Apps

Transmission for Mac gets its first major update in nearly two years

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 29, 2016

The popular open-source, cross-platform BitTorrent client, Transmission, today received its first major update in more than a year and a half. As first noted by Softpedia, the surprise update makes the free of charge app fully compatible with the user interface on Macs running OS X 10.9 Mavericks and later.

Transmission can now trim potential URIs from clipboard and supports downloading from HTTP servers on OS X El Capitan. Transmission's daemon, web client, Qt client and GTK+ client have also received various fixes. All told, there are over 50 changes in this release of Transmission.

Google Maps for iOS now lets you add pit stops to your trips without leaving navigation mode

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 29, 2016

Internet giant Google on Monday announced that an upcoming update to its native, free of charge Maps application in the App Store has a brand new feature that will let you add pit stops onto your trips without leaving navigation mode. The feature was added to Google Maps for Android last October and starting today will begin rolling out on iOS in more than a hundred countries worldwide where Google Maps offer navigation.

WhatsApp now lets you share media from other apps like Dropbox and Google Drive

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 29, 2016

The popular mobile messaging service WhatsApp today received a pretty cool update in the App Store which adds the ability to share photos or videos from other apps installed on your iPhone via a new option exposed after tapping the Photo/Video Library button.

In addition, WhatsApp has gained a pair of new shortcuts in the 3D Touch menu on the Home screen and now supports solid colors as chat backgrounds.

Oh, and you can now zoom in on videos while they're playing.

Firefly, Infuse and other apps to check out this weekend

Cody Lee ∙ Updated May 1, 2018

It's the weekend! And you know what that means: we've once again put together a list of awesome new apps and games for you to check out. There's a new social networking app, a new video editing app, and even one that lets you play with tornadoes! So enough stalling, let's get to it!

tvOS App Store now lists four times more Apple TV apps in Top Paid, Free and Grossing categories

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 26, 2016

In addition to a dozen new categories, including Catalogs and Utilities, that have been added to the App Store on the fourth-generation Apple TV earlier this week, Apple has made another change to the store that should make app discovery easier.

As reported by German blog iTopnews.de, now each Top Charts section available on the tvOS App Store includes 200 apps instead of just 50 like before.

Facebook Live now available in 30 countries, rolling out to more users in the coming weeks

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 26, 2016

Less than ten days after it began a staggered rollout of live video broadcasting capability, Facebook on Friday said the feature is now available to iOS users in thirty markets total.

“We’ll continue to roll this out to more people as well as Pages in countries around the world in the coming weeks,“ the social networking giant has confirmed.

Apple TV App Store gets new categories

Cody Lee ∙ Updated May 1, 2018

Apple began adding several new app categories to its Apple TV App Store on Thursday. As noted by Afterpad, the new categories are being rolled out to Apple TV 4 owners at a staggered pace, so they may not be available to everyone just yet.

The new categories include Catalogs and Utilities, and should help ease what has been a pain point for early ATV 4 adopters. Since the device launched last fall, App Store browsing and discovery has been a prominent complaint among users.

Kommute for iPhone downloads websites for offline use and is better than Safari’s Reading List

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated February 7, 2018

Today’s websites are big, even more so taking into account that scripts from ad networks continue to gobble up data long after actual website content has been retrieved.

One valid approach to reading news involves adding articles you want to read later to Safari’s Reading List, but that will download each saved webpage to every device that has Safari enabled in Settings → iCloud.

A nicely done iPhone app called Kommute from developer Red Brick Labs might be a far better solution for those people who are eager to download their favorite websites in order to read them on the go, or when they’re not on Wi-Fi.

With Kommute, you just add any URL and the app intelligently fetches home page content along with deep links, for you to browse later. From my brief hands-on time with Kommute, I liked the app and the fact that it works as advertised.

Popular platformer HoPiKo goes free as Apple’s App of the Week

Cody Lee ∙ February 25, 2016

Apple on Thursday updated its App of the Week promotion with Laser Dog's 'HoPiKo.' This means that for the next 7-days, you'll be able to pick up the popular 8-bit platformer for free, for both your iPhone and iPad—a savings of $2.

HoPiKo is described by its developers as an "intense speed run platformer where you get to save gaming." Players must jump from platform to platform, exploiting shortcuts and ripping through hundreds of gorgeous, hand-crafted levels.

Telltale’s The Walking Dead: Michonne hits the App Store

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 25, 2016

Telltale Games, a maker of episodic games, today launched The Walking Dead: Michonne on the App Store, Android, Mac and Windows PCs and the Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 consoles. A new mini-series, The Walking Dead: Michonne is aimed at both fans who are already familiar with the iconic character Michonne and those who have no prior knowledge of Robert Kirkman's comics, the TV show or Telltale's titles for that matter.

“This story is a separate, standalone experience, which makes it a great place to jump into the franchise with an awesome character,” notes Telltale.

Popular Spark email client is now available on iPad

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 25, 2016

Spark, a powerful email client from Ukrainian developer Readdle, has received a much-needed refresh in the App Store today, finally bringing out a native user interface on the iPad, so now you can experience Spark's email magic on all your devices, including the 12.9-inch iPad Pro.

Spark 1.6 also includes other refinements and improvements, such as an even better wrist app with fully native watchOS 2 support, landscape mode across all iOS devices, nine new languages, the ability to keep your email accounts and settings synced across all devices via iCloud and more.

The update is being rolled this morning so don't panic if you don't see it yet in your local App Store as these things take time to propagate.

Session videos from Apple TV Tech Talks now available to developers

Cody Lee ∙ February 24, 2016

Apple on Wednesday announced that it has posted videos of several Apple TV Tech Talk sessions to its developer portal. Both paying and non-paying members of Apple's developer program can access the instructional clips for free through the website.

The videos are taken from the 11 Tech Talks Apple has hosted around the world over the past few months. They contain in-depth technical information on building and designing for tvOS, refined coding techniques, and other valuable development help.