iPod Touch

Twelve South’s HiRise 2 Deluxe dock looks great with the new iPhone 7

Twelve South is at it again, making great accessories for Apple products. The company’s release of the HiRise 2 and HiRise 2 Deluxe charging docks earlier this month brought forth a redesign with new color options and improved stability for larger devices.

In this review, we’ll take a closer look at the HiRise 2 Deluxe in black, a color made to match Apple’s new black iPhone 7 & 7 Plus finish.

How to use emoji like a pro in Messages for iPhone and iPad

Your expressive Messages app for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch packs in some interesting and useful features related to emojis. For added impact, emojis can be made three times their normal size.

But that's not all.

Apple's stock QuickType keyboard now recommends emojis as you type and Messages has a cool emojification feature where you tap words to turn them into appropriate emoji characters.

We're going to take you through all emoji-related features in Messages for iOS and teach you how to use them. Are you ready to boost your emoji game?

MacID update brings improvements for iOS 10, watchOS 3, and macOS Sierra

An important update for the popular MacID utility for iOS and macOS has been released this week with improvements for iOS 10, watchOS 3, and macOS Sierra.

The utility is known for its ability to let you securely unlock your Mac with the Touch ID sensor on your iPhone or iPad, but it also has built-in features that let you unlock your Mac with your Apple Watch over Bluetooth or with a Tap to Unlock gesture on the trackpad.

Spotify’s new continuously updated playlist combines your favorites and new music

Spotify, the #1 music streaming service, today announced a new playlist updated daily with tracks that users mark as favorites as well as new music.

Now available in the updated mobile Spotify app for iOS and Android, Daily Mix differs from Spotify's existing Discover Weekly and Release Radar playlists which get refreshed each Monday and Friday, respectively, in that Daily Mix won't be a complete refresh of songs each time the playlist is updated.

Apple begins removing outdated apps from the App Store

In keeping true to its promise, The Great App Store Purge is now underway as Apple recently began removing old, outdated and seldom updated apps from the App Store, as first spotted by French blog iGen.fr. “We noticed that your app has not been updated in a significant amount of time,” reads Apple’s message to affected developers.

To keep their apps alive on the App Store, Apple is demanding that developers submit updated versions for review within 30 days.

IBM unlocks all the server-side capabilities now available in Swift 3.0

In February 2016, IBM promised to bring Apple's new programming language Swift to the cloud. Today, the firm has made good on that promise with the introduction of Bluemix Runtime which allows developers to write server-side code for iPhone, Mac and Windows PC apps in Swift.

“Swift is now ready for the enterprise,” Mike Gilfix, IBM’s Vice President of MobileFirst and Smarter Process, said in an interview with Mike Gilfix of Computerworld.

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.

How to save drafts of Instagram posts to work on later

With Instagram drafts, you can save any half-finished photo edits and work on them later, which is handy for those times you get too busy to post right away. And if you run an Instagram account for your business, letting your social media manager save a post as a draft makes it easy for you to review it in advance of publishing.