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iOS 8 on Older Hardware→

Every year, I’m always curious to know how the latest version of iOS works on the oldest compatible iOS hardware, and I always forget.

Thankfully, Ars Technica published two detailed looks at performance changes with iOS 8 on the iPhone 4S and iPad 2. Particularly in Andrew Cunningham’s article, it’s clear how Apple’s march towards larger screen sizes has been driving software features that take advantage of pixels to offer more room for information, search results, or toolbars.

I’m not sure I would be able to enjoy iOS 8 this much on a device like the 4S. Hopefully Apple will improve performance on older hardware like they did with iOS 7.1.

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Epic Zen Garden for iOS 8→

Zen Garden, the demo that Epic Games showcased at WWDC ‘14 for the Metal announcement, has been released today as Epic Zen Garden.

Epic Zen Garden is a demonstration of Metal’s capabilities, and it’s meant for modern hardware. I spent about 30 minutes with the game on my iPhone 5s and iPad mini, and I think it looks great. It’s especially impressive in motion.

It’s fun to tap areas on screen and see how Metal can animate thousands of objects at once. I can’t wait to see what kind of new experiences iOS 8 and Metal will bring for mobile gaming. Epic Zen Garden is free on the App Store.

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Apple Highlights “Great Apps and Games for iOS 8”

Following today’s launch of iOS 8, Apple has launched a new App Store section highlighting popular new apps and updates released today.

The section, aptly called “Great Apps and Games for iOS 8” is organized in seven sub-categories for games, share extensions, custom actions, Notification Center widgets, Touch ID-enabled apps, photo editing extensions, and custom keyboards. Highlighted apps include 1Password 5, Day One, SwiftKey and TextExpander, Evernote, Day One, OmniFocus 2, and several other apps that were updated earlier today to take advantage of new iOS 8 features.

You can find Apple’s “Great Apps and Games for iOS 8” section here. You can read our in-depth coverage of iOS 8 and iOS 8 apps here.

Screens Updated for iOS 8 with Touch ID, New Clipboard Features

Screens, developed by Canadian indie studio Edovia, has long been my favorite VNC client for iOS, and over the past two years I’ve been using the app more intensively as I need fast and intuitive access to a Mac mini server I keep at Macminicolo.

Last year, we covered Screens’ major update for iOS 7 and, earlier this year, I pointed out how the addition of trackpad mode made the app significantly easier to interact with on the iPad. Today’s Screens 3.5 builds upon the redesign launched in September 2013 and adds several iOS 8-only features that make Screens more integrated with iOS and third-party apps.

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My Favorite iOS 8 Keyboards So Far

Earlier today, I shared my thoughts on custom keyboards in iOS 8 and how I’ve struggled to use a custom keyboard as my primary input method on the iPhone and iPad.

I wrote:

All these limitations can be easily overcome by setting preferences in each custom keyboard and accepting the fact that iOS will often default to the system keyboard due to privacy concerns. And that is absolutely fine: I appreciate the secure model that Apple built to protect customer data as much possible and I like that Internet access needs to be granted manually to custom keyboards.

But from a user’s perspective, this lack of deep system integration, little trade-offs, and increased friction add up over time when trying to use a general-purpose custom keyboard as your only keyboard. At least in my experience, I’ve found it easier to switch to simpler custom keyboards when I needed them rather than keyboards meant to be used all the time.

In addition to the limitations I mentioned in my article, custom keyboards have taken a while to get used to for two main reasons: performance and novelty.

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Transmit for iOS 8 Review

Since I got serious about trying to get work done on an iPhone and iPad in mid–2012, I’ve constantly come across a roadblock that required me to set up complex workflows and scripts: uploading images to my server. Transmit for iOS 8, released by Panic today on the App Store, provides a solution to the problem of managing transfers to and from your own server with a feature set that, thanks to extensions and secure authentication with Touch ID, makes Transmit a first-class citizen on iOS.

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