The pandemic has been particularly challenging for restaurants and Yelp is out today with updates to its its apps like Yelp Waitlist and more to help with the worldwide shift we’ve seen toward takeout.
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Yelp is out today with an iOS update that looks to make hiring local contractors and other services easier than ever. The changes to the Request-A-Quote feature also improve communication with businesses and allow companies to bid for local jobs.
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Yelp is out with an update today that brings a neat use of the Apple Watch Series 5 built-in compass. The Apple Watch app also brings a more iPhone-like Yelp experience along with personalized results.
Yelp is rolling out a whole new experience for its iOS app that offers a custom home screen and personalized search results based on a user’s unique attributes like diet, lifestyle, accessibility, interests, and more.
Popular iOS app Yelp has today been updated with a notable addition: Apple Pay support. Bringing the app to version 11.25.0, the update lets users opt to pay with Apple Pay when booking with local businesses, restaurants, and more.
Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference is about to kick off. On Monday, June 8th, company executives will take the stage at San Francisco’s Moscone Center to provide their annual roadmap for Apple’s software, services, and devices.
Traditionally, Apple has used the conference to introduce major upgrades to the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch operating system iOS, as well as the Mac operating system OS X, along with new services. Of course, 2015 will be no different. Apple has been preparing a new version of iOS 9 codenamed “Monarch,” a release of OS X 10.11 codenamed “Gala,” a new streaming Apple Music service based on Beats Music, and updates for the Apple Watch.
Over the last several years, we have provided advance reports on the lion’s share of announcements that will be made at WWDC, as well as a comprehensive roundup ahead of the event. Read on for our roundup of what’s coming, along with fresh new details not found in our earlier reports.
Three years after Apple launched its own iOS Maps app to replace Google as its iPhone and iPad map provider, the Cupertino company is readying its first major enhancements to the service. While Apple was known to be gearing up for the launch of a mass transit directions service this fall in a handful of cities, sources have revealed that it is also developing its first entirely in-house mapping database to reduce its reliance on TomTom, using a fleet of mysterious vans to take still photos of business storefronts to replace Yelp photos, and building a 3D Street View feature. Apple has been using the sensor-equipped vans in cities such as Los Angeles, Dallas, and New York since earlier this year, and, below, we detail how the vehicles are advancing Apple’s plans for the future of Maps…
Yelp today has joined the long list of companies that have debuted apps for Apple Watch. In a blog post this evening, the popular ratings and reviews app shared the first screenshots of its Apple Watch app. The Yelp app for Apple Watch provides the majority of the information you’re used to seeing in the company’s other iOS apps, just on your wrist.
Earlier this year, Foursquare pulled a Facebook and split its mobile app in half with check-ins moving to a new app branded as Swarm and location discovery and recommendations becoming the sole focus of its Foursquare-branded app.
Both apps were iPhone-only for iOS users as Foursquare relied on a mobile site for iPad users wanting to check-in from a tablet, but now that Foursquare has become a full-fledged Yelp competitor with its own dedicated app to finding new places to travel and venues to review, Foursquare is giving users a native iPad app as well. Expand
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Apple CEO Tim Cook today announced via his Twitter account that Apple has received a 100% score on HRC’s Corporate Equality Index for the 13th year in a row. Apple once again makes the list put together by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, which rates U.S. workplaces based on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality: Expand
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Facebook Messenger
Thinkapps’ Build Blog has published a few designer mockups showing what popular third-party applications might look like on Apple’s new smartwatch with some interesting results. The apps were created by several different designers, and you can see that each app maintains some of the branding and design you’d expect while conforming to the smaller wearable UI and its new input devices like the Digital Crown.
Above you’ll find the design for Facebook Messenger, which features a contact view made up of circular contact photos with online indicators that closely resembles the watch’s home screen. The message view sports a single reply button that presumably uses the device’s built-in dictation capability to compose a response.
Below you’ll find designs for apps like Beats Music, Skype, Uber, YouTube, and more. Keep in mind that these designs are hardly official, but represent the types of user interfaces you might see when the folks in Cupertino release the Apple Watch early next year.
Yelp has updated its iOS app with a new feature that automatically translates foreign-language reviews to a users’ native tongue. The feature is powered by Microsoft’s Bing translation service. It currently works for 15 languages, according to a Yelp blog post:
The translation feature works for all 15 officially supported Yelp languages: English, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, Spanish, Italian, Norwegian, French, Polish, Portuguese, Swedish, Turkish, and Japanese.
The update doesn’t appear to have rolled out on the App Store just yet, but the company says it will be available later today. The Yelp app is free for iPhone and iPad.
Earlier this year Foursquare announced its plans to split check-ins and social features from location discovery and reviewing features from its mobile apps. Swarm, the new app focused on check-ins, launched earlier this year in May while Foursquare gave its users some time to become familiar with having two apps for two different purposes. Expand
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Yelp has updated its iPhone application with the ability to add short videos (3-12 seconds) to reviews. The app has allowed photo uploads alongside reviews, and according to The Next Web users are uploading over 23,000 photos a day.
You can grab the updated Yelp app now from the App Store for free.
What’s New in Version 8.1.0
They say a picture is worth 1,000 words, well now on iPhone you can take 3-12 second videos of your experiences at your favorite local businesses. So that’s worth like… 30 frames per second multiplied by video length… (pulls out calculator)… between 90 and 360 thousand words! Whoa.
Along with this new feature we also also added some polish to our app and fixed a bunch of bugs. Enjoy!
Just a little more than a week after acquiring Beats, Apple has now reportedly acquired Spotsetter. According to a report out of TechCrunch, Apple quietly snatched up the company mainly for the technology and two founders behind the service. Spotsetter was founded in 2012 by ex-Google Maps engineer Stephen Tse and Jonny Lee. Both Lee and Tse’s LinkedIn profiles now say they’re employed by Apple, as well.
Earlier this year, Google launched Zagat for iPhone and iPod touch. The application is Google’s form of allowing users to discover new places, such as restaurants, across many cities in the United States. Today, Google has updated the application with support for the iPad’s larger display. Also in the mix is support for ratings and reviews for shops and restaurants. Support for Charleston, South Carolina and Nashville, Tennessee has also been added. The 2.0 update is free on the App Store.
Yelp updated its iOS app today with a slightly tweaked UI that makes it easier for users to quickly post reviews, photos and check-in at locations. The app is getting rid of its old Home tab and now by default loads up the “Nearby” tab. In addition, the the tab in the middle along the bottom of the app now launches quick access to Check In, Review, and Photo buttons (as pictured above).
The updated app also includes “larger notification photos, better scrolling performance, updated icons and animations.”
New in v7.2
– We said goodbye to our homepage and hello to a beautiful new navigation that makes it even easier for you to discover great places nearby, add photos and reviews, and check in to your favorite businesses.
– We also added tons of polish to our app, including larger notification photos, better scrolling performance, updated icons and animations, and a whole lot more!
Yelp, perhaps feeling the pressure of other local-based apps like Foursquare, has released version 7.0 of their app that includes the ability to publish reviews within the application. Previously, users were able to draft up reviews in the app, but to publish them required logging in to the Yelp.com website on a desktop computer.
The reasoning for this is explained on TechCrunch’s post regarding the update:
Back in 2009, here’s how Eric Singley, VP of consumer and mobile products, responded to the request:
“We occasionally hear from other passionate Yelpers on why we haven’t enabled review publishing from our mobile applications. There are several reasons why we do this…Well imagine what it would be like if reviews were done in SMS shorthand: ‘OK so, IANAE, but AFAIC this place has THE best Cfood. It was gr8! ADBB’
Um, yeah.
We love the witty quality of the reviews and the insight that Yelpers share in their detailed accounts of their experiences. We’ve found that Quick Tips and Draft Reviews [two pre-existing short features] are mobile features that provide eager Yelpers with an outlet to catalog their immediate experiences or jot notes that they can then add to or edit when they get back to a computer. While we’re not saying that writing Yelp reviews on your mobile device is out of the question, we feel very strongly about maintaining the high level of content you all provide.”
They have now reversed course and will allow users to publish their high-quality reviews right on their iOS device.
The Yelp app is available for free in the App Store.
Yelp receives a nice update today for iPhone and iPad that brings the app up to version 6.9.1 and introduces a new feature (in at least the US) for users to order food directly from within the app. Now, while reading a review of a local restaurant users will be able to tap a new “Order Pickup or Delivery” button to place an order. The feature isn’t available everywhere yet, but Yelp plans to roll out the button to new locations in the weeks ahead.
New in 6.9.1:
• Reading that review making you hungry? Well, you can now order delicious meals without ever leaving the Yelp app! We’ll be rolling this out to more locations in the coming weeks, so check for the “Order Pickup or Delivery” button on your favorite local restaurants.
TweetDeck version 2.0.0: Popular Mac App Store Twitter client TweetDeck gets a big update today that brings a revamped UI with “Improved clarity of columns and Tweets”, the ability to change font sizes, and redesigned profile panels with images. The updated app, which includes a toggle to switch between the classic dark and a new light view (pictured above), also now allows unfollow, block, and report spam actions to function for tweets in all columns. Features of new app are highlighted in a blog post on the TweetDeck blog, and the full release notes from iTunes are below:
• Redesigned UI
• Improved clarity of columns and Tweets
• New option to choose the app colour – dark or light
• Ability to change font size under Settings > General
• Redesigned & improved profile panel, including profile header images
• Unfollow, Block & Report spam actions now remove tweets from all columns
• Popup windows can now be repositioned using drag handle in top-left corner
• Repeated retweets are no longer displayed in Timeline columns
• Reduced the volume of the notification sound
• Tweet actions now available on Tweets in the Add Column menu
• $Tags are now linkified
• Fixed some display issues with Growl notifications
• Plus lots of other fixes and smaller updates
Calendars by Readdle: Readdle is re-launching its Calendars app that it calls the “most elegant and easy to use Google Calendar client available on the AppStore.” In other words, the app is now fully iPhone 5, and iOS 6 compatibility, fixing a crash some of the app’s 400k users had been experiencing.
-Snapseed now supports iOS 6 and the iPhone 5
-Flickr Support has been temporarily disabled due to a violation of the Apple App Store Guidelines. We are working with Flickr and Apple to find a solution to bring Flickr support back to Snapseed.
Recall: Launching today in the App Store, Recall is an interesting new app that allows you to store and get notifications for recommendations you have received for movies, music, apps, books etc. For example, you can search for and save movies to a “My Items” list, allowing you to receive notifications when a specific movie is released. The idea is to save items as people recommend them to you, so in the future the app will act as a quick way to recall those recommendations and get notified of availability. It will also allow you to share recommendations with other Recall users via email and social networks, as well as browse new releases and top charts. The app essentially works as a wish list for iTunes content and new movies with built-in reminders and sharing, features the App Store and iTunes on iOS are currently missing. A promo video for the app is below:
Steve Jobs once urged Yelp’s Jeremy Stoppelman to not go Google.
SFGate published a lengthy profile of Yelps’ co-founder and chief executive today, but one of the more interesting anecdotes concerned the late co-founder of Apple, of course.
According to SFGate:
- Jeremy Stoppelman was on a conference call with venture capitalists when an assistant slipped him a note: “Steve Jobs is on the line.”
- Stoppelman quietly left the room at Yelp headquarters in downtown San Francisco. It was January 2010, and Google wanted to buy Yelp, the online, crowd-sourced review site. On the phone, Jobs urged Stoppelman, who revered the Apple chief as a visionary, to “stay independent and not sell out to Google.” Jobs was not a fan of Google and had accused the search giant of stealing Apple’s smart-phone and tablet technology.
- “At that point, we had already turned down Google,” Stoppelman said. “But Steve liked Yelp and wanted to make sure about Google. It was a moment where I said, ‘This is crazy. What just happened?'”
The CEO further admitted that he received another flooring phone call this spring when his company went public. Apparently, President Barack Obama ringed to congratulate Yelp on all of its successes since founding in 2004.
Yelp’s continuous upswing shows no signs of stopping, either. Senior Vice President of iOS Software Scott Forstall even demoed Yelp on Apple’s new Maps app during the opening keynote at the Worldwide Developers Conference last month. The check-in integration is slated to debut in iOS 6.
So, it appears Jobs may have had ulterior motives when warning Stoppelman about the repercussions of a Google acquisition—surprise, surprise.
Since Apple unveiled its new in-house Maps app for iOS 6, we have discovered bits and pieces of what it has planned for the final release this fall. Apple already showed off Yelp integration, turn-by-turn navigation, and the 3D flyover mode, and it appears to be utilizing a new Avenir typeface. Today, Techpp posted a code dump from the iOS 6 maps app courtesy of developer Cody Cooper who found some interesting evidence of potential Maps integration with OS X:
Our developer friend, Cody Cooper has now stumbled upon an interesting code dump in iOS 6 maps application which hints at the possibility of Apple Maps coming to Macs in the near future.
During his routine investigation of Maps app, Cody found some interesting bits in the file altitude_manifest.xml
In this XML file, there is a reference to a set of Intel based graphics chipsets for which certain features like Shading are disabled.
While this is not solid proof that Apple is working on a full-blown Maps app for Mac, it could hint at possible integration between core apps and features in Mountain Lion and Maps on iOS. For example, location features in iPhoto could integrate with iOS Maps. As noted in the report, the code refers to shading being disabled for older Intel chipsets, which Cooper guessed could likely not support the app’s shading features. We will do some digging, and then update you if we discover anything new. The public release of Mountain Lion is scheduled for this month. Expand
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We already told you about a big recent update to Scanner Pro that brings iCloud integration and new iPhone interface, and below is our usual roundup of other noteworthy apps and updates released today. In other app news, sources told VideoGamer that Activision Leeds will be heading development of new new Call of Duty titles for iOS devices, which we can only hope means a full-blown COD game is coming to iPhones and iPads sometime soon. There are also a ton of developers on our list extending their 4th of July day sales into the weekend.
Vimeo version 2.0.5: The universal Vimeo iOS app received a decent update today that “adds initial support for vimeo:// url scheme” with support for projects, camera, featured, my_videos, likes, watch_later, feed, stats, and help. The update also includes fixes for bad localizations and the usual bug fixes.
Facebook Messenger version 1.8.1: Facebook Messenger was updated today with a few small fixes following updates to many of Facebook’s iOS apps in recent weeks. Version 1.8.1 includes a bug fix that was causing profile photos and friend pages to load slowly, something many FB iOS users have been complaining about. You will also now be able to see more of your top friends from within a compose window.
Yelp version 5.9.1: Yelp received a minor update today that includes a fix causing issues for Italian users.
Analytiks 2.0: Analytiks was recently updated to version 2.0. The app is an iOS-based hub for Google Analytics stats, and it provides a unique, stylish user interface unmatched by any other Google Analytics application.
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There are many examples of flaws in Apple’s App Store review process. We know Apple is quick to reject apps that mimic the core functionality of iOS, such as Voice Answer, Find My Facebook Friends, or Airfoil, but those developers all made tweaks to their apps and were later accepted into the App Store. Perhaps a bigger problem is apps sneaking their way into the store as offensive or stolen content. We came across an example of each with two apps recently accepted into the App Store: Bulimia Duck (pictured above), which is a Yelp-like restaurant finder with an obviously offensive name, and Dragon Ball Z Jump, which is a hybrid of stolen IPs including Dragon Ball Z and popular iOS title Doodle Jump. These are just two examples of the type of apps making their way into the App Store every week.
Today, we get a bit of insight into what goes on behind the scenes during Apple’s review process. A former senior engineer at Apple, Mike Lee, talked to Business Insider about the app review team:
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