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App Store Sales for 32-bit Apps Less Than 1% of Total Revenue→

Oliver Yeh of Sensor Tower shares a revealing statistic regarding the current state of App Store revenue for 32-bit apps, which will no longer be available for purchase or download in iOS 11:

The potential revenue Apple stands to lose from eliminating 32-bit app support in iOS 11, expected to launch next week, will amount to less than 1 percent of its portion of quarterly App Store revenue, according to Sensor Tower research. Based on an analysis of our Store Intelligence data, we have estimated that these older apps, which will cease to function in the upcoming release, accounted for approximately $37.5 million in worldwide gross revenue last quarter, of which Apple’s cut—about $11.3 million—made up a mere 0.41 percent of its total revenue from in-app purchases and paid apps on iPhone and iPad.

While it should come as no surprise that 32-bit apps make up a small portion of App Store sales, this new data reveals just how inconsequential that portion has now become.

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Remaster, Episode 43: Surprising Games→

News of Shahid’s first VR game, thoughts on upcoming and recent Switch releases, and an interview with Mike Bithell to discuss Subsurface Circular.

On this week’s Remaster, we cover some upcoming Switch games, then Shahid interviews Mike Bithell on his latest release. You can listen here.

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Making Siri More Human→

David Pierce has a feature story on WIRED today that’s all about Siri – especially the new Siri voice coming in iOS 11. It features a variety of interesting details concerning Siri’s history, the way Apple thinks about the digital assistant, and in-depth details on how new Siri languages are added.

One of my favorite bits involves a quote from Apple’s VP of product marketing, Greg Jozwiak, who said Apple focuses on Siri’s ability to get things done:

It drives him crazy that people compare virtual assistants by asking trivia questions, which always makes Siri look bad. “We didn’t engineer this thing to be Trivial Pursuit!” he says.

This explains Siri’s productivity-focused commercial starring The Rock, and also helps make sense of the fact that Siri is often embarrassingly clueless when it comes to current events or other simple queries. Though Apple’s awareness of the problem exacerbates its lack of a suitable response in beefing up Siri’s trivia knowledge.

Other interesting tidbits from the story include the fact that Siri now has a massive 375 million active monthly users, and that Siri’s new, more natural voice was inspired in part by the movie Her.

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How Scotty Allen Managed to Add a Headphone Jack to an iPhone 7→

Scotty Allen wanted an iPhone 7 with a headphone jack, so he set out to build his own. Jason Koebler at Motherboard chronicles Allen’s epic quest:

This sorcery took four months of engineering, Allen told me. Many iPhones were sacrificed, and lots of grey-market parts purveyors were enlisted in the quest.

The process wasn’t cheap either:

“I shifted everything up a little bit and took out protective brackets and shields and shaved things down,” Allen said. “I lost three full phones trying this, a good handful of screens, a stack of components. I broke easily close to $1,000 worth of parts in the last week, which just about broke my will. But it got to a point where I told myself—I am going to keep doing this until I prove to myself it can’t be done.”

Allen also had to design and connect a custom flexible circuit board that allowed switching between the lightning connector and his custom 3.5 mm headphone jack.

Allen’s elaborate iPhone hack isn’t something most people could accomplish and even if they could, it isn’t economical at this scale. Still, the story is an incredible tale of ingenious DIY engineering and a fascinating window into the electronics marketplaces in Shenzhen, China. I highly recommend watching Allen’s detailed account of his efforts on YouTube.

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Connected, Episode 158: The EchoSystem→

Everyone is back, and it’s a good thing, because there’s lots of news: Siri has moved in with Craig, Alexa and Cortana are hanging out and the Apple September event looms large on the horizon.

On this week’s Connected, we discuss our usage of voice assistants and smart speakers as we prepare for next week’s Apple event. You can listen here.

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AppStories, Episode 21 – Breaking up iTunes is Hard to Do→

On this week’s episode of AppStories, we consider ways to break up iTunes into multiple apps that are designed to accommodate how media consumption has changed, but also account for legacy devices and uses.

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https://staging.macstories.net/episodes/21/embed/

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Apple Uses Tips App to Promote iOS 11 Features→

We’re less than a week out from Apple’s big September 12 event, when the release date for iOS 11 is expected to be revealed. As part of the lead-up to that release, Apple is now using its Tips app to promote upcoming iOS 11 features to iOS 10 users. Mitchel Broussard reports for MacRumors:

Apple has begun sharing tips to users on iPhone and iPad concerning the newest features of iOS 11…Users on Twitter and Reddit pointed out the new iOS 11 Tips section starting last night, noticing a few push notifications that encouraged them to read up on tips for Control Center, Siri Translate, the new iPad Dock, and more.

This news makes sense considering the how-to video series Apple surprisingly launched last month to explain iOS 11 features like the Files app and the iPad’s new dock. While those videos focused on iPad features, the items seen in the Tips app so far have been iPhone related as well. Clearly, Apple wants to get people excited about upgrading to iOS 11 while simultaneously helping prepare users for the changes that update will bring.

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Moleskine Launches Paper Planner That Syncs Appointments to Cloud Calendars→

Image Source: TechCrunch

Image Source: TechCrunch

Today Moleskine unveiled its latest work in the area of integrating physical and digital methods of note taking: the Smart Planner. Matt Burns, writing for TechCrunch:

Like other Livescribe systems, the Smart Planner as it’s called uses paper embedded with sensors that can read and sync anything written by the Moleskine Pen+. Meetings and appointments written on the planner part of the paper are synced automatically to the user’s Google or Apple account and placed appropriately on their calendar.

Both the pen and the paper are required for this system to work.

The system will be available worldwide on September 12…The set will cost $199 or $29 for just the planner.

Moleskine’s reputation in the area of physical notebooks is top-notch, and its work in the digital space with apps like Timepage is excellent as well. It should come as no surprise, then, that a company with expertise in both physical and digital realms would put that skill to use creating a system that seamlessly blends both worlds.

I prefer to avoid handwriting anything if I can help it, but for the huge market of people who love their handwritten notes – in this case, handwritten calendar appointments – but also want the benefits of keeping that data in the cloud, Moleskine is building an exciting system here.

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The Apple Music Festival Comes to an End→

Apple confirmed to Music Business Worldwide that the Apple Music Festival is coming to an end. The event, which was originally called the iTunes Music Festival, debuted in 2007. Over the course of 10 years the festival showcased some of the biggest names in music, as well as up-and-coming acts:

Artists who played the event over its decade-long run included Adele, Oasis, Mumford & Sons, Paul Simon, Ed Sheeran, Coldplay, Lady Gaga, Arctic Monkeys, Kendrick Lamar, Pharrell Williams (pictured), The Weeknd, One Direction and Beck.

The 2016 line-up included Elton John, The 1975, Chance The Rapper and Alicia Keys.

Music Business Worldwide says it expects Apple will concentrate on one-off concerts in the future and that ending the Apple Music Festival does not signal the end of the company’s involvement in live music events. I don’t think we’ve seen the last of Apple-sponsored live shows either, but I will miss the Apple Music Festival, especially streaming it to my Apple TV.

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