Graham Spencer

1005 posts on MacStories since January 2011

Former MacStories contributor.
graham@macstories.net

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Apple’s App Charts: 2015 Data and Trends→

For the past two years, Gilad Lotan (Chief Data Scientist at Betaworks) has been collecting data from Apple’s App Store RSS feeds. Last week Lotan published nine interesting findings in a post on Medium – complete with over a dozen fascinating charts.

Here we can clearly see both weekly cycles in app usage, but also longer term trends throughout the year. Facebook Messenger, which relaunches as ‘Messenger’ in June, stays very close to the top position throughout the whole year, while both Viber and Tango start strong and slowly drifts down the chart. Find My Friends, on the other hand, displays high volatility — drastic changes in ranking, hence app engagement — especially throughout the summer months, and Twitter has clearly weekly cycles.

The best part of Lotan’s story is definitely the accompanying charts, which really help tell the story alongside his commentary. But here’s one more snippet to encourage you to read his whole article:

Here we look at new applications that not only reach a notable spot in the top chart, but also sustain it to some degree. As you can see below, a handful of these apps are music related: SongFlip (free music streaming), Musicloud (stream music from your Dropbox mp3’s), and Free Music HQ (what it sounds). Moments is the Facebook app that helps you find yourself in friends’ photos, and Triller helps users make music videos on their phones. There are also two applications that help upload content into Snapchat. See a trend here? Media, media, and more rich media!

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Apple Announces Q1 2016 Earnings Call for January 26

Apple’s Investor Relations website was yesterday updated to note that Apple’s earnings call for the first quarter of fiscal year 2016 (October, November and December 2015) will be held on Tuesday, January 26, 2016. As is usual, Apple will provide a live webcast of the conference call on the day.

Apple’s guidance for the first fiscal quarter of 2016 is revenue between $75.5 billion and $77.5 billion, gross margin between 39 percent and 40 percent and a tax rate of 26.2 percent. But as is illustrated above, Apple’s guidance in the past has often underestimated the actual numbers by quite a significant degree.

As we have for previous earnings calls, MacStories will cover the conference call on our site’s homepage on January 26 starting at 2 PM PT, posting charts of the results, collecting key quotes from Apple executives and highlighting interesting Tweets from others.

Five TV Picks from Graham

Many of you will know by now that I watch quite a bit of TV drama, probably too much actually. There’s a huge amount of quality TV available today, and I couldn’t resist highlighting five TV shows from 2015 that I highly recommend watching. These aren’t necessarily the best, but they are five of my...

Apple’s 2015: Year In Review

2015 was a big year from Apple, arguably its biggest yet. Over the course of the past twelve months we’ve seen Apple release the MacBook, Apple Watch, iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, iPad Pro, new Apple TV, refresh the MacBook Air and iMac, and even release updated iPods. Then there’s all the new software from iOS 9 to OS X El Capitan, to watchOS 2, and even the unveiling of tvOS.

In assembling this story, I thought about how I could present the information in a way that wouldn’t be overwhelming and would hopefully be unique from everyone else’s “year in review” stories. As you can see below, I choose to display it in an interactive widget. You’ll be able to see at a glance which months were significant for Apple, and for what reason (iPhone, Mac, TV, etc). Then you can dive into a particular month and swipe across to get summaries of the big stories from Apple. If you want to learn more about a particular story, there’s a link that’ll take you to the full story.

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VLC Update Adds Support for iOS 9 Split View→

The VLC app for iOS was yesterday updated to version 2.7.0, adding support for a number of iOS 9 features, as 9to5 Mac reported:

The latest update includes an updated watchOS 2 app for Apple Watch users and several new iOS 9 features for iPhone and iPad.

VLC now supports system wide search through Spotlight, Split View for side-by-side apps on the latest iPads, and Touch ID unlocking on iPhones and iPads with fingerprint scanners.

A solid update to VLC, with new features and adding support for iOS 9 and watchOS 2. But I must admit, I was surprised to realize that although they added support for iOS 9’s Split View, VLC still doesn’t work with iOS 9’s Picture in Picture mode.

The initial release notes incorrectly stated that the update added an Apple TV app for VLC – in fact it does not. But the VLC Apple TV app is coming, and soon.

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60 Minutes: What’s Next for Apple→

60 Minutes (the US edition on CBS) today had an in-depth feature on Apple. 60 Minutes’ correspondent, Charlie Rose, spoke to a number of Apple Executives including Tim Cook, Jony Ive, Angela Ahrendts and Phil Schiller.

Apple is one of the most interesting business stories in generations and it finds itself at the heart of some of the biggest issues facing American companies today: the way terrorists may be using encrypted technology to plot attacks, the battle over the corporate tax rate, and the challenges of working in China. We talked about all of that with Apple CEO Tim Cook as part of a journey through the world’s biggest and richest company.

There wasn’t a huge deal of new information in tonight’s program, but Rose’s interview with Tim Cook, particularly regarding encryption and corporate tax rates makes it well worth a watch. Although perhaps more interesting is the brief look at a new design for Apple Retail Stores with Angela Ahrendts, as well as a look inside Apple design’s studio with Ive (complete with cloth-covered tables).

If you’re in the US, you can watch the 60 Minutes segment on Apple on their website. You can also read a transcript of the program here.

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Q&A

Question: I’m looking for an app for reading PDFs with the ability to markup the text using the new Apple pencil. I’ve been using Readdle’s Documents but it doesn’t seem to support the pencil very well. Any suggestions? Thanks.(Terrance Goodpasture, @brterrance)

Federico

I’ve heard good things about Notability and GoodNotes, Terrance. Both support PDF files...

Our Favorite Notification Center Widgets

Federico

2Do As my default task manager, I use 2Do’s widget quite a bit on both the iPhone and iPad to check on tasks for the current day and mark them as complete without having to open the app. In the widget, 2Do can show tasks due today (with colored labels for the list...

Apple Partners with China UnionPay to Bring Apple Pay to China in 2016

Update (18 December): iMore has a quote from Eddy Cue which lists some of the banks that will support Apple Pay in China; Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China, Bank of Guangzhou, Bank of Shanghai, China Construction Bank, China Ever-bright Bank, China Guangfa Bank, China CITIC Bank, China Merchants Bank, China Minsheng Bank, Industrial Bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Ping An Bank, Postal Savings Bank of China and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank.

Apple today announced a partnership with China UnionPay, which will see Apple Pay available to Chinese customers as soon as early 2016. China UnionPay operates the Chinese inter-bank network and develops the UnionPay Card network – and its role in China is somewhat analagous to that of Visa and Mastercard.

“China UnionPay is dedicated to promoting payment innovations and providing secure, convenient mobile payment experiences for its hundreds of millions of cardholders, aligning multiple parties in the industry,” said Chai Hongfeng, executive vice president of China UnionPay. “We’re very excited to offer Apple Pay among a diverse set of innovative payment options that work with China UnionPay QuickPass.”

Apple says that it is working with China UnionPay to launch Apple Pay with 15 of China’s leading banks, but provides no firm date apart from saying it will available as “soon as early 2016”. According to Apple, the service needs to go through “tests and certification required by Chinese regulators”. At this stage it is unclear which 15 banks will be supported.

China UnionPay cards are issued by over 165 financial institutions and can be used at more than 26 million merchants, 1.9 million ATMs and to date over 5 billion UnionPay cards have been issued. Today’s announcement will likely make China the fifth country to support Apple Pay, with Spain, Singapore and Hong Kong also getting limited support for Apple Pay sometime in 2016.

“Apple Pay has revolutionized the way millions of people pay every day with their iPhone, Apple Watch and iPad,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “China is an extremely important market for Apple and with China UnionPay and support from 15 of China’s leading banks, users will soon have a convenient, private and secure payment experience.”

Today’s Apple Pay announcement is a big deal after a rather lackluster year for the service outside of the US. After launching in the US on October 20, 2014, Apple Pay finally expanded beyond the US in July this year when it lauched in the UK. But the UK launch was a bit of a shambles with just eight banks supporting the service at launch and just one of the “big four” – worsened by one of the banks delaying their support by a couple of weeks at the last minute. Then in late October this year Apple announced a partnership with American Express to bring Apple Pay to Australia and Canada, which it did in mid-November. Apple was unable, or perhaps unwilling, to make a deal with local banks – with numerous reports which say there was a deadlock between Apple and the banks over how much Apple should be paid from each transaction made using Apple Pay. The same limited, American Express only, Apple Pay support will roll out to Spain, Canada and Hong Kong starting in 2016.