Articles about iOS

The BBC’s weather predictions tend to be reasonably accurate, and now you can check the corporation’s latest forecasts on a new app available for iOS and Android.

When you launch the app it detects your location and tells you what the weather is like where you are, providing details such as high and low temperatures, current conditions, humidity, visibility and wind speed.

Continue reading →

Eye-Fi memory cards can automatically copy photos from your camera to a wireless enabled device, such as your PC, whenever you get in range. The new Mobi card, announced today, is designed to transfer photos from a camera to any iOS or Android handset.

All you have to do is insert the Mobi card into your camera, and use it as you would any ordinary SD card. Install the free app on your phone and pair it to the Mobi by entering a unique 10 digit code. Once paired, photos and videos can be copied over automatically.

Continue reading →

The default Mail app for the iPhone and iPad is capable enough, but sometimes you find yourself craving more. Google Mail users could opt for the official Gmail app, but despite some improvements over Mail, there’s still a bit of clunkiness in there, particularly when it comes to handling larger mailboxes. But there’s another alternative, one that has just been updated to run natively on the iPad as well as the iPhone. That app is also free, and it’s called Mailbox 1.3.

Mailbox takes a different approach to handling your email, providing you with five separate zones in which to work. Mail lands in your inbox and you simply swipe it in the direction of a specific zone to deal with it in a particular way. It allows you to quickly and easily bring order to even the most disorganized mailbox.

Continue reading →

Over the course of the past week, Evernote Corporation has been updating its flagship Evernote client across all supported platforms. As with most Evernote updates, however, the changes implemented have not been equal, with users of Evernote for Mac 5.1.1 and Evernote for iPhone and iPad 5.2.3 getting the best deal.

The big news for Evernote users is the addition of support for reminders -- initially on Mac, iOS and the web-based platform. These can be triggered as email or in-app alarms, and are easily set via the small timer button at the top of a note.

Continue reading →

On Thursday, following user demand, Mailbox released an update for its iOS mail app that introduces support for iPads. The service, which delivers more than 100 million messages each day, was previously available as an iPhone-only affair.

Mailbox boasts a better organized and easier to manage inbox, allowing its users to take advantage of swipe gestures to archive or trash messages. Similar to alarm clocks, the app also offers the option to snooze emails in order to receive them at a later date in the inbox.

Continue reading →

iOS may well have a halfway decent keyboard, but it is still far slower to use than a regular desktop or laptop keyboard. Anything that can be done to reduce the amount of typing that has to be done on a daily basis is to be welcomed, and this is something that TextExpander has offered for some time. Type a few letters and they can be expanded into longer words or even entire sentences. With version 2.0 things just got a whole lot better.

There are a couple of key enhancements to be found in this latest release, not least of which is support for formatting. The context menu can now be used to add richly formatted text so you can save even more time.

Continue reading →

On Wednesday, cloud storage provider MediaFire, which now boasts 30 million users, launched support for native music playback and video streaming in its Android, iOS and web apps. The new feature is available through an update that is rolling out today.

MediaFire currently offers three plans -- basic (free), Pro and Business -- which come with 50GB, 100GB and 1TB of cloud storage, respectively. However, users who do not wish to shell out for a premium plan (either Pro or Business) are stuck with a 200 MB limit for uploaded files, which suggests that they are not able to take full advantage of both music playback and video streaming support.

Continue reading →

The first stage of developing an app involves no technical skills at all, it's also the hardest, and that’s coming up with an original idea. There are already thousands of apps out there so you need to make sure that what you’re proposing hasn't been done before. Or at the very least that you have a new and original twist on an idea that will make it stand out from the crowd.

It's important to note that just creating an app isn't going to make you money, research by Canalys in 2012 showed that some two-thirds of apps received fewer than 1,000 downloads in their first year. The store pages have many thousands of "zombie apps" which still appear on the websites but never get downloaded.

Continue reading →

The iOS versions of eBay’s app have been updated with a redesigned interface and a raft of other changes. The latest release improves on the stripped back UI that was available in previous versions and larger photos can now be accessed. As before, there are versions of the app available for iPad (which is version 2.3.0) and iPhone (which has reached version 3.0.0).

But there’s more than a new look to the latest version of the app. If you’re one of those people who has yet to create an eBay account, the signup process just got a whole lot easier -- if you’re in the US, that is. Forget time-consuming form filling, you can now sign up for an account with a quick scan of your driver’s license.

Continue reading →

Change the rules of the game and you change the hierarchy. Two days ago research company Gartner released its latest report on the state of smartphone market which, based on sales, places Windows Phone in fourth place, just behind BlackBerry in terms of share. Today, IDC also released its latest report for Q1 2013, that measures shipments, and the two smartphone operating systems trade places -- Windows Phone now surpasses BlackBerry for the third spot in the charts.

That switch means Microsoft and Nokia have a reason to celebrate, in spite of numerous barbs coming from pundits. "Windows Phone claiming the third spot is a first and helps validate the direction taken by Microsoft and key partner Nokia", says IDC's Kevin Restivo. But the research company suggests that the operating system still has a long way to go: "Given the relatively low volume generated, the Windows Phone camp will need to show further gains to solidify its status as an alternative to Android or iOS".

Continue reading →

It’s been a while coming. Two weeks ago my colleague Alan Buckingham wrote that Apple was fast closing in on a remarkable milestone -- 50 billion unique downloads (excluding re-downloads and updates) from the App Store -- and said the "big event seems destined to take place within the next 24 hours".

It actually took around 14 days from that point for the 50 billionth download to happen (or be announced at least), and for the winner of the $10,000 App Store gift card Apple put up as a prize to be revealed.

Continue reading →

Music Piracy is now dead. Apple iTunes is now obsolete. Spotify, Pandora, Slacker -- yesterday’s news. This is all because of Google Play Music All Access. It will change the way you listen to music. It will change your life. You will subscribe. Resistance is futile. This is the future of music.

The idea of a music streaming service is not new. However, a music streaming service by the most important and influential tech company is. On May 15, 2013, Google unveiled its new music streaming service, named Google Play Music All Access. Other than the ridiculously long name (I will just call it All Access for the rest of the article), the service is near-perfect.

Continue reading →

Ouch! The latest report from market research company Gartner crushes Microsoft's dreams of Windows Phone breaking away from the smartphone operating system bottom pack. In Q1 2013, with a low market share of just 2.9 percent, Windows Phone battled with BlackBerry for the consolation spot of third most popular platform (and lost), far away from either Android or iOS. The green droid is still the dominant leader, followed from afar by Apple's OS.

"There are two clear leaders in the OS market and Android’s dominance in the OS market is unshakable", says Gartner's Anshul Gupta. "With new OSs coming to market such as Tizen, Firefox and Jolla we expect some market share to be eroded but not enough to question Android’s volume leadership". What he doesn't says is that the future is bleak for both Windows Phone and BlackBerry, which have to showcase their strength to survive the future string of contenders. Let's take a look at the numbers.

Continue reading →

Just yesterday, I suggested that Gmail for iOS, which new version links to Google apps rather than Safari, might be a bigger deal. Sure enough, is it ever. The search and information giant is hellbent on co-opting Apple's mobile platform by offering superior apps tightly tied to web services. But the strategy depends on Chrome.

Contrary to popular tech convention, Android isn't the future of Google platforms, neither is Chrome OS, nor is an amalgamation of the two. The browser is the go-forward platform of choice. Android and Chrome stand apart, competing with operating systems like iOS and Windows. Chrome can co-opt them and others. The browser is more natural fit for Google services and anchors them anywhere. This is the lesson from March's corporate shake-up that put Android under Sundar Pichai, who leads Chrome and Apps.

Continue reading →

Instagram boasts 100 million users and it gets media attention, but the photo sharing service is far from being the only camera app available for mobile customers. In fact, while I use the service, I cannot say it is my favorite. That title belongs to Camera360, a photo app that brings all sorts of functionality to your smartphone.

Camera360 recently upgraded to version 4.0, bringing along new shooting modes, scenes, cloud integration and more. The upgrade is a hit  and today the company announces that, like Instagram, it now has 100 million customers.

Continue reading →