Apple

Kong for iPhone by Path developers lets you create instant memes from your selfies

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 30, 2018

A brand new app by Path creators (you do remember Path, don't you?), called Kong, is now available at no cost in the App Store. Billed as a piece of software designed to play with your selfies, Kong unleashes your imagination by letting you create GIFs of yourself in an instant.

You can make the bite-sized animated GIFs more interesting by adding text, applying filters to your selfie and more.

Your animated meme can then be shared with a private circle of friends or with the web at large through Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other services. Kong is actually quite cool and addictive, let me explain why.

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Win lunch with Tim Cook and two VIP tickets to attend future Apple keynote

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 28, 2019

For the third year in a row, Apple CEO Tim Cook is participating in a charity auction organized by the fundraising service CharityBuzz. You can now bid on the opportunity to have lunch with Cook on the Apple campus in Cupertino, California, and to be his guest at an Apple keynote event. In fact, the highest bidder will win not one but two VIP passes to an Apple keynote.

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Glide becomes first app to bring one-way video calling to Apple Watch

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 15, 2015

Glide for iPhone has been updated on the App Store today with Apple Watch support, becoming the first app to bring one-way real-time video messaging to the wrist-worn gizmo. The app lets you see a preview of video messages up to five minutes long on your wrist and respond straight from your Apple Watch.

Other features include getting quick updates to the Watch when friends send you videos, texts or photos without needing to take out your iPhone, accessing all chats and missed events and more.

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Multitasking on Apple Watch and other user interface shortcuts you should memorize

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 15, 2015

Apple's Watch features a handy “multitasking” shortcut that Apple did not detail publicly. According to a Reddit user who provided an animated GIF of the feature in action, double-tapping the device's Digital Crown switches you between your two most recently opened apps.

Although it's unclear yet if the Watch has true multitasking capability found on the iPhone and iPad, this shortcut is a great time-saver that makes it easy not only to jump between actions if you are multitasking, but also to go back to the Watch face if you’ve just been in one app.

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Samsung creates 200-people team exclusively building screens for Apple

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 15, 2015

Samsung's has devoted a team comprised of two-hundred skilled engineers to build mobile displays exclusively for Apple. The move indicates that the two technology giants are strengthening business ties, patent disputes notwithstanding, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.

The team formed April 1 and also helps with sales, people with direct knowledge of the matter said. In addition to the improved business relationship, analysts think the exclusivity of the business arrangement might indicate that Samsung Display could win more screen orders from Apple in the near future.

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Apple buys Israeli camera technology company LinX Imaging

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 28, 2016

In a bid to potentially boost its mobile imaging prowess, Apple has purchased an Israeli camera technology company called LinX Imaging for a reported $20 million, according to a Dow Jones report cited in a tweet by CNBC and later confirmed by Apple.

LinX, which builds miniature multi-aperture cameras designed for mobile devices, could help improve imaging features of future iPhones.

And because its technology is also used in tablets and so-called ultrabooks (ultra-thin notebooks akin to Apple's MacBook Air), there's a reasonable likelihood that we may see significantly improved cameras come to Apple's Mac computers and iPad tablet lineup.

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iOS 8 adoption rate passes 79 percent

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated February 27, 2018

Various versions of Apple's iOS 8 mobile operating system are now running on 79 percent of devices in active use, as measured by the App Store on April 13, 2015. The freshest stats were churned out Tuesday from the App Store Distribution webpage publicly available on Apple's portal for developers.

iOS 7 is now found on nineteen percent of devices, with earlier iOS versions running on two percent of iPhones, iPads and iPod touches in the wild.

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FiftyThree’s Paper gains cloud journals, centralized social interactions and more

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 14, 2015

FiftyThree's iPad drawing app, Paper, has been refreshed Tuesday with a pair of new features (among other enhancements) — Backup and Activity Center.

The former lets you back up private copies of your journals in the cloud so you don't lose your Paper data in case your iPad is stolen or damaged (and you didn't have enough space on iCloud for full device backup via iOS).

The Activity Center is a new place in Paper's Mix service that collates all your social activity in one place. For those wondering, Mix is an online repository of Paper content posted by creative users from around the world.

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Apple’s ResearchKit available today to developers and medical researchers

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 14, 2018

Today, Apple's made good on its promise to make ResearchKit available to developers and medical researchers. As announced in a media release Tuesday, medical researchers can tap into ResearchKit to write custom apps while developers are permitted to contribute new research modules to ResearchKit.

ResearchKit was designed as an open source software framework to help doctors and scientists mass-gather accurate data from participants using specialized iPhone apps. With today's ResearchKit release, it's now possible to create medical apps for Android in a true open-source fashion.

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Fleksy Keyboard goes free for a week, gains millions of GIFs via partnership with Riffsy

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 14, 2015

Fleksy Keyboard, one of the first and most popular software keyboards for iOS 8 devices, has gone free for a week. The app usually retails for 99 cents a pop and has never gone free since its App Store debut as an iOS 8-compatible downloadable software keyboard in September of last year.

In addition, Fleksy's latest update has rechristened the app as 'Fleksy + GiF Keyboard' to reflect its newly gained integration with Riffsy's GIF Keyboard for iOS. The resulting app now gives you access to millions of GIFs on top of Fleksy's existing emoji support and perks like advanced keyboard capabilities with gestures and much more.

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Selfie sticks and monopods banned from WWDC

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated March 19, 2019

Apple this morning announced that its annual developers conference will be kicking off on Monday, June 8, and already social media is trending with news of a revised terms prohibiting the use of selfie sticks and monopods at the show.

“You may not use selfie sticks or similar monopods within Moscone West,” or in the whole Yerba Buena Gardens area around it for that matter, as per this note describing attendance policy available on Apple's WWDC 2015 webpage.

So what's going on here?

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