This week Federico and Myke discuss Nintendo’s mobile gaming news, before Federico quizzes Myke on PS4.
Plenty of Nintendo talk on this week’s Virtual (more than usual, given recent announcements), but also my questions on which PS4 games to buy right now. You can listen to the episode here.
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I missed this last week, but Drafts has been updated with a useful Workflow integration to easily create actions that can trigger workflows with text. From the Agile Tortoise blog:
Drafts 4.1.2 has added a new “Run Workflow” action step to provide integration with Workflow app from Desk Connect. This step makes it easy to fire an workflow in Workflow app with a single tap. The action step can be configured with the name of a workflow, has a template to construct the text sent to the workflow and optional flag for whether to return to Drafts after execution. Under the hood, Drafts is constructing x-callback-url URLs to trigger the workflow, but this makes it much easier for the novice user than constructing them yourself in Open URL action steps.
Similarly, the latest version of Workflow has added a shortcut to create a Drafts action:
As an added bonus, the latest update of Workflow has added an option, when viewing settings on a workflow, to “Add to Drafts”, which will open Drafts and automatically create an action, setup with a “Run Workflow” action step, ready to go. This feature will be rolling out over the course of the next couple of days, so if you do not see it immediately in Workflow, try again later. For more details, read the Run Workflow action step documentation.
I’m using this to quickly send links copied from Twitter (which still doesn’t support the iOS 8 share sheet) to Workflow via Drafts, and it works well.
Speaking of Drafts, the app is coming to Apple Watch.
Apple, known for keeping its product developments under the strictest of lock-and-key, gave ABC News exclusive access into its top secret health and fitness lab, where only Apple employees became test subjects for the new Apple Watch.
Apple engineers, managers and developers have been secretly volunteering for the past year in this state-of-the-art lab to participate in rowing, running, yoga and many more fitness activities in order to collect data for the Apple Watch’s inner workings.
ABC News got exclusive access to Apple’s secret fitness lab, where the company tested the fitness and health functionality of Apple Watch and iOS for years. I needed to watch the video with a VPN (ABC is regionally restricted to the U.S.; YouTube version embedded below), and it was worth it: Apple has set up an entire facility with equipment and machinery worth millions of dollars to accurately calculate calorie burn and the response of the human body to various conditions – this includes special climate chambers, breathing masks, and even yoga tests.
This is impressive, and it reinforces the idea that health and fitness are going to be a big deal for Apple going forward. The video makes me even more excited about the potential of Apple Watch as a daily fitness companion.
This week, the boys talk about Apple Watch apps, Force Touch Trackpads, the Apple Store and Apple’s past (and possible future) moves in television. Oh, and Teletext.
I enjoyed our discussion on upcoming Apple Watch apps on this week’s Connected (see Apple’s webpage).
And, obviously, the underappreciated beauty of Teletext. You can listen to the episode here.
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Fast Company published a great interview with Tim Cook earlier this week. I liked the sections on life at Apple after Steve Jobs, initial response to the Apple Watch, and remembering to keep core values intact. And especially this bit:
Are there any fundamental ways in which you are letting go of parts of Steve’s legacy?
We change every day. We changed every day when he was here, and we’ve been changing every day since he’s not been here. But the core, the values in the core remain the same as they were in ’98, as they were in ’05, as they were in ’10. I don’t think the values should change. But everything else can change.
Yes, there will be things where we say something and two years later we’ll feel totally different. Actually, there may be things we say that we may feel totally different about in a week. We’re okay with that. Actually, we think it’s good that we have the courage to admit it.
Interesting thoughts by Alex4D on the new Force Touch trackpad and its possible implementation on iOS:
When I dragged the clip to its maximum length I did feel a little bump. Without looking at the timeline and looking at the viewer, I could ‘feel’ the end of the clip.
This feature presages the ability for UI pixels to be ‘bumpy’ - for user to feel the texture of application UIs without having to look at where the cursor is. This means that seemingly textured software keyboards and control layouts will be able to be implemented on future trackpads, iPhones and iPads.
Here’s what I wrote about iOS 7’s design refresh when iOS 8 came out:
What I realized in using extensions is how necessary last year’s redesign of iOS was. Imagine if Apple didn’t ship a new design with iOS 7: today, we’d have sheets of stitched leather or shiny metal on top of apps that look like agendas or little robots. The cohesiveness and subdued style that iOS 7 brought with its precise structure and hierarchy allows extensions to integrate nicely with apps, feeling like extra actions rather than eerily realistic objects.
Assuming Apple’s plan is to let users feel the interface on all their devices going forward, can you imagine doing that with UIs that have rugged leather, plastic buttons, and other physical textures close to each other? If that’s the case, I’d wager that Apple’s focus on clarity also applies to tactile feedback for on-screen elements.
This week Myke and Federico discuss the reviews for Codename S.T.E.A.M, Kotaku’s revisit of the Metroid Prime Trilogy and why Federico cannot play video games on airplanes.
And when you’re done with the Apple-related part of my trip to America, you can join Myke in his disbelief over what I do on airplanes. You can listen to Virtual #30 here.
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On the heels of Apple’s Spring Forward event, the boys talk about Federico’s trip to San Francisco, the new MacBook, the Apple Watch and more.
On last week’s episode of Connected, we discussed my trip to San Francisco for Apple’s event and our first impressions of the announcements. Good addition to my article about it (and great show notes). You can listen to the episode here.
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Fascinating story by Christina Bonnington at Wired:
Before the advent of high-quality smartphone shooters, slow-motion was largely left to movie montages, pro-sports instant replays, or pricey camera rigs. The idea that dancers, particularly freelancers and students, would have access to that sort of technology was unthinkable. When you’re making under $30k a year, that money is going towards food and rent, not a high-end DSLR. But now that a smartphone has become practically standard issue, previously high-end camera technology is accessible to almost everyone. And slow motion, while initially more of a gimmick, has slowly matured into a mainstay for some people.
For dancers, it’s become an incredibly useful tool for honing their craft. The newfound affordability of slow motion has enabled them to improve their technique, spruce up their audition reel, and isolate aspects of their performance that were once intangible.
My girlfriend is a dancer, and she can relate to this. Another testament to the iPhone’s transformative effect and how everyday tasks are empowered by new mobile technology.
Don’t miss Dancers of New York, Tristan Pope’s short film mentioned in the article. From Pope’s blog:
For slow motion I used Apple’s stock camera app and for timelapse I used Hyperlapse by instagram. The built in image stabilization made it ideal for quick shots without having to worry about keeping my hands still. If only the stock camera app could utilize this same technology to give the iPhone 6 the same stabilization as the 6 +. You may wonder why I didn’t just get the 6 plus… well, I enjoy my skinny jeans and have girlishly small hands, just ask my piano teacher from middle school.(Although they are rather soft…) Regardless the screen was the perfect size for viewing.
You can watch a preview below.
