Microsoft on Monday refreshed its Skype software for the iPhone with support for the enhanced notifications on iOS 8 that can be interacted with on the Lock screen, within the Notification Center and from the banners.
Now available in the App Store, Skype for iPhone 5.5 brings iOS 8 interactive notification support for audio and video calls and messages, in addition to general improvements, compatibility enhancements and bug fixes.
The Internet giant Google on Friday refreshed its native Google Search application for the iPhone and iPad with enhancements to the built-in Google Now feature in the form of new cards for personalized TV recommendations and traffic information.
Furthermore, version 4.2 of Google Search for iOS now includes better Chromecast integration allowing owners of the $35 HDMI dongle to ask Google “what’s on Chromecast?” to open the Chromecast for iPhone app and start casting.
TeeVee 3, a TV show-tracking app that I reviewed in May by Tomas Perzl of the Czech Republic and Slovakia-based CrazyApps Team, now lets you tweet out upcoming episodes or mark the ones you've seen as watched, directly from the notification itself, and also see which shows are coming next in the Today view of the iOS Notification Center, thanks to its iOS 8-focused update released yesterday.
Other new features available in this excellent iPhone and iPad app include new sorting options (Alphabetically, Reverse, AirDate and Unwatched), the ability to delete a show by long-pressing it in the list and several bug fixes.
As a cherry on top, the team has decided to discount the $2.99 app to zero bucks, for a limited time, in an effort to bring in new customers. If you're going to grab the latest TeeVee 3.1 update, please keep in mind that the app now requires iOS 8.
You may have noticed over the past 24 hours that a new section has appeared in the App Store entitled "Apps & Games for iPhone 6." As you'd expect, the section is meant to highlight apps and games that have been updated for the larger displays on the two new iPhones.
There are likely thousands of apps that are compatible with the handsets, with many more to come. Apple rounded up about 65 of them, and we thought we'd share 10 of our favorites, so you know what apps we'll be downloading when we get our new iPhones tomorrow.
Twitter, the popular micro-blogging service, is rolling out a brand new profile experience on Twitter for iPhone, in addition to another cool new feature — support for interactive notifications for incoming tweets on iOS 8 devices — the startup announced in a blog post Thursday.
While the new profiles will be available for everyone using iOS 7 or above, the ability to interact with alerts on the Lock and Home screen is not because this capability is part of the great new features available only in iOS 8.
Like many other popular apps, Flipboard, the beloved social news magazine for the iPhone and iPad, has received a nice update today bringing out support for iOS 8's Share sheet extension which allows you to more conveniently collect what you love into Flipboard magazines across Apple's ecosystem.
Now available free of charge in the App Store, the new Flipboard 2.3.8 also includes support for the bigger screens on the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.
Thursday morning, the online retail giant Amazon has released the new Kindle 4.5 for the iPhone and iPad in the App Store, bringing out a Today widget and compatibility fixes for Apple's latest iOS 8 software update, in addition to the ability to copy passages of text from e-books, look up translations and more.
The 40.4-megabyte download is universal so any iPhone, iPod touch or iPad is supported natively as long as it's compatible with iOS 7.0 or later.
Following up on yesterday's public release of the free iOS 8 software update for Apple's iPhone, iPad and iPod touch mobile devices, French games maker Gameloft on Thursday unleashed a pair of updates for its two highly-successful titles: Modern Combat 5: Blackout, a first-person shooter, and Asphalt 8: Airborne, a crazy racing game driven by a powerful physics engine which has you performing dynamic, high-speed aerial stunts.
Both games are now powered by iOS 8's new Metal framework which provides low-level access to the GPU inside the Apple-designed A7 chip (the iPhone 5s, iPad Air and iPad mini with Retina display) and its A8 counterpart (the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus). When played on these devices, both of these games benefit from close-to-the-metal access to graphics cores, without the overhead of the OpenGL graphics run-time.
CNN updated its iPhone app this morning, bringing it to version 2.4. You may recall Apple SVP Phil Schiller showing off this app on stage at last week's iPhone event, highlighting the way that it takes advantage of the larger displays of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.
It looks like today's update brings that support for the two new smartphones, as well as a handful of other enhancements. CNN says that the app has a much improved landscape mode—which looks great on my iPhone 5s—prettier photo galleries and more.
Following its release of iOS 8 this morning, Apple has begun updating its mobile apps to support the firmware. It looks like Numbers and iMovie were first on the list, with both apps showing up in the App Store's Updates tab today touting iOS 8 compatibility.
The change log for Numbers is fairly brief, mentioning only support for iOS 8, iCloud Drive compatibility, and stability improvements and bug fixes. iMovie's update, however, is a bit more extensive, bringing about new features like slow motion and video filters.
Update: it looks like Apple has also pushed out iOS 8 updates for Pages and Keynote as well.
Update 2: iMovie was experiencing issue so Apple apparently pulled it from the App Store. It should be fixed and come back quickly.
Update 3: as expected, Apple resolved the issue quickly and iMovie is once again available in the App Store.
AgileBits, the maker of the popular password-keeping utility, 1Password, has issued a major new version of the app following Apple's release of the iOS 8 software update earlier this morning.
1Password 5 for iOS 8 now takes full advantage of Touch ID fingerprint scanning to unlock your vault and comes with a brand new iOS 8 App Extension in Safari and other apps that also uses Touch ID.
The Safari extension is available right in the Share sheet and permits you to fill Logins directly into web pages. Taking advantage of AgileBits' own proprietary extensions for integrating third-party apps with 1Password, supported apps can now log you in with just a tap. And as you update passwords in these apps, 1Password updates the corresponding item in its database.
As for the price, the new 1Password 5 is a free update to existing users and a freemium download for everyone else, with a one-time In-App Purchase to unlock features like folders, tags, custom fields, Multiple Vaults, as well as the full range of items including Bank Accounts, Email Accounts, Memberships, Passports, Reward Programs, Wireless Routers, Software Licenses and many more.
The social networking behemoth Facebook has just updated its popular Paper app for the iPhone with iOS 8 compatibility following the release of Apple's mobile operating system this morning.
Facebook Paper version 1.2.2, a maintenance update, also enables high-definition video uploading. Previously, you could only upload photos in high-definition so this is going to be a nice upgrade for users who tend to post lots of video clips to the social network on the go.