Federico
How app subscriptions work, the pros and cons for consumers and developers, and examples of apps using creative subscription models.
Album
Solid Solids Jumping spheres, angry cones, and other animated solids make this geometric sticker pack come alive. Business Fish It’s tough being a businessman these days, but imagine being a business…fish. These stickers encapsulate the struggles of our modern economy if you happen to have the body of a fish. 3D Emojis Tired of...
TWiM
You’ve already got direct messaging built into your Twitter client, so why use an app designed just for DMs? It’s a valid question, but one that answers itself if you stop thinking of DMs as private tweets and instead, think of them as a cross-platform messaging system. If lots of your contacts are on...
App Debuts
Sleep Orbit Sleep Orbit lets you create mixes of sounds to fall asleep to. There are sounds you would expect like rain, but also things like scissors clipping hair. You can layer the sounds on top of each other, set their volume and the degree to which they rotate around your head, creating a...
Member Requests
Question: I have an IFTTT applet that takes trending GIFs from Giphy.com and puts them in a folder in Dropbox. While I love GIFs, it sometimes is overkill, and within a few weeks, I had accumulated over 700 GIFs in the Dropbox folder where these are stored. Since I only have 1 TB of space...
Apple Releases How-To Videos on iPhone 7 Photography
The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus include Apple’s most sophisticated cameras. Most of the time you see people out and about snapping quick shots that don’t necessarily take advantage of all the camera hardware and app have to offer. A series of 30-40 second videos released by Apple provide mini how-to tutorials on how to take iPhone 7 photography to the next level.
The videos are available on a new Apple website called ‘How to Shoot on iPhone 7’ and include videos on taking:
- Portraits with the Portrait feature that’s exclusive to the iPhone 7 Plus;
- Closeups using tap to focus and slide to adjust exposure;
- Vertical panoramic photos;
- Shots without using the flash;
- Action photos with burst mode;
- Selfies using the timer;
- Photos framed with a unique angle;
- Stills while filming video; and
- Night time photos using street light.
Five of the videos are also on YouTube, and you can watch them after the break.
Game Day: A.S.I.
Brian Mueller’s CARROT series of apps serve up healthy doses of snark along with the weather, fitness, tasks, and alarms. It’s a style that is immediately recognizable and adds an element of humor and fun that give his apps personality. That unexpected game-like quality, combined with utility and productivity apps, is what makes Mueller’s apps stand out from the crowd. Watching the family of CARROT apps grow over the years, it’s not surprising at all that Mueller has taken what feels like the next logical step and made an iOS game. A.S.I. brings CARROT, the star in his apps, to life in a sprawling and fun sci-fi sendup of artificial intelligence and tech culture.
PDF Expert 6 Adds Powerful Editing Tools and More
Readdle released a major update to PDF Expert today. Version 6 incorporates powerful PDF editing tools, in-place cloud-based editing and annotation, document-level assignment of passwords, and more. PDF Expert was already one of the premier PDF apps on iOS, but free alternatives have given it a run for its money recently. The new features in PDF Expert 6 should help maintain its status as a favorite for many PDF power users.
Beddit Sleep Tracker Acquired by Apple→
Beddit, which makes a sleep sensor that collects sleep and other health data and sends it to companion iPhone and Apple Watch apps, was acquired by Apple. According to Beddit’s privacy policy:
Beddit has been acquired by Apple. Your personal data will be collected, used and disclosed in accordance with the Apple Privacy Policy.
Since the introduction of the Apple Watch Series 2, Apple has placed renewed emphasis on the health and fitness tracking features of the Watch. One notable hole in Apple’s lineup of built-in health and fitness apps has been the lack of a sleep tracker. With Beddit, Apple fills that gap and presumably adds a team of engineers that can help it develop additional sleep tracking capabilities in-house.
The Beddit 3 Sleep Monitor is available on Apple’s online store.