The 2014 Apple Conference near its headquarters in Cupertino, California turned heads by the bunch with new devices, a new payment system and new a smart watch. If you haven’t had the chance to watch it live, here is our lowdown on the key highlights of the glittering events that was as many as 4 launches in one dazzling evening.

#1 – iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus – The device every loyal Apple fan has been waiting for was finally announced by Tim Cook, the Chief Executive of Apple. While the basic look of exterior matches the iPhone 5, the slightly rounded corners managed to hold attention. Also prominent was the protrusion of the camera lens out of the phone’s body. While the iPhone 6 sports a 4.7 inch screen, the iPhone 6 Plus boasts of a huge 5.5 inch screen – the biggest screen size on iPhone till date.

Both the phones feature Retina HD display, iOS8 and 20 LTE bands. They run on the proprietary Apple A8 64-bit 2^nd generation SoC that contains a little over two billion transistors built around a 20nM process. Apple claims 25% speedier CPU and 5% boost on graphics. ¹

The price sensitive consumer would be forced to think twice before ordering the new iPhone 6. However, crazy fans around the world will see no problems in shelling out $299 for 16 GB, $399 for 64 GB or $499 for a 128 GB iPhone. The interesting thing here is the increased storage made available in place of the maximum 64GB space in previous iPhones. ²

We are sure that the new editions will be a delight to both the iOS app developers as well as the iPhone users.

#2 – Apple Pay – The conference also marked the debut of Apple Pay, a new payment process that uses NFC and fingerprint-sensing TouchId to enable purchases directly from the phone itself. Users simply have to get a one-time credit card verification done from their bank. They can then use Passbook, Apple’s online merchant services, to make payment at a wireless tap-and-pay terminal. Tim Cook claims Apple Pay to be “an entirely new category of service. And it’s all about the wallet”. ²

#3 – Apple Watch – Apple also officially announced its first Apple Watch at the event. It has an accuracy of +/- 60 milliseconds and comes in six strap styles and 2 metal frames color tones. Some of the key features include Siri integration, touch screen, a gyroscope, a heart monitor and an accelerometer. It also doubles up as a “comprehensive health and fitness device” by using a three-ring system for monitoring physical activity everyday and gauging it against set goals. It will be available from 2015 onwards at a starting price of $349.

Tim Cook’s love for music was evident when he mentioned the iTunes festival in London and the growing fan base of iTunes. He then announced the final performance of the evening by U2 and helped distribute the band’s latest album for free to the participants.

Write in to us and tell us which of the product launches of the evening did you find the most enticing?

1 – http://www.extremetech.com/computing/189787-apples-a8-soc-analyzed-the-iphone-6-chip-is-a-2-billion-transistor-20nm-monster

2 – http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/09/apple-live-blog-new-iphone/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

3 – Image source – Mashable

Here’s a candid post by Nandini Saraf, an author of biographies, on 5+ apps she can’t live without on her iPhone 5s.

I recently acquired the latest Apple phone, the iPhone 5S. This happened after much planning and scheming from my part, where I had to attract my father’s attention toward some really good high-end smart phones, but never mention the one I really wanted.

Father: ‘Why don’t you buy an iPhone instead?’

Me: ‘No! It’s too expensive. These are good enough.’

Father: ‘Let’s go to the Apple store and check what they have.’

Me: Smiling mischievously!

Well, now that I have an iPhone, I realised how addicted I have become to it. And it’s not because it’s an iPhone. Well that’s there. But it is also because of its super amazing apps. There are about half a million apps and more. And almost all of them are rated well by its users.

Some of the apps that I really cannot live without on my iPhone are:

The Big Bad Social Apps

Facebook, LinkedIn, WordPress, and Goodreads are some of the most popular social networking apps that I heavily use. Not a day goes by when I have not opened my Facebook account or not checked out a book on Goodreads. I have my account on Twitter as well, but there I just follow people like a stalker.

The Keep-me-busy Messaging Apps

Whatsapp, Hangout, iMessage, Facebook Messenger, and Skype; these are just a few of the commonly used messaging apps. And I use them all; daily! Need I say more?

The SOS Mapping Apps

Google Maps is what I refer to when I am lost. My sense of direction is so strong that I can get lost even when I am at a place where I have been more than once. Hence, the Google Maps. There are other mapping apps as well, but this is the only map I like to refer.

The Make-me-pretty Photo Editing Apps

There are a whole lot of apps for editing photos. Photoshop, PicsArt, Repix and Pic Jointer are among few of such apps. It is said that a picture speaks a thousand words, and in this age of social media, at one go, it speaks to a thousand odd people too. It is for this purpose that photo editing apps become a necessity.

The Addictive Gaming Apps

Some of the games that I usually play are 2048, HayDay, QuizUp, Scrabble and Monsters. 2048 has now become so addictive that if I had nothing else to do, I would probably end up playing it the whole day. Scrabble and Monsters are the other games that I really enjoy.

The Indispensable Shopping Apps

How can a girl live without shopping? Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, and Jabong are my regulars. Among them, Amazon is obviously a favourite, followed by Flipkart. Although it’s a different issue that I usually and mostly buy books, and mobile and laptop accessories using these apps.

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Share with us–Which apps you can’t live without on your iPhone? Write to us.

(image source: CultOfMac.com)

This is Part 2 of the iOS8: Amazing New Features series. You can read Part 1 here.

With the release of the new iOS 8 SDK (Software Development Kit) in June 2014, the app developers are in for some really good news. This Developer’s kit includes 4000 new APIs (Application Programming Interface), which will help the developers to add new features and capabilities to their apps that will assist in enhancing the apps’ performance.

Following is a list of the various new kits and/or features that come with iOS 8 SDK.

Advantages of iOS 8 v/s iOS 7 Features:

Games:

Technology improvements in iOS 8 make it easy for iOS game developers to implement their game’s graphics and audio. 

• SceneKit helps create 3D animated effects and scenes into apps.
• SceneKit integrated with SpriteKit helps create high-performing and battery-efficient 2D games.
• Metal offers streamlined API, a unified graphics and shading language. Modern architectural considerations, such as multiprocessing and shared memory, make it easy to parallelize the creation of GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) commands.

App Extensions:

App extensions lets the developers create actions or buttons separately, which can be used in other apps as well.

• Your app can now share photos, videos, files and website links with social networking sites and other such websites.
• You can also customise your own action buttons to help users complete various functions like translating text into another language or editing documents, and so on.
• Developers can now get their apps to display widgets such as news stories, in the ‘Today’ section of the Notifications centre.
• Also, your apps can provide storage location which other apps can also access. This helps users to edit one file using several apps.
• Create custom keyboards that users can install and use universally.

CloudKit:

• Developers can now store and retrieve their app data in a more structured, secured and efficient manner directly on the iCloud.
• They can also make the users anonymously log in to their apps with their iCloud Apple IDs.
• Now there is no need to write server-side application logic. With CloudKit, developers can solely concentrate on client-side app development.

Touch ID:

• Developers can now make use of Touch ID, the way User IDs were used to gain access to certain contents in the app.
• Touch ID cannot be accessed by iOS or any other app, and is well protected.

PhotoKit:

• Now create apps that can directly edit photos in the camera roll. Previously, users had to first import the photos.
• Other attributes include fetching objects and requesting changes, thread-safe architecture for caching and loading thumbnails, and knowledge of changes made by other apps.

Manual Camera Controls:

• Now users can use your apps and directly control the exposure settings, camera focus and white balance.
• Also, they can click pictures with different exposure settings with the help of ‘bracketed exposure captures’.

HealthKit:

• With HealthKit, all health-related information shared by the users is stored in one secured location.
• iPhone or iPad App Developers can gain access to all the information as soon as the users share them with their app. This helps the developers to provide users with a complete health-report instantly.

HomeKit:

• Developers can now create apps that will help users to locate other iOS devices in their house, for quicker configuration.
• Your apps can also control the devices with the help of certain actions.

Handoff:

• iOS 8 can make users continue using an app on another device, from right where it left off on the previous one.
• Your apps also have the option of doing the same.

Swift:

• Swift, as the name suggests, is the new fast programming language which is highly secured and interactive.
• It is used for Cocoa and Cocoa Touch.
• Writing Swift code within Xcode 6 shows immediate results before compilation into native machine code.
• Code your apps in playgrounds before moving it into projects.

Here’s part 1 of the iOS: Amazing New Features series.

(image source: Any Geo blog)

Here’s a 2 part series to get a glimpse of the amazing new features Apple has come up with for iOS8 over iOS7.

Part 1 – Differences between iOS 8  v/s iOS 7  

On June 2, 2014, at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2014, Apple Inc. announced the eighth major release of its iOS mobile operating system. It has succeeded iOS 7, which was released in September 2013. There are some exciting new features for both iPhone users and iPhone mobile app developers.

The new iOS is an improved and advanced version of the previous operating system. Following is an overview of the different new features of iOS 8, in comparison with iOS 7.

Keyboard Difference between iOS 8 and iOS 7:

• The new QuickType feature helps in typing faster by providing word suggestions in iOS 8.
• It suggests what word to type next in accordance with the people you are interacting with, whether they are friends or colleagues or a complete stranger.
• Users can now also install a third-party keyboard, like Swype or Swiftkey.

Interactive Notifications:

• Now reply to a message without leaving the app you were using. This is also possible for third-party apps like facebook, where you can like or comment through the notification without opening facebook at all.
• This also works on the lock-screen.
• In iOS 7, double-tap could only get you in touch with the opened apps. In iOS 8, the same option can now get you in touch with your favourite contacts instantly.

Health Kit:

• iOS 7 had separate apps to measure blood pressure, heart rate, calories burnt, diabetes and other such metrics. With the new Health Kit in iOS 8, now keep all these measurements in one place.
• It’s personalised as well! The kit recognises your readings and acts accordingly. For instance, if your blood pressure is higher than what it usually is, or your heart rate has increased abnormally without having done any activity, it will instantly notify a hospital, and a doctor will contact you immediately.
• For this, Apple has also tied up with Mayo Clinic and several other hospitals.

Spotlight:

• Spotlight is enhanced, providing you with results from multiple sources. For instance, if you search for a movie, you will get results from iTunes, as well as its current running show-time in theatres.

Mail:

• Delete mails, mark as unread, or flag, by simply swiping the mail in the inbox.
• While composing emails, if you want to access other emails, you could now just swipe down the composing mail and check your inbox.

Safari:

• This app has become tidier, as you can now choose to hide the sidebar containing bookmarks, shared links and reading lists.
• It also provides a bird’s eye view of all the websites that you have opened, grouping the tabs which are from the same site.
• Scanning the credit card and make purchases without entering your details.
• By holding the ‘+’ icon, open a recently closed tab.
• Now enter into privacy mode for only select sites, unlike previously, when under privacy mode, all opened tabs went into that mode.

Enterprise:

• Configuring your device in accordance with your organisation has become as simple as it can be.
• Also, there is better privacy option with passcode protection for all apps – calendar, contacts, mail, messages, notes, reminders, third-party apps (eg. fb).

Siri:

• If you now say ‘Hey Siri’, the Siri is activated right away. You don’t even need to touch the phone at all.
• It even recognises songs playing in the background.
• Ask it to purchase that song for you, and it will take you to the iTunes store.
• It also supports 22 new dictation languages.

Continuity:

• With iOS 8, you can now have all Apple products synced together.
• Switch between devices and pick up from where you left off, and that too, without manual configuration.
• You can now also Airdrop files between Mac and iOS devices.

iCloud Drive:

• In iOS 8, if you make any changes on the documents that are saved in the iCloud drive, you instantly have it on all your synced devices.
• You also get the first 5GB data storage for free.

Messaging:

• In iOS 8, now share audio and video files instantly and also share locations.
• Have group conversations, add or remove people, and switch to ‘do not disturb’ mode to mute a conversation, or leave the group entirely.

Photos:

• Editing features for photos in iOS 8 has become smarter than before.
• Also, photos can now be easily searched for by typing their timeline, location or name of albums.

Family Sharing:

• With this new feature, add up to six members sharing the same credit card.
• Share as many photos, movies, songs, documents, lists or calendar reminders with family.

End of part 1. In part 2 we will discuss the Developer’s Kit. 

Update: Read the Part 2 – iOS8 versus iOS7 Developer’s Kit here

(image source – IBNlive.com)

Let’s begin with a simple definition of what Cross Platform Mobile Development is. It is a manner of writing single codebase for applications, which could be used on different operating systems. It is a known fact how difficult Multi-Platform Mobile App Formatting can be. Each platform functions differently and is unique in its own way. However, one could say that Cross-platform apps are the “in-thing” today. So as a developer, it is essential to develop best cross-formatted apps. Fortunately, there are some really good Cross Platform Mobile Development tools / platforms / frameworks in the market today (they have for sure evolved quite a bit). We bring to you the Top 5.

#1 – PhoneGap

PhoneGap is an award-winning Mobile Development Cross Platform that is capable of creating applications for Symbian, Android, Blackberry, Palm, iOS (iPhone and iPads) and Windows. These developers write their applications based on web shortcuts such as JavaScript, HTML, and CSS3. It is also open source and free, so there are no licensing costs. PhoneGap works systematically, and provides developers an easy access to hardware components. Like the accelerometer, camera, sound, GPS tracker and many more which are quite advanced in nature. In addition, PhoneGaps also conducts training to developers for free who are willing to make it big in this industry.

#2 – Appcelerator

Appcelerator creates Cross Platform Mobile Apps through Web Programming languages such as PHP, JavaScript, HTML, Python and Ruby. One of the best things about Appcelerator is that it provides its users with more than 300 API’s and location information to access easily. It is known to power over 1000 native apps in a month. For the 3rd Party Components, it provides value-adds such as Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS), app analytics and a marketplace.

#3 – Sencha Touch

Sencha Touch as a Cross Platform Mobile Development tool is a HTML5 mobile application framework for iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry. Sencha Touch can be used to develop UI’s for mobile web applications that have a look and feel like those of native applications on the supported mobile devices.

#4 – Whoop

This is a very interesting tool for Cross Platform Mobile Development. Whoop claims that they are “the one-stop mobile app publishing platform for non-developers.” They state that they are suitable for even non developers. This is considered one of the best ways to go for beginners in Mobile Development. Although, there is an ease in its use, it does not possess many important requirements for the latest features on hardware. It consists of a WYSIWYG interface which allows the developers to easily drop app elements to attain the desired result.

#5 – MoSync

MoSync is an advanced SDK for Cross Platform Mobile Development. This SDK provides the developers with many useful tools such as runtimes, libraries, integrated compilers and more. It includes Eclipse based IDE and supports C/C++, PHP, Python, Ruby, JavaScript, and Java. MoSync supports OS’ such as Android, Windows Mobile, Moblin, Symbian, Mobile Linux distro. The release of MoSync 2.4, will allow support for iPhone OS and BlackBerry.

#6 – RhoMobile

It offers Rhodes, an open source integrated framework based on Ruby. This is basically used to develop applications that can be used on several other mobile OS’. It allows native applications to be developed for Symbian, Android, Windows Mobile, iOS and RIM. RhoMobile provides a framework, which needs the developer to just code once. This same code can be used to develop apps for different OS’.

Cross Platform Mobile Development tools are in huge demand today. We hope these are able to help you in developing an awesome app!

For consultation and development of cross platform mobile apps, connect with GoodWorkLabs, the experts in cross platform mobile and HTML5 development.

Step 1: Describe and also get described.

A simple but clear description about your app is an absolute must. It should not be the bare minimum. But then again, it should not be a long essay either. The trick is to make it interesting so it can grab the consumer’s attention. Ensure that the description is written well, along with all the details and the key features, which would compel the user to download the Ipad app. Attaching screenshots of the App, would also be an advantage. To have a better idea, look out for similar apps in the Apple App Store that are successful, to get an idea of what is working for them.

By getting described we mean get good reviews and ratings. Getting good reviews and ratings would put the iPad app at a higher rank in the App Store. One does not need to hire a PR Agency to market their app. You can simply do a Google search of your app’s topic. This will lead you to finding relevant newspaper columns and blogs, which you can target with a press release. Mention that promo codes are available for whoever would like to review the app. This can be a clever form of marketing.

Step 2: Are you making your Ipad App social?

This question determines how well you can market your Ipad app. In the current times, promoting an app mostly happens online and social media is the key. Using popular social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, and others, to promote your app is a common and effective method. Liking, sharing and commenting have become a big way to sell your app to people. This, basically increases the visibility of the app. Another way to boost sales for your Ipad apps is by following pages of app development, marketing, sales, etc. Being connected to likeminded people will help you understand better.

Step 3: Be smart

We advice that you do not charge the customer for your app at the first go. Consider offering a “lite” or a “trial” version of your Ipad app. It should contain adequate key features of the main app, so that the consumer knows what he will be purchasing. Also, it ensures that he is adequately excited about it.

Here, we divulge a bit and tell you that, it is important to know how to monetize your apps. Marketing takes time and till then one must keep afloat. Do read our previous blog on the same to get a fair idea on how to do so. Click here.

Step 4:  Get Your iPad App on the Web

It is not a necessity to spend a fortune on a website. It could be just a standard WordPress site, which would work just as fine. What you need to consider is the quality and the content on the website. It should not look amateurish. Your website will act like an online business card. It will give the customer an idea about your company and your app. The trick is to make sure your website creates curiosity. We tend to remember those, that makes us curious.

Next, SEO (search engine optimisation) of your website is very important. Identify the keywords for your app, optimize the content for these keywords and ensure you drive traffic to your site through search engines. This is called organic traffic and is the cheapest, the best and the most relevant traffic you can ever get. Also, once the visitors land on your site, make sure you convert them into your clients by continuously improving your website.

Step 5: Here comes the iPad App!

Now comes the time to launch your app. All the strategizing, planning and marketing has led you up to this. Ensure the visibility of your Ipad app is high. Making noise about your app at this stage is the way to go. Get in touch with bloggers, journalists, etc. to spread the word about your app. Getting people interested in the app is the first step to having a successful iPad App. But do make sure you have an app that is clean, bug free and unique. It can be the same old story but with your unique twist.

(image source – http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com )