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Posts tagged with "iOS 8"

Apple Asks Developers to Start Submitting iOS 8 Apps

Following a media event in Cupertino and an official release date for iOS 8, Apple has now begun notifying registered developers that App Store submissions are open for iOS 8 apps.

Starting today, developers will be able to send their iOS 8-ready apps to Apple for approval; in addition, Apple has also confirmed that developers will be able to start using TestFlight for beta testing (at the moment, only for internal teams), create App Previews, and collect multiple apps in Bundles.

Make sure your apps take advantage of all the great new features in iOS 8, which will soon be available to hundreds of millions of customers around the world.

To prepare your apps for the App Store, download and build with the iOS 8 and Xcode 6 GM seeds from the iOS Dev Center. With these latest seeds, Swift is now final and you can submit your iOS apps written with Swift to the App Store.

iOS 8 adds hundreds of new features such as extensions, custom keyboards, iCloud Photo Library, new group messaging options, and a new Health app. It will be released next week on Wednesday, September 17th.

For more coverage, check out our September 9 news hub and follow @macstoriesnet on Twitter.

iOS 8 App Marketing Checklist→

Is your app ready for iOS 8? Have you updated it and added all the great functionality iOS 8 provides? That sounds great, but what should you do next? There are a few helpful (I hope) tips that I’m going to share.

Solid series of tips by Readdle’s Denys Zhadanov.

I’ll add these:

  • Use Tokens for promo codes;
  • Get in touch with the press early to give them (us) time to properly test apps and prepare coverage;
  • Consider Vine videos as a way to create easily shareable and digestible previews of new features in your app (see);
  • If you’re working on iOS 8 extensions, get in touch with other developers and try to figure out possible bugs together.
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iOS 8 and Web Views→

WKWebView is the centerpiece of the modern WebKit API introduced in iOS 8 & Mac OS X Yosemite. It replaces UIWebView in UIKit and WebView in AppKit, offering a consistent API across the two platforms.

Boasting responsive 60fps scrolling, built-in gestures, streamlined communication between app and webpage, and the same JavaScript engine as Safari, WKWebView is one of the most significant announcements to come out of WWDC 2014.

Mattt Thompson has a handy technical overview of the changes coming to web views (such as webpages opened from your Twitter timeline or an RSS app) in iOS 8. In testing a bunch of iOS 8 apps, I can tell that the difference in terms of performance from iOS 7 is noticeable (and extremely welcome).

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1Password App Extension for iOS 8→

AgileBits explains what the 1Password extension for iOS 8 will be capable of:

  1. Access their 1Password Logins to automatically fill your login page.
  2. Use the Strong Password Generator to create unique passwords during registration, and save the new Login within 1Password.
  3. Quickly fill 1Password Logins directly into web views.

If you’re a developer working on an iOS 8 app that includes user registrations and logins, I strongly recommend considering the upcoming 1Password extension. The integration with the OS and the main 1Password app is incredible, especially if you’re used to the limitations of iOS and the things you’re not supposed to have on an iPhone or iPad.

The fact that the extension will also offer a password generator is a solid incentive to implement it – you’ll give 1Password users a way to easily retrieve and create secure passwords within the context of your app. This is one of the most exciting changes coming with iOS 8 (and there will be many).

For a technical read, check out this post from AgileBits’ blog.

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iOS 8 Privacy Updates→

Luis Abreu has published a fantastic roundup of the privacy changes in iOS 8 (via Dave Verwer):

The latest updates to iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite introduce some very welcomed changes to the way Security and Privacy is dealt with on these platforms and may serve as an inspiration for others.

I’ve gathered this information by watching over 17 hours of WWDC 2014 sessions and carefully reviewing, analyzing what was said, and writing a huge number of notes on Security, Privacy, UX and other areas which I will be publishing here in the coming weeks.

Even if you’re not an iOS developer, read through Luis’ post to understand the updates Apple introduced to make it easier to remain in control of your data and decide which apps can access your information. I had a lot of doubts about the Health app and HealthKit data, and Luis’ explanation helped.

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An Overview of iOS 8’s New Accessibility Features

Since this year’s WWDC keynote ended, the focus of any analysis on iOS 8 has been its features — things like Continuity, Extensions, and iCloud Drive. This is, of course, expected: iOS is the operating system that drives Apple’s most important (and most profitable) products, so it’s natural that the limelight be shone on the new features for the mass market.

As I’ve written, however, the Accessibility features that Apple includes in iOS are nonetheless just as important and innovative as the A-list features that Craig Federighi demoed on stage at Moscone. Indeed, Apple is to be lauded for their year-over-year commitment to improving iOS’s Accessibility feature set, and they continue that trend with iOS 8.

Here, I run down what’s new in Accessibility in iOS 8, and explain briefly how each feature works.

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iOS 8 and The Weather Channel→

Kara Swisher, writing at Re/Code about a data provider change in the Weather app for iOS 8:

To convince Apple to make the shift and cut Yahoo out of the middle, the Weather Channel added a lot more technology and information to the offering that it does not provide to Yahoo. That includes more weather specificity related to the location of a user, a nine-day forecast (up from five), a weather-conditions summary and more.

Over the past year, I’ve been using two weather apps on my iPhone: Weather Line and Apple’s Weather app. While I like Weather Line for its visualization of temperature changes, I find the default Weather app a good enough all-in-one solution (unlike others, I can’t enjoy the benefits of Dark Sky alerts here, otherwise I’d install it).

The changes provided by The Weather Channel appear to be ultimately best for the majority of iOS users, and, in my tests with the iOS 8 beta, the summary integrated in Notification Center has been accurate and useful. It seems that Apple is making a good move, and I’m also excited about the idea of third-party apps offering their own weather summary widgets for Notification Center (in my case, national and local services).

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