Apple releases iOS 10 for compatible devices
14 Sep 2016
Apple on Tuesday released iOS 10 for compatible devices, after it rolled out its iMessage App Store, which comes with a wide range of apps supporting the revamped messaging app.
Currently, the iMessage App Store is available for users who had installed iOS 10 as part of the beta programme. For those who hae older iOS versions, they would need to wait till iOS 10 was publicly launched.
The iMessage App Store was much similar to Apple's main App Store having different categories of apps. According to commentators, the resemblance to the main App Store was not really a bad thing as it brought familiarity for users, and helped them get started.
It may be pointed out that there were some apps, which were iMessage extensions of already available apps while there were others exclusively for iMessage. Though there were not many apps currently, their numbers could increase after the official roll out.
The store currently offered games, fun apps, keyboard apps as also everyone's favorite stickers, which were big names like Disney, Bandai Namco and Sario. As could be expected from Apple, a lot of apps were paid, but then again free ones would also come in with more users coming aboard.
Meanwhile, in its quest to become a go-to app for global peer-to-peer payments, with the arrival of iOS 10, Apple has made Circle, available on iMessage, which would give iOS 10 users the ability to send US dollars, euros, pound sterling and Bitcoin to people using Apple's texting service.
With the release of an iMessage version of Circle, which was announced last week, the social payments provider would likely be Apple's most popular app, processing 200,000 iMessages a second.
''We want to make money work the way the internet works,'' says Jeremy Allaire, the founder and CEO of payments app Circle, noting that while people talked about ''cross-border'' payments, no one would describe an email that way. ''Crucially, [Circle for iMessage] works with the dominant way people interact - messaging.''