Coronavirus

The pandemic saw a record spend on apps last year, and App Annie reports that this has continued into the first quarter of this year.

The analytics firm says that demand for entertainment during lockdown saw developers enjoy the biggest quarter since records began…

Apple yesterday announced that for the second year running its Worldwide Developers Conference will be a virtual event – and I think this has implications for the future of WWDC.

While the Cupertino company is a great fan of in-person interactions, the online event definitely offers significant benefits …

There have been multiple suggestions that Apple plans to adopt under-screen Touch ID for the iPhone 13, given that masks have greatly reduced the usefulness of Face ID. The company already has a bunch of patents for different ways to pull this off, and has today applied for an interesting new one.

Apple explains that optical fingerprint reading can be unreliable for two reasons, and explains how it would address these …

COVID-19 test kits have been in short supply, so Apple stepped in to help develop a more efficient manufacturing process for a key supplier, boosting output by almost 4,000% since last April. It saw output rise from thousands per week to over a million.

Apple’s Advanced Manufacturing Fund provided COPAN Diagnostics with both manufacturing expertise and a capital injection of $10M…

The NHS coronavirus contact tracing app – built on the Apple/Google API – has saved thousands of lives in England and Wales, according to a study.

Ironically, the privacy protections built into the API made it challenging to measure its effectiveness…

While 2020 was all about social distancing and staying at home, there was a controversial app promoting secret private parties during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thankfully, the iOS app was removed from the App Store this week.

The coronavirus crisis has changed many things. People working from home, school closures, hospitality restrictions and more. It’s no surprise, then, to find that smartphone usage has also changed.

A Kantar study found that some of these changes were temporary, shifting back and forth in line with lockdowns – but other changes appear permanent, or at least longer-lasting …

All UK contact tracing apps are now compatible, working across borders.

The UK has separate coronavirus apps for each of England & Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. All three are built using the joint Apple/Google API, and two of them are based on the same core source code which has been made open-source to facilitate easier interoperability between apps …

An update by Apple and Google to a more sophisticated version of their joint coronavirus contact tracing API should mean more accurate risk assessments by the apps which use it.

In the UK, however – and likely elsewhere – that may result in more people being told they are at risk and being asked to self-isolate …

A project to ensure that coronavirus contact tracing apps work across Europe has hit its first goal: the Scottish contact tracing app – built using the Apple/Google API – now works in Northern Ireland and Jersey.

The shared code is what also enables interoperability between apps used in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware …

US contact tracing apps are still a mess, says a new report today, despite efforts by Apple and Google to make it as simple as possible for countries and US states to use their API.

We’ve been tracking adoption of the joint Apple/Google API by US states, with just eleven having done so as of our last update at the beginning of the month … Update: Michigan has just launched its app.

Belgium is the latest country to roll out a coronavirus app using the joint Apple/Google contact tracing API. The app is available from today.

Belgium posed a particular challenge for a contact tracing app …

A professor in Canada has suggested that both governments and Apple and Google could reward people for using contact tracing apps.

Joshua Gans, Professor of Strategic Management at the University of Toronto, has said that, ironically, we need an app dealing with a coronavirus to itself go viral – and so far that isn’t happening …