Apple picker Developers from Crimea are feeling economic sanctions, Sid Meiers is preparing a new game, the popular Any.do has arrived alongside the games Stronghold Kingdoms and SimCity Complete Edition on Mac, and important updates have been made to Google Docs, Sheets and Presentations, Rdio, Spotify or even Twitter and Photoshop Express. You will read this and much more in the 4th edition of this year's Application Week.
News from the world of applications
Apple suspended developer registration for developers from Crimea (January 19.1)
Crimean app developers received an unpleasant message from Apple this week, notifying them of the suspension of their developer registration. “This letter serves as notice of the expiration of the Registered Apple Developer Agreement (the “RAD Agreement”) between you and Apple, effective immediately. This means that developers operating in Crimea no longer have access to the developer portal and cannot create and submit new applications to the App Store.
The email suspending the "Apple Registered Developer Agreement" was received by all Crimean developers. The report states that the reason for this measure is the sanctions against the Ukrainian Crimea imposed by the US government and the European Union, which were published on December 18 and 19 last year. The mentioned sanctions are the reaction of the USA and the European Union to the Russian occupation of Crimea, which is officially part of Ukraine. It can be assumed that if the sanctions are lifted, the developers' contracts will be renewed.
Source: 9to5Mac
Sci-fi strategy Sid Meier's Starships should arrive in the App Store soon (January 19.1)
Already from the name of the new game Sid Meier's Starships, which is to be released in the first part of this year by 2K Games, it is clear that it relies primarily on the art of the famous developer to create interesting strategies.
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Sid Meier is known primarily as the main creator of the Civilization strategy, to whose futuristic form "Starships" will be close not only in the nature of the game system. In addition to information about fleets of spaceships traveling from planet to planet, guarding their inhabitants and building an interplanetary federation increasing its power, there was also a reference to the game Civilization: Beyond Earth published last year. Its owners who decide to purchase Sid Meier's Starship can also look forward to an interesting connection between the two games, which should create an interesting gaming experience.
The game Sid Meier's Starships will be available for iPad, Mac and PC, the price has not yet been announced.
Source: iMore
Dropbox will drop support for OS X 10.5 and earlier (January 20.1)
In recent days, many users of the Dropbox desktop application on Mac have received an email informing them that support for OS X Leopard and earlier has been discontinued. The official end of support date is May 18.
Dropbox further assures users that they don't have to worry about their data, which will remain intact in the cloud, it will only be necessary to use a web browser or update the operating system to access it.
Source: iMore
Blackberry CEO wants iMessage on his platform (January 21.1)
Blackberry CEO John Chen posted an article on the company's blog saying that iMessage, Apple's Internet messaging service, should be made available to other platforms as well.
He is turning to the US government, which should create a law for this. Chen's argument mentions net neutrality, which is a principle that prohibits internet service providers from disadvantaging certain types of data over others by reducing their availability (by limiting download/upload speeds). He says the same principle should prevent discrimination against smaller platforms by dominant ones.
In addition to iMessage, Chen also complains about the unavailability of Netflix and other services and contrasts them with the "friendliness" of Blackberry, which creates its Blackberry Messenger not only for its own platform, but also for Android and iOS.
What he doesn't seem to realize is that Netflix and the like don't have apps for Blackberry simply because they wouldn't get a return on their development investment and the constitutional mandate would essentially be to use Blackberry to sell their products at the expense of the efficiency of others' business models.
The iMessage service is not a separate application, but a part of the iOS system, which is where its effectiveness lies - if the other party has an iOS device, the message is sent as a "free" iMessage instead of a paid SMS. It is also one of the reasons why people buy iOS devices.
Source: 9to5Mac
Telltale Games will release Game of Thrones: The Lost Lords. For Mac on February 3, for iOS two days later (January 22.1)
Game of Thrones by Telltale Games is an episodic game for iOS and Mac based on the HBO television series of the same name. The game tells an alternative (or supplementary) story containing most of the main characters from the series.
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The Lost Lords is the second episode of the six-part series and, like the first, takes place in parallel in several locations, copying its original.
All individual episodes of the series will be available for purchase for $4 each. Mac gamers can subscribe to the entire series for $99.
Source: iMore.com
New applications
The popular task manager Any.do comes to Mac
Until now, the popular task management app Any.do was only available as a mobile app and on the desktop as an extension for the Google Chrome web browser. However, now a native application has also arrived in the Mac App Store.
Any.do for Mac can do practically the same thing as its mobile counterpart. So it displays all your tasks in one window, either as a simple list or sorted by various criteria, such as day, type of activity, etc. It also allows voice input of tasks, prompts and real-time collaboration on task lists. You can set notifications, the start of the week, and the date and time format.
The application is free download in the Mac App Store. There is also a premium version of the service that is available for $2 per month or $99 per year.
You can finally play Stronghold Kingdoms on Mac
Stronghold Kingdoms was first released on PC in 2010 as a public beta, and two years later as an official full version. Gamers with Macs had to wait almost three more years. But this week, the wait is finally over.
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Stronghold Kingdoms is an online free-to-play medieval strategy game in which players start with a small village and try to build it into a fortress that will be feared and respected by the surrounding existences. At the same time, they can also compete cross-platform, i.e. with opponents on Windows.
Players who enjoy the game free download in the Mac App Store and subsequently register before February 14th, will receive a free Starter Pack of Game Cards, Tokens and Points that normally cost $19.
SimCity Complete Edition is coming to Mac
The latest SimCity for Mac has received a second edition, which includes a whole package of new content. SimCity Complete Edition includes the original game, the Cities of Tomorrow expansion, and a variety of expansion sets including Amusement Park, Airship, Heroes and Villains, and a set of French, British, and German cities. On the plus side, SimCity Compete Edition can be played without an internet connection.
[app url=https://itunes.apple.com/app/simcity-complete-edition/id955981476?at=10l3Vy&ct=d_im]
The puzzle game Willy Weed is coming to the App Store
Wily Weed is a new interesting puzzle game based on the Rubik's cube principle. The player's task is to rid the world of cunning weeds from the position of an amateur gardener, using his brain threads. The game is not an action shooter, but a really complex puzzle for players who like more complex challenges.
The game is Free Download and will offer the player the first 42 levels for free. Additional level packs can be purchased for one dollar each through in-app purchases.
Before the hockey championship comes the Puppet Ice Hockey game
Meanwhile, before the soccer championship in Brazil, the game was released Puppet Soccer 2014, before the Ice Hockey World Championship, developer Jiri Bukovjan comes with an alternative in the form of Puppet Ice Hockey. You will now be able to tune in to one of the biggest sporting events of the year and at the same time shorten a long time with the big-headed stars of world hockey.
The news is free download in universal version for iPhone iPad.
Important update
Google Docs, Sheets and Slides come with Touch ID support and other new features
Mobile applications belonging to the family of office software from Google have received another update and have again functionally come a little closer to their desktop counterparts. Google Docs for iOS has gained the ability to check spelling in real time, Google Sheets can now hide selected rows or columns, and Google Slides has learned to group geometric shapes in a presentation. Another great new feature is Touch ID support, which has arrived in all three applications and will allow the user to lock their documents with their fingerprint.
Rdio 3.1 brings a new radio station with music news and smart sharing
The official application of the streaming service Rdio has received a new version 3.1. It comes with a new radio station with new music and smarter sharing on iPhone and iPad. The Rdio update also brings a few UI improvements and minor bug fixes.
Spotify for iOS comes with music previews and nifty gestures
Spotify, a direct competitor to the aforementioned Rdio, also came up with news this week that is worth mentioning. These should allow you to easily listen to samples of songs and, in addition, to create playlists more easily and conveniently.
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As you can see in the video, the first of the functions (Touch Preview) works simply by holding a finger on any song to start a short preview of it. In addition, by smoothly swiping your finger on another song, you can easily flip between samples. To start the whole song, just tap your finger normally. When the song preview ends, Spotify automatically resumes normal playback at the point where the user left off.
The second novelty is support for the gesture of dragging a finger over a song. If you swipe left over a song, you'll save it to your music collection. Flicking in the opposite direction sends the selected song to the queue for later playback. The "My Music" section collecting the user's music collection was also changed. A list of recently played songs has been added to the front page, and you can no longer scroll between subsections of playlists, albums, artists and individual songs, but directly from the section's front page.
Interestingly, this Spotify update did not normally go through the App Store, but found its way to users during the week itself, through the server background of the application.
Twitter for iOS will now present you with the best tweets since your last visit to the app, it has also learned to translate
Twitter has officially launched a new feature on its iOS app that will show users the best tweets since their last visit to the app. The overview is supported by the reactions of other users. The goal of the feature is to ensure that the user doesn't miss out on the best tweets, which might otherwise get lost in the flood of hundreds and hundreds of posts sorted solely based on when they were posted.
While the aforementioned feature is exclusive to the iOS operating system for the time being, Twitter's other big news is showing up across all mobile apps and the web. New Twitter allows translation of tweets using Bing translator. Using the function is very simple. For a specific post, just press the globe icon and the app will do the rest. More than 40 languages are supported, including Czech and Slovak. The function can also be easily turned off in the account settings.
Photoshop Express for iOS comes with WhatsApp sharing
Adobe has released an update to its Photoshop Express mobile app for image editing on iPhone and iPad. Version 3.5 brings the ability to share photos via the popular WhatsApp Messenger and also fixes a number of minor dysfunctions associated with the application on the latest iOS 8.
Adobe also provides users with access to some premium features for free through the app. Photoshop Express users with a free Adobe ID can now use regular paid features like noise reduction. However, this access to premium features is only a short-term event.
Further from the world of applications:
- Space Marshals – a great shooting game connecting the Wild West with outer space
- The LastPass password manager comes with a native Mac app
- Apple bought startup Semeric. It could make Beats Music better with itChrome for iOS comes with Material Design, Handoff and iPhone 6 support
- WhatsApp is coming to the web. But the connection with iOS will come later
- Logic Pro X got new drums and features associated with Yosemite
- Letterpad game will also be released for Apple Watch
- We learn on the iPad: Czech flashcards 3.0
- The App Store makes more money than Hollywood. The most successful developers earn the same as actors
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Well, in Crimea, you're probably writing a solution for them to have some kind of internet, and there won't be many developers anyway :)
I always considered Crimea to be Russian, never Ukrainian.
With that political bullshit, go to Novinky, this is Jablickar about Apple products.