Apple announces its ‘Best of 2018’ lists across apps, games, music, podcasts and more

Apple today announced its Best of 2018 selections – its annual, editorial list of what it considers the best content across its App Store and iTunes, along with its top charts of the most downloaded apps and games fo the year. As in other years, Apple selected a “best” app and game for each platform, including iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and Mac. It also rounded-up several favorite Apple Watch apps, but didn’t award a winner.

The best app of 2018 on iPhone was the iPhone version of the popular Procreate drawing app for iPad, Procreate Pocket.

Meanwhile, the top iPad app was Froggipedia, an AR app that lets you virtually dissect a frog so you don’t have to actually dissect a frog.

Both apps showcase technologies Apple aims to promote. In Procreate Pocket’s case, it’s the iPhone companion to an Apple Pencil-powered app on iPad. On the iPhone, it instead uses 3D Touch support for painting with your finger. Froggipedia turns an Apple Pencil into the scalpel to dissect a virtual frog.

On Mac, the top app was image editor Pixelmator Pro, and top Apple TV app was the big-screened version of workout app Sweat, whose creator Kayla Itsines also showed up at WWDC this year to lead a special session.

The top games this year were: Donut County (iPhone), Gorogoa (iPad), The Gardens Between (Mac) and Alto’s Odyssey (Apple TV) – the latter which also won an Apple Design Award earlier this year.  

Showcasing their somewhat secondary status, Apple Watch apps didn’t get a “best of” pick for app and game, but a small group got a shoutout from Apple as being “favorites.”

This includes: WaterMinder, Lifesum, 10% Happier, Carrot Weather, FunGolf GPS, Swing Tennis Tracker, Slopes, App in the Air, Overcast, and Just Press Record.

While its “Best of” selections were editorially chosen, Apple also unveiled its year-end “Top Charts” across iPhone and iPad, which were separated by both apps and games (free and paid).

These are the most downloaded app of 2018. The lists still show Facebook, YouTube, Google, and other entertainment apps dominating the top free charts.

Top Free iPhone Apps – Chart

1. YouTube: Watch, Listen, Stream
2. Instagram
3. Snapchat
4. Messenger
5. Facebook
6. Bitmoji
7. Netflix
8. Google Maps – Transit & Food
9. Gmail – Email by Google
10. Spotify Music
11. Amazon – Shopping made easy
12. Uber
13. WhatsApp Messenger
14. Pandora – Streaming Music
15. Wish – Shopping Made Fun
16. TikTok – Real Short Videos
17. Cash App
18. Google Photos
19. Google Chrome
20. Twitter

Top Paid iPhone Apps – Chart

1. Facetune
2. kirakira+
3. Dark Sky Weather
4. HotSchedules
5. PlantSnap Plant Identification
6. AutoSleep Tracker for Watch
7. Sky Guide
8. 1 Second Everyday: Video Diary
9. The Wonder Weeks
10. Afterlight 2
11. My Talking Pet Pro
12. Glitché
13. Scanner Pro
14. TouchRetouch
15. 7 Minute Workout Challenge
16. Forest – Stay focused
17. Full Fitness : Exercise Workout Trainer
18. Word Swag – Cool Fonts
19. SkyView® – Explore the Universe
20. HeartWatch. Heart & Activity

Top Free iPhone Games – Chart

1. Fortnite
2. Helix Jump
3. Rise Up
4. PUBG MOBILE
5. Hole.io
6. Love Balls
7. Snake VS Block
8. Rules of Survival
9. ROBLOX
10. Dune!
11. Subway Surfers
12. Episode – Choose Your Story
13. Word Link – Word Puzzle Game
14. Toon Blast
15. Color Road!
16. HQ Trivia
17. Twisty Road!
18. 8 Ball Pool
19. Kick the Buddy
20. Sniper 3D Assassin: Gun Games

Top Paid iPhone Games – Chart 

1. Heads Up!
2. Minecraft
3. Plague Inc.
4. Bloons TD 6
5. Pocket Build
6. Bloons TD 5
7. Geometry Dash
8. The Game of Life
9. Papa’s Freezeria To Go!
10. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
11. Trivia Crack (No Ads)
12. Getting Over It
13. Monument Valley 2
14. Alto’s Odyssey
15. True Skate
16. The Room: Old Sins
17. Terraria
18. Exploding Kittens®
19. Five Nights at Freddy’s
20. The Escapists: Prison Escape

Top Free iPad Apps – Chart

1. YouTube: Watch, Listen, Stream
2. Netflix
3. Messenger
4. Facebook
5. Amazon Prime Video
6. Google Chrome
7. Gmail – Email by Google
8. YouTube Kids
9. The Calculator
10. Amazon – Shopping made easy
11. Spotify Music
12. Hulu: Watch TV Shows & Movies
13. Google Docs: Sync, Edit, Share
14. Google Drive
15. Google Maps – Transit & Food
16. Microsoft Word
17. Pandora – Streaming Music
18. Amazon Kindle
19. Colorfy: Coloring Art Games
20. Google

Top Paid iPad Apps – Chart

1. Procreate
2. Notability
3. GoodNotes 4
4. Toca Life: Pets
5. Duet Display
6. Toca Life: After School
7. XtraMath
8. Toca Hair Salon 3
9. MyScript Nebo
10. Toca Kitchen 2
11. PDF Expert by Readdle
12. Toca Life: Hospital
13. Affinity Photo
14. Toca Life: Office
15. GoodReader
16. Toca Lab: Elements
17. Notes Plus
18. Human Anatomy Atlas 2019
19. Toca Life: City
20. AnyFont

Top Free iPad Games – Chart

1. Fortnite
2. ROBLOX
3. Kick the Buddy
4. Love Balls
5. Helix Jump
6. Color by Number Coloring Game!
7. Bowmasters – Multiplayer Game
8. Hole.io
9. Rise Up
10. Rules of Survival
11. Subway Surfers
12. Rolling Sky
13. PUBG MOBILE
14. Toon Blast
15. Snake VS Block
16. Granny
17. Piano Tiles 2
18. slither.io
19. Run Sausage Run!
20. Pixel Art – Color by Number

Top Paid iPad Games – Chart 

1. Minecraft
2. Geometry Dash
3. The Game of Life
4. The Room: Old Sins
5. Heads Up!
6. Bloons TD 6
7. Goat Simulator
8. Five Nights at Freddy’s
9. LEGO® Jurassic World
10. Terraria
11. The Escapists: Prison Escape
12. Bloons TD 5 HD
13. Monument Valley 2
14. Plague Inc.
15. Five Nights at Freddy’s: Sister Location
16. Goat Simulator PAYDAY
17. Five Nights at Freddy’s 2
18. Teeny Titans – Teen Titans Go!
19. Teen Titans Go! Figure
20. Scribblenauts Unlimited

Apple also rounded up its best stories

In addition to the best content across categories, Apple this year also highlighted the most-read stories from the “Today” section on the App Store.

The revamped and more editorially-driven App Store launched over a year ago in September 2017, making this year the first full year of its existence.

The store is now not just a marketplace and search engine for apps, but also a place to read about the developers who create apps, their businesses, and learn other tips and tricks.

According to Apple, the top ten most-read stories included several on popular games, and a guide for parents on Snapchat, among others.

The full list included:

• A Parent’s Guide to Snapchat
• A Whole New Virtual You
• All the Feels
• Enter the World of The Elder Scrolls: Blades
• Games for Nongamers
• These Puzzles Get Pretty Wild
• Likelife—but More Fun
• Enter Fortnite’s Epic Universe
• Create the Perfect Wallpaper
• Sky Guide

Apple also picked a few editorial favorites of its own, including:

• She Beat the Heat
• It’s Complicated
• Lend an Ear
• Sum Kind of Love
• Falling in Love? Sounds Glorious

Music, books and more

The company also unveiled its editorial and most-downloaded lists for podcasts, audiobooks, books, TV shows and music.

Some highlights of those selections included Artist of the year: Drake; Breakout Artist of the Year: Juice WRLD; Song of the Year: I Like It – Cardi B featuring Bad Bunny & J. Balvin; Album of the Year: Golden Hour – Kacey Musgraves; Most Downloaded Podcast: The Daily; Best Book of the year: American Marriage; and Audiobook of the year: American Marriage.

Apple isn’t the only one with a year-end “Best of” list out now. Google Play also this week unveiled its own “Best of 2018” winners. Its list included the best app, Drops: Learn 31 new languages, and best game, PUBG Mobile. It introduced a “fan favorites” category as well, where users got to vote on their own favorite apps and games. Those winners included PUBG again, but for best app, they chose YouTube TV.

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Apple Music is getting native Android tablet support

Bringing Apple Music to Android tablets probably wasn’t Apple’s biggest priority, but three years after launching support for Android phones, the bigger screens are getting some love.

The update, first spotted by 9to5mac, is only available to Google Group beta testers for now, but should soon be rolling out widely when the 2.7 update goes out. The tablet-friendly design switches up the navigation to make use of the added screen real estate.

Apple added support for Android Auto in the last big update in September. As the company expands its native support for Google products, it does make one wonder where support is for Google Home products. The company announced just last week that Apple Music was coming to Amazon Echo devices so it seems that Apple is growing more open-minded in terms of what platforms it’s interested in bringing Music support to.

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Apple Music is getting native Android tablet support

Bringing Apple Music to Android tablets probably wasn’t Apple’s biggest priority, but three years after launching support for Android phones, the bigger screens are getting some love.

The update, first spotted by 9to5mac, is only available to Google Group beta testers for now, but should soon be rolling out widely when the 2.7 update goes out. The tablet-friendly design switches up the navigation to make use of the added screen real estate.

Apple added support for Android Auto in the last big update in September. As the company expands its native support for Google products, it does make one wonder where support is for Google Home products. The company announced just last week that Apple Music was coming to Amazon Echo devices so it seems that Apple is growing more open-minded in terms of what platforms it’s interested in bringing Music support to.

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Apple launches online store with 10 percent discount for active military and veterans

Just in time for holiday shopping, Apple announced the launch of an online store offering a 10 percent discount of all products for active military and veterans.

“At Apple we are deeply grateful to the men and women of our armed forces,” the company said in statement offered to TechCrunch. “We’re proud to offer active military and veterans a new dedicated online store with special pricing as an expression of our gratitude for their brave service.”

Apple has long offered education and student pricing discounts on various hardware offerings, along with select pricing through its federal employee and military personnel government purchase program. A number of other companies, including Microsoft, Lenovo and Samsung also offer some version of military personnel discounts.

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Analysts are still bullish on wearables

New numbers from Gartner this morning show solid projections for the wearable market, in spite of a few relatively lackluster years following the category’s initial explosion. The drivers for the projected growth should be no surprise to anyone who has been following it of late — namely smartwatches and ear-worn devices (the unfortunately named hearables).

Overall, Gartner his predicting a jump in shipments in excess of 25 percent in 2019, up to 225 million, from 179 million. That number is expected to continue to increase all the way up to 453 million by 2022.

Smartwatches — led by Apple, Samsung and relatively recent entrant Fitbit — are a key factor, growing from 53 million units shipped to 74 million, and then up to 115 million by 2022. Impressive, if it plays out accordingly, though interestingly, average selling price is expected to drop over that time frame by ~$11 per device.

That’s a product of lower-priced competition for the industry-leading Apple Watch. We’ve already seen Fitbit undercut the competition pretty dramatically with the $150 Versa. How that will square with costlier health components like Apple’s ECG, however, remains to be seen.

Ear-worn devices — namely Bluetooth earbuds like Apple’s AirPods and Samsung’s IconX — are the other big driver. Gartner suggests they’ll account for nearly one-third of the wearables market by 2022.

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Former eBay product chief RJ Pittman takes the reins at 3D capture company Matterport

Matterport, a provider of 3D image capture technology, has named former eBay chief product officer RJ Pittman as its new chief executive.

Pittman will take the reins from former chief executive Bill Brown, who will continue to advise Matterport as the company looks to capitalize on its library of three dimensional scans.

The company currently has a library of 1.4 million three dimensional models that have been viewed at least 600 million times since the company launched.

According to Silicon Valley Business Journal, the company had revenue in 2017 of $33 million from selling its camera equipment and software services to businesses.

The company was launched when founders Matt Bell and David Gausebeck realized the commercial potential of the motion capture and sensor technology that Microsoft had unveiled with their Kinect camera back in 2010.

At the time, the company’s several thousand dollar pieces of hardware were the cutting edge for capturing images — now it can be done with software and a cell phone camera. The march of technology has put Matterport in a somewhat precarious position, but the company continues to lock in deals with companies like Donan, an investigation service for insurers and others that looks at fire damage.

The company has inked deals with a number of different enterprise customers — and even brought on State Auto Labs as a strategic investor earlier this year.

“Matterport has the opportunity to revolutionize how property risks are underwritten and claims are handled in the insurance industry,” said Kim Garland, Senior Vice President, Commercial Lines & Managing Director of State Auto Labs said in a statement at the time.

In all, Matterport has raised around $77 million from investors including State Auto Labs, Lux Capital, DCM Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, Ericsson Ventures, AMD Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures, CBRE, Felicis Ventures, GIC, Crate and Barrel founder Gordon Segal, iGlobe Partners, Navitas Ventures, News Corp, and Sound Ventures.

Matterport’s hardware can digtially capture, document, visualize and collaborate around properties in 3D on web, mobile and in VR. And its hosted Matterport Cloud service automates the creation of state-of-the-art 3D models, high-quality 4K 2D photography, floorplans and other assets and stores them in easily accessible formats.

There’s still a lot of contested space in the collection and capture of the real world for use in augmented and virtual reality and the addition of Pittman should help Matterport as it looks at a much more crowded competitive landscape.

“RJ’s operating experience at scale, paired with his entrepreneurial DNA and deep product vision will be instrumental to unlocking the full potential of our breakthrough technology and unparalleled 3D media and data,” said company co-founder and chief technology officer David Gausebeck, in a statement.

Indeed, Pittman discussed the importance of Matterport’s library when he spoke of the opportunity he saw for the company. “Matterport Cloud is an unrivaled dataset of precision 3D environments that represents an enormous opportunity to scale the company’s data services business exponentially. This will open up new strategic partnerships and investments as we realize the full value of this data,” Pittman said in a statement.

As an entrepreneur, product developer and real estate investor, Pittman is uniquely qualified to take charte at Matterport.

He previously worked on product, design, engineering and mobile payments at eBay and held roles at Apple and Google. In addition, he had also co-founded and served as the chief executive for the search engine that created the industry’s first graphical information interface, Groxis.

Finally, Pittman worked on a number of real estate projects in the U.S. and UK, giving him insight on the role that technology can play in the new architectural landscape.

 

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The battle over the driving experience is heating up and will be won in software

Lou Shipley Contributor

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Sirius XM’s recent all-stock $3.5-billion purchase of the music-streaming service Pandora raised a lot of eyebrows. A big question was why Sirius paid so much. Is Pandora’s music library and customer base really worth that amount? The answer is that this was a strategic move by Sirius in a battle that is far bigger than radio. The real battle, which will become much more visible in the coming years, is over the driving experience.

People spend a lot of time commuting in their cars. That time is fixed and won’t likely change. However, what is changing is the way we drive. We’re already seeing many new cars with driver assist features, and automakers (and tech companies) are working hard to bring fully autonomous cars to the market as quickly as possible. New cars today already contain an average of 100 million lines of code that can be updated to increase driver assist options, and some automakers like Tessla already offer an “autonomous” mode on highways.

According to the Brookings Institute, one-quarter of all cars will be autonomous by 2040 and IHS predicts all cars will be autonomous after 2050. Those are conservative estimates, as we are likely to see major changes in the next 10 years.

These changes will impact the driving experience. As cars become more autonomous, we can do more than simply listen to music or podcasts. We may be able to watch videos, surf the web, and more. The value of car real estate is already valuable, but it’s going to skyrocket as we change the way people consume media while driving.

The Pandora acquisition was a strategic move by Sirius to gain the necessary assets so that it won’t fall behind in this space — and to get into the fast-growing music streaming business, where users consume music at home, work and at play.  While Pandora’s music library is arguably second tier, it’s also good enough that it can provide pretty much every artist most people want. This is often how high-priced mergers happen – one party is concerned about falling behind and pays a premium to purchase the other company’s assets. It’s also a bet by Sirius about the driving experience of the future.

As the battle over the driving experience heats up, we will initially see companies like Google, Amazon and Apple start dipping their toes in the market. They might do that through investments in startups, rolling out their own services, or purchasing competitors. Some of those large tech companies already have projects around autonomous cars. Uber may even be interested in this market.

For now, Sirius probably doesn’t need to worry about competition from startups. They won’t be able to grow big enough fast enough to get a sizable share of the market. A more likely scenario is that startups will work on software that offers a unique functionality, making it an attractive acquisition target by a larger company.

This is going to be an interesting battle to watch in the coming years, as cars essentially become software with four wheels attached. Companies like Sirius know this is an important space and that the battle over the driving experience will be won in software. The acquisition of Pandora is only the beginning.

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