iPad

From the latest news to the most comprehensive tutorials, learn how to get the most out of your iPad with our step-by-step guides and expert tips.

Blend, Quicky, Bynd and other apps to check out this weekend

This week's edition of our Apps of the Week roundup features some great apps and games for you to check out this weekend. We have an easy wallpaper-maker, a productivity app for shortcuts, a one-stop-shop for all of your news and social feeds, and of course two awesome new games that you won't want to miss.

Project “Invisible Hand” would let users fully control Apple devices via Siri within 3 years

Bloomberg today published an article that shed more light on Apple's rumored Amazon Echo-like Siri hardware, which has purportedly exited the research and development lab and is now in prototype testing. As part of the report, Bloomberg alleges that Apple has another secretive project in the works that would improve Siri on iPhones and iPads.

Code-named Invisible Hand, the project would give us the ability to fully control our Apple devices through “a Siri command system within three years”.

Apple’s free app of the week: AG Drive

Apple on Thursday updated its App of the Week promotion with the game AG Drive. This means from now through next Thursday, you can pick up the popular futuristic racing title for free—a solid savings of $4.

AG Drive puts you behind the wheel of a blazing fast anti-gravity craft and up against opponents on gorgeous tracks. It features amazing graphics, easy-to-learn controls, and it works on both iOS and Apple TV.

Facebook Messenger gains iOS 10 integration on the Lock screen and in Phone app

Facebook just pushed a major update to its Messenger software in the App Store. On iPhones with iOS 10, the app now takes advantage of Apple's new CallKit framework to make audio (VoIP) calls from Messenger look and behave like normal cellular calls with full support for Lock screen and Phone integration.

Bumped to version 89.0, the app now shows incoming VoIP calls from Messenger contacts right on your Lock screen complete with fullscreen contact images, standard controls like the Mute, Keypad, Speaker, Add Call and Video buttons and more.

Snapchat rolls out Sticker Search

Snapchat recently rolled out a minor refresh to its iPhone application in the App Store, bumping version number to 9.39.3.0 and bringing out a new Sticker Search feature. As the feature's name suggests, this lets you find precisely the sticker you want simply by typing its description. A previous Snapchat update introduced a few tweaks, including support for caption styling with the new bold, underline and italic options.

Google’s Allo messaging app hits the App Store and it logs all your chats

At the annual I/O developer conference in April 2016, Google previewed two new mobile apps: a one-to-one video calling app called Duo, which released in mid-August, and a messaging software called Allo, which surfaced on the App Store this morning as a free download.

It sports features commonly found in messaging apps and includes a built-in Assistant, Google's conversational artificial intelligence helper, an Incognito mode and more.

While Google originally promised Allo would only store messages transiently and in non-identifiable form, the firm's had a change of heart as Allo logs all chats by default.

Tip: use Messages low quality image mode to conserve precious cellular data

Apple's Messages app provides an optional iOS-only mode which cuts down your cellular data consumption to a bare minimum when sending image attachments. I don't know about you, but I worry about sharing high-resolution images when cellular data is on. In my experience, most normals are oblivious to the fact that sending a single shot-on-iPhone photograph through iMessage burns through one to five megabytes of data, sometimes even more.

In low quality mode, Messages uses only 100KB per image attachment. Another way to think about it: you can send 30 to 50 images for the same amount of data required to share a full-resolution attachment in Messages. In this brief tutorial, we'll teach you how to tell Messages to send lower quality images in order to optimize your cellular data consumption and prevent unwanted overage fees.