Apple's iOS 9 operating system is currently powering three out of each four iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices in the wild, according to the latest stats as measured by the App Store on January 11, 2016.
That's a four-point gain over the 71 percent adoption rate for iOS 9 reported a month ago, a notable increase due to no doubt strong sales in the holiday quarter.
Greed! Greed! Greed! Apple will kill the headphone jack out of greed. They just want to sell you $30 adapters.
This ridiculous claim is the result of narrow thinking. After all, it's much easier to yell "greed" than trying to think of rational reasons why Apple would pull the plug (pun totally intended) on the 3.5mm headphone jack.
Apple is of course no stranger to that kind of situation. The company has been known for killing various technologies over the past few decades, and the bright side is that all of us have survived to tell the story.
In this post, I lay down a few more or less plausible reasons why Apple could eventually leave the headphone jack behind.
Remix OS, a software platform created in partnership with the Android-x86 project, is now available for download from the Jide website. Remix is basically a custom engineered version of Android Lollipop that can be installed onto a USB thumb drive to boot your Mac right into Android.
This is a pre-release alpha version of Remix intended for developers so it may be a bit rough around the edges and exhibit some hiccups. That being said, Remix OS is pretty cool: it has a custom user interface with built-in Amazon App Store, but you can sideload Google Play services to run virtually any Android app on your Mac.
VLC for Apple TV was supposed to be released back in December, but it took longer than anticipated. As of Tuesday, the application is now available free in the App Store on the fourth-generation Apple TV.
According to Felix Kühne, lead iOS developer for VLC, the app is “a full port of VLC media player combined with platform-specific features” and it supports virtually all formats under the sun, just like its iOS counterpart.
Like Infuse and Plex, VLC permits you to stream audio and video item stored on network-attached drives to your Apple TV, without having to manually convert DIVX, AVI and other “foreign” files into iOS-friendly formats.
Learn how to restrict FaceTime on the iPhone or iPad to block the feature completely so your child cannot send and receive video calls from other people.
Spotify today announced it is partnering with Genius (not to be confused with iTunes Genius), to annotate your music. Genius is the crowdsourced musical knowledge startup that annotates music lyrics and other online content and Spotify is betting that this new feature will help retain its competitive edge over other music-streaming services.
Available at launch via a limited number of tracks through special playlists—called Behind the Lyrics and curated by Spotify and Genius—this feature adds backstory and commentary which pops up as you play tracks on Spotify.
Infuse for Apple TV, a versatile media center app by aTV Flash Black developer FireCore, has received an update in the App Store today, bringing a bunch of welcome additions to the experience. No longer are those media folders you add to Infuse represented by generic icons: you can now add custom artwork to them, letting you pretty up Infuse's menu.
New zoom options have been added for removing encoded black bars, you can now sort your media by filename and rename or remove a Favorite by long-pressing its icon. Read on for the full list of changes in this edition of Infuse.
In a major move, micro-blogging startup Twitter today announced that live Periscope broadcasts are coming to Twitter for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, making it possible to watch broadcasts without leaving Twitter's mobile app.
Now when you tap a Periscope link in your timeline, no longer does it take you to the Periscope app. Instead, those links are getting replaced with the broadcast itself that automatically plays right within your tweet.
Readdle's Spark for iPhone is an awesome email client and I can't wait to use it on my iPad (coming soon) and the Mac (it's in the works). Today's update makes it even better.
In Spark 1.5 for iPhone and iPod touch, you can now customize which swipes are available in notification actions for new messages. You can also designate an email signature to be your default on a per-account basis, zoom in on HTML emails and more.
CarPlay, Apple's software platform that integrates some iOS features into the dashboard of select cars, is now available in over a hundred vehicles from nearly two-dozen auto manufacturers, according to Apple's newly published webpage which details CarPlay availability across manufactures and brands.
We knew for some time that Apple was partnering with major vehicle manufacturers in CarPlay, but this marks the first time the company has listed all manufacturers and models with CarPlay support.
Apple today shot down a report published last Sunday by The Telegraph newspaper that it was building a tool at the request of EU carriers that would permit iPhone owners to transfer their contacts, photographs, messages and other data to Android smartphones.
“There is no truth to this rumor,” a spokesperson told John Paczkowski at Buzz Feed.
AgileBits' popular password manager, 1Password, was updated this morning in the App Store with support for 3D Touch actions on the Home screen and Peek and Pop gestures within the app for iPhone 6s/Plus owners.
These shortcuts permit you to quickly bring up search, view your favorites or add a new item, right from the Home screen, and preview items within the app with 3D Touch.
In addition, the new version contains other refinements and new features such as the inclusion of Watchtower, a service that has been available in 1Password's Mac app for quite a while and alerts you when your accounts might have been compromised, as determined by monitoring the latest security vulnerabilities from around the web.