App Updates

Google Calendar can intelligently find time on your schedule to work on your personal goals

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 13, 2016

Yesterday, Google announced a cool new feature to mark the tenth anniversary of its online calendar service: Google Calendar will now scan your calendar intelligently to find the time on your schedule to work on your personal goals.

According to Google, the updated Google Calendar app lets you add a personal goal to your calendar.

These can be things like “run three times a week” or “hit the gym every day except weekend”. After parsing your natural language input, it'll schedule time automatically for you and help you actually stick to it.

Chat bots go live in Facebook Messenger, Facebook opens up Live Video APIs

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 12, 2016

Facebook was supposed to announce the addition of customer service chat bots and Live Chat APIs soon, but it seems that the latest app update already includes the plumbing work necessary to support chat bots. As first noted by Engadget, the app now shows a Bots and Businesses section and already third-party chat bots appear in search.

Trigraphy photography app picks up new effects, gains albums and document support

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 12, 2016

Trigraphy by Nixes, a beautiful app for turning your photographs into low-poly artwork, was refreshed in the App Store earlier this week with a few new tricks. Bumped to version 2.1.2, the software gained two new effects alongside an effects bundle and other perks.

For starters, it's now possible to open images in Trigraphy from other apps because the app has gained its own Document Provider extension.

The built-in gallery now supports albums and users can change how images are saved and how 4K assets are handled, which should fix problems related to 4K download.

Airmail gains iPad and Touch ID support, adds tons of new features in latest update

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 12, 2016

Airmail, the popular Mac email client, has made the leap to the iPhone back in February.

As of today, this powerful email application is available with a native interface on iPads, with full support for iOS 9's Split View multitasking mode, wireless keyboards with fully customizable shortcuts, Touch ID, the ability to draw sketches within the app and much more.

“Never before has e-mail been so powerful and productive across your Apple devices,” developers told me via email. “Use the extended screen real estate to compose and communicate like never before.”

The refreshed iPhone and iPad app is available now in the App Store at no charge for existing users.

Facebook Messenger gains Dropbox integration

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated July 12, 2017

As Facebook continues advancing its mobile Messenger app, the company just announced in a blog post that users can now take advantage of a brand new integration to share their Dropbox files from within the mobile Messenger app.

The new feature is accessible through the More button in Messenger chats, where Dropbox is now listed as an available source. Simply tap the new icon to open the Dropbox app on your device and select cloud files that you'd like to share in a chat.

Google optimizes the layout of Now cards in native search app for iPad

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 11, 2016

Google on Monday pushed a small refresh to its native Search app for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad in the App Store. Bumped to version 14.0, the software features an optimized layout of the Now cards to make better use of the iPad's screen real estate.

“Updated structure for Now cards on iPad, designed to keep your content organized and better surface the info you need most,” reads a line from Google's release notes accompanying the 65.4-megabyte download.

GarageBand for Mac updated with Music Memos support, new Apple Loops and more

Cody Lee ∙ April 7, 2016

Apple on Thursday pushed out an update for GarageBand for Mac, bringing the software to version 10.1.1. The release brings about several improvements, including improved compatibility with GarageBand for iOS and Live Loops projects.

The update also brings about support for Logic Remote on the iPhone and iPad Pro, 2,600 new Apple Loops and sounds, and support for Music Memos—the app Apple released earlier this year to help musicians and songwriters capture ideas.

Facebook app gaining Live button, video broadcasts now more Periscope-like

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 6, 2016

The Messenger button in the mobile Facebook app for iOS and Android which sent users to the Messenger app has been replaced with a Live button as the popular social network aims to push live and pre-recorded videos in front of as many eyeballs as possible.

Announced in a blog post Wednesday, the company is also rolling out new features for Facebook Live that give users more ways to discover, share and interact with live video.

Starting today, contents of your WhatsApp chats are now protected with full end-to-end encryption

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 5, 2016

WhatsApp today announced it is turning on end-to-end encryption to make it virtually impossible to eavesdrop on your communications.

Starting today, all text messages, photo and video attachments, documents, voice messages and VoIP calls are protected with full end-to-end encryption, developed in collaboration with Open Whisper Systems.

Similar to Apple's iMessage and some other instant messaging platforms such as Telegram, end-to-end encryption makes the contents of WhatsApp chats unreadable to third-parties. And with the encryption keys stored on a user's device, they cannot decrypt chats if served a valid government request.

Real Racing 3 gains three new cars, adds fresh new events and more

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 5, 2016

Electronics Arts and Firemonkeys today pushed a brand new content update to Real Racing 3, their popular racing game for the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and Apple TV.

Bumped to version 4.2, the game has introduced three new powerful cars: the Hennessey Venom GT—the fastest accelerating production car in the world according to Guinness—along with the 2015 BMW 3.0 CSL Hommage R and 1975 BMW 3.0 CSL.

In addition, players can now take on the all-new Front Runner special event for their chance to win the aforesaid Hennessey Venom GT and participate in other events to bring home that classic 1975 BMW 3.0 CSL or the new 2015 BMW 3.0 CSL Hommage R.

Infuse 4.1 brings dark mode from iOS version to Apple TV, 24-bit HD audio, watched icons & more

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated February 4, 2018

Infuse, arguably the most versatile media player app for the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and Apple TV by aTV Flash Black developer FireCore, has just unloaded a ton of goodies in its most recent update on the iOS and tvOS App Stores.

Available now, Infuse 4.1 brings an optional dark mode from the iOS edition of the app to its Apple TV counterpart, and it's a beauty! Next, you can finally delete videos from remote SMB and FTP/SFTP shares.

iOS users, I'm sure, will appreciate Infuse's background metadata fetching for Favorites whenever they open the app. And my favorite: Infuse now finally renders DIVX files without any hiccup.

1Password for Mac gains new import options, automatic login naming and more

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 16, 2018

Developer AgileBits today pushed a brand new 'Tricks Edition' update for 1Password for OS X, its popular password-management that's available across iOS, OS X, Android and Windows platforms.

Available in the Mac App Store at no charge for existing users, this particular update sports some interesting new options for 1Password's data importer and includes a much improved browser extension that can now automatically name the login it creates, among other enhancements.

1Password is $64.99 in the Mac App Store.