You can now enable WhatsApp dark mode theme on your iOS 11 running iPhone. Here are the details on how this works.
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Seeing only active apps at the bottom of your desktop can be a refreshing change if your Dock has become cluttered with various app shortcuts over time, and you can always use Spotlight (key combination Command-Space to activate) or an alternative method to launch your Mac apps.
When following the simple steps below, just bear in mind that Terminal is a powerful app, so make sure you enter the commands properly, especially if you’re not familiar with it.
If you decide you don’t like this way of using the Dock, follow the steps below to return it to its usual behavior.
If there’s a specific active app that you’d like to hide from the Dock for whatever reason, there are a couple of third-party utilities that might help. Dock Dodger is a free drag-and-drop tool that can hide certain apps from the Dock even when they’re running (once placed on the tool’s droplet, you have to restart the app in question to hide it, although our success rate varied depending on the app). If you’re willing to open your wallet, GhostTile is a more recent and reliable paid-for alternative with similar functionality.
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Way, way back in 2009 we were all left to the mercy of Palm and Sprint, as the two companies worked together to launch the Palm Pre into the wild. What looked like just “another slider phone” quickly turned into something much more, and webOS became one of the best mobile operating systems on the market. We’d see devices like the Pre 2 and the Pixi find their way out the door later, and, if you’re anything like me, that Pixi smartphone surprised you quite a bit.
webOS is one of those things from the past that I wish would make a huge comeback. Just surprise everyone with not only a stable, super user-friendly user interface, but also plenty of developer support for its burgeoning app store. The latter would probably be impossible these days (just look at Windows 10 Mobile), but the former seems like it could be possible.
Will it happen? Probably not. But I can’t help but start wishing when I hear that TCL is going to launch a Palm-branded smartphone later this year.
That news arrived earlier tonight, and I was a little bummed to see that there wasn’t much in the way of details at the time. There still isn’t: we don’t know what this phone will look like, what it might feature, and what operating system it’s going to be running. But of course the likely bet –the safest bet– is that the new Palm phone is going to be running Android.
I am oddly still excited to see Palm resurrected into the smartphone market, even if we’ll ultimately see “just another Android phone”. But I’ve got hope that the new Palm smartphone will be something worthwhile, even if we’re just looking at newer BlackBerry-branded smartphones. TCL has been doing some solid work there, so I’m hoping we see the same thing with the Palm brand.
But, all that being said, I have to ask: do you want a Palm smartphone? By now I imagine most of you have picked your favorite smartphones manufacturer(s), and while Palm is definitely a recognizable brand for some of us, it might not be for everyone. Getting someone to replace their Samsung smartphone for a Palm device would take some legendary marketing and hardware specs, I think.
In an unrealistic vision of the future, I’d throw money at my computer screen if TCL announced a new Palm smartphone with an updated version of webOS on board, with all the necessary apps ready to go right out of the gate. But, while I’m still excited to see which hardware design comes to light later this year, I can’t help but be a bit skeptical if a new Palm phone is going to make any impact at all.
What do you think? Do you think TCL will launch a high-end flagship smartphone with the Palm brand? Or will we see a mid-range, or even an entry-level smartphone launched into the market? Are you excited for a Palm phone running Android? What design do you want to see: Pre or Pixi? Let me know!
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Currently, when Apple sends an invoice to its customers and business partners, the recipient gets an invoice number that is entirely numeric and spans 10 digits.
According to a post on Reddit citing a letter from Apple called “Change in Invoice number format,” the company has drafted so many invoices that it’s close to going through all possible permutations for these 10-digit numeric codes, necessitating a switch to an alphanumeric system.
This means that instead of a basic 10-digit number, Apple’s system will now include two alphabet characters followed by eight numbers, for example: “AB12345678.” These changes will begin applying to all invoices issued “approximately after the third week of February 2019.”
When adding in two letters to the beginning, Apple’s invoice code possibilities increase to around 67.6 billion. Redditor nalexander50 explained the math in greater detail:
Wow, that’s a lot of orders! If I am remembering my college combinatorics course properly, a 10 digit numeric only code would cover 10 Billion orders. Each position in the number has 10 possible values (0-9) and there are 10 values total. Multiplying it out, 1010 = 10 Billion.
Changing the first two positions to letters vastly increases the possibilities. For the first two positions, there are 26 possible choices (a-z), and the remaining 8 positions have the same 10 (0-9) choices. Multiplying it out, 262 * 108 = 67.6 Billion invoices. Since it has taken this long to creep up on 10 Billion, I figure that an additional 67 Billion will last a while.
With yesterday’s update to the Apple Store iOS app, the company also made it possible to get to your order invoices from within the app. To do so follow these instructions: open the app, tap the circular profile symbol at the top right of the Discover tab, scroll down to My Orders, tap on one, tap Print Invoice, then sign in to your Apple ID. On the invoice, the invoice number is located in the Additional Information section at the very bottom of the page.
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While Apple regularly clears its store of apps not supporting the latest iPhone models or hardware architectures, Google has only recently started to lay out similar requirements for Android apps. In December, the company announced that Play Store apps would have to target an API level no more than 1 year older than the current codename release. In other words, after Android P comes out, all apps submitted to the Play Store would have to target for Android 8.0 Oreo or above.
Android P feature spotlight: Apps built for Android 4.1 or lower may be blocked from running was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
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I’ve been a little grumbly at times about Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp [Free], I’ll admit. Perhaps I’ve just been frustrated that what seemed like a slam-dunk franchise for a mobile game seemed to almost completely miss the point. But I also haven’t exactly been quiet about my main gripe with the game, which comes down to just how little there is to do in it. Even the events have mostly had you doing the same old things and getting rewards. The gardening event was neat the first time, but now that we’ve had a few, it’s getting a little boring. Well, the latest update to the game hit yesterday, and it seems to have brought a new type of event with it: a fishing tournament.
Sort of, anyway. Unlike in the mainline Animal Crossing games, you’re not actually competing with anyone here. Instead, the goal is to catch as many special tournament fish as possible. The total quantity of the fish you deliver is calculated when you hand your latest catch in, and you’ll be rewarded with prizes at various intervals. One interesting note is that we can see a new type of monetization with this event. The host of the event, Chip, will rent you his special golden fishing rod, which allows you to catch twice as many fish each time. The cost? 80 Leaf Tickets. Well, it’s something to do with Leaf Tickets, I suppose. It’s too early to tell how the event is balanced, but it may be the case that you’ll need that rod to get every prize.
Also interesting is that this event is overlapping the month-long event being run in celebration of MAR10 Day. We’re still in the first part of that event, which has players collecting Super Mushrooms to craft special Mario-related items. The Super Mushrooms aren’t quite as easy to come by as the special items in previous events, but the pace is slow enough that most players should be able to get the things they want without too much trouble. The trick will be in balancing the two on-going events, I suppose.
This all follows on the heels of the game’s latest update, which added a few new features. First of all, fish and insects you catch will now have a size attached to them, and your best catch of each type will be recorded. Gardening is easier than ever now as you can harvest, water, and plant in batches rather than the maddeningly slow one-at-a-time method from before. The update also fixed a few bugs and presumably laid the framework for the current event.
Only time will tell if Nintendo can get Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp in the shape it needs to be in to last as a long-term app, but I will say that I’m at least a little interested in the new event. Perhaps once Nintendo has a good mix of activities to bounce between for events, it’ll be a little easier to keep players engaged.
The Huawei P20 – code name Emily or EML-L29 – took its Kirin 970 chipset for a run in the Geekbench fields. The chip performed as expected and seeing Android 8.1 as the software version was a pleasant surprise. The Oreo will be topped with EMUI, of course, but Huawei has really made an effort to keep the software fresh recently. 4GB of RAM isn’t ideal for a flagship (it matches the P20 Lite) but it’s not a dealbreaker either. JRGRAPH_EXPANDABLE_VERSION = false; JRGRAPH_EXPANDABLE_VERSION = false; GeekBench 4.1 (multi-core) Higher is better Samsung Galaxy…
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Last week I toured the Valve offices and got a hands-on preview of their upcoming collectable card game Artifact, but the most interesting thing to me was that Artifact runs on the Source 2 engine which Valve has successfully ported to mobile. In a passing comment surrounding Source 2 working on mobile devices, Gabe Newell also mentioned that they’ve got Dota 2 running on tablets, although it’s super difficult to control.
The fascinating part of this is that it means that mobile ports of all sorts of Valve titles (and other games that run on Source 2) are now technically possible. Additionally, given Valve’s flat structure and the complete freedom employees have to create new products and experiment with old ones, the only thing stopping all the Valve games eventually being released on the App Store is someone willing to champion that cause at the company. Valve team members are free to do whatever they want, as long as they feel it will bring value to the customer, after all.
Is it a major stretch to suggest we’ll see games like Portal on our iPhones? Of course it is, but, when you look at the history of the App Store and mobile gaming as a whole, there was a point in time where it would have been equally laughable to suggest that Square Enix would bring practically every Final Fantasy game to the platform. Hell, we’re even experiencing that right now with Fortnite not only coming to the iPhone but also supporting cross-platform play with the Xbox. If you would have floated that as a possibility as little as two weeks ago, you would have been dismissed as a dreamer, but, here we are.
So, for real, we need everyone in Touch Arcade land to cross their fingers and toes that somewhere along the lifecycle of Artifact coming to the App Store someone at Valve gets passionate enough about mobile gaming to take charge of bringing the rest of their library. Yes, controls will be an issue for games originally designed for the PC with a keyboard and mouse, but, when there’s a will there’s a way.
Valve… don’t make me do this. I totally will.
This just means I need to take one for the team, get a job at Valve, and spearhead bringing all their games to mobile.
— Eli Hodapp 🧙
♂️
(@hodapp) March 9, 2018
GoNoodle makes free software your kids may have used at school; he wants them to watch it at home, too.
KC Estenson used to spend his time trying to get you to click on his stories and watch his videos. Now he wants your kids to watch his videos and run around the classroom.
Estenson is the new CEO of GoNoodle, an education company that distributes videos to schools and homes, aimed at getting kids active while teaching them something, or at least entertaining them.
Estenson ran CNN’s digital arm from 2008 through 2014; he left two years into the Jeff Zucker era.
At GoNoodle, he replaces co-founder Scott McQuigg as the company’s leader; McQuigg will take a seat on the company’s board. The Nashville-based company has raised $ 16 million since 2013.
GoNoodle’s software is free. It generates revenue via underwriting deals from health care companies like HealthNet and, increasingly, licensing/ad deals from entertainment companies, who pay it to incorporate their characters and brands into the software.
Here’s the kind of video GoNoodle produces:
And here’s a sample of some GoNoodle-branded content from Viacom’s Paramount, promoting its upcoming Sherlock Gnomes movie:
GoNoodle says 14 million kids use its software, primarily in schools. One of Estenson’s jobs will be to increase its reach in homes. The challenge, which Estenson is well aware of: Kids and their parents have unlimited other options.
“The shelf space is super full, and yet there’s nothing healthy on the shelves,” he said. “We’ve found a way to create content that is good for kids and enjoyable to watch.”
