With Apple Music launching in just a few hours, media identification service Shazam on Tuesday announced a new version of its mobile app focused on the ability to check out all the songs that artists you follow are discovering on Shazam.
This new feature is in addition to lists of most-often Shazamed songs by region, genre and overall that were available before.
The update is rolling out today on iOS and Android.
VLC, a cross-platform, open-source media player by VideoLAN that can render just about any file type thrown at it, has updated its iOS app in the App Store with a brand new WatchKit component in addition to a bunch of new features and other enhancements.
VLC 2.6 for iOS now lets you control your media library application from your wrist, with the Apple Watch app providing basic playback control, media information and the ability to browse your library.
Google's Chrome browser includes a handy feature designed to decrease bandwidth usage by up to fifty percent for mobile users on very slow networks. Called Data Saver, it works by passing webpages you visit to Google servers that compress graphics and other web content.
You can even tell Data Saver to replace the originally requested image with a small placeholder graphic, if the original image is likely not a crucial element of the page.
Here's how you can reduce the amount of data that Chrome uses on your Mac, iPhone, iPod touch or iPad by enabling Data Saver mode to cut your bandwidth usage up to fifty percent, and even more.
Google on Monday issued a minor but notable refresh to its Hangouts client for the iPhone and iPad. If you're using Hangouts to exchange instant messages with your friends, engage in free audio and video calls, adorn your communications with stickers and more, the brand new Hangouts 4.0 for iOS is now available free in the App Store.
It brings out several user interface tweaks that Google claims elevate your experience while adding a much-needed ability to send multiple photos at once, and more.
Apple Music will exclusively stream 'The Chronic,' Dr. Dre's 1992 debut studio album, Rolling Stone reported Monday. As a matter of fact, the seminal album will actually make its streaming debut when Apple Music launches tomorrow morning.
This is newsworthy because 'The Chronic' has not yet been available on digital platforms like the iTunes Store, Beats Music, Spotify or Rhapsody due to legal disputes regarding distribution rights.
The Iconfactory has issued a nice little update to Twitterrific 5, its freemium Twitter client for the iPhone and iPad, which brings out an interesting new feature that uses facial recognition algorithms to frame faces in media previews in your timeline.
And if you own an Apple Watch, Twitterrific has a new push notification type for quoted tweets as an opt-in feature in settings. Another enhancement: at last, you're allowed to swipe from the left screen edge to go back or dismiss the current view, a productivity boost for iPhone 6 Plus owners wanting to use the app one-handed.
Today eight years ago, the original iPhone went on sale in the United States after a 6-month period of unprecedented hype triggered by its January 9, 2007 introduction. Like most other Apple products were panned as duds but went on to become smash hits, the Apple smartphone was universally dismissed.
Then industry heavyweights such as Nokia, RIM and Palm—with a little help from shortsighted technology press—ridiculed the device for its poor (by non-smartphone standards) battery life, multitouch interface, software keyboard and many other features that were ahead of its time.
In retrospect, rivals' knee-jerk reaction to the iPhone, coupled with their risk aversion and stubborn insistence on old ways of doing things, contributed to their incredibly fast undoing.
Doomsayers notwithstanding, the device went on to sell hundreds of millions of units worldwide (726 million units to date, to be precise), becoming the de facto gold standard for smartphones. And while the iPhone is now common sight in all corners of the globe, its beauty isn't that it invented, but re-invented the hopelessly-out-of-touch (to quote T-Mobile CEO) industry.
It gave the sleepy, self-absorbed wireless carriers—and handset makers, their partners in crime—a much needed kick in their butt for not listening to consumers' needs at all. Sure, there were smartphones before the iPhone but they looked like they were designed by committees (which they actually were) and one needed a user manual to master them.
There were phones with touchscreens before the iPhone but none implemented the sensation and immediacy of touch so elegantly and seamlessly as Apple's device. There were also mobile app stores, of sorts, before the App Store. But none has offered the ease of use and instant gratification of tapping a colorful icon to have an app arrive wirelessly on your Home screen.
No smartphone other than the iPhone has managed to consistently earn highest customer satisfaction scores to this date. And as we've witnessed, in the process of doing so the iPhone has turned the largely written off, beleaguered computer maker from Cupertino into the most powerful corporation in the world, one that can easily sway whole multi-billion dollar industries with their decisions.
Facebook has been testing a new photo uploading experience in its mobile app with a limited number of users, TechCrunch reported Monday.
Facebook for iPhone and iPad now lets people optionally adorn their photos with text overlays, touch them up with quick color adjustments and make them more interesting with crazy photo stickers, all before uploading them to the service. The new photo uploader is not live for everyone yet, but we'll keep you posted.
Apple Music is a really great service until you realize that Spotify, the world leader in music streaming, works across a bunch of mobile and desktop platforms and is supported by dozens of Hi-Fi equipment, wireless speakers, gaming consoles, connected TV sets and more.
But Apple does not intend to ignore this aspect of Spotify. In what could only be described as a hint of broader third-party support in the works, both Sonos and Apple have now officially confirmed working together to bring Apple Music to Sonos hardware by the end of the year.
Former Beats Music CEO Ian Rogers wrote in a blog post yesterday that iOS 8.4 with Apple Music will release for public consumption on Tuesday, June 30, at 8am Pacific / 11am Eastern. A few hours later, however, Rogers has updated his post removing mention of the specific timing.
“Tuesday morning we’ll be unveiling the next chapter,” reads the post. “Please make a note to upgrade to iOS 8.4 Tuesday, June 30 and listen to our first day of broadcasting.”
Rogers is now a Senior Director of Apple Music.
Apple has begun early production of new iPhone models with a feature called Force Touch, Bloomberg reports. Citing sources familiar with the matter, the outlet says that volume manufacturing is expected to ramp up as soon as next month.
Force Touch was first introduced in the Apple Watch last fall, and it enables a device to sense how hard users press down on its screen. The technology has since made its way into the MacBook, and has long been rumored for the next iPhone.
With iOS 9, Apple has brought out a brand new Low Power mode which kicks in when you're nearly out of juice. It was designed to help extend your iPhone's battery life, providing up to three hours of additional time before charging.
After using Geekbench's iPhone application to measure an iPhone 6's processor performance in Low Power, MacRumors was able to determine that this mode reduces processor performance by about forty percent. As a result, an iPhone 6 in Low Power mode would be roughly on par with an iPhone 5s or iPhone 5 in terms of sheer CPU performance.