Relax, It’s the Weekend
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Blink 2.0: iPad Multitasking Support and Removing Small Frustrations
In my original review of Blink, I described it as “effortless affiliate link generation on iOS” and that rings true six months on with the launch of Blink 2.0. The update arrived yesterday, and whilst it does require iOS 9, it also comes with some really neat feature additions.
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.
Q&A
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Metapho
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Apple’s iOS 9 News App Review: Broken News
Apple occasionally introduces new apps to iOS that come preinstalled on every device, and with iOS 9 they’ve done this again with the introduction of News. As you would expect from the name, News is, or at least tries to be, a one-stop shop for all your news needs. One way to think of News is a fusion of Google News (for the recommended articles), Flipboard (for the ability to follow publishers and topics), and Facebook’s Instant Articles (custom, gorgeous articles on mobile).
The News app was, to me at least, one of the features of iOS 9 that I was most looking forward to using – I even put that in writing. I was excited about the News app because reading news on an iPhone, although it has improved over time, can still be a frustrating experience jumping from app to app. The experience is even worse with many news websites which chew massive amounts of data and obscure the small display with a myriad of annoying ads. News, as it was demoed at WWDC, offered a promising alternative: a one-stop app that would deliver “the articles you want to read in a beautiful and uncluttered format, while respecting your privacy”.
Much like Apple’s past experiments in bringing news to iOS,1 the News app in iOS 9 fails to live up to its potential. The high hopes that I had for the News app have unfortunately been (mostly) dashed. Whilst there are aspects of great execution in some limited areas, huge aspects of News seem half-baked and confused.
Sofa: Discover New Movies from Curated Collections
Sofa is a new app that launched just last Friday. Sofa does two things: it helps you discover new movies to watch, and it lets you keep a list of movies you want to watch. Despite its rather sparse feature list, Sofa is well worth your time. One of the reasons why is because Sofa’s discover section is populated by hand-curated collections of movies. But Sofa also looks great and, because it isn’t burdened with dozens of features, the app is simple and delightful to use.
Apple Asks Developers to Start Submitting iOS 9, El Capitan, watchOS 2 Apps
Ahead of the upcoming release of iOS 9 and watchOS 2 on September 16, Apple has now begun notifying registered developers that App Store submissions are open for iOS 9 apps.
In an email shared today with the developer community, Apple has confirmed submissions are also open for OS X El Capitan apps built using the OS’ Golden Master seed.
From Apple’s email:
The next release of watchOS, iOS, and OS X will soon be in the hands of hundreds of millions of customers around the world. Make sure your apps are optimized for the exciting new features now available for these platforms.
To prepare, build your apps using Xcode 7 GM seed, and test with the GM seeds of iOS 9, OS X El Capitan, and watchOS 2. Read the App Review Guidelines and use TestFlight to get feedback before submitting to the App Store.
Starting today, developers will also be able to set up iOS 9 apps with external testers via TestFlight, Apple’s beta testing service.
iOS 9 adds hundreds of new features that developers can leverage to improve their apps, including multitasking on iPad, new gaming APIs, expanded search capabilities and deeper support for CloudKit, HomeKit, HealthKit, and MapKit. iOS 9 will be released next week on Wednesday, September 16.
Interesting Apple TV Tidbits: App Size Limits, Parallax Icons & More
If you haven’t already read our overview of the new Apple TV, I’d recommend reading that first. But since then we’ve also learnt a few more details about the Apple TV that were interesting enough to share. They include details about Apple TV app size limits, parallax icons (and how you can test them today), the Remote Loop and the Nimbus Steelseries (third-party) controller.
Apple TV Apps Limited to 200MB
As noted by 9to5Mac, Apple is restricting the size of Apple TV apps to 200MB. Apps can of course download additional content at any time, but this additional data will only be kept temporarily. This might not be too much of a problem for apps, but this may prove to be a big hurdle for some of the more ambitious Apple TV games.
Along with the lack of local storage, the maximum size of an Apple TV app is limited to 200MB. Anything beyond this size needs to be packaged and loaded using on-demand resources. Knowing how and when to load new assets while keeping your users engaged is critical to creating a successful app. For information on on-demand resources, see On-Demand Resources Guide.
Read more about this in Apple’s tvOS Developer Library.