iPhone Photography Awards Showcase Best Photos of 2015 [iOS Blog]
Photos from the winners of the eighth annual iPhone Photography Awards have been posted on the IPPA website, offering a look at some of the best pictures captured with an iPhone over the course of the past year.
As in previous years, the photos feature a range of different subjects, from people to landscapes to animals. This year’s first place photo, by Michal Koralewski from Poland, depicts a man playing traditional Polish songs on an accordion.
The second place photo is an impressively clear image of a bird in flight, while the third place winner features a couple on a train. According to the contest, all photos were taken with an iPhone, and photo editing with apps like Instagram and VSCO was permitted.
Along with the top three winners, IPPA also chooses winning photographs from several different categories, including animals, architecture, children, flowers, food, landscapes, nature, panorama, and more. The image below, taken in Cairo, took the top slot in the “Travel” category.
Apple’s iPhone 6, iPhone 5s, and iPhone 5 continue to rank as the three most popular cameras on photo sharing site Flickr, which is no surprise given the quality of the images that can be captured with the phones. Apple continually improves the picture quality in its iPhones, and rumors have suggested that the upcoming iPhone 6s could include the biggest camera jump yet.
Photos from all of the winners of the 2015 iPhone Photography Awards can be found on the IPPA website. The site is also now accepting entries for the 2016 awards.
Apple Adds Four New Videos to ‘Shot on iPhone 6’ Gallery
Apple today updated its “Shot on iPhone 6” microsite to add four new videos to the “World Gallery films” section of the site. While the Shot on iPhone 6 campaign has been running since March, the dedicated video gallery was just added in early June.
Today’s videos come from the Netherlands, Australia, the United States, and Norway. Like the existing videos in the gallery, the new videos showcase content shot using the iPhone and its video capturing tools like Slo-Mo and Time Lapse Each of the 15-second videos is accompanied by music and concludes with the tagline “Shot on iPhone 6.”
The first video, shown above, is a Time Lapse of clouds passing over a mountain, while the second depicts a caterpillar inching along the grass. The other two videos depict what appears to be a swarm of birds and a Slo-Mo video of the shadows cast by skateboarders.
Apple’s Shot on iPhone 6 microsite also includes a range of photographs that were taken with the iPhone 6, some of which have been edited using various apps. The site features photos and videos from more than 70 photographers in 24 countries, with the images being used in print media, transit posters, and billboards across the world.
Apple Seeds Sixth OS X 10.10.4 Yosemite Beta to Developers and Public Beta Testers
Apple today seeded the sixth beta of OS X 10.10.4 to developers and public beta testers, approximately one week after releasing the fifth OS X 10.10.4 beta and nearly two months after releasing the first OS X 10.10.4 beta. OS X 10.10.4 has been in testing since mid-April, following the early April release of OS X 10.10.3, which included the new Photos for OS X app.
The new beta, build 14E36b, can downloaded through the Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store or through the Mac Developer Center.
OS X 10.10.3 brought several consumer-facing changes including the new Photos for OS X app, a redesigned emoji picker, and diversified emoji, but OS X 10.10.4 appears to be an under-the-hood update that brings performance enhancements and bug fixes.
Thus far, OS X 10.10.4 betas have not included outward facing design changes or feature additions, but the fourth beta introduced a significant behind-the-scenes update that may improve networking performance for users who have experienced issues with OS X Yosemite.
Discoveryd, a somewhat problematic networking process that has been linked to multiple bugs in OS X 10.10, was removed in favor of the older bug-free mDNSresponder.
It is not clear when Apple plans to release OS X 10.10.4 to the public, but the fact that we’ve now received six betas suggests we may be nearing the end of the beta testing period. It’s possible we could see the public release of OS X 10.10.4 on June 30, the same day Apple plans to release iOS 8.4 with the new Music app and Apple Music service.
OS X El Capitan Review Roundup: Not Hugely Different From Yosemite, but Adds New Conveniences
At its Worldwide Developer’s Conference last week, Apple introduced OS X 10.11 El Capitan, the newest version of its Mac-based operating system. At the time, Apple provided the software both to registered developers and to members of the media. Media reviews are hitting the web, giving us our first in-depth opinions on OS X El Capitan.
We’ve rounded up details from some of the best reviews in order to give MacRumors readers a look at OS X El Capitan from the perspective of people who have used it extensively over the course of the last week. Each of the reviews is worth reading in full to get a feel for how OS X El Capitan builds upon the features introduced with OS X Yosemite.
Lauren Goode, Re/code:
The most notable I’ve-seen-this-before feature in OS X El Capitan is Split View: Now, two apps can run in split view on a full screen. Finally! Mail and TweetDeck side by side throughout the day, on a full screen, without having to manually drag windows into place. Of course, Microsoft Windows has had this “snap” feature for years.
Jim Dalrymple, The Loop:
I use Mail a lot. Unfortunately, I’ve had some trouble lately with Mail on Yosemite getting stuck while checking IMAP connections, especially after I wake the computer from sleep. All I ask for in El Capitan is for that to be fixed.
The good news is that it seems much better in this beta version of the operating system. Apple said Mail in El Capitan delivers an improved IMAP engine, so I’m very hopeful. I haven’t had Mail stop working yet and I’m a week into using it–that’s a damn good sign.
Lance Ulanoff, Mashable:
The differences between Apple OS X Yosemite and El Capitan are so subtle that it often feels like one of those puzzles where you have to spot 11 differences between two photos. Considering Yosemite was a lauded OS overhaul, this isn’t a bad thing, but the best way to sum up Apple’s OS update is this: If you like Yosemite, you’ll like El Capitan, too. […]
Apple tweaked system performance to improve mail load times and application launches, but it was hard for me to tell the difference. Did it seem fast? Yes. Does Yosemite also seem fast? Yes. I did notice one very beta glitch when I unexpected ran out of system memory in El Capitan.
Darrell Etherington, TechCrunch:
Now, Apple has added a lot of muscle to Notes in 10.11, turning into a much better competitor not only for other text editors, but for things like Evernote, too. You can integrate images, PDFs, videos and other media right into notes via drag-and-drop insertion, for instance, and crate checklists out of line-separated items with a single click.
Formatting ensures that you can create headers, paragraph styles, bold and italicize text and you can attach from your Photos app directly. Open content from other apps directly in Notes, too, using the Share menu across OS X, and even add stuff like Maps locations, spreadsheets and more. Folders keep things more organized, and thumbnails provide easy identification of what’s within a Note from the sidebar menu when you’re including media.
Dieter Bohn, The Verge:
Why would you choose Apple’s solutions in El Capitan? Because they’re all so tightly integrated. Maps talks to Notes, Calendar talks to Mail, and all of them talk to Spotlight. All of those interconnections and digital conversations could subtly drive you to opt for Apple apps instead of whatever you might have been using before. Think of it like Continuity, but inside the computer instead of between devices. And all of it works incredibly well.
Dana Wollman, Engadget:
Some of my favorite updates are in Safari, though many would rightfully argue that these improvements aren’t necessarily novel. In fact, some appear to take after features already offered in Chrome, and other competing browsers. For instance, there’s now an option to identify which tab is playing sound. From there, you can hit a mute button on the tab itself, or click the speaker icon in the address bar. The latter option comes in handy when you have sound coming from multiple tabs — say, a song you meant to stream, and an auto-playing video ad in the other. By clicking the sound icon in the URL bar, you can see a list of all the tabs playing sound and selectively mute the one that’s bothering you.
Perhaps my favorite new feature is the addition of pinned sites. They sort of form a bookmarks bar, only better: Here, these tabs can’t be closed, and because they look like shrunken buttons, they take up much less space than a regular tab.
Rene Ritchie, iMore:
Thanks to a new CoreSpotlight API, developers can now make the content in their apps, including documents, messages, and more, available to Spotlight as well. That means it’ll be even easier to find what we’re looking for, no matter where it’s contained.
I’ve tried LaunchBar, Alfred, and Quicksilver, but none of them ever stuck: Spotlight has always been my go-to. Yosemite made it significantly more functional, but natural language and the new results engine promises to make it integral to the Mac experience. I’m really looking forward to using it full-time come the fall.
Other Reviews:
Ryan Smith, AnandTech
David Pierce, Wired
Ed Baig, USA Today
David Pogue, Yahoo
OS X El Capitan is currently only available to registered developers. Apple has plans to introduce a public beta test of the software in July, following that with a fall public release. For detailed information on all of the new features in OS X El Capitan, make sure to check out our El Capitan roundup.
iOS 9 Code Suggests 12.93-Inch ‘iPad Pro’ Could Have 2732×2048 Display
Taiwanese iOS developer Hiraku Wang has shared further iOS 9 beta code (via Steven Troughton-Smith) that suggests the 12.9-inch “iPad Pro” could have a 2,732×2,048 pixels display at 264 PPI based on Apple’s @2x high-resolution modifier. The findings corroborate a DisplaySearch report from last January, in which the research firm said that Apple had a tablet display with a resolution of 2,732×2,048 pixels and 265 PPI under development.
Apple’s existing lineup of iPads with Retina displays, ranging from the third-generation iPad to iPad Air 2, each have 9.7-inch screens at 264 PPI, so it would make sense that the larger 12.9-inch “iPad Pro” would have a scaled up resolution with the same pixel density. Specifically, a 2,732×2,048 display with 264 PPI points towards an approximately 12.93″ diagonal screen size. As a @2x display, this would represent 1,366×1,024 points as shown in the onscreen dimensions for the keyboard.
Earlier today, iOS developer Steven Troughton-Smith discovered that the new iPad keyboard on iOS 9 beta is capable of scaling to a larger size with rearranged keys, providing further evidence that Apple could be planning to release the much-rumored 12.9-inch “iPad Pro” in the future. The A9-based tablet is rumored to feature a flexible display with increased pressure sensitivity, built-in NFC chip, Force Touch, USB-C port and possibly a pressure-sensitive Bluetooth stylus.
OS X El Capitan preview: a series of minor, but welcome improvements
When Apple revealed that the next version of OS X would be called “El Capitan,” I couldn’t help but laugh. I think we all did. I mean, here we were expecting the company to name its new operating system after another national park, and instead it chose a rock formation inside Yosemite that you may or may not have heard of (but that you most definitely enjoy saying out loud). In a way, though, this was fitting: OS X 10.11 ushers in a series of minor improvements to last year’s “Yosemite” release. The design remains virtually unchanged, and the new features aren’t particularly groundbreaking. This is a relatively small update — small enough that it doesn’t deserve to be named after another national park. Still, it’s an improvement nonetheless. I’ve been using an unfinished developer build of the OS for the past week, and though Apple continues to refine the software, I think it’s safe to say that all of the changes are nice to have, however inconsequential some of them may seem. Join me here for a first look.
Windows management
Mission Control
For years now, OS X users have had Mission Control to get a quick view of all their open apps, and then easily switch between them. In El Capitan, this feature works mostly the same as it did before: Swipe up on the touchpad with three fingers or press F3, and you’ll see zoomed-out previews of all your open programs. As ever, there’s a so-called Spaces Bar running along the top of the screen, making it easy to jump between different desktops and full-screen apps. Once you’ve opened Mission Control, you can drag various preview windows into the Spaces Bar, giving them their own — wait for it — space. To move between spaces, you can just click on a thumbnail in the Spaces Bar, though can also swipe left and right on the touchpad with three fingers. This is how Mission Control worked in Yosemite, and indeed, none of that has changed.
All told, there are very few differences here. For one thing, the previews now have a flatter look, with all the windows arranged in a single layer. That means even if your programs are overlapping on the desktop, they won’t appear that way in Mission Control. Instead, OS X keeps each preview window separate, but attempts to show them relative to where they are on the desktop. So, if Finder is sitting closest to the left side of the screen, that’s where it’ll appear in Mission Control; over on the left. In any case, this is a helpful change, but also a pretty minor one.
Split View
The other new thing in Mission Control is that you can use it to run two apps side by side in a split-screen mode (yep, just like in iOS 9, which was unveiled the same day as OS X El Capitan). Much like the Snap feature in Windows 8, “Split View” in OS X involves locking two programs into place, at which point you can use a slider to resize the windows. That means you can go with a 50-50 split, or give one program more screen real estate. Each window functions independent of the other, and scales automatically as you resize it.
There are two ways to enter Split View in OS X. One option, as I said, is to go through Mission Control. Start by opening one of the two apps at full-screen. Then launch Mission Control, and drag another app window on top of the full-screen app. You’ll know you’re doing it right when you see that the combined preview box has a split screen.
The other way is to click and hold the green stoplight on an app that isn’t yet running at full-screen. Do that, and you’ll see half the screen glowing blue, showing you where to drop the app to snap it into place. Then, once you’re locked in, you’ll see all your other open apps in Exposé on the second half of the screen. Just click one of those preview windows to open it in split-screen mode.
All of this is pretty straightforward — once you read up on how it works. Though both of these maneuvers are quick and easy to pull off, I wouldn’t describe either of them as intuitive, per se; how was I supposed to know, for instance, about the “holding the green stoplight” trick? Fortunately, exiting Split View mode is a little easier: Just click the full-screen stoplight on either of the two split-screen apps to bring them out of full-screen. Or, even better, just hit the Escape button.
Spotlight
With last year’s Yosemite release, OS X’s built-in Spotlight search got a lot smarter. In addition to locally stored documents, Spotlight could serve up Wikipedia previews, web search results, movie times and iTunes purchases. Yosemite also ushered in a whole new look for Spotlight: a search bar you could bring up in the center of the screen, with all the results contained neatly inside that search field.
This year, it’s really just more of the same. The search bar looks the same; you can just move it around the screen or resize it. Additionally, Spotlight can give you weather forecasts, stock quotes, sports stats, public transit information, web videos and top Safari hits, which are based on your recent browsing history. For instance, if I type in “AAPL,” I’ll see Apple’s own stock ticker symbol pop up, along with the most recent price and stats like the opening price, trading volume and 52-week high and low. For weather forecasts, you can use search terms like “weather,” “weather Paris” or “weather Paris Thursday.”
With transit, I was able to write “nearest subway” and get an accurate answer. Since I’m not a tourist, that particular use case isn’t very useful to me, although by the time El Capitan reaches a public release, it should respond to a wider range of queries. It’s a similar story with sports: Right now, Spotlight has the most data for Major League Baseball and NBA basketball, but by the time the OS launches, it should offer equally robust search for other sports as well.
The only one where I didn’t have great luck was web video. Though Apple says it recognizes videos from YouTube, Vimeo and Vevo, I’ve so far had more success searching for videos on Vimeo. Even then, you’d have to know the exact title; general search terms won’t cut it.
Through it all, Spotlight now responds to more natural language, including written search terms like “word documents I downloaded” or “photos I took last month.” It works well — as do most of the Spotlight tricks (well, with the exception of the web video thing).
Native apps
Apple’s built-in Mail app has received some updates as well. When the company first unveiled these changes at WWDC last week, it focused mostly on the new gestures: the ability to swipe right on the touchpad to mark something as unread, and swipe left to delete. (Yes, just like in iOS.) Additionally, when you’re composing an email at full-screen, you can start a new, separate draft and it’ll appear as just another tab. If ever you need to put your drafts on hold while you check incoming messages, you can click outside the compose box and your drafts will collapse to the bottom of the screen, where they won’t be in the way.
Meanwhile, if someone emails you and isn’t already in your contacts, Mail will prompt you to add that person to your list. It’s a similar story with events: If someone proposes a get-together, you’ll be presented with the option to create a calendar entry. Likewise, anytime somebody mentions something like a flight, you’ll see a prompt to get more information (say, flight stats) without having to open a new app. Throughout, you can use the same sort of natural-language search that you would in Spotlight — queries like “emails with attachments,” for example.
Notes
Notes has also received some upgrades: many of them small, but all of them overdue. To begin, you can drag and drop various files into notes, including, but not limited to photos and PDFs. This works as promised. There’s also now an inline formatting option to turn lists into checklists, similar to what you can already do in some competing apps, like Google Keep. In addition, Apple made it so that you can share to Notes from other Mac OS X apps, including Safari, Maps, Pages, Numbers, Keynote and Photos.
Lastly, there’s now a so-called attachments browser — a sort of repository for all the photos, websites and whatnot you may have saved in Notes. In other words, it’s possible to sift through everything at once without necessarily returning to the original note. Kind of reminds me of Apple’s own Messages app, where you get a separate view of all the photos you and your texting partner have uploaded throughout the conversation.
Safari
Some of my favorite updates are in Safari, though many would rightfully argue that these improvements aren’t necessarily novel. In fact, some appear to take after features already offered in Chrome, and other competing browsers. For instance, there’s now an option to identify which tab is playing sound. From there, you can hit a mute button on the tab itself, or click the speaker icon in the address bar. The latter option comes in handy when you have sound coming from multiple tabs — say, a song you meant to stream, and an auto-playing video ad in the other. By clicking the sound icon in the URL bar, you can see a list of all the tabs playing sound and selectively mute the one that’s bothering you.
Perhaps my favorite new feature is the addition of pinned sites. They sort of form a bookmarks bar, only better: Here, these tabs can’t be closed, and because they look like shrunken buttons, they take up much less space than a regular tab. I find this comes in handy for things like Gmail, my calendar, Facebook, Twitter, Engadget and other sites I read regularly. I open these sites many times a day, so it’s worth it to have them always be open. Still, it’s nice to have them more or less out of my way when I don’t need them.
Other new features: Safari has the same improved Spotlight suggestions I described earlier. Also, Safari in El Capitan will allow you to send video to an Apple TV over AirPlay, but unfortunately, this feature wasn’t yet ready for testing when I sat down to write this story. I’ll have to try that out some other time.
Maps
Maps has received one big update in El Capitan, and that’s public transportation data. Though Apple wouldn’t say, I suspect the company relied heavily on its purchase of HopStop here: The directions closely match what you can already get on the transit guide’s site, complete with similar options to plan your route around specific departure or arrival times. What’s unique about Maps on OS X, though, is that in addition to transportation directions, you get detailed maps that account for the fact that certain large metro hubs might have multiple exits, and might house different trains in different parts of the station. All told, it’s a handy feature: I’ve already used it several times, mostly because it feels easier to launch the Map apps than to navigate to Hopstop.com in my browser.
So far, this Transit View feature covers New York, London, Toronto and the San Francisco Bay Area, plus over 300 Chinese cities. I imagine Apple will later add more metropolitan areas too.
Photos
When Apple rolled out Photos for Mac, the idea was that it would replace Aperture. That means the editing tools better be good. Indeed, most, if not all, the changes here involve expanding the editing options in some way. For instance, you can add locations to a single image or an entire moment; sort albums by date or title; batch-change image titles; and batch-organize faces. You’ll also be able to download third-party editing extensions from the Mac App Store, but since this feature was only announced last week, there weren’t any extensions available for me to play with as of this writing.
Performance
On the one hand, performance and under-the-hood tweaks are actually a big part of what makes El Capitan tick. In particular, Apple ported over “Metal,” the graphics engine it debuted last year for iOS devices. The result, says the company, is up to a 40 percent improvement in app-load times and a fourfold boost in opening PDFs. (Photos, in particular, is supposed to see considerable speed improvements, especially as far as initial launch times go.) Apple also says that emails will download in up to half the time, and that Macs will also be able to switch apps up to twice as fast. For graphics, the company promises up to a 50 percent rendering boost and up to a 40 percent improvement in efficiency.
All of these claims are worth investigating, but now’s unfortunately not the time. Not only is this an unfinished developer build, but also some of the apps (namely Safari) crashed frequently. It’s clear to me that any performance tests are fairly meaningless until Apple releases the final software to the public.
Miscellaneous
Even now, 2,000 words later, there are still a few features I haven’t covered. Things like “Find My Cursor,” which lets you find the cursor on the screen by rapidly shaking your finger over the trackpad. (I’m being a little snarky as I talk about all this, but it is in truth a useful feature: Who among us hasn’t at some point wondered just where the hell they left their cursor?)
Additionally, El Capitan also brings some expanded language support, but it’s mostly for Chinese- and Japanese-speaking users. There’s now a new Chinese system font for both traditional and simplified Chinese, and the Chinese keyboard also offers regularly updated vocabulary lists. As for Japanese, OS X 10.11 automatically transforms Hiragana into written Japanese so that you don’t have to individually confirm word conversions. Lastly, Japanese speakers get four new typefaces in that language.
Early thoughts
Taken individually, none of the updates in OS X El Capitan are revolutionary. There simply is no killer feature this time around. But as minor as some of them may seem, they’re all at the very least nice to have, and in many cases genuinely useful (see: pinned sites, Split View and built-in transit directions). We’ll have to revisit the OS once Apple releases a final version with stable performance and all the features ready for testing. Until then, it’s clear El Capitan is a modest release, marked in part by an attempt on Apple’s part to play catch-up. Even if some of these features aren’t novel, though, they’re sure still to be appreciated by loyal Mac users — people who only use OS X, and maybe even specific Apple apps, like Safari. El Capitan isn’t a big release, then, but perhaps it doesn’t have to be.
Alternate iOS 9 keyboard hints at larger iPad
Whenever someone talks about the 12.9-inch iPad, we pull the same nervous, hopeful gaze that we do when Half-life 2: Episode Three is mentioned. Deep down, we know in our hearts that neither are very likely to happen, but no matter what, they’ll never be able to take the hope from us. Now, iOS expert and friend of the site Steve Troughton-Smith believes he’s found a nugget of proof that the iPad “Pro” exists. Oh, put your tongues in your cheek and grab a handful of salt, because we’re venturing into tangent territory, here.
Also new in iOS 9 – UIKeyboard seems to scale to a much larger heretofore unseen iPad screen size 😛 #ipadproconfirmed pic.twitter.com/Q9eN9CLCKQ
– Steve T-S (@stroughtonsmith) June 15, 2015
While digging deep into the details of iOS 9 preview, the developer has found a new larger on-screen keyboard. One that’s sufficiently big to scale beyond the 9.7-inches you’ll find on Apple’s full-size tablet, at the very least. The biggest tweak is to add a new row of symbols above the keycaps, as well as the inclusion of tab and caps lock keys on the left hand side. As 9to5Mac points out, the overall effect is to reduce the number of different screens you need to switch through for characters from three to two, since all of the symbols now fit in the second pane. Now, as we probably need to remind you, this is a tiny piece of software from a preview build and doesn’t guarantee anything — but we can’t stop you from lighting a candle in the tallest tower of your heart.
Filed under: Tablets, Software, Apple
Via: 9to5Mac
Source: Steve Troughton-Smith (Twitter)
GarageBand for Mac Gaining New Features Alongside Apple Music Launch on June 30
Apple has updated its GarageBand for Mac website to confirm that the music and podcast creation software will be updated with new features on June 30 alongside the launch of Apple Music, as noted by Macworld editor Kirk McElhearn on his personal blog Kirkville. The new features will relate to GarageBand’s built-in recording and editing features, including Smart Controls and Piano Roll Editor.
“Capture your changes in real time by adjusting any of your software instruments’ Smart Controls while recording a performance,” reads a caption on the GarageBand website. “You can also fine‑tune your music later in the Piano Roll Editor.”
A footnote lists the new features as available on June 30 in the United States and as “coming soon” in other countries, consistent with the Apple Music website. Smart Controls and Piano Roll Editor are two features already part of the current version of GarageBand, so it remains unclear how Apple will be improving upon these areas of the software.
It is possible that Apple may also add a way for GarageBand users to upload new music to Apple Music Connect, a social platform that will enable artists to connect with fans. Apple hopes that Apple Music Connect will help not only well-known musicians, but also unsigned artists, more easily promote their music and engage with their fans through one centralized platform.
Bethesda Announces ‘Fallout Shelter’ for iOS [iOS Blog]
Kicking off the week of conferences making up the Electronic Entertainment Expo, Bethesda yesterday announced a brand new game set in the Fallout universe specifically tailored for iOS devices, called Fallout Shelter [Direct Link].
Revealed alongside long-awaited games like Fallout 4 and Dishonored 2, Fallout Shelter lets players make and run their own “Vault” dwelling, locations in the Fallout world that shelters the remnants of humanity following a nuclear fallout. The game, which is free-to-play, notably won’t require an Internet connection for users to play and interact with the game.
Once players build their own personal vault, they’ll be tasked with getting to know each of the characters dwelling inside of the shelter — assigning jobs, outfitting them with gear and weapons and training them for the harsh outside landscape. Eventually, players will have to contend with threats attempting to enter their Vault, and with power struggles emerging from within.
Fallout Shelter puts you in control of a state-of-the-art underground Vault from Vault-Tec. Build the perfect Vault, keep your Dwellers happy, and protect them from the dangers of the Wasteland.
BUILD THE PERFECT VAULT
Create a brighter future…underground! Select from a variety of modern-day rooms to turn an excavation beneath 2,000 feet of bedrock into the very picture of Vault Life.OVERSEE A THRIVING COMMUNITY
Get to know your Dwellers and lead them to happiness. Find their ideal jobs and watch them flourish. Provide them with outfits, weapons, and training to improve their abilities.PROSPER
A well-run Vault requires a variety of Dwellers with a mix of skills. Build a Radio Room to attract new Dwellers. Or, take an active role in their personal lives; play matchmaker and watch the sparks fly!EXPLORE THE WASTELAND
Send Dwellers above ground to explore the blasted surface left behind and seek adventure, handy survival loot, or unspeakable death. Find new armor and weapons, gain experience, and earn Caps. But don’t let them die!PROTECT YOUR VAULT
From time to time, idyllic Vault life may be disrupted by the dangers of post-nuclear life. Prepare your Dwellers to protect against threats from the outside…and within.
Fallout Shelter is available to download from the App Store for free [Direct Link].
Apple Confirms 71.5% Revenue Sharing for Apple Music, No Royalties During Trial Period
Apple vice president of iTunes content Robert Kondrk has confirmed to Re/code that the Cupertino-based company will share 71.5% of Apple Music revenue with music owners in the United States.
That number will be slightly higher outside of the United States, averaging around 73%, but Apple will pay no royalties during the three-month free trial period in return for slightly higher revenue sharing.
“Apple won’t pay music owners anything for the songs that are streamed during Apple Music’s three-month trial period, a bone of contention with music labels during negotiations for the new service. But Kondrk says Apple’s payouts are a few percentage points higher than the industry standard, in part to account for the lengthy trial period; most paid subscription services offer a free one-month trial.”
The payments will be primarily sent to record labels and publishers that own the rights to songs and their underlying compositions, meaning that the royalties will not necessarily line the pockets of musicians directly. Artists often have their own individual deals with the record label they are signed to, so their payouts are often dependant on the terms of their contracts.
Apple paying seven-tenths of every dollar to rights holders is the standard rate paid by other streaming music service such as market leader Spotify, although Apple Music may be more lucrative for record labels due to its absence of a free ad-supported tier. Spotify argues that Apple also offers free streaming music through iTunes Radio and its upcoming Beats 1 global radio station.
Apple Music was unveiled last week as an all-in-one streaming music service, live global radio station and social platform for artists to connect with fans. The subscription-based service will be available June 30 for $9.99 per month after a three-month free trial period for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac and PC. Apple TV and Android versions of the service will be available in the fall.
AIVAnet 