"If there is an app for that"

Have you seen Pinterest’s new-look iOS app yet?

April 19, 2016 by macjeff

Pinterest today announced a completely overhauled iPhone and iPad application—"our fastest, cleanest app yet"—that lets you focus on more Pins than ever before. The app, used by more than a hundred million people around the world, is a lot faster than the previous version it replaced, with your Home feed now loading up to three times faster.

The refreshed application is now rolling in the App Store so check back later if the new version isn’t immediately available where you live. The Android edition of Pinterest and its web-based counterpart are next on Pinterest’s list to tackle, though they wouldn’t commit to a firm release dates for these.

More Pins than ever before

Pinterest’s new design and a cleaner user interface makes it easy to focus more on Pins. As mentioned, when you open the app your Home feed now loads three times faster than before. Scrolling through other feeds is noticeably smoother with up to 10x improvements in touch responsiveness and scrolling smoothness. The app features some nicely designed animations and transitions done in a performant way.

Pinterest’s major speed increased is due to the fact that developers haven’t simply given the app a new coat of paint—they’ve actually re-architected the entire platform from the ground up around a new framework that’s faster to build in and easier to scale.

Major architectural changes

The app relies heavily on multithreaded code: user interface rendering, image downloading, GIF decoding, model processing and other critical aspects of the app take full advantage of multiple processing cores in Apple’s A-series chips.

"The fastest and easiest way to reduce energy usage and increase performance was to take advantage of the fact that most iPhones have multiple processors," said developers.

Oh, and those Pins and general layouts you see are now device agnostic and Pinterest’s new framework will automatically scale fonts, margins and kerning depending on your screen size and language.

Localized for your market future-proof

"We found Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages appear too large to native readers without a bit of scaling, so our framework automatically handles that," as per the Pinterest Engineering blog.

"These changes have laid the groundwork for future improvements, too," they added.

"Now that we’ve rebuilt things in a smarter way, engineers and designers here at Pinterest will be able to develop features faster than ever before."

Pricing and availability

Pinterest requires an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad with iOS 7.0 or later.

The app is localized in English, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian Bokmål, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese.

Grab Pinterest for free on the App Store.

Source: Pinterest

Free Apps to Download TODAY ONLY 04/19/2016

April 19, 2016 by macjeff

aTimeLogger 2 - Personal Time Tracker & Time Sheet , PDF to Audio Offline - Reader : Professional Read of Your Text Documents - Fast & Stable , Fresh Reversi – Othello Like Strategy and Logic Board Game and more

iPhone:

WiFiMan provides real-time statistics for all of your Wi-Fi networks including total usage data, received and sent data, and the last reset. You’re able to monitor multiple Wi-Fi networks, and view usage data per SSID. You’re also able to export the information.

Universal:

Thanks to its intuitive interface, aTimeLogger ensures you won’t waste a lot of time tracking your time. The main menu provides you with a large grid of activity icons, but if you can’t find one that suits your activity, go ahead and create your own. To track an activity, just tap on an icon to start the timer. At the end of the day you can view all of your stats and generate custom reports.

PDF to Audio Offline allows you to listen to things that you’d normally read. It’s able to convert almost anything into a PDF including HTML, RTF, TXT, DOC, XLS, and even photos. You can then have the app convert and read the text aloud, freeing up your hands and your eyes. The audio can be exported to your favorite cloud services or shared via email.

We really like Fresh Reversi because it allows you to jump right in and play. You’re able to compete against three different computer-controlled opponents, grab a friend and play locally, or play online. As you play you’ll see a running tally of the pieces you own at the top of the screen. You’re also able to have hints shown and change the starting position. The game includes full stat tracking as well.

Envelope provides you with the tools to be more efficient day in and day out. It’s able to determine your most important contacts and show their emails separately. Smart filters allow you to cluster similar emails together, and pre-defined categories allow you to automatically group emails. Envelope has a bevy of other handy tools and customization options as well including reminders, handwritten signatures, Apple Watch integration, and snippets.

Source link: http://appadvice.com/apps-gone-free

Messaging app Viber follows WhatsApp’s lead, adds end-to-end encryption

April 19, 2016 by macjeff

Viber's more than 711 million users can now enjoy encrypted messaging, safe from third-party snooping. A new Hidden Chats feature will also hide your conversations from the main screen of the app.

The post Messaging app Viber follows WhatsApp’s lead, adds end-to-end encryption appeared first on Digital Trends.

Best app deals of the day! 10 paid iPhone apps for free for a limited time

April 19, 2016 by macjeff

Everyone likes free apps, but sometimes the best ones are a bit expensive. Now and then, developers put paid apps on sale for a limited time, but you have to snatch them up fast. Here are the latest and greatest apps on sale in the iOS App Store.

The post Best app deals of the day! 10 paid iPhone apps for free for a limited time appeared first on Digital Trends.

Plex 4.0 for iOS review: A “free” personal media player worth paying for

April 19, 2016 by macjeff

When it comes to media player apps, many stream content from the cloud, while others require users to transfer files directly to the device. Plex (App Store link is different breed of player, one that creates a personal cloud securely hosted on a computer or network-attached storage (NAS) device at home. If you’re already converting discs into digital files, Plex organizes this media with beautiful artwork and metadata, then serves it up for playback from nearly anywhere.

You’ve been served

By itself, Plex for iOS doesn’t do a whole lot aside from casting the contents of your Camera Roll to other client apps on Android smartphones and tablets, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, game consoles, or late-model smart TVs. There’s also no way to directly sideload content like other media player apps.

Instead, the universal app requires free Plex Media Server software running on the Mac, Windows, or Linux PC where content is stored, or an NAS from one of nine different manufacturers including Synology and WD. (You can also mix-and-match—I use a NAS mounted on a vintage mid-2007 Mac mini, for example.) Once installed, the server can be managed from any web browser, where users set up libraries for Movies, TV Shows, Music, Photos, or Home Videos.

This process is as simple as pointing the server to where local media files are stored, although there are plenty of settings available for advanced users to tinker with. The software automatically indexes and organizes content in the background, downloading relevant artwork and metadata from a variety of internet sources. (Worth noting: DRM-protected content and disc images/folders are not supported.)

Plex secures all communication using SSL certificates and encryption; remote connections are streamed through your home broadband connection, but can be converted on-the-fly to conserve bandwidth. The server also keeps track of what you’ve been watching, making it easy to resume or dive into the next episode of a TV series.

Pay to play

There’s never been a better time to try Plex for iOS since the app is now free. However, in this case, “free” is really more like a feature-limited trial, since full access to the core functionality requires a $5 in-app activation. (That fee doesn’t apply for those who own a previous version.)

The free version allows casting from your Media Server to other Plex apps, but limits same-device video and music playback to only a minute. It’s a fair compromise considering the amount of backend work required to maintain the ecosystem, but the absolute best experience comes with a subscription.

Available in monthly ($5), annual ($40), or lifetime ($150) flavors, Plex Pass is completely optional, but adds a ton of premium benefits including managed accounts for other members of the household (great for keeping kid’s shows out of your queue), offline sync for mobile devices, the ability to wirelessly upload camera content, and free access to all apps, including early releases.

The makers of Plex aren’t exactly pocketing all the activation and subscription income—some of that money now goes to metadata providers like Rotten Tomatoes, whose movie ratings (and soon, full reviews) are now displayed in the iOS app. Plex Pass subscribers can also generate automatic music playlists using Gracenote metadata, along with access to movie trailers and more than 140,000 music videos from VEVO.

Discover and browse

In recent months, Plex has been preoccupied updating other apps with improved browsing and discovery, often at the expense of the iOS version. I’m happy to say this situation has been fully rectified with the latest release, which offers new features like a mini-player that allows viewers to browse other content while the current video continues playing in a small window, similar to the YouTube app.

With the 4.0.1 update, Plex also splits the iOS home screen into separate Discover and Browse tabs for faster access to recent content. The former contains the same On Deck, Recently Added, and related categories, along with a large Continue Watching banner across the top for picking up where you left off.

Other categories like libraries, Playlists, and Channels (plug-ins added from the web app which deliver free streams from web providers like Apple Movie Trailers) can now be found consolidated into the Browse tab instead. Individual movies feature a new option to display related titles from your library, along with easy access to other content from the same genre, director, or stars.

Plex 4 also now parses chapter information from videos, making it easier to jump to specific scenes, and finally speeds up the process of syncing content (including entire playlists) to mobile devices for offline playback. Last but not least, you can now view or listen to partially synced files—no more leaving home with useless half-downloaded content.

Bottom line

Assuming you already make digital versions of packaged media or want to be able to view personal media from anywhere without storing it in the cloud, it doesn’t get any better than Plex for iOS. It’s worth $5 to unlock core features, but the absolute best experience comes with a premium subscription.