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)