Apple Music rival Spotify could finally turn a profit in 2107, one of its board members told the media Thursday. Asked if the Swedish music service could become profitable soon, Par-Jorgen Parson, one of Spotify's first investors, told Reuters that it was “absolutely” the case.
Spotify currently operates in 60 markets and has more than 40 million paid subscribers. Apple Music is available in 115 markets and has 17 million paying customers and over 30 million songs in its catalog.
Media management service Plex announced yesterday that its Plex Media Player app is now free to everyone. Previously, using Plex Media Player required a paid Plex Pass subscription, a $5 per month value.
In addition, Plex announced an extension for competitive player Kodi which lets users of Plex Media Server stream their media content to the Kodi app.
Apple is assembling a team of robotics and mapping experts that will use data-collecting drones to capture and update Maps information faster than its existing fleet of minivans that use cameras and other sensors to collect Maps data.
The company has reportedly hired at least one person from Amazon's Prime Air division to help run the drone team, which is being assembled in Seattle. In addition, Apple is working on a brand new indoor view in Maps.
Indoor features would use pressure sensors, GPS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth in latest iPhones to let users easily navigate indoor areas such as airports, museums and other high-traffic buildings, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman and Alan Levin reported Thursday.
Tiny Wings, an addictive iPhone game with simple gameplay and subtle charm, is now available on the fourth-generation Apple TV more than five years since its App Store debut in February 2011. Developer Andreas Illiger released the Apple TV game as a new $2.99 app, called Tiny Wings TV.
Like its iOS counterpart, Tiny Wings TV has you playing as a cute little bird with aerial navigation issues. You must escape the darkness of night, but the hills in your way hinder your speed so you must have good reflexes and a good sense of timing.
Apple Pay today launched in Spain, the thirteenth market for the mobile payments service since its inception more than two years ago. According to Apple's website and the official Apple Pay support document, the service is available in the 46 million people country with launch support for debit and credit cards from Banco de Santander, Carrefour, Ticket Restaurant and American Express.
Google today pushed an update to its native Maps app for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, adding a pair of new features whilst bumping version number to 4.25.0. Like with Apple Maps, Google's app now supports searching for points of interest along your route while in navigation mode. In addition, you can also see traffic information on your Home/Lock screen and in the Notification Center with a handy new Nearby Traffic widget.
Apple on Wednesday said that it is aware of the calendar spam issue and is working to fix it. In a statement to iMore's Rene Ritchie, a spokesperson for the company apologized for the spam calendar invites and said it's actively working to address the issue.
Google-owned Snapseed, the popular image editing app, was updated Wednesday on the App Store with a trio of improvements bringing the app's version to 2.13. The first change tweaks the user interface to make it easier and simpler to select and change filter parameters.
The second new feature is basically the dedicated tool which got launched on Android a while ago that lets you adjust white balance of your images.
The last feature is a correction for developing RAW files with embedded color profiles.
You may be unfamiliar with it (that is, unless you were born in the 20th century), but the Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer (AKA the “808”) was one of the first programmable drum machines. Unveiled in the early 1980s at $1,995, the 808 undercut significantly more expensive digital sampling machines of the time, such as the $5,000 Linn LM-1.
Snowman, the team that brought you the award-winning endless snowboard odyssey Alto's Adventure, is hard at work on a major new title, Distant. It's a brand new project that Snowman is co-developing in partnership with a talented Australian studio called Slingshot & Satchel.
As a platformer, Distant is quite a departure from Alto’s Adventure. The game is coming some time in 2017 to Macs, PCs, consoles and the fourth-generation Apple TV.
YouTube today began rolling out support for both standard and 360-degree live streaming in 4K video resolution, a change that will significantly improve visual quality of panoramic live streams. Approximately a month ago, Google added support for High Dynamic Range (HDR) in 4K clips and just recently updated its Chromecast HDMI dongle with 4K video output.
After more than a year of hard work, Spark for Mac is finally available on the Mac App Store. Like its iOS counterpart, the Mac app is available at no charge. Ukrainian developer Readdle has ported all the marquee features you like about Spark for iPhone and iPad over to the Mac edition, allowing you to triage your inbox, quickly see what’s important and easily clean up the rest.
The fast, well designed native app includes Touch Bar shortcuts on the new MacBook Pro, swipes on the trackpad, snoozing, quick replies, natural language search, unified inbox, full macOS Sierra compatibility, seamless settings sync across devices and other productivity-focused perks.
“It is created for people who live by their inbox and who want to have an amazing experience with email,” Readdle told me via email.