When Apple took to the stage at the Worldwide Developers Conference last month, we knew that there would be some big iOS-related announcements as part of the keynote. But whilst we'd already gathered quite an insight into HealthKit and such, we didn't foresee the opening up of several key areas of the platform to third parties. As well as bringing widgets and offering developers the chance to do more with Siri, the Cupertino company finally came through and brought third-party keyboard support, and given how the AutoCorrect had become a bit of a running joke, the announcement did not arrive too soon.
Google Now is still very much a work in progress, and even though it has evolved significantly since its introduction a couple of years ago, it's always going to have its imperfections. One such case is when, rather irritatingly, the voice recognition feature cannot properly comprehend what you're saying, and if you're asking a long question, having to repeat the entire speech becomes cumbersome even at the second time of asking. Now, though, thanks to an update, you can correct just the word that Google Now has failed to latch onto by using a simple command, and although it's rare for the polished service to mishear anything anyway, it's a good little tip to know.
Apple's iTunes U application for the iPad and iPhone has received quite the feature bump, with version 2.0 now available to download. The big 2.0 update was announced last week.
Even though we enjoyed some really awesome deals this weekend, there are still plenty more savings to be had on a regular basis, and below, we've got a nice batch of apps and games ready for your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.
iOS 8 beta 3 has been released, and in typical fashion, we took the latest beta from Cupertino out for a test run and found a few nuggets along the way. Here’s what is new!
iOS 8 beta 3 download is now live. The new beta 3 includes the usual spate of bug fixes and general performance enhancements. There are one or two new features to boot, and we’ll surely discover a few more as we become better acquainted with this new release in the coming hours. The official changelog, as well as the details on how you can get your hands on this latest build, can be found after the break!
For a lot of jailbreak fans out there, one of the most important aspects attached to liberating a device is the ability to efficiently access the internal file system. This access could be required for a number of reasons which are beyond the scope of this article, but suffice to say it's undoubtedly an important part of jailbreaking.
Apple has passed on the message to developers that it will be removing all CloudKit data from its servers as of Monday, July 7th. This is not out of the ordinary, and in fact, regularly occurs around the time that iOS and OS X betas arrive, and anybody running iOS 8 beta or OS X Yosemite Developer Preview with data stored in the iCloud Photo Library, Mail Drop or iCloud Drive will need to retrieve it over the next couple of days.
We cannot, it seems, help but get carried away by voice assistants, and even though Microsoft joined the party extremely late with the introduction of Cortana earlier this year, the amount of hype it has generated for the software giant will certainly do Windows Phone's cause no harm whatsoever. Having already been compared a dozen times to Google Now and Apple's Siri, Cortana has had the benefit of watching and learning from both, but while the Halo-based voice assistant has clearly borrowed from its two longer-serving rivals in many departments, Siri is now looking to Cortana for inspiration.
It's become customary for big new movies to be accompanied by a mobile title, which offers fans supplementary entertainment whilst also ramping up promotion. We're still a couple of weeks away from the box office début of Dwayne Johnson's Hercules movie, but already, we have an action-packed iOS / Android game on our hands, the details of which you can find below.
