News

Apple has added DuckDuckGo as one of its search engines options in iOS 8 and OS X 10 Yosemite. The privacy-focused company said they were "thrilled to be included in Safari" on their official blog announcement posted on Tuesday. DuckDuckGo was designed to be an alternative to other search engines such as Google who are known for tracking its users.

The addition of DuckDuckGo is also another chapter in the long running feud between Apple and Google. Apple has been purging itself of Google products since it ditched its stock YouTube and Google Maps app with the release of iOS 6.

As usual Apple did not cover everything iOS 8 has to offer during its public keynote on Monday, but the company did display a graphic detailing the less important features at the end of its preview of its new operating system. One of the listed features that flew under the radar was "improved zoom for accessibility". Currently in iOS 7 users can navigate to Settings > General > Accessibility to activate the "Zoom" option which allows you to use a three-finger tap to magnify text on your display. In iOS 8 the Zoom settings will now allow users to open a magnify glass that can be positioned anywhere to enlarge a specific area of your display.

The magnify bubble can be enlarged to cover more of your display and comes with its own settings for you to configure. You can see the improved zoom feature at work (3:30 mark) during the 9to5Mac video posted below.

With over 1.2 million iOS apps available in the App Store, finding the best and most useful can seem like a daunting task. While the App Store app in iOS 7 has received many improvements, Apple has not stopped working to make the experience even better for mobile device users. iOS 8 promises to incorporate several enhancements to help users and app developers alike.

There are currently 300 million visitors to the App Store every week, so it's no wonder that 75 billion apps have been downloaded since 2008. There are also 9 million registered developers making apps for a total of 800 million iOS devices already sold. Apple CEO Tim Cook detailed the company's latest plans for the App Store at the WWDC 2014 keynote presentation this week.

One of the major improvements to iOS 8 announced at today's WWDC keynote presentation are new features coming to the stock Photos app. Apple is adding a new service called iCloud Photo Library to help store iOS users' photos safely in the cloud. However, that's just the beginning.

Apple touts the iCloud Photo Library as a way to store and easily search any photo from any device. Once enabled, Photos will automatically keep everything on iCloud in its original resolution and format. The files can be accessed on the web or from any iOS device. Searches result in suggestions to check out favorite photos, or those taken around the same time or place.

As predicted, Apple announced its new Health app at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2014 in San Francisco, California. The new app and HealthKit tool for developers will give iOS 8 users an "easy-to-read dashboard" of their health and fitness data, according to Apple.

The new Health app works a lot like the Passbook, collecting data from third-party apps that monitor your heart rate, calories burned, blood sugar, cholesterol and so on. Users will then be able to access all the collected data under one hub so they have a more accurate view of their overall fitness level. The app will also allow users to share their information with their doctors and create medical emergency cards that can be accessed directly from their device's Lock screen.