Apple has just sent out invitations to a special media event on October 16th, which will take place at Town Hall on the company's Cupertino campus. With the event considered a certainty and the venue long since rumored, it was just a matter of when, and with the invitations having now been distributed, we know that 10/16 will be the date for Apple's second major keynote in as many months.
Apple's iPad refresh is set to take place in around two weeks' time, and given the imminent nature of the announcement, we're likely to begin seeing quite a few leaks and tidbits of information over the next fortnight. Kicking us off, a new video has emerged of a dummy iPad Air 2, which features redesigned, iPhone 6-like volume buttons, a sleeker finish and, as has long since been suspected, a Touch ID fingerprint sensor.
Earlier on, we told of how Apple's work on patching the 'date trick' loophole will soon prevent fans of SNES and GBA emulators from installing them on iOS devices without a jailbreak, and while it has just been revealed that Popcorn Time for iOS can also be loaded on iPhone and iPad using a similar method, the torrent streamer will also be a jailbreak-only enterprise once iOS 8.1 arrives.
iOS 8.1 Beta 2 is now available for download. This new beta comes in only a week after Apple released first beta for supported iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices.
Talk of an enlarged, so-called "iPad Pro" has been rife for about a year now, but with the likes of the Microsoft Surface Pro and Samsung's Galaxy TabPro having rolled out in that time, there's a genuine feeling that Apple is finally poised to counter with a similar effort of its own. The slate, which will apparently include a 12.9-inch display, remains something of an enigma, but a new report cites the usual sources familiar by claiming that it will run a hybrid operating system combining bits of iOS and OS X into one.
Apple's decision to allow third-party keyboards into iOS with its latest release took many by surprise, mainly because after all these years it was generally accepted that Apple simply didn't want to give third parties access to everything its users typed, but that also meant that users of iPhones and iPads were going to miss out on some of the excellent keyboards and keyboard features that have been available to users of other platform devices for years.
Apple's decision to launch a 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch iPhone may have ruffled a few feathers and divided opinion right down the middle, but there's one thing that's for sure; the jumbo-sized iPhone 6 Plus will definitely appeal to those who love to create, edit and consume media on the move. The 5.5-inch Retina HD display of the iPhone 6 Plus makes watching high-definition videos, swiping through photograph galleries and just generally interacting with any visual content an absolute pleasure. For those individuals who love creating and sharing moving masterpieces, Adobe has just launched its Premiere Clip application for iPhone & iPad, designed and developed to make editing videos a much simpler and more enjoyable task.
If you're an iOS fan, there's a good chance that you've either bought an iPhone 6, are planning to buy an iPhone 6, or are indeed saving your pennies for the imminent launch of the next-generation iPads due later this month. The point here being, of course, that spare change for apps and games might be a little hard to come by at this moment in time, and if you want to save a few bucks this weekend, we've got an assortment of six paid apps gone free.
Apple may currently be working to bring forth iOS 8.1 later on this month, which will include some exciting new features like Apple Pay, but even at its current duration, iOS 8 offers plenty of changes and improvements for the iDevice community to familiarize themselves with. Along with some of the more blatant additions to iOS 8, such as third-party keyboards and Notification Center widgets, Apple has made a multitude of subtle, less obvious adjustments, and among them, a long-standing gripe regarding App Store purchases has now been addressed.
The introduction of Notification Center widgets with iOS 8 has brought a whole new dynamic to Apple's mobile platform, and of all the areas of the ecosystem that have been opened up to third parties with the latest software updates, Notification Center widgets appear to be thriving the most during these early stages. We've already seen dozens of great widgets as developers seek to take advantage of what is a brand new category, and here, we feature one of our favorite widgets to have landed so far.














