Mary Meeker's 2016 Internet Trends Report is a treasure trove of surveys and predictions on the global trends concerning our industry. I found out this morning that half of the searches will be either through images or speech by 2020 and that Siri was handling more than one billion requests per week through speech as of June 2015.
I've now compiled the report's most interesting tidbits regarding Internet usage around the world, the iOS vs. Android battle and more.
Alto's Adventure from developer Snowman, the popular endless snowboarding odyssey set in the tranquil wilderness, was updated this morning on the App Store with all-new Zen and Photo modes and other perks.
Zen Mode, a new way to enjoy the game, is a dedicated experience that helps you unwind “for all those times when catching llamas and chasing high scores isn’t high on the agenda”.
Facebook announced yesterday that it's adding more than 1,500 new emoji to its free mobile Messenger app, bringing a lot more diversity to your communications.
Underscoring that emojis have changed the way we talk to each other, “from skin tones that you can choose to lots of women in great roles”, the post reveals that nearly ten percent of mobile sends in Messenger include emojis.
Tumblr for iPhone was updated this morning on the App Store with a much appreciated GIF-captioning feature which helps turn the popular micro-blogging software into an instant meme generator.
In addition to the ability to post regular GIF images and animated GIFs, now both static and animated GIFs can include funny captions with support for up to three built-in fonts and custom colors.
Siri is an amazing piece of software and Apple has tried so hard to make it capable of pronouncing everyone's names right, but there are just too many names in the world for Siri to be perfect and pronouncing all of them.
On the other hand, if you're sick of Siri not being able to pronounce your name correctly, there is a way to train her so she will pronounce it right going forward.
We'll show you how this is done in this quick tutorial.
The popular app for iPhone and iPad that lets you unlock your Mac with your Touch ID sensor over a low-energy Bluetooth connection has received an important update on Tuesday that adds a number of new features to the app and fixes a number of previously-known issues.
The update is free for everyone who owns MacID already for both the iOS and OS X apps, and make the new features and stability available across both platforms immediately following installation.
Apple's stock Photos app has a lot of nicely implemented features and it gets used a lot on my iPhone 6s, but I'm still yearning for the ability to zoom on photos unlimitedly, using the pinch-zoom gesture.
Zooming in Photos isn't possible beyond a certain threshold and that's been ticking me off for quite some time now. Curiously, there appears to be a bug in iOS which overrides this behavior and lets you zoom unlimitedly on a photo.
iOS 9 came with a totally new Spotlight experience for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, but there still remains a lot that could be changed to better suit individual users' needs.
Thanks to the jailbreak community, however, customization is never really a problem.
A new free jailbreak tweak called PersonalSpotlight is now available that gives users the ability to personalize their Spotlight experience in a way that better suits them, and we'll show you how the tweak works as we go hands-on in this review.
Taiwanese trade publication DigiTimes is reporting that TPK Holding is gearing up to product nanowire-based flexible touchscreens. TPK is on Apple's supplier list so there's a high likelihood that future iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices could switch to these flexible screens based on nano silver ink. Originally developed by 3M, silver nanowire films are flexible and transparent to the eye, making them feasible for wearable devices particular.
Although you couldn't tell it by looking at official release notes for Twitter's version 6.54 update, which make a passing mention of “a few minor updates that you didn’t even know you needed”, the app has finally gained additional 3D Touch goodies in the form of Peek and Pop previews within the app. Before today, Twitter for the iPhone and iPad only supported Quick Actions on the Home screen. Grab Twitter for iOS for free on the App Store.
Sometimes it feels like I'm wrestling with iOS's text-selection feature in Safari instead of it making my life easier. Increasingly, certain webpages either wouldn't let me copy body text at all or would leave me struggling trying to make a precise selection.
More often than not, zooming doesn't prove much of a help. This issue is particularly infuriating when trying to highlight a URL. But don't worry, this is where iDownloadBlog's how-to series comes to the rescue!
Here's a simple trick which helps override this behavior, letting you highlight and copy text on webpages that don't necessarily play nicely with iOS's text-selection feature.
Lookmark for iPhone by developer Claes Jacobsson received a major update yesterday, prompting me to take another look at this interesting piece of software.
With Lookmark, you can bookmark apps and other iTunes content very easily from Safari, other apps and your desktop, and install/download them later when the time is right. Yesterday's update added a Share sheet extension which can save apps mentioned on any webpage.