Federico
AppStories Episode 11 - iOS 11’s Impact on Third-Party Apps
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Federico and John consider the effect on third-party apps of PDFKit, the system Markup extension, changes to Notes, and password AutoFill for apps.
The Wall Street Journal’s Mini-Documentary on the Creation of the iPhone→
The Wall Street Journal released a short documentary called Behind the Glass to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the iPhone’s release on June 29, 2007. The almost ten-minute long documentary cuts between interviews with Greg Christie, former Vice President of Human Interface, Scott Forstall, former Vice President for the iPhone Operating System, and Tony Fadell, former Senior Vice President of the iPod division. The three describe the struggle over whether to base the iPhone’s hardware on a multi-touch interface versus the iPod and the ensuing 2.5-year effort to create the first iPhone.
The interviews are short but recount several anecdotes, including the attempts to find a way to adapt the iPod’s interface to work as a phone and the predictive software used to make the touch keyboard accurate. Even ten years later, the retelling of the stories behind the iPhone’s birth is captivating.
Game Day: Newton
Casual puzzle games that you can pick up and play for a few minutes are a great way to kill time when you’re bored. Since the earliest days of the App Store,1 games have taken advantage of the iPhone’s sensors to create puzzles with realistic physics. Newton, by Binary Games, is a fun and challenging addition to the genre with unique mechanics and gameplay that I’ve enjoyed playing this week.
App Debuts
Groovebox This app is a lot of fun whether or not you have any experience mixing music. Tracks are categorized into Drumbox, Retrobass, and Poly-8. Pick a few from the hundreds available then tweak to your heart’s content. The app is free, but some of the controls are only available via In-App Purchase. In...
Q&A
Question: I use RescueTime on my Mac to track application usage and measure my productive vs. unproductive time. I upgraded my old iPad 3 to the 10.5” iPad Pro and have been using it a lot for work this week. I absolutely love it, but I’m missing my regular reports on how I’m spending my...
Album
Smileys in Hats If you’re tired of the standard smilies, check out these. Beautifully rendered in 3D, there are some great hats and glasses decorating this pack. Veggie Emojis Twenty smiling veggies and a solid set of speech bubbles with messages that will come in handy with the veggie stickers or in combination with...
AppStories, Episode 10 – iOS 11’s All-New App Store→
On this week’s episode of AppStories, we take a look at the upcoming changes to the App Store announced at WWDC, the challenges Apple will face producing original content about apps, and consider what it will mean for users and developers.
Sponsored by:
- Zapier - Connect your apps and automate your workflows.
- WaterMinder – Track your daily water intake.
AppStories Episode 10 - iOS 11’s All-New App Store
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Sega Forever Brings Sonic and Other Classics to iOS
Sega has been out of the hardware business for a long time, but still, has some of the most beloved video game franchises around. Today, Sega began releasing classic Sega games under the banner Sega Forever.
The first titles released are Sonic the Hedgehog, which was already available on iOS, Comix Zone, Altered Beast, Kid Chameleon, and Phantasy Star II. The games, which are standalone downloads, are free and include ads that can be removed with a $1.99 In-App Purchase. The Sega Forever website indicates that the next title in line for release is Virtua Tennis Challenge, which is currently $4.99 on the App Store and hasn’t been updated since 2013. For iMessage sticker fans, each game also includes a handful of animated stickers of game art.
John Markoff Interviews Original iPhone Engineering Team Members and Scott Forstall
Last night, the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California hosted a two-two hour interview program. The event was split into two parts. The first half is an interview moderated by John Markoff who spoke with former iPhone team members Hugo Fiennes, Nitin Ganatra, and Scott Herz about the development of the original iPhone. The three engineers recount what it was like to be recruited to the secret project and detail the team’s efforts to bring the phone to market.
The second half of the program, which begins at about 1:07:00 in the video below, is a one-on-one interview by Markoff of Scott Forstall who led software development for the iPhone. The interview with Scott Forstall is his first public comment about the iPhone and Apple since he left the company in 2012 and covers a broad range of topics from early iPhone prototypes to demonstrating the iPhone to Cingular, the first carrier to offer the phone.
Both interview segments are full of entertaining anecdotes about the iPhone’s development and well worth watching by anyone interested in what it took to create the iPhone. Forstall is particularly engaging as a storyteller displaying the same enthusiasm and excitement that he used to show onstage at Apple keynotes.