John Voorhees

5811 posts on MacStories since November 2015

John is MacStories' Managing Editor, has been writing about Apple and apps since joining the team in 2015, and today, runs the site alongside Federico. John also co-hosts four MacStories podcasts: AppStories, which covers the world of apps, MacStories Unwind, which explores the fun differences between American and Italian culture and recommends media to listeners, Ruminate, a show about the weird web and unusual snacks, and NPC: Next Portable Console, a show about the games we take with us.
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Controversy Surrounds Proposed Frowning Pile of Poo Emoji→

There’s a debate raging in the halls of the Unicode Consortium, and the fate of creative expression hangs in the balance. Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an overstatement, but the same could be said of some of the concerns raised in the dispute over the ‘Frowning Pile of Poo’ emoji. The unhappy pile, depicted above in an Emojipedia mockup, is under consideration for inclusion in the emoji lexicon alongside the happier version next fall, which has some Consortium members steaming mad.

BuzzFeed News published a story about the controversy today. Two typographers, Michael Everson and Andrew West, are leading the lobbying efforts against the frowning poo. Author Charlie Warzel reporting on a memo that Everson sent to the Consortium:

“Organic waste isn’t cute,” Everson wrote, aghast that the technical committee would even deign to consider additional excremoji. “It is bad enough that the Emoji Subcommittee came up with it, but it beggars belief that the Unicode Technical Committee actually approved it,” he wrote. Everson continued:

“The idea that our 5 committees would sanction further cute graphic characters based on this should embarrass absolutely everyone who votes yes on such an excrescence. Will we have a CRYING PILE OF POO next? PILE OF POO WITH TONGUE STICKING OUT? PILE OF POO WITH QUESTION MARKS FOR EYES? PILE OF POO WITH KARAOKE MIC? Will we have to encode a neutral FACELESS PILE OF POO?”

West penned a note to the Consortium voicing similar concerns.

It’s not clear yet what will become of ‘Frowning Pile of Poo.’ Final decisions on next year’s new emoji are still months away. One thing’s for sure though, form a committee, and literally, anything can become a drama.

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Apple Q4 2017 Results: $52.6 Billion Revenue, 46.7 Million iPhones, 10.3 Million iPads Sold

Apple has just published its financial results for Q4 2017. The company posted revenue of $52.6 billion. Apple sold 10.3 million iPads, 46.7 million iPhones, and 5.4 million Macs during the quarter.

“We’re happy to report a very strong finish to a great fiscal 2017, with record fourth quarter revenue, year-over-year growth for all our product categories, and our best quarter ever for Services,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “With fantastic new products including iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, Apple Watch Series 3, and Apple TV 4K joining our product lineup, we’re looking forward to a great holiday season, and with the launch of iPhone X getting underway right now, we couldn’t be more excited as we begin to deliver our vision for the future with this stunning device.”

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IKEA’s Trådfri Lighting System Adds HomeKit and Alexa Support

After a miscommunication in August, IKEA has added Alexa and HomeKit support to its Trådfri smart lighting system, which it originally promised back in May. The lighting system includes a gateway, remote controls, and LED lightbulbs that can be mixed and matched in different configurations at prices that are competitive with rival systems. For example, two Trådfri bulbs, a remote, and the required gateway costs $79.99 compared to two similar Philips Hue bulbs and a gateway for $69.99. Each gateway controls up to 10 lightbulbs using one of IKEA’s remotes, an iOS app, Amazon’s Alexa App, Apple’s Home app, or your voice via Amazon and Apple’s smart assistants.

The addition of Alexa and HomeKit support means the Trådfri lighting system can be integrated with smart home accessories from other companies and controlled with any Alexa or Siri-enabled device. The IKEA Trådfri app, which can be downloaded for free from the App Store, lets users control their Trådfri lights, customize settings like the warmth of the the light, and set timers.

The release of HomeKit-enabled devices has accelerated this year. An increasing number of manufacturers like IKEA are also hedging their bets by integrating Alexa support alongside HomeKit support, which is good for consumers who benefit whether they’ve chosen one system over the other or assembled a hybrid Alexa/HomeKit environment.

Nintendo Disappointed by Super Mario Run Profits

As part of its earnings report, Nintendo announced today that its iOS game, Super Mario Run, has not yet reached ‘acceptable profits.’ At this point, nearly a year after the game’s debut, it’s hard to imagine when, if ever, that point will be reached barring a major shift in the game’s business model.

Super Mario Run took the App Store by storm in December 2016 breaking download records and topping the charts around the globe. But the game, which is free to download costs $9.99 to unlock all the levels. That’s a steep price by App Store standards for games. About a month later, the Wall Street Journal reported that Super Mario Run had been downloaded 78 million times and earned $53 million in revenue.

In contrast, Nintendo says that Fire Emblem, which was released in February and features a free-to-play model, has met its profit objectives. The same in-game consumables model has been adopted for Animal Crossing: Pocket Park, which is available in Australia and New Zealand but won’t debut in the rest of the world until late November.

I’m not a fan of free-to-play games in general, although they can be done tastefully. Perhaps Nintendo’s profit expectations for Super Mario Run were too optimistic from the start, but it’s hard to argue against free-to-play for a company like Nintendo when even its most beloved franchise is perceived a failure on mobile platforms.

iPhone X Review Roundup

iPhone X first impressions and reviews were published today. Some reviewers have had Apple’s latest iOS device for about a week, while others have had it less than 24 hours. Here’s our roundup of the most interesting insights from what has been published so far.

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Beats X: First Impressions

John

I loved my AirPods, but they’ve been put out to pasture. The first problem was fit. AirPods stayed in my ears well enough that they weren’t ever in danger of falling out, but they required too much fiddling to get a fit that stayed in place without shifting. I also had trouble maintaining good...

Microsoft Aligns Features of Skype’s Desktop and Mobile Apps

Over the summer, Microsoft introduced a new Skype app for iOS with a multitude of new features that seemed designed to maintain its relevance in a social media-dominated world. At the time, Microsoft also introduced a preview version of the Skype desktop app that incorporated some of the same features. Today, Microsoft announced that the desktop app has exited preview mode and is being rolled out across several platforms.

The new Skype desktop app includes a lot of new features, but one of the most fundamental that should be welcome to all users is the unification of messaging across platforms. That means messages you receive through Skype will be available whether you’re using the app on a Mac, iOS, Windows, an Xbox, or another device.

In addition, Skype now includes cloud-based file sharing of up to 300 MB of data, customizable themes, and different ways to organize your chat list. Notifications have also been centralized with reactions to your messages, @mentions in group chats, and instances where you have been quoted available in one place. To jump to the spot in the conversation where the notification appears, just click on it. There’s a chat media gallery where you can access all photos, links, files, and other items sent to you too.

Microsoft has added many other bells and whistles. Chat conversations can take advantage of add-ons like event scheduling, sending money to friends and family, searching for GIFs, and more. Video calls and text-based messages can include reactions to let others know your mood, status updates, Twitter-style @mentions, and bots from third parties too. If there was any doubt that Microsoft wants to expand beyond simple voice and video calling, the latest updates to Skype’s apps should put that to rest.

The new version of Skype has begun rolling out to users. If you don’t want to wait for the update to show up, you can manually download it from Skype.com now.

Motherboard Reviews Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp→

Most of the world has to wait until late November for Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp to arrive on iOS, but if you live in Australia or New Zealand, you can play the game now. Jed Whitaker has an early review at Motherboard where he provides additional details about the game’s free-to-play mechanic and stacks it up against Animal Crossing: New Leaf, a 3DS game on which Pocket Camp is based.

According to Whitaker:

One major change to the Animal Crossing formula here is that almost all items must be crafted instead of simply purchased, and the time it takes to craft something passes in real time. The game starts out by having every item only take one minute to craft, but three hours in, wait times get much longer, and you can pay real world money to purchase the premium currency, Leaf Tickets. These can be used to craft items instantly and to basically speed up every facet of the game.

Wait times in Pocket Camp are three hours. By comparison, New Leaf wait times are three days, which Whitaker points out should make Pocket Camp more tolerable to fans of the franchise. Still, if you simply must have an item right away and can’t wait a few hours, you can buy Leaf Tickets as an In-App Purchase.

Fans of the Animal Crossing series may also need to lower their expectations a little. At launch, there are only 40 animals to befriend in Pocket Camp, a small number compared to the over 300 available in New Leaf. Still, even if it’s not as deep as other incarnations of the series, Pocket Camp looks as though it strikes a good balance that should make the free-to-play aspects of it tolerable.

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