Posts in Linked

What If You Used iOS 9’s Low Power Mode All the Time?→

Matt Birchler has asked the question I imagined many would come to ask after the launch of iOS 9:

One of my favorite new features of Apple’s iOS 9 is Low Power Mode. This feature is designed to kick in when you reach 20% battery remaining, and give you a little more time before you have to race to a charger. And while most iOS 9 reviews covered this mode briefly and determined it worked as advertised, I wondered what would happen if you used Low Power Mode all the time. I was surprised that no reviewer seems to have done this, so I took it upon myself to give it a try. I don’t have any standardized battery tests that I can do, so I simply spent the last 2 weeks alternating between using Low Power Mode all day, and not using it at all and comparing the differences. My findings are rather remarkable.

As I explained, I advise against leaving Low Power Mode enabled all the time because it’ll alter your iPhone experience across system apps and third-party ones. Still, fascinating findings with impressive results.

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Live Photos and Capturing Memories→

Great take by MG Siegler on Live Photos:

You know the scene in almost every movie where a person is looking at an old picture of a loved one when suddenly it triggers their memory of the moment and we’re taken back to a live version of the scene? In a small way, that’s Live Photos. It’s hard to see right now because these iPhones with the functionality are brand new and so the memories are still fresh in our heads. But just imagine what these Live Photos will be like when you look at them in a year? Or ten years? They’ll be memories, captured in time.

See also: Jeremy Olson on capturing moments of a child’s life with Live Photos.

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Office Apps for iPad Pro to Require Office 365 Subscription→

Writing for Ars Technica, Peter Bright reports that the iPad Pro version of Office for iOS won’t offer the same free tier available for smaller iPads, which was later confirmed by Microsoft to the publication.

The Office apps on the current iPads offer both viewing and editing documents for free. A handful of features require Office 365 subscriptions, available as in-app purchases, but the core editing capabilities are all zero cost.

Install those same apps on the iPad Pro once it arrives in November, however, and all those editing features will go away. Office on the iPad Pro will require an Office 365 subscription for any and all editing.

This is part of Microsoft’s “cut-off” policy that identifies devices above 10.1 inches as computers that are too big to get the Office apps for free. I’m curious to see how they’ll handle this in the same app for multiple iPads.

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Apple Redesigns iTunes Connect→

Busy week for Apple’s developer team: following issues with XcodeGhost, App Slicing, and delays in processing app builds for third-party developers, the company has rolled out a brand new iTunes Connect.

https://twitter.com/pws/status/647188243318882304

As an app reviewer, the most notable change seems to be scheduled app releases that are automatically released to the App Store after App Review but no earlier than a specific date and time. If this works well with propagation on Apple’s servers (and that’s a big if), it could be a solution to the common dilemma of developers setting embargo times for their app launches. If I’m understanding this correctly, developers wouldn’t have to manually hold an app for release and push it live to the App Store and then wait for propagation – they’d just submit it for review (as usual) and pick the release time from iTunes Connect beforehand. I’m curious to see how this works in practice with iTunes’ servers.

A tour of what’s changed in iTunes Connect (and it sounds like a lot has changed) is available here.

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Fantastical 2.1 for Mac and Plans for iOS 9 & watchOS 2→

Flexibits released version 2.1 of Fantastical for Mac earlier today, adding full support for El Capitan and addressing some of the most common feature requests. These include the ability to scroll to specific days with the trackpad in Week and Month views, copy and paste for events and reminders, and new text size options.

In the same blog post announcing the update, Flexibits has also shared some details on the upcoming updates to Fantastical for iOS 9 and watchOS 2:

Fantastical 2.5 for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch are receiving their final changes and bug fixes. We’re almost there and we hope to have everything sent to Apple within the next week. Of course we’re talking about software, so this could slip based on what we’re able to accomplish in the next few days. But rest assured that they’re coming very soon.

We’re most excited about our 2.5 update for iPad update which brings support for iOS 9’s iPad multitasking, including Slide Over and Split View. It was a lot of work to implement, but we’re excited about the future of iPad productivity and 2.5 will make it even easier for you to be productive.

…and last but not least, for those of you who have been asking: Yes! Fantastical 2.5 for iPhone will include Complications for Apple Watch!

Can’t wait.

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Instagram Hits 400 Million Users→

Instagram announced yesterday that they had hit the milestone of 400 million monthly active users:

We are thrilled to announce that the Instagram community has grown to more than 400 million strong. While milestones like this are important, what really excites us is the way that visual communication makes the world feel a little bit smaller to every one of us.

Our community has evolved to be even more global, with more than 75 percent living outside of the US. To all the new Instagrammers: welcome! Among the last 100 million to join, more than half live in Europe and Asia. The countries that added the most Instagrammers include Brazil, Japan and Indonesia.

I can’t believe its been nearly five years since Instagram launched, it really doesn’t feel like it’s been that long. But I was really surprised to remember that Facebook acquired Instagram in April 2012, when Instagram had “only” 40 million users. If I recall correctly, a lot of people thought Facebook was crazy to buy Instagram for $1 billion. Well, I think Facebook got the last laugh on that one, and as Forbes points out, Instagram now has more monthly active users than Twitter (316 million).

It’s been a few years since I updated my Instagram growth chart, so here’s an updated version.

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Matthew Panzarino on the iPhone 6s and 3D Touch→

TechCrunch’s Matthew Panzarino has written my favorite iPhone 6s review yet. He goes into detail on performance and camera improvements, but he also focuses on the productivity aspect of 3D Touch and why iOS 7’s design helped bring the feature to life.

This is one of the big things that 3D Touch does, it eases the fear of handling actionable items. It allows you to retain your context while adding something to your calendar, peeking at an email or sneaking a look at a link to see if you really want to read it.

Pressing lightly to ‘peek’ and pushing hard to ‘pop’ it into existence provides an escape hatch that eases your mind, and a new iOS 9 affordance injects a ‘back’ button at the top left corner of any screen you jump to. iOS 9’s new task manager, accessed by a firm press on the edge of the screen (or the standard double-tap of the home button) is also arranged in a much more contextually rich card format — a time-line of your jumping around through apps.

It’s not hard to imagine how apps will take advantage of 3D Touch, and Matthew gets it.

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Joanna Stern on the iPhone 6s’ Battery Life→

From Joanna Stern’s iPhone 6s review for the WSJ:

Let’s get this out of the way first. The No. 1 thing people want in a smartphone is better battery life. And the iPhone 6s doesn’t deliver that.

And:

Still, there is no battery improvement over last year’s iPhone 6 models. In our grueling test; which loops a series of websites with brightness set at around 65%, I found the 6s and 6s Plus get no more—but also no less—battery life than their predecessors. (iOS 9 itself adds an hour of savings to the iPhone 6, and has Low Power Mode.) Strangely, although Apple says that the 6s Plus gets hours more battery life than the 6s, repeated testing on multiple devices reveals a slimmer difference. In a Web surfing test, the 6s on average lasted for 8 hours, while the 6s Plus went 20 minutes longer. In a video playback test, the difference was an hour.

This is a common theme in reviews I’ve read this morning. Given that Apple had to ship a smaller battery to make room for new components, the fact that the 6s is still getting the same performance on a more powerful hardware suggests that iOS 9’s optimization technologies are working.

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Jim Dalrymple on the iPhone 6s→

The iPhone 6s review embargo lifted this morning. As usual, the first review of a new iPhone I read is Jim Dalrymple’s:

Peek and Pop work all over the place on iPhone. In Apple Music, you can use it to view albums and playlists; you can view Messages and texts; You can set calendar events, view flight info, view images and videos and all kinds of other things.

3D Touch is one of the handiest features that I’ve seen from Apple in a long time. It’s not just that it’s cool, it actually saves me time. It’s a new way to navigate the iPhone that’s quick, easy, and efficient.

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