Android P is nearing release and so Google has set out its guidelines for how the ‘notch’ found on many new devices should be accommodated.
Love it or hate it, the notch has become mainstream. First marketed by the first ‘Essential’ smartphone and quickly followed by other Android manufacturers to maximise the screen-to-device ratio, even Apple has adopted it with the iPhone X.
On the Android Developers
Google has decided Android will follow Apple’s policy of banning apps used for mining cryptocurrencies from its app store.
Last month, Developer reported Apple’s guidelines were updated to state the company will no longer allow cryptocurrency mining apps on the iOS App Store.
"Apps, including any third party advertisements displayed within them, may not run unrelated background processes, such as cryptocurrency...
The developers of popular media app VLC have decided to drop support for Huawei devices because of their aggressive killing of background activities.
VLC reportedly faced many poor reviews of its app on the Play Store due to an issue out of their hands relating to the “ridiculous” way that Huawei handles apps running in the background.
Notably, the developers highlight that Huawei does not apply the same policy to their own apps on Android.
Twitter is taking a stricter approach to how developers use its APIs in addition to the removal of 143,000 apps failing to be compliant with its policies.
Starting with a new application process, developers will need to first apply for a developer account using the portal at developer.twitter.com.
Prospective applicants will need to provide detailed information about how they intend to use Twitter’s APIs before they’re provided access.
If a developer who has previously been...
The number of Play Store downloads of apps continues to beat the App Store, but the latter remains leagues ahead in generating revenue.
According to figures by App Annie, downloads on the Play Store have increased 20 percent year-on-year. That’s impressive enough, but put in the context that represents 160 percent more growth than Apple’s iOS App Store – well, it’s quite staggering.
Google is advancing its goal to bring its mobile and desktop platforms closer together by recommending installing Android apps during the setup of ChromeOS.
The company first announced support for Android apps in ChromeOS back in 2016 with just six Chromebooks initially compatible. That initial support was riddled with bugs and issues.
Since then, support for over 80 Chromebooks has been added. The stability of Android apps on the platform has also improved substantially.
Support for Android apps hasn’t...
Developers are finding their apps in the Microsoft Store are being prevented from downloading external content such as images and videos.
The developer of Monocle Giraffe, an app for browsing Imgur, has posted an email he received from Microsoft after submitting an update:
The downloads banned from the app were, presumably, videos and photos from Imgur. Akshay Zade, the developer of Monocle Giraffe, says he’ll be...
Google has announced support for Microsoft’s Hyper-V and AMD processors as part of an update to its official Android Emulator.
According to Android Product Manager Jamal Eason, the new features are two of the most requested by users.
Support for users with AMD processors is unsurprising as they were previously unable to emulate using Google’s official tools. While most PCs use Intel processors, AMD’s market share is growing...
Apple is preparing to celebrate the 10-year birthday of the iOS App Store, over which it's seen phenomenal growth and success for developers.
The App Store was introduced on July 10th 2008 with 500 apps. At the time, it was already impressive for a mobile app store.
Now, that number has swelled to over two million apps.
Phil Schiller, SVP Worldwide Marketing at Apple, says:
“In its first decade, the App Store has surpassed all of our wildest expectations — from the innovative apps that...
Amid the continued fallout after Cambridge Analytica took advantage of Facebook’s APIs, the social media giant is making several platform changes.
For anyone who’s been living under a rock, election data firm Cambridge Analytica partnered with an app which used prior versions of Facebook’s advertising API to collect data on at least 87 million users without their consent.
Investigations...
GitLab is shifting from Azure to Google Cloud but says its decision was not due to users who migrated from GitHub following its Microsoft acquisition.
Following the news of Microsoft’s acquisition of GitHub, traffic spiked of people using GitLab’s tool for importing projects from the world’s biggest Git service. It’s clear developers still have very...
Facebook’s woes over its handling of user data continue as it admits to leaking private information to external app testers.
The company accidentally sent analytic reports intended for developers and their direct employees to external app testers.
None of the emails contained personal information, but they did contain data which should be kept private to the developer such as views, average users, and other information which could be especially useful to a competitor.
Fortunately, only a small...
Google has announced a biometric authentication API which enables developers to improve the security of their apps.
Biometrics has become a favoured and quick security method for users. While there are certainly more secure methods of authentication, few are so fast and unintrusive.
Vishwath Mohan, Security Engineer at Google, wrote in a blog post:
“Biometric authentication mechanisms are becoming increasingly popular, and it's...
Game development platform Unity has made it easier to build apps supporting both ARCore and ARKit with a new cross-platform API.
Unity calls its new solution AR Foundation and it aims to solve many of the problems developers face with augmented reality development.
AR Foundation allows developers to leverage features in the ARCore and ARKit toolkits such as plane detection and world tracking.
Bradley Weiers, AR/VR Technical Product Manager, and Michael Durand, Lead AR/VR Software Engineer, wrote in a...
The US Supreme Court will hear Apple’s appeal in a class action lawsuit alleging the company is abusing its position to charge developers high fees.
Apple takes a 30 percent cut of developers’ app sales on the iOS App Store. This is pretty industry-standard across most of the major app/game stores, including the Play Store and Steam.
The major exception is Microsoft, which recently slashed its cut of Microsoft Store sales from 30...
Britain is leading app development in Europe with more than £2 billion worth of sales on the iOS App Store since it was launched.
According to Apple’s figures, over 290,000 jobs in the UK are linked to the App Store.
London is the hub for app development in Britain, accounting for around 138,000 of the jobs.
Other major cities for development jobs in the UK includes Manchester, Oxford, Bristol, and Birmingham.
The next biggest country in Europe for iOS app development is Germany with around...
Google Cloud has announced support for the popular cross-platform Node JavaScript runtime in the standard App Engine environment
Node.js allows server code to be written in JavaScript. With the support added today, Google is seeking to make this process as simple for developers as possible.
To ensure simplicity, Google is not putting any limitation on the Node.js packages that developers can use — and it will not have any language or API restrictions.
Here are the benefits Google claims its...
Apple clearly isn’t a fan of cryptocurrency with its new guidelines saying it will no longer “hodl” on to support for mining apps in the iOS App Store.
The guidelines say that cryptocurrency mining will be disallowed in App Store apps unless the processing is being performed off-device such as on a remote server or cloud provider.
"Apps, including any third party advertisements displayed within them, may not run unrelated background processes, such as cryptocurrency mining," the...
Bethesda is establishing itself as the first game publisher to fully embrace omnipresent gaming, and it doesn't mind poking fun at itself for it.
Omnipresence is something which is everywhere. Bethesda has a reputation for making its games available to as many platforms as possible, but the company is taking it up a notch with Elder Scrolls Blades.
Elder Scrolls Blades is a new game in the popular series that features...
A notice of OpenGL’s deprecation in Apple’s documentation has game developers threatening to abandon the company’s platforms.
OpenGL has been a tried-and-trusted library for cross-platform game developers for decades. Up-and-coming APIs like Vulkan and Apple’s own Metal offer promising alternatives, but many projects still use OpenGL.
Dan Omachi, Software Engineer at Apple,...