Amazon updated its Instant Video streaming app today, bringing it to version 2.9.5. As the build number indicates, it's a fairly small update, but it should make users happy with its improved support for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.
This means that streaming videos should look better on the larger, higher resolution displays of Apple's newer handsets, as should the app's menu system. You can now see more content in a single glance, making navigation easier.
It's Thursday and those of you who frequent iDB know what that means: Apple's editors get to discount and highlight another app as part of the App Store's ongoing promotion marketed under the ‘Free App of the Week’ banner.
With last week's free app, the popular retro-futuristic 3D shooter Space Qube, soon going back up to its regular price of three bucks, we now turn our attention to Brushstroke, a photography app available to you at no cost for a week.
Created by Code Organa, the developer behind the amazing ToonCamera app which turns your video and photos into a live cartoon, Brushstroke transforms your photos into beautiful paintings in seconds. Brushstroke made its App Store debut back in March, has an average rating of 4.5 stars based on 285 reviews and was never free before.
Online retailer Amazon today launched Prime Now, a shopping and ordering app for iOS and Android with one-hour delivery directly to a customer's doorstep in select markets.
Available exclusively to Amazon’s $99 per year Prime members, the software allows you to shop for tens of thousands of daily essentials such as diapers, toys, paper towels, shampoo, batteries and mor, plus gifts like consumer electronics, wearables, books, toys, clothing and other items.
One-hour delivery will set you back eight bucks per order while two-hour delivery is available at no cost.
For the time being, Prime Now is available from 6am to midnight, seven days a week, in select areas of Manhattan, with more markets to be added at a later stage. The app will even ping you when the new delivery services launches in your area.
The folks over at Halfbrick Studios must be getting in the holiday spirt, because they just discounted their entire library of iOS games down to free. That's right, for a limited time, you can pick up any one of their popular apps for iPhone and iPad, at absolutely 0 cost.
Even if you're not familiar with the Halfbrick name, there's a good chance you've played one of their titles. The studio is responsible for a number of iOS hits including Fruit Ninja, Monster Dash, Jetpack Joyride and more. Full list of games and App Store links below.
Glimpse is a new app that lets you pin one or more favorite webpages to the Today tab of Notification Center, allowing to have a quick glance at your most visited websites, without having to launch Safari. The Notification Center extension is particularly handy to check news-focused websites where information is often time sensitive, and where a quick look is usually enough to get an idea of what is going on, without necessarily unlocking the device and opening up the full web browser.
By now, you probably have your favorite go-to filter app. There are enough of them in the App Store that, no matter what your preference is, there is probably an app that suits your needs.
Shift is a photo filter app that may make you rethink whether or not you’ve found the right one. First, you shuffle premade filters in a random selection. Then, tweak the filter you like best to make it perfect. We’ve got a full app review of Shift for you today.
Popular photo sharing service 500px has posted a monster update for its iOS client today, bringing the app to version 2.9. The update brings about a number of significant improvements, including support for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus and the 1Password iOS 8 login extension.
Perhaps most noteworthy, though, is that 500px has added a built-in camera to the app, with the option to control focus and exposure manually. So the app once only served as a browser/manager tool for the service, it now competes directly with Instagram, Flickr and others.
Yahoo's main search-focused iPhone and iPad application has received a refresh today. In addition to an improved navigation system focused on the new side panel accessible by swiping, Yahoo 5.4 for iOS now integrates latest local news headlines and finally lets you comment on stories within the app.
“Today we’re bringing local news to your fingertips with the Yahoo App,” writes the Internet company. “As you move around the country, you’ll be able to see what’s going on in your area.”
Microsoft's mobile Bing apps for the iPhone and iPad are getting a major makeover today, with the translate extension that debuted in the iPhone app two months ago at last available on iPads.
On the iPhone, you can now tap anywhere underneath the search box to check out Bing's image of the day in uncluttered full-screen view. You can also swipe from the left to see yesterday’s image of the day.
Another handy addition: weather information, trending news and images of the day zoom to full screen smoothly when swiping from the bottom of Bing's Home screen.
Although Duet Display is not the first app to allow your iOS device to act as an extra display for your Mac (Shape's $10 iDisplay comes to mind), it's the first app to have done screen extending right.
Built by ex-Apple engineers who worked at the company for three years on the iPad and iMac, the software delivers a Retina display at a smooth sixty frames per second with no lag whatsoever.
Featuring touch control, Duet Display makes interactions with your Mac fun and smooth while taking advantage of the fact that an additional display increases productivity by giving you up to 48 percent more pixels to work with.
Apple is changing its pricing scheme across European App Stores, switching from the previously same VAT rate it imposed across the entire European Union to a country-specific model, iMore reported.
Apps European customers purchase on their local App Store previously had an Irish 22 percent VAT on them. With this change taking effect soon, Apple will be now calculating app prices based on whatever VAT is used in each customer's home country.
Slingshot, Facebook's weird ephemeral messaging app, is actually getting better and more useful with each update.
After releasing a major 2.0 version rebuilt from the ground up and enriched with such new features as private reactions, photo filters, drawings, emojis and notifications on a per-contact basis.
Today's update keeps smoothing out the remaining few rough edges.
For instance, you can now switch smoothly between your iPhone's front-facing FaceTime camera for ‘selfies’ and the iSight camera out the back for ‘fronties’ by swiping left and right.