This week's edition of our Apps of the Week roundup features some great selections, including a financial assistant, an email filtering client, and an app for watching news videos on-the-go. And as always, we've selected two great new games for you to check out this weekend.
Nintendo is scheduled to debut Super Mario Run, its platformer optimized for one-handed gameplay, on the App Store on December 15. Ahead of this eagerly anticipated release, the Japanese gaming giant released a live-action commercial that's all about speed.
Running two minutes and five seconds long, the ad features people from all walks of life running across scenic locations and in front of landmarks across the globe. The video features an upbeat tune and classic Super Mario notes and sound effects.
Niantic has launched an update (version 1.19.1) for the popular Pokémon GO game on both the Android and iOS platforms on Thursday that addresses several bugs, as well as a highly-requested game improvement.
Those who catch many Pokémon know the struggle of having to transfer out the ones they don’t need to Professor Willow, one by one, but Thursday’s update now allows players to transfer a handful of unwanted Pokémon to the professor all at once.
As we noted earlier today, you can now test out Super Mario Run at your local Apple Store. They have preinstalled the game on their demo devices ahead of the games launch on December 15th. I was lucky enough to head over earlier today and put together a video and some first impressions on the upcoming platformer.
Spotify, the world's top on-demand music service, is not buying Berlin, Germany-headquartered audio distribution platform SoundCloud after all, TechCrunch has learned.
Spotify has reportedly given up on its latest effort to buy SoundCloud realizing, after months of talks, that any such deal would probably negatively impact its impending initial public offering (IPO) and expected expansions in China, Russia and South Korea.
Photoshop maker Adobe today issued a series of updates to Lightroom for iPhone and iPad, Lightroom CC and Adobe Camera Raw, adding several new features for photographers, including refreshed Edit and Capture interfaces, a new info section and a brand new Professional mode.
Lightroom for iPhone and Lightroom for iPad are available free on the App Store. The Lightroom CC 2015.8 update and Adobe Camera Raw 9.8 are available from Adobe.
Ahead of its scheduled December 15 debut, Nintendo's upcoming platformer Super Mario Run can now be experienced firsthand in your local Apple Store. That's because the iPhone maker has installed Super Mario Run demo stations at its brick-and-mortar retail locations for pre-release play, as announced during Wednesday evening's “The Tonight Show” starring Jimmy Fallon.
Snowman, the brains behind the award-winning endless snowboard game titled Alto's Adventure, today said that the time has come for something new in the form of Alto's Odyssey, their brand new game scheduled for release some time in 2017 (we're thinking early-2017).
Snowman's Ryan Cash told me via email that long before Alto’s Adventure had even been released, they started working on an idea for what might come next.
According to Phil Schiller, Apple's Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, the App Store last month enjoyed the highest monthly sales ever since its inception in the summer of 2008. “November 2016 was a record breaker for the App Store—the highest monthly sales ever in its history,” reads the tweet.
Although Schiller didn't provide any hard numbers, in just two weeks during last year's holiday season the App Store raked in a massive $1.1 billion revenue from sales of iOS apps and In-App Purchases.
In its never-ending fight to curb abuse on its service, Instagram today said an upcoming new tool will let you completely turn off comments on individual posts.
As reported by The New York Times this morning and confirmed by Instagram itself, in addition to being able to turn off comments on individual posts users will be also permitted to remove followers on private accounts and like other people's comments as well.
Back in September, Instagram launched keyword-based comment moderation as another measure to fight spammers and abusers who have been harassing honest users with unwanted comments and marketing messages.
After gaining the long overdue offline playback feature last week, Netflix's mobile app for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch has emerged as the top iOS app on the App Store's Top Grossing charts for the first time ever, overtaking apps like Spotify and Candy Crush Saga, according to stats from app tracking firm SensorTower. By comparison, just last month Netflix was the #7 top-grossing iPhone and iPad software overall in the United States.
At the time of this writing, Netflix's iPhone and iPad app was the top-grossing item on App Stores in the United States, India, Mexico and Colombia.
Google added Spotlight Search integration to Chrome for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch back in January 2016, allowing you to search for your Google bookmarks using iOS's Spotlight feature. Today, the Internet giant issued a small update to Chrome for iOS, bumping version number to 55.0.2883.79 and adding a pair of enhancements.
The first lets you start Chrome in Voice Search mode or open a new Incognito tab right from Spotligh.
As for the other change, Google has now removed the folder named All Bookmarks from your bookmarks view in Chrome “by popular request”.