Category: iOS

Apple is upping its game with Apple News according to a report in Digiday.  According to the report, Apple is signing deals with content providers to provide exclusive content to users of the app on their iPhones and iPads.  That content could prove to be only available for Apple News or, as with BuzzFeed News last month, will be exclusive and first on Apple’s service temporarily.

Last month, BuzzFeed News released a three-part series Future History: 1968 with the company confirming that Apple paid to have the exclusive rights to have first views of that series on their news app.

With the release of iOS 11.3.1 last week, Apple has stopped signing iOS 11.3 meaning that iPhone and iPad owners can no longer downgrade from the latest build.  Long time Apple followers will know that this is normal for the Cupertino company to do after a release of an update or major version of the platform.

For the majority of iOS users, the removal of 11.3 won’t be a big deal.  Most owners don’t downgrade after an update unless there are bugs or other use impacting issues.  With virtually none reported, it was just a matter of when Apple stopped signing it.

The short of it is, Apple Podcasts are doing well.  The service, which launched way back in 2005 as a part of iTunes, has slowly been building both content and users of the now independent app for iPhone and iOS.  Now, according to a report from Fast Company, the Cupertino company has now seen some 50 billion all time downloads on the service.

In all, there are some 18.5 million podcast episodes available for download in Apple Podcasts with over 100 languages supported in those episodes.  It is a staggering number on the whole and is a proof point that Apple has positioned itself well as being the go-to place to find a podcast on virtually any subject out there.

Update – Now Live in the Stable version

A new and pretty exciting feature is making its way to Microsoft Authenticator for iOS.  The feature will allow the app to keep a user’s credentials so they don’t get locked out of their accounts when they move to a new device.  The feature is a long requested feature by users and should make the migration from one phone to another more simple.

Today, if you migrate to a new phone, you have to pre-configure the Microsoft Authenticator app on your new phone prior to wiping your old one.  If you wipe the old one prior to doing this pre configuration, you run the risk of losing access to your two factor accounts – which is a gigantic pain, let’s be honest.  This new feature should make it a lot easier.

On the Apple Developer site, the Cupertino company has released the latest update of iOS distribution figures and it is pretty astounding.  For the report which is dated April 22, 2018, 76% of all iPhones and iPads coming to the App Store were running a variant of iOS 11, the latest version of the mobile platform.  A further 19% were running iOS 10, meaning that stunning 95% of all devices are running the last two major updates to the platform.

The numbers stand in stark comparison to Android Oreo, the latest version of Android from Google.  There, you will find just 4.6% of Android devices coming to the Google Play Store.  In fact, if you add up Oreo and Nougat, the version prior, you only get to 35.4%.  While it is easy to point the finger at Google, the reality is that the blame for the lack of updates to the majority of devices in the Android ecosystem lies with manufactures, a problem Apple clearly doesn’t have with iPhones and iPads.

Google has finally released a standalone task management app.  A round of applause please….  Google Tasks is a new app for both Android and iOS that allows you to create and management your tasks that formerly, you could only get to from Google Calendar.  The app, though, doesn’t remove your tasks from Calendar but instead, provides you a way to management without having to dive into Calendar itself.

The new app has been rumored for a while and was leaked a few weeks ago but there wasn’t much information on it until it was released today.  The new app is a beautiful example of Material Design and makes task management easy.