MacRumors

Over the course of the last few months, several companies have decided to end development on apps for the Apple Watch, focusing instead on Apple's iOS platform. The latest company to nix its Apple Watch app is Slack. If you're unfamiliar with Slack, it's a team communication and collaboration platform for businesses.

In an update to its iOS app today, Slack eliminated its standalone Apple Watch app. Slack customers will, however, still be able to respond to incoming messages on their Apple Watch thanks to rich notifications.

Apple Watch users, there's now one iOS app for all of your needs. We've removed the standalone Watch App, but rest assured, receiving and replying to messages from your wrist works the same as before. It's like two for the price of one, but with apps.

Slack's Apple Watch app, like many of the Apple Watch apps that have been abandoned, was never particularly useful, so it's no surprise Slack has decided not to dedicate additional resources to it. The Slack Apple Watch app let users view unread mentions and view and respond to direct messages, but these features were not easy to use on a wrist-worn device. It also let users receive and interact with notifications, features that are still available through an iPhone.

When the Apple Watch was released, most companies developed an Apple Watch app for the device even if the app didn't do anything useful, because it wasn't yet clear how and when people would use apps on the wrist. As the Apple Watch has matured, though, it's become clear that most dedicated apps offering anything beyond a quick interaction aren't used often enough to be a worthwhile use of company resources.

For example, Twitter in September ended support for the Apple Watch, eliminating the standalone Twitter app on the device. At the time, Twitter said that it felt notifications were the most helpful part of the Apple Watch Twitter experience, which is also what Slack is now relying on.

Other companies that have stopped offering Apple Watch apps include Target, eBay, Whole Foods, Amazon, and Google (for Google Maps). eBay and Google have both said Apple Watch support might return in the future, but have not yet released new apps.

Spotify is doubling down on free music and has begun testing a standalone app that offers a station-based streaming music experience similar to Pandora's original music service, reports Variety.

"Stations," available on Android devices in Australia, is designed to let users stream free music from curated radio-like stations. The app's description says that Stations "is an experiment by Spotify that makes it easy for anyone to listen to great music."

Stations is the easiest way to listen to the music you love. Totally free.

When you have access to all the music in the world, finding the right thing to play can feel like a challenge. With Stations, you can listen immediately, and switching stations is simple and seamless--no searching or typing needed. As you listen, it learns what you like and creates personalised stations that you'll love.

Based on the app's description, Stations is designed to make it quick and easy to find new music, with the app offering up personalized stations after it "learns what you like." Spotify says there's no searching or typing required to use the app.

It's not clear what Spotify plans to do with Stations in the future, and it's not known if the company plans to eventually release an iOS app, but Stations does fill a much-needed function - it provides more free listening options for customers on mobile devices.

Spotify's main app also has a free ad-supported listening tier, but the on-demand service is limited to customers who use Spotify on the desktop. On mobile devices, listening options are far more limited.

Spotify's main app boasts 140 million total active subscribers and 70 million paying subscribers, so the unpaid market is still huge for Spotify and one consumer group that Apple does not reach. Apple Music has no free listening tier, and Apple has no plans to implement one.

For now, Spotify's new Stations app is limited to a select number of Android devices in Australia and it is supported via ads.

Logitech today announced the launch of new features for its HomeKit-compatible Circle 2 security cameras via an update to the Logi Circle app.

Notification Snapshots, a new in-app feature, are designed to provide a visual "snapshot" notification of an event whenever motion is detected by the Circle 2 camera.

With this option, you'll get a visual representation of exactly what triggered the motion detection feature rather than a simple text-based notification that lets you know motion was detected. Snapshots will be sent via push notification and should let you react more quickly to incoming motion detection alerts.

For customers who also subscribe to Logitech's Circle Safe premium service, Notification Snapshots offer up a zoomed-in view of the object or person that triggered the motion detection based on the Circle's Person Detection feature.

Enabling Notification Snapshots on existing Circle 2 cameras will require you to download the updated Logi Circle app from the App Store and install a new firmware update from within the app.

Along with new notification features, Logitech is also introducing new Circle Safe Home subscription plans designed for customers with multiple cameras.

Circle Safe pricing starts at $3.99 per month for the basic subscription for a single camera and goes up to $9.99 per month (or $99.99 per year) for the premium subscription, but customers with multiple cameras can now get discounted prices.

For up to five cameras, Circle Safe Basic starts at $6.99 per month or $69 per year, while Circle Safe Premium starts at $17.99 per month or $179 per year.

Circle Safe Basic and Circle Safe Premium allow you to store video in the cloud for a longer period of time and access premium features. Logitech's cameras, available from Logitech and Amazon for $180, can be used sans subscription, but only 24 hours of video footage is stored in the cloud.

Over on our YouTube channel, we've started a new monthly video series highlighting new, interesting, and useful iOS apps that we think are well worth checking out.

With so many apps available in the iOS App Store, it can sometimes be hard to find new content, and it's easy to overlook some older apps that are also great. Our app lists will include both older and newer apps that we personally recommend and have used over the course of the month.

Bear (Free) - Bear is a writing, coding, and note taking app that has a clean, simple interface and a rich feature set. It's available on iOS and Mac devices, and it offers Apple Pencil support, todos, multiple export options, an Advanced Markup Editor with support for more than 20 programming languages, SmartData Recognition, in-line images and photos, hashtags for organization, and more.

Bear is free to download, but if you want to sync your notes between your devices, unlock themes, and use advanced exporting options, you'll need to pay $1.49 per month or $14.99 per year for a subscription.

Workout (Free) - There are an endless number of workout apps available from the App Store, but we're highlighting Workout for its easy-to-create workout plans, tutorial videos, progress tracking, and exercise database. Workout is free to download, but to unlock all of the features, you'll need a subscription. It's $15 for one month, $30 for a year, or $40 for lifetime access.

Adobe Spark Video (Free) - Adobe's Spark Video app is designed to allow anyone - even someone who is new to video editing - to create high-quality videos from video clips and photos in a matter of minutes. It's a great way to spruce up your Instagram and Facebook videos.

A Color Story (Free) - A Color Story is a photo editing app that has tons of preset filters and effects you can apply to your photos, similar to popular app VSCO. You can choose a filter and then add effects like bokeh, confetti, color overlays, or light flares. The best feature is batch edit, which lets you get the same effect on multiple photos at once.

A Color Story is free with some filters unlocked, but adding additional filters will require in-app purchases.

The Room: Old Sins ($4.99) - The Room: Old Sins is the fourth game in the popular The Room series, and this one has the same escape room-style puzzles you've come to know and love from past games. Old Sins takes place in a super creepy dollhouse and it's well worth checking out if you loved the other games in the series. Check out our sister site TouchArcade's review for more details.

If you're looking for great Mac apps that are worth downloading, make sure to check out our list of five essential apps for the Mac. And if you have favorite iOS apps, share them with us - we'll be highlighting interesting, useful iOS apps on a monthly basis.

A new MacRumors exclusive Sound Forge Pro Mac 3 offer is launching today, allowing our readers to get Magix's advanced audio waveform editing software for $229, a $328 discount on the traditional price of $557. The exclusive sale lasts from today, January 31 through February 28, 2018.

Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with these vendors. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.

Sound Forge Pro Mac 3 is an advanced audio waveform editing suite that has been optimized and designed for macOS, offering users multi-channel recording and editing, mastering for music and dialogue clips, and support for high-resolution audio recording at 24 bits with sampling rates as high as 192kHz. The suite's full features are extensive -- also including customizable window layouts, file conversion automation, and the iZotope's RX Elements and Ozone Elements tools -- so make sure to head over to Magix's website for more details if you're interested.

Another exclusive deal for MacRumors readers is debuting tomorrow, February 1, for a collection of RAVPower portable and desktop chargers. Today, most of the accessories are available at a discount of up to 30 percent off in Amazon's Gold Box Deal of the Day, but MacRumors readers will be able to gain access to these sale prices for an extended period of time thanks to a series of promo codes.

This means that beginning Thursday, February 1 and running through Saturday, February 3 you'll be able to enter the below promo codes on Amazon and nab the same RAVPower accessories at today's discount prices. So if you are interested in purchasing one of the sale items today, remember that you won't need a promo code. Also note that a few of the accessories have an on-page coupon you can click to get an extra 10 percent off your purchase.

Check out all of the chargers on sale below (the first two are not discounted as part of the Gold Box deal today):

• RAVPower 20000 mAh Portable Charger (Black) - $25.89 with promo code 4CA29JTI, down from $36.99

• RAVPower 20000 mAh Portable Charger (White) - $27.29 with promo code 39NWGPJW, down from $38.99

• RAVPower 40W 4-Port Desktop Charger (Black) - $15.39 with promo code QCHAR40W, down from $21.99

• RAVPower 40W 4-Port Desktop Charger (White) - $15.39 with promo code QCHAR40W, down from $21.99

• RAVPower 15000 mAh solar power bank - $21.99 with promo code 796DPW9M, down from $29.99

There are a few other notable sales happening today only, including B&H Photo's $1,200 discount on the late 2016 15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar (2.9 GHz, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD) in Silver for $2,299.00, down from $3,499.00. At Best Buy, you can purchase the 64GB Apple TV (fourth generation) for $169.99, down from $199.99 (also at Walmart). JBL is offering a notable limited-time sale as well on its Charge 2+ speakers in recertified/factory refurbished condition for $59.95, down from $149.95.

Head over to our full Deals Roundup for even more of the latest discounts and sales going on this week.

In a new episode of IGN's "Unfiltered" interview series, thatgamecompany co-founder Jenova Chen discussed a variety of topics, including the developer's upcoming iOS- and tvOS-only game "Sky," the "malicious" intent of some mobile games, and how Sky's payment model is its "biggest innovation."

Specifically, Chen talked about how the iOS App Store and other mobile gaming platforms have affected the gaming industry as a whole, and his hopes that Sky can potentially become counter programming to those titles. Instead of using a payment model that is "downright malicious," Chen teased that Sky's structure will include a method where players "pay money for other people" and not for themselves.

Since we still have a few weeks to go before the game's March release date, Chen didn't divulge any more details.

"I think many people will be surprised by how this game makes money. I think my biggest breakthrough or innovation on this game is about how it actually charges people... this is something you probably have never seen before, once you play the game you will be interested. It’s a game where you pay money for other people and not yourself."

Chen called this app payment structure his "biggest breakthrough" in the development of Sky's iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV apps. He also reiterated on topics previously known about the game, like how it will be "ongoing" and constantly evolving, and include a multiplayer aspect that makes it easier for players to directly connect to their friends and family, unlike Journey's random encounter system.

Chen also briefly touched upon the moment when Sky was unveiled during Apple's iPhone X event last September. He said that the presentation at the Apple event reached a wider audience of non-gamers, but some of the people he knows who play games are less aware of Sky, because they "just fast forwarded the whole Apple TV part to just watch the end and look at the iPhone X."

Ultimately, Chen said that he hopes players connect with Sky in a way that "could still generate good revenue" despite its lack of notorious mobile gaming trends like loot boxes. "So then you can create a path for other publishers or investors to, you know, consider doing it the honest way."

The full 90-minute interview with Jenova Chen can be viewed on IGN's website and on the company's YouTube channel.

Two former Apple executives have today launched a new game broadcasting service called Caffeine, which allows users to watch and broadcast games and other entertainment on Mac, PC, and iPhone. In a press release, the company likened Caffeine to Amazon's Twitch platform, "only easier, safer, and more social."

Caffeine was founded by Ben Keighran and Sam Roberts, a former product design lead for Apple TV and lead user experience designer for Apple, respectively. Other than games, Caffeine will be a "social broadcasting platform" with tools for entertainment as well as other artistic content, and is backed by $46 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz and Greylock Partners

“We're incredibly excited to be sharing more details on the pre-release version of Caffeine,” said Ben Keighran, CEO of Caffeine. “I left Apple to create a company that would fundamentally change the way we create, consume, share, and monetize live content. Our goal was to re-imagine every aspect of live broadcasting -- ignoring the good things we could do and focusing on the really great things instead.

We are committed to building the best experience for creators, giving them everything they need, from the broadcasting software all the way through to how the audience discovers and enjoys their content. We have put together a world-class engineering and content team that will transform the way the world thinks about live broadcasting.”

The company described Caffeine's interface as simple and straightforward to use, with "1-click easy" controls and no additional software required to stream content. Users can broadcast games in three ways: using PC game broadcast software, a webcam from a Mac or PC, and through the iOS application.

Once you start using Caffeine, the app will showcase content and broadcasts from the people you follow in a "social circle," and you can join and watch content with them together. "There are no endless feeds of meaningless comments," the company said, because the app highlights personal conversations between friends and creators, helping to dispel toxicity in a real-time chat environment.

On the creator side of things, Caffeine is also touted as a way to "build more personal, meaningful relationships" with viewers, leading to more opportunities to monetize content as well. The company said that a monetization system that backs Caffeine's "easy to use" mantra will be coming in early 2018.

Right now, all versions of the service are technically in a pre-release build. If you're interested you can find the desktop site at caffeine.tv and the iPhone app on the iOS App Store [Direct Link]. As a few readers have pointed out, Caffeine does not currently support Safari on Mac, but instead encourages users to try Firefox or Chrome.

Nintendo recently reported earnings for its fiscal third quarter of 2017, including data related to the company's two-year-old smartphone game business. In the report, Nintendo confirmed that its smart device and intellectual property related earnings increased from 10.6 billion yen (about $98 million) in the nine months ended December 31, 2016 to 29.1 billion yen (about $267 million) in the same period in 2017.

While this includes income from Nintendo's smartphone games as well as royalty income, Bloomberg reported that Nintendo's smartphone game profits specifically grew from 8.8 billion yen in the year-ago quarter to 11.2 billion yen this fiscal quarter. The only smartphone game that launched this fiscal quarter for Nintendo was Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, which is said to have generated $17 million globally and reached a download number of 22 million since its launch in November. The other major smartphone game to debut from Nintendo in 2017 was Fire Emblem Heroes.

Nintendo said it plans to get its players to continue returning to and enjoying previously released iOS and Android games through ongoing updates, not including the recently confirmed imminent shut down of its first iOS app Miitomo.

In our smart-device business, consumers not only continued to enjoy Super Mario Run and Fire Emblem Heroes, which became available for download during the previous fiscal year, but also had fun with Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, released globally during October and November. Smart devices and IP related income were up to 29.1 billion yen (172% increase on a year-on-year basis).

In our smart-device business, we will focus on operations that encourage more consumers to continue to enjoy playing the applications that they have downloaded

Although Fire Emblem Heroes and Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp are free-to-download apps, they're believed to net Nintendo more of a profit in the long run thanks to players who become enticed to spend money on in-app purchases. Alternatively, Super Mario Run is a free-to-start app where users can play a few levels and then must spend $9.99 to gain access to the full game.

At one point, Nintendo described the freemium model of Fire Emblem Heroes as an "outlier" in its overall smartphone game plan and that it prefers Super Mario Run's pay-once structure, but so far that's been the only app to go that route. Additionally, the company's previous earnings report mentioned Super Mario Run had yet to reach an "acceptable profit point" around 10 months after launch.

Otherwise, Nintendo's earnings report detailed a huge success for the company's Switch console, selling 12.13 million units from April to December 2017 and now totaling 14.86 million units sold to date. Upon this report, Nintendo increased its operating profit outlook from 120 billion yen to 160 billion yen for the year ending March 2018, and bumped up the Switch sales forecast from the already-surpassed 14 million units to 15 million units for the same period.

Apple's main iPhone manufacturer in India is closing in on a land deal in the tech hub of Bengaluru that will see the firm invest around $157 million to assemble iPhone SE and potentially iPhone 6s models on the site, according to Reuters.

Unnamed Indian government officials on Wednesday reportedly confirmed the Taiwanese contractor's intentions, which could result in its iPhone SE assembly unit taking over about 100 acres in and around the capital of the southern Indian state of Karnataka.

Wistron executives reportedly toured the area in November and met with the industries minister of Karnataka earlier this month, and a deal on the land lease could be struck in a few weeks, according to one of the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they are not authorized to publicly comment on the plans.

Another source who spoke to Reuters said Apple will likely begin assembling iPhone 6s models in India soon, using Wistron's expanding manufacturing capacity in the country, as it looks to cut costs and diversify its production base beyond greater China. Launched over two years ago, the iPhone 6s is still popular in emerging markets because of its affordability relative to Apple's iPhone 7, iPhone 8, and iPhone X.

Apple sees opportunities to save on import taxes, price phones cheaper and potentially widen its customer base in India if it assembles phones locally. However last month India raised import taxes on electronic goods, which caused Apple to raise the price of most iPhone models there except for iPhone SE.

Apple has sought tax breaks and incentives from the Indian government for months as it looks to expand operations in the country, but despite some positive comments from state officials, no exceptions have yet been made for Apple.

Earlier this afternoon, a bug with the Apple News app caused notifications for a single CNN news story to be sent out to iPhone and iPad users over and over again.

The issue, which lasted for approximately 15 minutes, appears to have impacted all Apple News subscribers who had alerts turned on for CNN based on a slew of complaints that popped up on reddit, Twitter, and the MacRumors forums.

It wasn't clear if the problem was with CNN or the Apple News app, but on Twitter, CNN claims it was the latter. According to the news organization, CNN only sent a single notification, and the company is working with Apple to identify the problem.