According to fresh new stats from Apple's App Store dashboard for developers, iOS 9 is now powering 71 percent of iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices in active use, a one-percentage point gain versus the 70 percent milestone recorded two weeks ago.
iOS 8 continues declining as a result, dropping from 22 percent two weeks ago to 21 percent of iOS hardware as of yesterday, indicating that much of iOS 9's growth in the 14-day period came from users upgrading to iOS 8 and new iPhone buyers.
As you use apps on your iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, iOS dynamically manages system memory (don't confuse RAM with storage), allocating chunks of RAM to foreground and background tasks and suspending memory usage for apps that are not actively running in the background.
For the most part, iOS manages RAM efficiently to ensure that your frequently-used applications are ready for action as soon as you switch to them. But as so-called garbage collection is not available in iOS, a poorly written application might keep large portions of memory to itself and refuse to release it at iOS's request, resulting in slower performance.
You can get around this by rebooting your device, but there's a more elegant way to purge the memory taken up by apps without rebooting, as explained in this tutorial.
KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo shared some interesting predictions for 2016 iPhones and iPads in a note sent to clients this morning, a copy of which was obtained by MacRumors.
For starters, Kuo is adamant that the third-generation iPad Air will be arriving in the first half of next year. The tablet won't be outfitted with a pressure-sensing screen due to alleged production issues related to building a 9.7-inch 3D Touch sensor array.
As promised, Apple Music is available on Sonos wireless speakers from today, marking the first official third-party integration of Apple's subscription-based music service.
Available as a public beta, the feature lets you access select Apple Music features on wireless speakers by Sonos, including custom playlists through the For You and New features and Beats 1 radio. Of course, you can also play any song from your Apple Music catalogue through your Sonos speakers.
Procreate Pocket, an iPhone and iPod touch edition of the drawing and illustration app that started out as an iPad-exclusive, was updated this morning with a bunch of 3D Touch goodies and other enhancements.
Procreate Pocket 1.6 includes support for pressure-sensitive painting with 3D Touch on the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus. The refreshed app claims double the frame rate across all supported devices and includes an all-new native Apple Watch app on watchOS 2 that improves the battery life and responsiveness.
A late evening report from Bloomberg's Tim Culpan has shed a bit of light on Apple's plans regarding the future of its display technology for iPhones, iPads, and other devices. Culpan's report shows that Apple has opened a secret lab within a Taiwanese science park, and has no less than 50 engineers working on advanced versions of LCD and OLED display technology.
Apple's goal, according to the report, is to create screens that are thinner, lighter, brighter, and more energy-efficient than the screen technology used in current production iPhones and iPads. The report emphasized Apple's keen interest in OLED technology in particular, since it requires no backlight, a fact that can help meet the improvements in energy efficiency and thinness that the Cupertino firm is seeking.
In this quick tutorial, you'll learn how to browse recently updated apps on your Apple TV and access official changelogs from developers, which typically provide a treasure trove of information detailing new features, refinements, fixes, and other information.
According to TechCrunch on Monday, Facebook is in the process of removing photo syncing capability in its mobile applications and is asking users to download a dedicated Moments app to retain that functionality.
Photo sync, an opt-in feature in the mobile Facebook app, uploaded photos from the user's Camera roll to a private photo album on Facebook, where they could later be edited, shared or deleted.
Moments, a private-photo sharing app, debuted this summer for iOS and Android and then rolled out to everyone nearly four months ago.
Has Microsoft's unilateral decision to reduce free OneDrive accounts from fifteen to just five gigabytes of cloud storage left you totally flabbergasted? If so, you're not alone. An online petition at the OneDrive feedback website has received more than 70,000 votes already. Feeling the heat, the Windows maker today announced an opt-in offer that will permit all affected OneDrive customers to keep their fifteen gigabytes of free storage space, as well as their fifteen-gigabyte camera roll bonus.
BBC iPlayer, the on-demand application for watching live television channels and exclusive content from BBC, is now available on the 4th generation Apple TV.
“Christmas is a popular time for viewers to come to BBC iPlayer, as they unwrap new devices and browse and discover the BBC’s fantastic Christmas programs,” said iPlayer chief Dan Taylor-Watt.
“With the launch of iPlayer on new Apple TV, I’m delighted we've been able to give people another way of accessing the full breadth and range of BBC programs.”
Giving credence to prior rumors surrounding Samsung's next-generation Galaxy flagship smartphone, The Wall Street Journal on Monday said that the Galaxy S7 will launch in March of next year outfitted with a pressure-sensing screen akin to Apple's 3D Touch technology on the iPhone 6s.
Citing people familiar with the matter, the publication claims the Galaxy maker is also considering adding a retina scanner “to some versions of the flagship device,” though that feature could change.
Infuse 4 for tvOS, the Apple TV edition of the powerful media player for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, was updated last evening in the App Store following its debut on the fourth-generation Apple TV earlier this month.
For starters, the app now claims up to ten times faster metadata fetching (depending on the video type), which should drastically reduce the waiting time when Infuse initially scans a newly added network disk.