Posts in Linked

Christina Warren’s Apple TV Review→

The Apple TV embargo lifted last night, and the first reviews have been published with a general consensus that the device is a worthy upgrade with some annoyances for search and logging into apps.

I recommend starting with Christina Warren’s review, which gives a great overview of the platform and the brand new Siri remote:

Swiping faster on the touchpad moves faster across the interface, slower goes slower. Movements are extremely precise and never felt out of control. The remote is Bluetooth — not IR — so you don’t need direct line of sight to navigate — which is nice. On some Bluetooth-based remotes, I’ve noticed lag between a selection and what happens on screen but the Siri remote always keeps up.

Tapping the Menu button will take you back one level or give you a menu of an app you’re in. Tapping the home button will bring you to the core home screen. Double tapping the home button opens up an app switcher, so you can easily navigate between screens. If you want to close out an app, swiping up on the trackpad will dismiss it.

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Apple Publishes New Apple News Format Documentation, Details API→

Earlier this week, Apple published new documentation regarding the Apple News Format (via Benedict Evans), which will allow all publishers to deliver native articles with richer experiences to their Apple News channels. Currently, only selected publishers have access to the Apple News Format.

In an updated reference page, Apple describes the Apple News Format, which is still listed as “Coming Soon” for publishers:

Apple News Format is the custom JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) document format for News content. With Apple News Format, you can create beautifully crafted layouts with iOS fonts, rich photo galleries, videos, and animations—all optimized for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

In addition, Apple has detailed an API for publishers on Apple News, which can be used to publish Apple News Format articles as well as “retrieve, update, and delete articles you’ve already published, and get basic information about your channel and sections”. An API reference is available here, and Apple has included links to CMS plugins for WordPress and Drupal.

Last, Apple has also released a News Preview tool for OS X to preview Apple News Format documents in the Xcode simulator. It’s available as a beta download here.

You can read our review of Apple News for iOS 9 here.

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Connected: The App Is Named App→

This week, Stephen is questioned about his growing Apple collection, Myke wonders why he bought an Apple TV and Federico ponders his iPad future.

On this week’s Connected, the final segment is all about the iPad Pro. You can listen here.

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A Transcript of Apple’s Q4 2015 Earnings Call→

Serenity Caldwell and Jason Snell, writing for iMore, have already put together a transcript of Apple’s Q4 2015 earnings call. This is where you want to go to get all the details shared by Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri earlier today, such as this tidbit on the iPhone Upgrade Program:

Rod: On the Upgrade Program, can you envision a time ever, maybe in the U.S. or elsewhere, where you would not have to come into an Apple Store to take advantage of the upgrade? You might be able to do that somewhere else?

Tim: That’s a really good question. We actually solved that problem back in 2007, but then quickly had to change it in order to scale in a major way. And so that is something that we is always in our mind, that one day from a customer experience point of view, we would like to make things as easy as possible for the customer. And to some degree, you can already do that with buying online. But there are many different plans and so forth that people buy that they have to come in for. Yes, over time we’d love to have that automated, working with our partners with service providers.

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The New Apple TV, On-Demand Resources, and tvOS Games→

Writing for Polygon, Dave Tach has an in-depth overview of how games will be installed and work on the new Apple TV:

Before app slicing, Apple treated apps as all-or-nothing bundles. That meant that you couldn’t start playing Barbie: War until the multi-gigabyte file that included levels one to 10 (and all of the resources created for other devices, resources you didn’t need and would never use) finished downloading. But with a combination of App Thinning, slicing and on-demand resources, users can get the essential components of a game — things like the executable code, the splash screen that loads when you launch the app, the title screen artwork — in the initial download and reserve downloading for, say, levels eight to 10 until players approach them by completing the prerequisite levels. Levels four to 10 live in the cloud, tagged, and Barbie: War’s developers can say when the game should start downloading the assets tagged for specific levels.

This is possible because Apple provides developers with cloud-based storage accessible at any time — or on demand.

Tach goes on to explain how tvOS will manage app installations, and he also interviewed some game developers on their thoughts on the new Apple TV. I’m really curious to see how all this will work in practice.

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Facebook Confirms Background Audio Issues in iOS App, Releases Fix→

In a post on Facebook, Ari Grant, engineering manager for iOS at Facebook, has confirmed that the Facebook app was affected (among other bugs) by background audio issues which caused high battery consumption.

The second issue is with how we manage audio sessions. If you leave the Facebook app after watching a video, the audio session sometimes stays open as if the app was playing audio silently. This is similar to when you close a music app and want to keep listening to the music while you do other things, except in this case it was unintentional and nothing kept playing. The app isn’t actually doing anything while awake in the background, but it does use more battery simply by being awake. Our fixes will solve this audio issue and remove background audio completely.

From what I’ve heard, today’s update to Facebook for iOS has removed the background audio permission completely. Facebook is working on more fixes, which, as Grant also mentions, include improvements to the app’s network code.

At this point, I don’t think it’s productive anymore to speculate on how long the problem has been around. I’m glad that Facebook has publicly acknowledged issues that were affecting battery life on iOS and it’s good to see fixes being released to address them.

I’m going to reinstall the Facebook app and see how it goes.

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YouTube Announces ‘YouTube Red’ Subscription, Launching in the US First→

Earlier today, YouTube introduced Red, a new subscription option to watch ad-free videos, save them offline, and listen to them in the background:

On October 28, we’re giving fans exactly what they want. Introducing YouTube Red – a new membership designed to provide you with the ultimate YouTube experience.

YouTube Red lets you enjoy videos across all of YouTube without ads, while also letting you save videos to watch offline on your phone or tablet and play videos in the background, all for $9.99 a month. Your membership extends across devices and anywhere you sign into YouTube, including our recently launched Gaming app and a brand new YouTube Music app we’re announcing today that will be available soon.

YouTube Red will launch in the U.S. first on October 28 (with limitations if you leave the U.S.), and at $9.99 it’ll also include access to Google Play Music. Once it rolls out in more countries, there’s no way around it – it is a strong offering, and YouTube is big and loved enough to convince a lot of people to pay for ad removal and offline consumption.

I’m curious to see how their original content initiative will play out (here’s a full list of YouTube originals), not to mention the reaction of YouTubers to the altered deal (my prediction: every popular channel will end up accepting it).

Here’s a thought: should YouTube finally enable Picture in Picture on iOS 9 for Red subscribers? With official background play, it would make sense (the main problem would be cards being unavailable via Picture in Picture, though).

See also: Ben Popper’s story at The Verge, with feedback from YouTube creators.

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Emojipedia’s iOS 9.1 Emoji Overview→

Fantastic overview of all the new emoji in iOS 9.1 by Emojipedia’s Jeremy Burge:

In addition to emojis approved in Unicode 8.0 (mid-2015), iOS 9.1 also includes emoji versions of characters all the way back to Unicode 1.1 (1993) that have retroactively been deemed worthy of emoji presentation by the Unicode Consortium.

Every emoji that has been approved by Unicode is included in iOS 9.1; no matter how obscure, redundant, or outdated.

The article includes this bit about the Symbols category of the updated emoji keyboard:

Symbol emojis are grouped by color in iOS 9.1, which not only looks pleasant, but also makes finding the correct emoji easier.

Like millions of other people today, I’m having fun discovering the new emoji in iOS 9.1. Jeremy’s overview makes for a great starting point.

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Twitter Teases New Twitter for Mac Coming Soon→

At its Flight developer conference earlier today, Twitter showed a brand new version of Twitter for Mac – the company’s neglected desktop client – coming soon with a refreshed design and modern Twitter features. In addition to a revamped look (see screenshot above), the new app will include inprovements to Direct Messages in line with the mobile versions, such as group DMs and the ability to share photos and large emoji in private conversations. Also, the next Twitter for Mac seems to offer a dark mode.

Twitter for Mac has been ignored for a long time. Even if I’m not using my Mac as my primary computer anymore, I’m curious to see what Twitter – now under Jack Dorsey’s guidance (who was in an apologetic mood today) – does with it.

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