Major VLC Update Released with Support for 4K, 8K, HDR, 360 Video, Google Chromecast, and More

By John Voorhees

Today, VideoLAN, the non-profit organization behind VLC, released version 3.0 of its media player app across several platforms, including macOS and iOS. The update, known as Vetinari, supports a long list of modern video, audio, and streaming technologies such as:

hardware decoding by default to allow for 4K and 8K video playback on supported hardware
HDR
360 Video and 3D audio
HDMI passthrough for HD audio codecs
Streaming to Google Chromecast devices
Blu-Ray Java menus
Local network browsing of drives and NAS
Improved subtitle rendering

There are many other additions and refinements to VLC 3.0, which you can read about on VideoLAN’s website. The iOS update to VLC should be available later today as a free download on the App Store. The Mac version is already available on VideoLAN’s website.

Apple Adds Direct Access to News Sources to its TV App

By John Voorhees

Apple has added a dedicated News section to its TV app on the Apple TV and iOS devices. The feature, which was announced at the company’s September 2017 event at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, allows users to jump straight into several different news programs.

In the US, the choices include CBS News, CNN, Fox News, Cheddar, CNBC, and Bloomberg, some of which require paid subscriptions. When you select a news source, your Apple TV or iOS device will prompt you to install its app if it isn’t already on your device. On iOS, and at least with CNN on the Apple TV, the app is installed without a trip to the App Store, after which you are taken directly to the app to begin watching the news. The new feature also works with Siri using commands like ‘Watch CNBC.’

If you tap on a news source for which you don’t have the app, you are prompted to install it without having to go to the App Store.

News joins the TV app’s dedicated Sports section, which was announced at the same time as News but was introduced last December. Unlike Sports, which occupies a dedicated tab in the TV app’s interface, News is limited to a single row of icons that appears beneath Up Next, What to Watch, Sports, and a row of featured content.

App Debuts

By John Voorhees

Federico

Cortana Microsoft’s digital assistant is now available on iPad as a Universal update to the existing Cortana for iPhone app. Cortana, like other assistants, can create reminders and events, show you the weather and news, and give you a summary of your schedule for the day ahead. Of course, like the Google Assistant, Cortana...

PopClip

By John Voorhees

John

I spend most of my day working with text in one form or another. That’s true for a lot of people whether or not they write. On iOS, if you highlight a bit of text, you get a contextual popup with standard options like Cut, Copy, and Paste, but you’re also presented with options...

Creating a Personal Apple Music Radio Station

By John Voorhees

John

The first HomePod orders arrive today, and there’s a feature you might not remember that I expect will be very useful for HomePod owners. It’s called Personal DJ, and initially, it’s only accessible via Siri, which is why many people forget it exists. Personal DJ, which was described in detail by Kirk McElhearn when...

Q&A

By John Voorhees

Question: Why can’t I edit my spreadsheets in Microsoft Excel, Word, or PowerPoint from iCloud Drive on my iPad Pro and have them update on all my devices that are signed into the same iCloud account and using the same Office 365 account? If I use my iMac they update everywhere. Why isn’t it ubiquitous?...

Media Outlets Use ARKit to Bring the News into Your Living Room

By John Voorhees

Last week, The New York Times announced that it had added an augmented reality feature to its iOS app. The first article with embedded AR content was a preview of the feature published last week that explained to readers how it worked. At the bottom of the article was a newspaper box that could be dropped into your surroundings. I showed it off to some friends over the weekend, and everyone was impressed by how realistic it looked as they walked around the box in a neighbor’s kitchen.

The New York Times debuted its new ARKit features with a newspaper box demo.

This week, the Times rolled the feature out as part of its Winter Olympics coverage. In Four of the World’s Best Olympians, as You’ve Never Seen Them Before, the publication spotlights figure skater Nathan Chen, speed skater J.R. Celski, hockey player Alex Rigsby, and snowboarder Anna Gasser. The results are impressive. I placed each athlete in my living room, then walked around them. From each angle, snippets of text about what I was seeing were overlaid on the image providing additional details and context. The app also makes use of haptic feedback on the iPhone to alert users to new information as they examine a scene.

AppStories, Episode 41 – iOS 11’s Effect on Our iOS Habits →

Linked By John Voorhees

On this week’s episode of AppStories, we take a look at how iOS 11 has changed not only the way we work, but also how it has impacted our use of lifestyle, health and fitness, media consumption, and other types of apps.

AppStories Episode 41 - iOS 11’s Effect on Our iOS Habits

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AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

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HomePod Review Roundup

By John Voorhees

Initial orders of Apple’s new HomePod smart speaker will arrive on doorsteps and in Apple stores beginning Friday in the US, UK, and Australia. Today, reviews were published by several media outlets that have had about a week to test the HomePod. Apple also invited several journalists for a tour of its audio labs in Cupertino with Phil Schiller, hardware VP Kate Bergeron, and senior director of audio design and engineering Gary Greaves.

The consensus of the first wave of reviews is that the HomePod sounds fantastic. Apple has brought its engineering expertise and computing power to bear in a way that reviewers say produces remarkable sound for the HomePod’s size and price.

However, Siri’s limitations and the lack of support for third-party music streaming services also mean that the HomePod’s voice assistant features lag behind those of the Amazon Echo and Google Home. As a result, the HomePod’s appeal will likely be limited to people who already subscribe to Apple Music, use iOS devices, and care about high-quality audio.

Matthew Panzarino of TechCrunch:

Apple’s HomePod is easily the best sounding mainstream smart speaker ever. It’s got better separation and bass response than anything else in its size and boasts a nuance and subtlety of sound that pays off the 7 years Apple has been working on it.

As a smart speaker, it offers best-in-class voice recognition, vastly outstripping the ability of other smart speakers to hear you trying to trigger a command at a distance or while music is playing, but its overall flexibility is limited by the limited command sets that the Siri protocol offers.

Buy a HomePod if you already have Apple Music or you want to have it and you’re in the market for a single incredibly over-designed and radically impressive speaker that will give you really great sound with basically no tuning, fussing, measuring or tweaking.

Nilay Patel sums up what that means for everyone else:

The Apple engineers I talked to were very proud of how the HomePod sounds, and for good reason: Apple’s audio engineering team did something really clever and new with the HomePod, and it really works. I’m not sure there’s anything out there that sounds better for the price, or even several times the price.

Unfortunately, Apple’s audio engineering team wasn’t in charge of just putting out a speaker. It was in charge of the audio components of a smart speaker, one that simply isn’t as smart as its competitors.

That’s really the crux of it: the HomePod sounds incredible, but not so world-bendingly amazing that you should switch away from Spotify, or accept Siri’s frustrating limitations as compared to Alexa.