One little goodie that came along for the ride with the brand new iOS 8.2 update is the brand new Apple Watch app. Read on for more info.
iOS
iOS 8 adoption up to 75%
The latest pie chart shows iOS 8 adoption at 75%, with iOS 7 at 22%.
Apple to release first ever iOS public betas: 8.3 in March, 9 in summer
Mark Gurman, writing for 9to5mac:
Apple intends to release the upcoming iOS 8.3 as a public beta via the company’s existing AppleSeed program in mid-March, according to the sources.
More than half of all emails in UK opened on an Apple Device
A remarkable trend: Android device “email open rates” are done significantly, while iOS opens are up a fair amount. Read on for specifics.
On the Apple Watch, rumored numbers, and planned obsolescence
Projected Apple Watch sales numbers from the Wall Street Journal, plus projected production numbers, and some thoughts on Apple Watch and planned obsolescence.
12 tips for typing faster on your iPhone or iPad
You might know most of these, but chances are you don’t know all of them. I didn’t.
If you work with color, the ColorDrop app is a great app to have
If you work with color, this is an excellent app to have. Pick a picture from your library, zoom in, touch a pixel, all the info you could ever want about the pixel’s color.
Photos for Mac: an FAQ
Two good reads if you are interested in learning about Photos for OS X, Apple’s coming replacement for iPhoto.
On code signing, and the world of difference between Android and iOS
Geoffrey Goetz, writing for GigaOM, digs into the concept of code signing and getting your app on the App Store. Bottom line, code signing shows the world of difference between iOS and Android. It’s all about security.
YouTube bangs another nail into Flash’s coffin
Flash is no longer in the Google Play Store, and now YouTube has officially moved from Flash to HTML5 as a default.
On App Store purchases that no longer work with the latest version of iOS
Jeremy Horowitz from 9to5mac writes about apps that charge big money, but are abandoned by their developers when faced with rewrites to support a major iOS release.
How to make your iPhone dimmer than its dimmest setting
Here’s a little trick to dim your iOS device even dimmer than the normal Settings allow.
On the public nature of your personal iPhone contact info
Apple makes your contact info available via Siri, even on a locked screen.
Be My Eyes – An app that lets you help a blind person
Be My Eyes pairs visually impaired and sighted people in video link sessions that let the sighted person help sort out a specific problem.
Watch the video below. Brilliant.
On multi-user access to your iOS device
Have you ever wanted to share your iPhone or iPad with someone else? If you share your Mac with someone, you can each have your own account. OS X is designed for multiple users. But iOS is not.
Here’s an idea for a short term fix.
Apple devices and a constant for battery life
Jason Snell offers an interesting analysis on the daily battery expectancy for iOS devices.
iOS 8 adoption now up to 68 percent
Apple updated their iOS adoption pie chart on Monday.
The year’s best user interface animations
Beautiful Pixels posted their annual look at the best user interface animations from apps and the web. My favorite, from Lush for iPhone, is below. So very delicious.
On leaving the Mac App Store
Last May, Cabel Sasser, co-founder of Panic, announced that the team was pulling Coda, their highly regarded web development tool, from the Mac App Store, primarily due to sandboxing issues.
Yesterday, they published the results of this experiment.
On the iOS storage lawsuit
There’s been a lot of discussion about the lawsuit alleging that Apple is somehow defrauding its customers by selling a 16 Gig phone, which yields about 12 Gigs of usable space.
Six Colors lists their favorite iOS games
Jason Snell and Dan Moren of Six Colors put together a list of their favorite iOS games. The usual suspects are there, but there are plenty of games that were new to me. A nice little list.
Twitter clients in 2014: An exploration of Tweetbot, Twitterific, and Twitter
Federico Viticci on the history of Twitter clients and the current state of the union. Fantastic read.
Apple and IBM deliver first wave of apps from new partnership
The apps are vertical in nature, targeting specific industries such as travel, banking, and insurance. They are built with a combination of IBM’s vertical savvy and Apple design skills.
Autocorrect canceling gesture
I am a fan of autocorrect. And I hate it, too.
I love autocorrect when it helps me properly spell a difficult or mis-typed word or when it speeds up my typing by properly predicting the next word I’d like to type.
Here’s a proposal to make autocorrect a bit better.
Single question survey: How do you sync your iOS device?
Kirk McElhearn put up a page with a single question survey. If you would, please take a minute to click over to this page and answer the question. Once the results are known, Kirk will post them and so will we. Thanks.
Wish List: Handoff for iTunes and music
Automatic music handoff from one device to another is on my wish list too.
Apple’s iCloud Photo Library: A quick how-to guide
Know the difference between iCloud Photo Library and Photo Stream? Katherine Boehret, writing for re/code, walks you through the basics. Good read.
The true nature of the pixels on an iPhone 6 Plus
Ole Begemann used a closeup camera rig to take pictures of the iPhone 6 Plus screen doing its downsampling magic. Pretty pictures, and he published all his code on GitHub for folks who want to try this themselves.
Apple scrubs the term free from the App Store (mostly)
This past July, the European Commission asked both Google and Apple to implement changes to the way they sell “free” games that contain in-app purchases. Yesterday, Apple unveiled a design change that addresses this ruling.
Deleting a Safari tab on one device from another one
This tip arrived with iOS 8 and Yosemite, but is a little down in the weeds, so you may not have noticed it. This clever detail is exactly the sort of thing that draws me to Apple products.