A thank you, a new iPad app that’s long overdue, a record high, custom app icons, Facebook VR and just a tiny bit of schadenfreude…
- We’ve hit another record month in listenership. THANKS!
- Google released its Calendar app for iPad…finally
- AAPL shares closed today at $144.12
- MLB and NHL apps now offer custom team app icons under iOS 10.3
- Facebook goes VR with 360-degree live streaming for everybody
- Samsung has another fiery experience the day before the Galaxy 8 was unveiled
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Text Version
This is Steve Sande for Apple World Today, and you’re listening to the AWT News Update for March 29th, 2017.
I’d like to personally thank all of our listeners for another record month. If you can leave a positive review of the AWT News Update podcast on iTunes, I’d really appreciate it.
Google today released its Calendar app for iPad. This marks the first time that the app, a solid alternative to Apple’s iCloud-based Calendar app, has been available for iPad. Previously, the app was available for iPhone, Android smartphones and tablets, and on the web through any web browser. Calendar’s machine intelligence-powered features allow groups to find a time and book resources based on a team’s availability, and let you add a goal, with Calendar intelligently scheduling time for the goal so you can stick to it. The initial release today doesn’t include a Today View widget, which will be coming soon and to quote the press release, let users “easily see your upcoming events in the Notification Center and on the lock screen”. For those who use the Google Apps ecosystem rather than iCloud-based apps, this is a release that has been a long time in coming.
Shares in Apple have closed at another record high today of $144.12, bringing the company’s market capitalization to $756.1 billion. The performance of Apple so far this year has some analysts speculating that the stock price could reach $200 per share later in 2017.
Poor Samsung doesn’t seem to be able to catch a break lately. Yesterday, the day before today’s reveal of the new Galaxy S8 smartphone, one of the Samsung Experience stores in Singapore caught fire. The fire, which started in a storeroom, was put out in minutes by sprinklers and there were no injuries. However, the Singapore Civil Defense Force says it’s still investigating what caused the fire. Let’s hope they weren’t storing old Galaxy Note 7s in the storeroom…
Are you a fan of Major League Baseball or the National Hockey League? If so, be sure to update the MLB.com At Bat or NHL apps as soon as possible, because if you’ve also bumped your iPhone or iPad to iOS 10.3, you’ll be able to take advantage of a new feature. That feature allows you to replace the default icons with one featuring your favorite team’s logo.
I’m a big fan of 360-degree virtual reality photos and video, and today Facebook made it super-easy for those with an iPhone-compatible 360-degree camera to livestream that video. The new 2017 model Samsung Gear 360 will work with iPhone, and the Insta360 Nano or Ricoh Theta S work beautifully with the service as well. I’m not sure when we’ll be doing our first VR livestream, but you’ll be the first to know if we do!
That’s all for today; I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon with another edition of the AWT News Update.
