Apple on Thursday updated its App of the Week promotion with the game King Rabbit. This means that for the next 7 days, you'll be able to download the popular action-puzzler for both iPhone and iPad for free—a modest savings of $1.
For those unfamiliar with the title, King Rabbit is a puzzle-action crossover. Players are tasked with helping King Rabbit rescue his bunny citizens from devious enemies using keys, potions, bombs and other items they find along the way.
Last time we checked, iOS adoption rates stood at 84 percent of iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices that were detected as running iOS 9. Moreover, eleven percent of hardware was on iOS 8 and the remaining five percent of devices used iOS 7 or older editions of Apple's mobile operating system.
These stats were valid as of a little more than two weeks ago. The new numbers Apple just posted to its App Store dashboard for developers, however, paint a not-so-rosy picture for iOS 9 adoption.
According to App Store device logs, the latest set of figures has not changed the slightest bit, or has not changed enough to move the needle versus two weeks ago.
Apple's oft-criticized review process for app submissions, which normally takes about a week or more, now takes as little as two days, according to developers who reported seeing dramatically faster App Store review times on submissions.
AppReviewTimes.com, a website that tracks average App Store review times using crowdsourced data, has confirmed that Apple's review process now takes an average of two days to approve an app, based on 332 reviews in the last 14 days.
Periscope, a Twitter-owned app that lets anyone start a live video broadcast from their iPhone, today received a pretty substantial update on the App Store. Bumped to version 1.4, Periscope for iPhone now lets you search videos and broadcast live to the service from a compatible DJI drone.
In addition, the team shared a preview of their full beyond 24 hours approach that will be available in the coming weeks.
If you rely on the excellent cross-platform Sunrise Calendar to keep up with your schedule, Microsoft has some bad news for you: your favorite calendar app is breaking up with you as the Windows maker announced plans to shut down Sunrise on August 31. For those wondering, Microsoft bought this popular calendar app in February of 2015.
Fortunately, Sunrise alternatives are plentiful.
Celebrating yesterday's launch of Gemini 2, its duplicate file finder application, Ukrainian developer MacPaw is now offering a special 50 percent off store-wide discount on all their paid-for Mac applications, valid through May 17, 2016.
If you've been on the lookout for deep discounts on quality apps such as Hider 2, which lets you keep sensitive information and private files from prying eyes, CleanMyMac and CleanMyPC for optimizing the inner workings of your Mac and Windows PC or the aforementioned Gemini 2, this is it.
Google's native Translate application for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad received a major update yesterday in the App Store, bringing version number to 5.0 and introducing some rather interesting advances. For starters, Google Translate now works without an Internet connection, allowing you to translate words, phrases and sentences in 52 of the 103 supported languages when there is no cellular or Wi-Fi connection available.
The instant camera translation feature, called Word Lens, now works with Chinese: it reads both to and from English, both Simplified and Traditional Chinese. This feature is ideal for traveling: you just point your camera at, say, a restaurant sign in a foreign language and witness the appropriate translation appear like magic in live video feed.
As promised, Google this morning launched its first software keyboard for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, called Gboard. Available free on the App Store, it integrates the power of Google Search, supports gesture-based typing, lets you send GIFs, emoticons and more. “No more app switching; just search and send, right from your keyboard,” said Google.
Security has always been a top priority for Apple and its ecosystem, especially as of late. Tim Cook has made it clear that maintaining encryption and tight security protocols are here to stay. Users that are equally as concerned about protecting their personal information have had few options in actually monitoring their security however. A new app called System and Security Info from security firm SektionEins aims to help with that.
Facebook-owned Instagram today announced a major new version of its iPhone app with an overhauled user interface with bigger photos and an updated Home screen app icon.
“Inspired by the previous app icon, the new one represents a simpler camera and the rainbow lives on in gradient form,” explains the company. In addition, they've updated app icons for Layout, Boomerang and Hyperlapse, too.
Instagram is available free of charge on the App Store.
WhatsApp on Tuesday launched a native desktop app for Mac and Windows computers. The Facebook-owned messaging service says the app provides a "new way to stay in touch anytime and anywhere - whether on your phone or computer at home or work."
To download the new desktop version of WhatsApp, visit whatsapp.com/download from your desktop browser. Then, open the app and scan the QR code using the WhatsApp app on your smartphone (be sure to look for WhatsApp Web menu under Settings).
Ukrainian developer MacPaw, the makers of the versatile and powerful CleanMyMac and CleanMyDrive apps, today pushed a major new update for Gemini as a brand new app. For those unfamiliar with it, Gemini is an intelligent duplicate file finder that can help recover tons of storage space on your Mac wasted to duplicate files.
Aside from identifying identical duplicates, Gemini 2 uses a proprietary algorithm to spot similar files that are not 100 percent identical, but can be considered redundant due to little difference between them.
It scans your iTunes and Photos libraries in search of retakes of the same picture or different formats of the same song, and becomes smarter and more precise in automatic selection of duplicates the more you use it.