On a regular basis, Apple World Today posts a list of notable new apps or app updates that have been released. They may not necessarily be new, but they're popular and deserve mention. Here are today's picks.

iOS Apps/Updates

Titan Deep Space Company has launched Math Classroom Challenge. The $0.99 game is designed especially for children aged five to 12,.MCC is an educational and interactive game that generates random math exercises in a 3D environment. This version has no enemies, and no weapons. Instead, the player throws water with a water hose to the numbers, solving the static and dynamic random panels, from sums to equations.

App Eminence has introduced Balls vs Blocks 2K18. The free game challenges players to swipe their finger to...

This could lead to something nifty.

Apple’s GymKit platform seems to have made its first debut in the United States. After initially surfacing in Australia and London, GymKit was seen as Life Time Athletic at Sky, a “luxury health club” in Manhattan. GymKit is also expected to be incorporated at the Equinox line of clubs beginning in 2018. Life Time Athletic says it plans to expand to over 130 locations soon and is currently using equipment from TechnoGym.

The GymKit platform pairs an Apple Watch with workout equipment such as treadmills, ellipticals, and stationary bikes. Once paired, the user has access to more accurate information such as speed and incline.

The setup process is described as follows:

GymKit works with a simple tap-to-pair process: Tapping a ready piece of equipment starts the process, and the Apple Watch brings up a confirmation screen.

With treadmills, it asks if you want to record a walk or a run. From there, everything on...

SpaceX is making an historic first on Wednesday, when it gets one step closer towards realizing its vision of reusable space launch gear. The private space company is launching a space station resupply mission using a refurbished Dragon spacecraft an...

Bungie's Destiny 2 fixes continue to roll in. Having addressed its communities' gripes with the game's XP system, it's now tackling another hot-button topic: the high-level content locked behind the debut Curse of Osiris DLC. In its latest blog post,...

This week most series are wrapping up with fall finales, but the biggest TV show making its exit is Mr. Robot. While we wait for the new Star Wars flick this weekend, movie fans can check out Dunkirk via video on-demand services or Moonlight on 4K Bl...

Rumors of Apple Pay’s launch in Brazil have been circulating for the last year, but it looks as if we might be nearing a launch. iHelp BR reports that some Itaú Unibanco customers have started seeing early signs of the services launch in the country…

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For two days only (or while supplies last), Adorama is offering shoppers the lowest prices anywhere on a variety of Macs. Pick up a 2015 13" Air for just $779 or a 27" iMac 5K for $1,299, the lowest price we've seen to date. Current 15" MacBook Pros are also up to $300 off, while a premium 13" Touch Bar is $200 off. All with free shipping, no tax outside NY and NJ, and 0% financing incentives.

GymKit, a feature built into WatchOS 4.1, enables seamless tap-to-connect tech. It’s like CarPlay, but for fitness machines.

That’s a great way to put it. I can’t wait to try this out.

∞ Read this on The Loop

Both Apple's iPhone X and Samsung's Galaxy Note 8 offer camera-based biometrics for unlocking your handset, but which one is better? We put both to the test in this video.

Apple on Monday announced a new App Store feature that allows developers to offer discounted introductory pricing or limited-time free trials on auto-renewable app subscriptions, a move designed to help subscription-based apps draw in new customers.

Apple updated its developer guidelines with some simple and sensible rules for preorders: here’s how it works.

If you need a quick game to play after Christmas dinner, or just want to get in the holiday spirit, you’ll want to check out these games.

Apple has announced today that all developers can now offer their applications for pre-order via the App Store. Apple made the announcement on its iTunes Connect blog, alongside a few other tidbits of news…

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Unfortunately, the US$4.99 app climbed to the #3 spot in Fiance apps, meaning a lot of people paid for a wallet that is potentially dangerous, and is at the very least unethical.

Apple’s GymKit platform is making its United States debut. After initially rolling out in Australia and London, CNET today reports that GymKit support is live at its first American gym…

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In ExtraBITS this week, Apple is buying the Shazam audio-identification app, the Ai.Type keyboard for iOS and Android has leaked the data of over 31 million users, Apple’s ban on app templates is hurting small businesses, Apple has patched a HomeKit vulnerability, and the iPhone X’s reliance on new gestures has proved to be a complex topic.

Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Apple agreed to acquire music-identification service Shazam, taking ownership of one of the first apps to demonstrate the power of the iPhone, recognizing songs after hearing just a few bars of a tune. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed, but a person familiar with the situation said Apple is paying about $400 million for the U.K.-based startup. That would be one of Apple's largest acquisitions ever, approaching the size of its 1996 purchase of Next Computer Inc. which brought co-founder Steve Jobs back to the company. That transaction would be worth more than $600 million in today's dollars. The Shazam app uses the microphone on a smartphone or computer to identify almost any song playing nearby, then points users to places they can listen to it in future, such as Apple Music or Google's YouTube.

"Apple Music and Shazam are a natural fit, sharing a passion for music discovery and delivering great music experiences to our...

Apple made a new commercial by shaving off a hipster model’s beard a little bit at a time and assembling it stop-motion style into a video to demonstrate Face ID.

Apple on Monday debuted three new 15-second video spots for the $999 iPhone X, once again looking to lure in shoppers during the critical holiday season.

Earlier this month, we visited the New York Audio Show. We hoped we'd find some audio gear to write about on iLounge, but didn't find much that would be relevant to normal people — though the stereo systems on display at the NYAS were amazing, many of them cost more than some people's homes. There are worse ways to spend a Saturday, for sure, but we found something interesting in the most unexpected place: on our way out the door, we noticed a small booth showing what appeared to be Bluetooth headphones by a company called Hooke. We stopped by to chat with the founder about his product, and we're happy we did. The Hooke Verse ended up being one of the most unique headphones we've ever used — it's not just a headphone, it's a head-mounted microphone array.{/exp:char_limit}
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Belkin’s new USB-C Car Charger takes the traditional car charger up a notch by adding USB-PD Fast Charging capabilities for iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X users. The minimalist car charger features a USB-C port that you can connect a standard Apple USB-C to Lightning cable to to juice up your iPhone at the fastest speeds possible. it’s a great solution if you’re a busy iPhone user who is always hopping in and out of you car…

The ban will be put into effect on January 15.

An impostor app pretending to belong to MyEtherWallet.com has been removed from the App Store, but not before it managed to secure an ad and climb to third place in the store's Finance category over the weekend.

Creator Mike von Rotz made an Apple Watch stand inspired by Thing from The Addams Family. As fans know, Thing is a disembodied hand that crawls around and performs various services for the family. It started when Mike found a free hand model from TurboSquid. He then configured it using Autodesk Maya to move it into the correct position. Printing it took about 19 hours, and the final model stands 6.6 inches (17 cm). You can find a free file on Thingiverse. It’s just a simple, plain white hand, but if you’re good at painting you can customize it to your liking.

Apple usually avoids talking about its projects, but it also wants to reassure researchers that you can still publish papers as an employee.

Apple is donating $1 million to assist in "rebuilding and recovery" efforts for southern California, following the latest rash of wildfires in the region.

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, writing for Motherboard: Google has released a powerful tool that can help security researchers hack and find bugs in iOS 11.1.2, a very recent version of the iPhone operating system. The exploit is the work of Ian Beer, one of the most prolific iOS bug hunters, and a member of Google Project Zero, which works to find bugs in all types of software, including that not made by Google. Beer released the tool Monday, which he says should work for "all devices." The proof of concept works only for those devices he tested -- iPhone 7, 6s and iPod touch 6G -- "but adding more support should be easy," he wrote. Last week, Beer caused a stir among the community of hackers who hack on the iPhone -- also traditionally known as jailbreakers -- by announcing that he was about to publish an exploit for iOS 11.1.2. Researchers reacted with excitement as they realized the tool would make jailbreaking and security research much easier.

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Apple has confirmed to BuzzFeed News that last week’s rumor was true: it’s acquiring Shazam, the popular music recognition app that’s used by more than 100 million people each month to identify music, get song lyrics, and more.

Apple spokesperson Tom Neumayr has this to say in a statement to BuzzFeed News: “We are thrilled that Shazam and its talented team will be joining Apple. Since the launch of the App Store, Shazam has consistently ranked as one of the most popular apps for iOS. Today, it’s used by hundreds of millions of people around the world, across multiple platforms. Apple Music and Shazam are a natural fit, sharing a passion for music discovery and delivering great music experiences to our users. We have exciting plans in store, and we look forward to combining with Shazam upon approval of today’s...

The iPhone X, iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus all have a feature that brings an extra level of convenience to charging -- they're Qi-compatible, which means that they can use any Qi charger for wireless charging. Just lay your iPhone onto the charger and it is quickly charged up, all without needing a cable. We have some great deals on wireless iPhone charging docks from JS Innovations, starting with the popular Tilt Dock for $52.50. 

The Tilt Dock has a rotating design so that you can charge your iPhone in a flat position or have it propped up for easy use while it's charging. All of the JS wireless charging docks use a 3-coil design to quickly charge your iPhone without needing to have perfect alignment on the dock.

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Apple on Monday confirmed that it has purchased popular service Shazam, an app that listens for and identifies songs. It was rumored that the deal was for about $400 million, but no official sale price was given.

After handing off some of his day-to-day management responsibilities while Apple constructed its new campus, Jony Ive is back in direct charge of the product design teams, Bloomberg reports. Ive was named Chief Design Officer in 2015 after spending years as Senior Vice President of Design, handing off many of his management tasks to Vice President of Industrial Design Richard Howarth and Vice President of User Interface Design Alan Dye. But now, “with…

Shipments of the Apple Watch Series 3 could rise as much as 20 percent next year to between 23 and 25 million units, according to new industry predictions.

Apple’s efforts to purge clone and spam apps from the App Store by banning those created by a “commercialized template or app generation service” has ended up driving small businesses off the platform as well, TechCrunch reports. While lots of template-generated apps are generic and don’t provide much in the way of functionality for users, many others are created by services that cater to businesses, churches, and other organizations…

The third-party keyboard company Ai.Type has inadvertently leaked data from over 31 million iOS and Android users, including names, phone numbers, and information associated with social media profiles. Unfortunately, because many third-party keyboards need full access to your data, it’s not particularly surprising that one of them would have been hacked or, as in this case, accidentally revealed user information. If you use Ai.Type, you might want to delete it now, and if you rely instead on other third-party keyboards to which you’ve granted full access, consider the potential problems if they were to leak data as well.

Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email...

Former Apple India Managing Director Maneesh Dhir has joined Meta, which specializes in augmented reality, as its new chief operating officer. Previously, at Apple India, he was responsible for expanding Apple’s retail presence, raising the customer experience, and growing the company’s India business.

Prior to working at Apple, Dhir served as executive vice president – international at America Online (AOL). He previously held the position of vice president and general manager of the Application Platform division at Netscape (Netscape was acquired by AOL in 1999). Earlier in his career, he was part of the leadership team for KIVA Software, an Internet start-up that was acquired by Netscape in 1997.

In December 2016, Meta began shipping its Meta 2 Development Kit to select individual and enterprise developers. The Meta 2 delivers an immersive experience  and enables users to interact with holograms with their...

Apple founder Steve Wozniak was in Australia to speak at the Pivot Summit in Geelong, Victoria. Woz was asked his feelings about the iPhone X. What spun out of that short talk was a series of headlines, like:

“Woz Slams The iPhone X, Confirms Google Is Taking Advantage Of Consumers”, from ChannelNews, and “Apple iPhone X not what Steve Wozniak wants” from the The Australian.

At the same time, 9to5Mac ran this take on the exact same event:

Speaking at the Pivot Summit in Geelong, Victoria today, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak shared a few new tidbits about his experience with the iPhone X so far and his thoughts on Face ID vs. Touch ID. Woz also offered up a few anecdotes about his years working with Steve Jobs. Wozniak is one of several speakers at the one day conference focused on providing insight about emerging technology.

Apple and India are once again at loggerheads about expanding iPhone manufacture in the company, and the country's taxation authority is not likely to concede to demands for more slack in local part sourcing requirements, a lighter tax burden on imported components, or the call for governmental assistance with capital investment.

In June 2017, Apple updated its App Store rules to prohibit templated or generated apps, a move that seemed to be aimed at reducing spam apps. Now Apple is warning app template makers who serve small businesses — restaurants, fitness studios, and more — that it will start rejecting their apps on 1 January 2018. App templates and generators are used by small businesses who lack the resources to develop their own apps from scratch. Unfortunately, some of these app makers are already having to shut their doors due to Apple’s change in rule enforcement. Apple’s move has drawn the attention of Representative Ted Lieu (D, CA), who has asked the company to reconsider.

Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an...

Months ago Google released a Chrome extension that enables always-on voice search from a desktop. When Google.com is open, just say "Ok Google" and then your search term. This always-on voice search is in the right direction for what we should expect from our computing devices. 

This is something an Apple home/small officer server — which I call the "iServe" — would be useful for implementing throughout a home or office. Imagine a range of iServe appliances, all based on the Mac mini form factor, that provide services throughout homes such as always-on With microphones distributed throughout a home, it would be easy and useful to have this capability.

Apparently, Apple has at least investigating the idea of an iHome-like device. The company has filed for a parent (number 20130097286) with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office for pairing a media server and a media client. The patent (see the graphic) involves a system for use in presenting media content that includes...

By Aaron Lee

iMobie's MacClean is a cleaner app made to keep Macs running "right and light." It's designed to allow you to free up disk space, enhance your browsing experience, and more.

MacClean comes in handy with a simple interface those who need to quickly deal with accumulated junk (generally unused files and incompatible apps) clustered on hard drive. 

It allows users to configure which files to clean and remove. Plus, MacClean has collected nine cleaning and maintenance utilities in one place, so that users can makes a complete cleanup for large and old files, duplicates, apps, Photo library, language files, extensions, add-ons, and more.

Whether users want to remove junk files from Safari, Firefox or Google chrome, MacClean offers a one-stop solution without heading over to various browsers to clean cookies, history, caches and more one by one. The app also helps users...

Apple and the Indian government are reportedly clashing over plans to expand iPhone production in the country.

Wistron assembles iPhone SE models in India for Apple, but the components are all imported. Under a current agreement, most of these components can be brought into the country tax-free, but the government wants to impose import tariffs on more of them as a way to encourage more local manufacturing …

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On a regular basis, Apple World Today posts a list of notable new apps or app updates that have been released. They may not necessarily be new, but they're popular and deserve mention. Here are today's picks.

iOS Apps/Updates

NTT Resonant has released RagnaQuest. It’s a free role-playing game allows you to immerse yourself in a charming Norse tale full of adventure, comedy, and Valkyries. Fight alongside hundreds of gods and mythical heroes in real-time battles, and stand up against fate to save the gods, and the world.

tvOS

SiriusXM has announced that SiriusXM's 200-plus channels of world class audio entertainment are now available on the Apple TV 4K and Apple TV (4th generation) via the SiriusXM app. It gives subscribers away to access its extensive lineup of...

With Spotify gradually moving towards a public offering, it seems that Apple is looking to acquire yet another music property. Sources close to the story have stated that Apple is close to acquiring Shazam, the popular app that lets people identify any song, TV show, film or advertisement in seconds, by listening to an audio clip or a visual fragment, and then takes you to content relevant to that search.

It’s been said that the deal is being signed this week, and will be announced on Monday, although that could always change.

One source has stated that the deal could take place for around £300 million ($401 million). Other figures that have been cited are lower than the $1.02 billion (according to PitchBook) post-money valuation Shazam had in its last funding round, in 2015.

Shazam has raised $143.5 million in capital from investors that include Kleiner Perkins, London’s DN Capital, IVP and strategic investors Sony Music, Universal Music and Access...

Apple this weekend updated its regional online stores to reflect improvements in iPhone X availability, which is now shipping in as few as one to three days in some locations.

One longstanding complaint from iPhone users is how their device slows down over time, specifically as the device ages and Apple releases new software updates. A Reddit thread has emerged this weekend with some interesting theories as to why this may happen…

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"What's your opinion on the current state of smartwatches?" asks long-time Slashdot reader rodrigoandrade. He's been researching both smartwatches and fitness trackers, and shares his own opinions:
- Manufacturers have learnt from Moto 360 that people want round smartwatches that actually look like traditional watches, with a couple of glaring exceptions....
- Android Wear 2.0 is a thing, not vaporware. It's still pretty raw (think of early Android phones) but it works well. The LG Sport Watch is the highest-end device that supports it.
- LTE-enabled smartwatches finally allow you to ditch your smartphone, if you wish. Just pop you nano SIM in it and party on. The availability is still limited to a few SKUs in some countries, and they're ludicrously expensive, but it's getting there.
Keep reading for his assessment of four high-end choices -- and share your own opinions in the comments.

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Apple on Saturday held a grand opening for a newly relocated retail store in Raleigh, N.C.'s Crabtree Valley Mall, replacing an outlet that first opened more than ten years ago.