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Apple posted iOS 18 adoption rates on Friday, which are only slightly different from the numbers for iOS 17 a year ago. The company says iOS 18 has been installed on 68 percent of all iPhones (as of January 21) and 76 percent of models from the last four years. A year ago, 66 percent of all iPhones ran iOS 17, so theres a two-percent uptick for iOS 18 this year. The other stat was identical to todays data: 76 percent of iPhones from the previous four years were running iOS 17 in January 2024. iPad owners arent moving any needles dramatically, either. Apple says 53 percent of all iPads are running iPadOS 18 (the same as iPadOS 17 a year ago). And 63 percent of the tablets from the last four years run iPadOS 18. Thats a notch above the 61 percent of devices from the previous four years running iPadOS 17 early last year. Does the minor boost come from Apple Intelligence wooing a few extra curious adopters? Unfortunately, the company is mum about how many people have opted into its suite of generative AI features. Regardless, we can speculate that Apple wants Apple Intelligence adoption to grow: In the latest iOS 18.3 beta, Apple is enabling its AI features by default during onboarding. (You can still opt out after that, but you have to dig into settings to do so.) In previous versions, it was an opt-in feature you had to explicitly agree to during setup. That software could arrive as early as next week.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/apple-says-68-percent-of-all-iphones-are-running-ios-18-195956904.html?src=rss
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Marketing and Advertising
The extremely popular strategy game Endless Legend is finally getting a sequel, ten whole years after the original game began blowing up sales charts. Developer Amplitude Studios, who made the first one, just dropped a trailer for Endless Legend 2 and it looks pretty darned cool. This game and its sequel fall under the 4X sub-genre of strategy games, meaning the crux of the gameplay involves building an empire of some kind. The Civilization titles are a great example of 4X strategy. 4X actually stands for eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate. I guess 4E just didnt have the same vibe. In any event, Endless Legend 2 is set in a new location, the oceanic world of Saiadha. The trailer hints at the mysterious nature of this world and showcases the refined gameplay mechanics. It also looks like players could stumble upon an imprisoned god during campaigns. Good times. Players can adopt the role of various factions in the game, many of which are shown off in the trailer. Theres a human-like race, an insectoid race and a centaur-like race, among others. Here's more good news for fans of the original. While Amplitude hasnt announced a release date yet, it did say that it will enter early access in early 2025. Using my advanced math skills I have deduced that its early 2025 right now. The early access build will let players take control of four of the aforementioned factions, with two more coming with the full release. If that nebulous release date has got you down, there's a way to try the game out even earlier. The company has reopened applications for its insider program. Not everyone will be selected for the initial testing phase, but its worth a shot.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/endless-legend-2-is-real-and-theres-a-mysterious-trailer-to-prove-it-191206441.html?src=rss
Category:
Marketing and Advertising
In its year-and-a-half of existence, one of the things thats set Threads apart from Metas other apps is that the service has been entirely free of the advertising that fills up just about every corner of Facebook and Instagram. Thats now about to change. Meta is beginning its first small test of ads on Threads, Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced, as the company looks to finally start making money off the service. The ads will appear as image posts in between content in users feeds and will show up only for a small percentage of people in the US and Japan. According to Mosseri, Meta plans to begin with a handful of brands in the two countries. We know there will be plenty of feedback about how we should approach ads, and we are making sure they feel like Threads posts youd find relevant and interesting, he wrote. Well closely monitoring this test before scaling it more broadly, with the goal of getting ads on Threads to a place where they are as interesting as organic content. It seems that Meta is using its existing advertising infrastructure to bring ads to the app. In a blog post, the company explains that brands can extend their existing Meta ad campaigns to Threadswithout the need for bespoke creative or additional resourcingby simply checking a box in Ads Manager. The company will also test its inventory filter on Threads, which allows advertisers to control the sensitivity level of the organic content their ads appear next to. That will likely be an important feature for marketers as Meta loosens its content moderation guidelines and once again allows more political content to appear in users recommendations. Though the initial test is small, using its existing ad tools would enable Meta to scale Threads ads to many more advertisers, and its 300 million users, very quickly in the future. Mark Zuckerberg has previously indicated that he preferred a slow approach to building Threads ad business. All these new products, we ship them, and then there's a multi-year time horizon between scaling them and then scaling them into not just consumer experiences but very large businesses, the CEO said last year.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-begins-a-small-test-of-ads-on-threads-174523673.html?src=rss
Category:
Marketing and Advertising
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