windows 10 Creators Update.

And finally, browser maker Mozilla has updated its ​published roadmap​ for Flash in Firefox.

“Starting next month, users will choose which websites are able to run the Flash plugin,” it said. Flash will be disabled by default “for most users” of the Firefox browser in 2019.

“In order to preserve user security, once Flash is no longer supported by Adobe security patches, no version of Firefox will load the plugin,” reads Mozilla's blog post.

Flash's death couldn't have come sooner: for 20 years, Adobe's proprietary plugin has powered games, videos and apps on the web, sending our notebook's fans into overdrive and contributing greatly to the battery drain. Safari on macOS Sierra and later disables the Flash plugin by default, requiring explicit approval on each website before running Flash.

The fact that Flash was never supported by iOS, the world's most popular operating system, has certainly helped doom Adobe's software and hasten its demise, especially given the size and appealing demographics of iOS users.

Apple's late co-founder Steve Jobs famously disparaged Adobe's technology back in April 2010 via his highly controversial open letter, innocently titled “Thoughts on Flash”.

Steve's letter, still available on Apple's website, was in response to Adobe’s public criticism of Apple for omitting the technology from its iOS products. It sent the stubborn Photoshop maker through the roof, prompting it to port the Flash Player to the rival Android platform.

Six years ago, Adobe stopped developing Flash Player for Android.

I'm sure that somewhere Apple's late co-founder is grinning from ear to ear.

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