In late August, Microsoft announced that Windows 8.1 was shipping out to OEMs. Within the same announcement, Microsoft said that subscribers to its MSDN or TechNet services doesn’t get early copies of Windows 8.1. As we learned from the Xbox One debacle, however, Microsoft will relent when enough people complain. Microsoft announced today that Windows 8.1 RTM is now available to subscribers to MSDN and TechNet. This ensures that developers get a head start on making apps for Windows 8.1 before it launches to consumers in October. So, what changed between late August and now? The folks who pay Microsoft an annual fee rightly complained that obtaining Windows 8.1 mutually as everybody else was unfair and, frankly, really stupid. Here’s what Microsoft’s Steven Guggenheimer needed to say about it: We heard from you that our decision not to initially release Windows 8.1 or Windows Server 2012 R2 RTM bits was a large challenge for our developer partners as they’re readying new Windows 8.1 apps and... Read More »

If you utilize any sort of analytics on your mobile app, you simply might use Parse. It’s one of the crucial popular mobile analytics platforms in the marketplace, and the team behind it have announced some new tools with a purpose to make it even better. During its first annual Parse Developers Day, the corporate revealed five new tools that it’s been developing during the last few months with its new owners at Facebook. There’s slightly something for everybody here, including new analytics tools or even support for some of the fastest growing game engines available. The major release of the day is a brand new analytics tool called Custom Analytics. Because the name implies, it’ll allow app developers to “track arbitrary events with an arbitrary set of dimensions.” The recent tool joins the previously released Push Analytics and API requests tools that tracked user interactions with push notifications and the collection of API requests dealing with Parse. Yow will discover out more about Parse... Read More »

Do you prefer living at the edge? Does untested software excite you? If this is the case, you could just would like to subscribe to a brand new beta rolling out this week. Adobe announced that the Flash Player 11.9 and AIR 3.9 betas at the moment are available on Adobe Labs. The betas will provide users with a glimpse at among the new features Adobe is operating on for both platforms. As always, AIR is receiving nearly all of the updates while Flash Player receives just a few minor upgrades. Starting with Flash Player 11.9, Adobe announced that the beta supports Mac OS X 10.9, or Mavericks. With Mavericks support, Flash Player developers shall be ready to make sure that their Flash content works properly at the newest version of Mac OS X when it launches later this year. Speaking of Mac OS X, the Flash Player 11.9 beta now supports .pkg installation. This can make it easier for system admins to deploy new... Read More »

Current rumors suggest that the iPhone 5S and iOS 7 are just a month away. As such, Facebook is prepping its SDK for the eventual release of the latest version of iOS and desires its developers to be ready besides. In an update at the Facebook Developers blog, Jason Clark writes that Facebook is doing things a bit differently this time around with reference to its iOS development. Rather than anticipating the overall release to begin issuing bug fixes, Facebook is operating to deal with as many bugs as possible before launch. He also says that any developer engaged on iOS 7 should want to upgrade to Facebook SDK for iOS 3.7.1 or newer. You’ll grab that here. Alongside the changes to its iOS development, Clark also announced some changes to Facebook’s platform policies. For starters, developers are not any longer required to manage promotions only within apps. They are able to now send out promotions on Page Timelines and Facebook Web apps. Obviously, you... Read More »

Amazon is the world’s largest online retailer and it sells nearly everything. It’s also host to 1 of the world’s largest mobile platforms with its Kindle Fire devices and Amazon Appstore for Android. Now the retailer is combining the 2. Amazon announced today the launch of the Mobile Associates API. It’s a brand new tool that enables developers to integrate Amazon’s retail store into their mobile apps. In other words, a developer could sell physical items via in-app purchases, and the sale of these physical items will be handled by Amazon’s retail operation. “Developers now be capable of create an excellent deeper connection between their app and the goods customers value and buy through Amazon.com,” said Mike George, Vp of Amazon Appstore, Games and Cloud Drive. “Imagine a developer of a nutrition and fitness app can now offer their customers the power to buy vitamins, supplements and fitness gear in the app, directly from Amazon.com. It offers the client a more relevant experience and gives... Read More »