Ever found yourself turning down the radio so you can focus on finding a parking spot? Music didn’t stop you seeing, but it was taking up some tangible mental resources. But what if you had a way to immediately make the music more calming? Or to change that distracting string section? That, effectively, is the promise of Aimi’s interactive music player app. It won’t help you find a parking spot, though, you’re on your own with that.

If the name Aimi sounds familiar, that’s because its self-described “generative music platform” has been available online for a while. What’s new is the mobile app, launching in beta today with 5,000 slots open globally. The mobile experience takes the endless mood-based music feeds from the Aimi website and adds the option to tweak them to your heart’s content. It’s not a full-bore music making app, more of a tailored soundtrack for when you want a certain vibe, or as Aimi calls them: Experiences. The basic app will be free, but unlocking the majority of those controls will cost $10 a month.

The app offers experiences with names such as Serenity, Flow, Electronica and Push. Each gives a clear hint at what the vibe is and there are 10 of them at launch. The slowest, Serenity, starts at 64 BPM and they ratchet up to Push’s time-honored throb of 128 BPM.

As a listener, you could just open one of the experiences, tap play and go about your business. The idea being that if what the app serves you up isn’t quite what you wanted, you can mash the shuffle button and it’ll reconfigure the track with new sounds and energy. Or maybe you liked it, so there’s a thumbs-up option to tell it “more of this please.” That’s the most basic use case, which is also the extent of the free tier – but you can take it a few steps further with a subscription.

For premium users, once you have an experience playing, swiping left will give much more detailed control. The first screen shows a cluster of circles, each one labeled after a musical part (Beats, FX, Bass and so on). Hold down one of these circles and, as long as it’s active, it’ll solo just that part. If you tap a circle, you’ll enter a sub menu where you can adjust the volume of that part along with a shuffle option for just that element and more thumbs up/down.

If you swipe left one more time, you’ll find a selection of sliders which can vary from experience to experience, but tend to include “Intensity,” “Progression,” “Vocals” and “Texture.” It’s here that you can tell the app to do things like add a little intensity, mix things up more often or deliver more/less vocals. The changes are usually quite subtle - it’s more re-adjusting than remixing. These settings are remembered, too, so the next time you fire up that experience it’ll be to your taste. Or, at least the taste you had the last time you listened to it.

All the music on offer here is of the electronic variety. And despite the relatively wide range of BPMs, there’s definitely a thread that runs through them. That’s to say, this isn’t genre-hopping in the sense that you might want a Hip Hop vibe before moving over to some Indie and back to EDM. It’s more like being at a large House club with different areas with different BPMs along with a few well-stocked chill out rooms.

According to the company, the musical loops in Aimi are created by a pool of over 150 artists including some big names like Carl Cox. Once the loops are fed into the platform, AI takes over to match the pitch, BPM and general vibe. Theoretically, you have an endless radio station of music you can interact with, and the library is set to keep growing over time. Let’s hope that includes some other genres. Hip Hop and anything with a breakbeat would instantly provide a shot of different energy here, for example. Likewise, something on the more acoustic side of things would at least provide an option for those less into electronic music.

Generative music has seen an increase of interest in recent years as technology has developed enough to make it more fluid than just burping up clips that are in time and key. Mostly this has been focused on the headspace area, meditative apps, concentration soundtracks and so on. Aimi’s main rivals here would include Endel ($15 a month) and Brain.fm ($7 a month).

While Aimi does occupy this space too, its emphasis on interactivity with its mood-based streams sets it apart. In fact, Aimi CEO, Edward Balassanian, sees it as a gateway for the musically curious. “One of the strengths of generative music is that we can use it to attract casual listeners with continuous music experiences and then introduce them to interactive music by letting them take ownership of their music experience.” he told Engadget.

Aimi

This hints at a broader plan. Right now there’s the linear player on Aimi.fm and the new interactive app launching today. In the future, there will also be Aimi Studio, which Balassanian says will be released this summer. “Once we get you hooked on interacting with music through our player, we want you to feel inspired to try making music using Aimi studio. Aimi studio will be offered in both basic and pro editions for everyone from aspiring amateurs to professionals.” he added.

I’m uncertain if this will appeal to users that use something like Note by Ableton or Maschine by Native Instruments. The actual amount of impact you can have on the music in Aimi is very limited as your effectively just giving nudges to the AI rather than being directly hands on. Likewise, the section of the app where you can solo parts isn’t immediate, this means if you were hoping to remix on the fly DJ-style by cutting the bass and beats before dropping them back in on the next phrase, it’s not really designed for that.

Likewise, sometimes you can find yourself distracted by the thing that’s meant to help you focus. When I tried the “Flow” stream, the first “idea” it presented was actually a bit irritating to me, so it served the opposite purpose. Of course, I could shuffle it to something more agreeable, but the irony of being taken out of the moment, even if just temporarily, was not wasted on me.

To that end, it’s hard to see where the interactive arm of Aimi excels, at least at launch. The genres, while varied, do overlap quite a bit. The control you have over the music is quite gentle in the scheme of things and feels more like fine-tuning than an actual creator tool. The core experience of listening to chill vibes is a great alternative to your tired Spotify playlist, but that part is free and has been available in some form for a while.

Balassanian says that even more experiences from more artists will be coming after launch and once the Studio app is released anyone will be able to make loops and upload them to the platform for users to enjoy. In the meantime, you can sign up for early beta access here and start configuring your own soundtrack today.

When Twitter quietly updated its developer policies to ban third-party clients from its platform, it abruptly closed an important chapter of Twitter’s history. Unlike most of its counterparts, which tightly control what developers are able to access, Twitter has a long history with independent app makers.

Now, the developers of some Twitter clients are turning their attention to another upstart platform: Mastodon. This week, Tapbots, the studio behind Tweebot, released Ivory, a Mastodon client based on its longtime Twitter app. Matteo Villa, the developer behind Twitter app Fenix, is testing a Mastodon client of his own called Wooly. Junyu Kuang, the indie developer behind Twitter client Spring is working on a Mastodon app called Mona. Shihab Mehboob, developer of Twitter app Aviary, is close to launching a Mastodon client called Mammoth.

The one-time Twitter developers join a growing group of independent app makers who have embraced Mastodon, the open-source social network that’s seen explosive growth since Elon Musk took over Twitter. The decentralized service now has more than 1.5 million users across nearly 10,000 servers. That, coupled with Mastodon’s open-source, “API-first” approach, has attracted dozens of developers eager to put their own spin on the service.

Mastodon

Paul Haddad, one of the developers behind Tweetbot and Ivory, says Tapbots started working on a Mastodon client late last year as they started to grow nervous about the future of Twitter’s developer platform.

“They [Twitter] had absolutely been making huge strides and opening up their API platform, but clients like ours were always going to be second- or third-class citizens,” says Haddad. “Whereas with Mastodon, that's absolutely not the case.”

Thomas Ricouard, the developer behind Ice Cubes, a Mastodon app that launched earlier this month, says that he had considered building an app with Twitter's API in the past, but decided against it because it was “looking more and more limited as the days passed.” At the same time, he says he noticed fewer and fewer familiar faces on his Twitter timeline. “Loving open source software,” he says, “I quickly saw the opportunity [for Mastodon].”

Ice Cubes launched in the App Store January 19th, and it has already won the praise of reviewers and has dozens of contributors on GitHub. Even Twitter co-founder Ev Williams, who has been more active on Mastodon lately, uses the app.

On its part, Mastodon has welcomed developer interest even though it maintains its own mobile apps. “It's exciting because it means that a lot of very talented people are investing their time and resources into building on the platform and ecosystem that we have built up,” Mastodon founder and CEO Eugen Rochko tells Engadget. “Third party applications are incredibly valuable for a platform because that's where the power users go … it benefits everybody because the power users are the people who create the content that everybody reads.”

Developers’ contributions also have the potential to influence the direction of the platform itself. Just as Twitter’s earliest developers had an outsize impact on the service, some developers now see an opportunity to similarly influence Mastodon.

Both Ricouard and Haddad noted that official Mastodon apps currently don’t support quoting — the Mastodon equivalent of a quote tweet — but some clients, like Ice Cubes and Mona, do. “I think the client developers are able to implement that feature within the app, we're probably going to push it to go higher up on the radar of the Mastodon server developers,” Haddad predicts. Mastodon so far hasn’t publicly committed to adding quotes but Rochko, who was once adamantly against the feature, recently said he’s considering it.

Mastodon developers have experimented with other unique additions, too. Ice Cubes has Chat GPT-powered prompts that will spice up the text of your post (or "toot" as they are known to longtime Mastodon users). Wooly groups notifications in batches, similar to Twitter. Tapbots is working on a Mac app that will sync with Ivory’s iOS app, much like Tweetbot did across platforms.

“Mastodon is in the [same] early phase Twitter was, where third party apps will have a big impact on the future product focus and development,” says Ricouard.

Rochko says that while he’s happy to see the growing number of Mastodon clients, he’s not in a hurry to try to replicate their features. Mastodon is still a nonprofit with a small team and a lengthy product roadmap. “It's definitely interesting to see different ideas tested out and experimented with and I think that long term, there's probably going to be influence over the official apps,” he says.

Still, not every former Twitter client developer is eager to start over on Mastodon. “I’m not sure if I want to create a Mastodon app but you should definitely check out those other developers who have,” Tweetings said in a farewell post on Twitter. Twitterrific’s developers are also unsure if Mastodon fits into their future plans.

Much will likely depend on if Mastodon is able to maintain its current growth and continue to attract new users. And as much as many former Twitter users see it as a replacement, Mastodon is structured very differently, and not everyone finds it as user-friendly as Twitter. Rochko, who started Mastodon in 2017, says he’s optimistic because the site continues to add influential users.

“What's exciting to me about the latest wave of users on Mastodon is not the numbers but the who. The people who have joined from various journalist organizations, media organizations, politicians, actors, writers, and just you know, famous internet people — like the olden days.”

Apple's rumored mixed reality headset may help you create apps even if you don't know how to code. The Informationsources claim Apple is working on a tool that would let anyone create augmented reality apps with Siri. You'd only have to tell the voice assistant what you want — you could have digital animals scurrying around the room without the need for modelling, animation or conventional programming software.

The AR creation tool is said to be based on technology from Fabric Software, a Canadian company Apple quietly bought in 2017. The acquired startup's Fabric Engine let developers automatically create environments and objects using procedural generation, a technique used in games like No Man's Sky. A Fabric co-founder, Peter Zion, is believed to be running the development tool project. Apple also bought DigitalRune, which sought to make 3D game development easier, in 2016.

Apple might also save you the trouble of creating unique objects for headset apps. You could scan and import objects that, if all goes well, would look and behave realistically. You wouldn't have to rely on Apple-made stock models. Existing like Object Capture (which creates 3D models from iPhone photos) and RoomPlan (for virtual floor plans) are apparently part of these efforts.

The company has already declined comment. The state of the Siri-based development tool isn't known, but the sources say Apple's original plan was to release the suite at the same time as the headset. Current rumors have the wearable arriving as soon as this spring. 

According to past rumors, the initial mixed reality headset (possibly named Reality Pro) may be very expensive and aimed more at professionals than everyday users. However, leaks suggest Apple is still building features that would appeal to a mainstream audience, such as FaceTime calls with avatars as well as health and fitness apps that could include a meditation experience. Combined with the easy development tool, Apple may be setting the stage for a lower-priced wearable by fostering the app ecosystem — there could be plenty of apps by the time there's a headset you can afford.

IK Multimedia has launched the iRig Stream Mic Pro designed to be more versatile than typical multimedia mics from Blue and others. It combines a multi-pattern condenser microphone with a 24-bit, 96 kHz audio interface for iOS, Android, Mac and PC. That lets creators do things like marry their voice with music from a phone or tablet or connect easily to a media player, keyboard or other device. 

The company promises "crisp, clear and detailed" sound thanks to dual mic capsules that let you select from cardioid, figure 8, omnidirectional or stereo pickup patterns. The 24-bit, 96kHz converters allow for high quality output, which you can check through a headphone output with direct monitoring.

As for the audio interface, you can connect devices like a turntable, soundboard or keyboard directly using the stereo 3.5mm audio input. With the monitoring mix control, you can blend the director or recorded audio via the headphone output. 

IK Multimedia

It also features the company's Loopback+ that lets you not only add music from a smartphone or other device, but route the mic signal to a separate app to add reverb, EQ or noise-reduction. From there, you can send the signal to an app like TikTok, allowing for easier output "on apps that don't normally allow audio processing or adding background music," IK Multimedia said in a press release.

Settings can be selected and operated with a single control knob, and levels monitored via LED level indicators. It can run in stereo or multichannel modes , and includes cables for iPhones, iPads, Android devices and Macs/PCs. It's powered by its host and is MiFi certified.

All of the features are reflected in the price. Where Blue's Yeti is $100 and there are a bunch of good streaming mics under $100, the iRig Stream Mic Pro costs $170. That could actually be cheaper than the cost of a mic and interface together, however. It ships with some free apps including iRig Recorder 3 LE for mobile devices as well as MixBox CS (iPad) and MixBox SE (Mac/PC). It's now available for $170 at IK Multimedia's online store and select retailers. 

Don't worry if you hate Twitter's curated For You tab, as you now have a better way to avoid it. Twitter is updating its web and mobile apps to default to the timeline tab you last had open. If you close the app after looking at the chronological Following tab like a sensible human being, you'll see it again when you come back. The tab default is rolling out today on the web, and "coming soon" to the Android and iOS apps.

This won't revert to the old "twinkle" button that saved space. It does let you stick to your preferred timeline, though. This could be particularly helpful if you want to follow time-sensitive events (one of the main reasons many people use Twitter) and would rather not switch tabs every time you check your feed.

For You is an algorithmically generated feed that highlights certain tweets based on the users and conversations Twitter believes are relevant to you. While this can surface slightly older posts you might have missed, it also tends to bury content from some users and makes it difficult to follow live events.

The update comes as Twitter faces criticism of its approach to clients following Elon Musk's acquisition last year. The social network now bans third-party clients, forcing developers to shut down popular apps and pivot to rival services like Mastodon. Many of those apps gave users more control over their timeline view and otherwise helped users dodge common Twitter annoyances. This change won't likely satisfy fans of alternative apps. It might, however, reduce the sting of being force to use official software.

The next version of Android could bar you from installing ancient apps in some circumstances. 9to5Google has spotted a code change indicating that Android 14 will block users from sideloading apps (that is, installing them outside of the Play Store) that don't target a minimum version of the operating system. It will stop the installation of particularly old software at first, but Google expects to "progressively" raise the bar to require at least Android 6.0 Marshmallow.

The move is meant to boost security and privacy. Malware writers can't just target old versions of Android to escape security measures in newer releases, Google says. Google already requires that apps in the Play Store target at least Android 12. This update denies attempts to install vintage apps through the web or third-party stores.

This won't completely thwart you if there's a classic app you're determined to run. It's up to device manufacturers to enable the cutoff, and there will still be a way to install apps through a command shell. The new policy is meant to stop people from unwittingly installing malware. If you sideload an old app on an Android 14 phone with this measure switched on, you likely know exactly what you're doing.

Still, it's notable that Google is limiting sideloading at all. For some, it's a reason to buy an Android phone instead of an iPhone — you're free to install apps that aren't available in the official store. However, it's not surprising that Google is clamping down. Android malware writers frequently (though not always) rely on sideloading precisely because there are fewer restrictions than in the Play Store. A block on old apps won't put an end to malware, but it could tighten the platform's overall security.

Garmin hasn't yet had a dedicated electrocardiogram (ECG) app despite the health focus of its wearables, but it's filling that gap today. The company has introduced a simply-titled ECG App that, like equivalents on other devices, can study your heart rhythm and look for atrial fibrillation (aka AFib). If there are signs of trouble, you can sync your results with Garmin Connect and create a report you can share with healthcare providers.

You will have to be fussy about your choice of devices to use this software right away. Garmin is currently offering the app only to Venu 2 Plus owners in the US. They'll need to update both their firmware and the Connect app. The company plans to add support for more devices and countries over time, but that will require further government approvals. Don't expect your running watch to get an ECG app for a while.

This is the first app Garmin has cleared with the US Food and Drug Administration. As with similar apps, it's not meant to be a definitive verdict on your heart health and won't detect cardiac arrest. Your watch only offers functionality comparable to a single-lead ECG — your doctor can use a multi-lead system that will present a more accurate picture of your condition. Garmin VP Dan Bartel notes that this app is mainly helpful for spotting AFib in the early stages, when it's "difficult to detect" at a clinic.

There are plenty of alternatives if ECG is a must-have feature. Apple, Google (including Fitbit), Samsung, Withings and others have had the technology in their watches for a while. It's difficult to complain about having more choices, though, and this may be appealing if you prefer Garmin's overall fitness and health tracking capabilities.

Mac users who have been waiting for a native version of WhatsApp can now download it without restrictions, WaBetaInfo has reported. The new app is optimized for Mac hardware and built with Mac Catalyst, so it should be faster and more efficient than the current web-wrapped Electron version. You also get a new interface with three panels to easily flip between chats, calls, archived and starred messages, while seeing contacts and interactions at a glance.  

Apple's Catalyst was designed to allow developers to port iOS apps over to macOS or create just one version that can run on either platform. Since the Mac was developed on Catalyst, that lends some hope that a long-awaited version may also come to iOS. In 2021, Meta said that it was expanding multi-device support for WhatsApp, leading to speculation that an iPad app was forthcoming.

Last year, WhatsApp released a native version for Windows 10 that works without the need for a smartphone. It looks much the same as the Mac app and also offers increased reliability and speed.

The native macOS app has been around for several months on TestFlight, but that only offers limited slots for testers. Now that it's in a full beta, though, you can download it directly from WhatsApp's website. 

The native iOS and macOS versions of Fortnite are about to become even more limited. Since the start of its legal feud with Apple back in the summer of 2020, Epic Games has allowed players who had Fortnite installed on their devices prior to the game's removal from the App Store to continue playing. However, due to the removal, Epic hasn’t updated those versions of the game, meaning they’ve been stuck on Fortnite’s 13.40 release for more than two years. Effectively, that meant they’ve existed in a sort of limbo. All of the gameplay changes Epic has made to Fortnite since then (and there have been many), as well as all new cosmetics and seasonal passes the company has introduced, haven’t made their way over to the native iOS and macOS releases. Now those versions are about to become even more restrictive.

Starting on January 30th, Epic won’t allow you to spend Fortnite’s V-Bucks currency within the game’s iOS, Mac and Google Play versions. You’ll also need to be over the age of 18 to play. “We want all versions of our games to use the current suite of Epic Online Services including parental controls, purchasing defaults, and parental verification features,” Epic said on Twitter. “We are not able to update the app on these platforms given Apple and Google’s restrictions on Fortnite.”

In December, the company introduced new accounts designed specifically for younger players. They prevent kids from spending money in Fortnite’s in-game store and using voice chat without a parent’s consent. That same month, the Federal Trade Commission announced Epic had agreed to pay $520 million to settle allegations it had violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and “tricked millions of players into making unintentional purchases."

Most players won’t be affected by the restriction since there are ways to access Fortnite without going through the App Store or Google Play Store. On iOS and macOS, for instance, you can play the game through GeForce Now. On Android, meanwhile, it’s possible to download the native version of Fortnite directly from Epic’s website.

Now that Twitter has confirmed it's banning third-party clients, some of the most prominent alternatives are going away. Tapbots has shut down work on Tweetbot, one of the more popular iOS apps, as Twitter rendered it non-functional "in a blink of an eye." The developer is instead pivoting to Ivory, an app for the open social platform Mastodon. While it's limited to an invitation-only test for now, Tapbots hopes to make the software "better than Tweetbot ever could be."

This isn't the only major Twitter app developer calling it quits. The Iconfactory has pulled Twitterrific from the iOS and macOS App Stores, and blasted the Musk-era Twitter as a company it "no longer recognize[s] as trustworthy." Android users, meanwhile, can't count on apps like Matteo Villa's Fenix (it's no longer available on Google Play) or Luke Klinker's Talon (which the creator warns "will cease to work").

The shutdowns follow roughly a week of disruption and unclear messaging. Numerous third-party apps suddenly stopped working around the evening of January 12th, with leaks suggesting it was intentional. Twitter later acknowledged it was breaking these apps, allegedly to enforce "long-standing" developer rules. The social media giant then quietly updated its developer agreement to formally ban unofficial clients.

Third-party Twitter clients generally haven't played a major role in recent years. In 2018, Sensor Tower determined that 6 million users had installed alternatives versus 560 million for the official Android and iOS apps. However, the ban doesn't help Twitter's bid to keep users and protect its bottom line. Third-party app users downloaded their software of choice precisely because they're active and want features that the official apps don't offer (such as more powerful media previews and searches). Twitter's policy risks alienating those users who hate the first-party app.