Google Play Newsstand Redesigned →

Google has been on a tear with new and updated iOS apps. The latest is a redesign of Google Play Newsstand, a free app for browsing news outlets and magazines similar to Apple News.

Blending a variety of national and local news with article recommendations based on your personal interests using machine learning, Newsstand creates a media-rich ‘For You’ page divided into two sections. The ‘Briefing’ includes a handful of what Google deems the most important and relevant stories to you. Below the Briefing is ‘Highlights,’ a longer list of articles culled from you favorite sources and topics. Each article in Highlights helpfully explains why it was suggested.

Tapping the three dot menu button below any article lets you hide stories from its source, have fewer articles of that type suggested (I took advantage of this immediately with CNN’s report on a Parmesan cheese recall), or jump directly to the source or topic of the article. I’ve found the last two options a great way to quickly build a database of topics and sources that I want to follow.

Newsstand is built on an AMP foundation:

We have improved our support for multimedia content building on the AMP support we launched earlier this year. Scroll through your feed, and you will see autoplay videos, easy podcast controls, and high-resolution, full-bleed images. Every story and topic in Newsstand now comes to life in a more engaging, beautiful presentation.

I’m not a fan of autoplay anything, but Newstand’s articles look terrific and load fast.

Finally, Google also touts Newsstand’s new web app as a way to access news wherever you are. It’s broad claim that needs to be qualified. The unstated assumption seems to be that the web app is for desktop use only because it doesn’t work on iOS even if you use Google’s Chrome browser. Moreover, on macOS, Newsstand doesn’t work with Safari, instead directing you to download Chrome.

Newsstand’s web app does not work on Safari for iOS or macOS.

In some ways Google Play Newsstand feels like a modern implementation of Google Reader, which was shuttered in 2013 around the same time that Newsstand was introduced. I wonder how much better my recommendations would be if Newsstand had the benefit of all the years I used Google Reader. Maybe it does have access to that data, but using Newsstand feels too much like starting over for that to be the case. In any event, Google Play Newsstand is a worthy competitor to Apple News. Perhaps 2017 will see competition among news services similar to what we’ve seen with photo services this year.

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Reddit Adds iPad Support

By John Voorhees

Reddit purchased third-party client Alien Blue in 2014. This past Spring, Reddit launched its first official client. Many of Alien Blue’s features found their way into the official client. However, one notable exception was iPad support. As a result, Alien Blue for iPad remained on the App Store and, in fact, is still there.

Reddit’s iPad version (right) adds wide margins to the content.

Today, Reddit updated its official client to support the iPad. The UI of the iPad version is the same as the iPhone version, but with margins added to the left and right sides of the screen to avoid it looking like the content is stretched out. As a result there is a lot of white space if you use the app in landscape mode. I would have preferred to see a more creative use of the iPad’s added screen real estate, but the update is still better than using the scaled-up version of the iPhone app.

Google Introduces PhotoScan and Updates Google Photos

By John Voorhees

Earlier today, Google announced a new app called PhotoScan and updates to Google Photos. PhotoScan is a simple scanner app for capturing prints. On launch it opens to a camera view with the instruction to frame your photo within the rectangle on the screen. When you tap the shutter, instead of taking a picture of your print, PhotoScan displays a circle in the middle of the view finder with four other circles near the corners of your print. There is a little arrow that prompts you to move your phone to line up the middle circle with each of the four other circles one at a time. When you’re finished, PhotoScan processes the data it’s collected and presents you with your scanned print, which can be further adjusted in-app.

PhotoScan, which is a free download on the App Store, doesn’t require you to sign into a Google account, unless you want to save your scans to Google Photos. If you prefer, you can save your scans to Apple’s Photos.

Google made a video demoing how PhotoScan works:

I tried PhotoScan on a handful of family photos to see how it would fare. In my tests, I found that there are a couple of simple things you can do to greatly improve your scans. First, find a spot where the lighting is good, but indirect which will help avoid glare on glossy photos. Second, don’t use the flash. Here’s an example of a scan with and without the flash that I took in the same spot, from the same distance, and with the same lighting:

The scan with flash turned on (left) has a nasty white glare spot in the middle of the photo and did a poor job cropping the image.

Not every photo taken with the flash on had this much glare, but most had a bright white spot in the middle of the photos. Here are three scans that came out much better that were taken under normal lighting conditions in my kitchen with the flash turned off:

Each of these photos was scanned with the flash turned off and turned out reasonably well.

PhotoScan does have some bugs. It crashed a couple times while I was using it. The second crash happened after I scanned fourteen photos. I went to the preview page to save them and when I tapped ‘Save All,’ PhotoScan crashed. When I reopened the app, all of my scans were gone. I thought I had lost data, but it turns out they were saved to Photos before the app crashed, so what could have been a scary moment if I had scanned dozens of photos turned out fine.

Overall, PhotoScan did a good job detecting the corners of prints and properly cropping most of them. PhotoScan also did a good job capturing the colors and detail of each shot as long as the flash was disabled. None of the snapshots I scanned were in perfect focus, but the scans of each were noticeably fuzzier and the colors off a little in some. Despite the bugs and limitations though, PhotoScan is an app I’ll keep close by when I visit relatives over the holidays for when they pull out family albums of photos because it’s so convenient and easy to use.

Google also added three new features to Google Photos today. The first is an improved auto-enhance tool. Second, Google added twelve new filters, which it calls ‘Looks.’ The feature first edits the photo to enhance it and then applies a filter that complements your photo. How does Google Photos know how to adjust its filters complement your photos? Machine learning of course. The third feature is fine-grained light and color editing tools. The Verge reports that Google is also introducing three new automatically created videos to Google Photos, for newborns, formal occasions like weddings, and a ‘through the years’ a slideshow for annual events like holiday gatherings.

More from Jony Ive on Designed by Apple in California →

Linked By John Voorhees

Jony Ive was interviewed by design website Wallpaper about Designed by Apple in California, an Apple-published book of photography that documents twenty years of product design and manufacturing. Apple is known for its singular focus on the future and, during Steve Jobs’ tenure, its disdain for dwelling on the past. That has begun to change in recent years with things like its 40 Years in 40 Seconds video and its tribute to past laptops at the MacBook Pro event last month. Even so, Apple’s announcement of an expensive book about its own products caught some off guard. In response to Wallpaper, Ive addressed why Apple created Designed by Apple in California:

Sometimes if we are struggling with a particular issue then that gives us reason to go back and look at the way we have solved problems in the past. But because we’ve been so consumed by our current and future work we came to realise we didn’t have a catalogue of the physical products. So about eight years ago we felt an obligation to address this and build an objective archive.

Beyond chronicling the design of Apple’s past products, Ive explains that Apple wants to illuminate the connection between designing and making a product and provide a resource for design students:

One of the things we wanted to do was try and explain as clearly as we can – through photography – how you transform a raw material into a product that you recognise and hopefully use as a daily tool…. We feel that more than ever there has been a disconnect between designing and making and really, you can’t disconnect them. In the 90s, as manufacturing was outsourced, this chasm developed between where something was made and where it was designed. But designing and making are inseparable if you want the ultimate product to have integrity. Another key point is that the book is being sent to all the major design colleges in the world. We are keen to get it into the hands of young people who are studying design disciplines. It’s very important that it’s an educational resource as well.

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Twitter Announces New Steps to Combat Abuse →

Linked By John Voorhees

Twitter announced steps it has taken to curb abuse on its service. The first is an extension of the mute feature. The ability to mute an account has been available for a long time, but Twitter is adding the ability to mute keywords, phrases, and conversations in notifications. The feature will begin rolling out world-wide to all users ‘in the coming days.’

With respect to reporting abuse, Twitter says:

Our hateful conduct policy prohibits specific conduct that targets people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease. Today we’re giving you a more direct way to report this type of conduct for yourself, or for others, whenever you see it happening. This will improve our ability to process these reports, which helps reduce the burden on the person experiencing the abuse, and helps to strengthen a culture of collective support on Twitter.

Finally on enforcement, Twitter reports that it has retrained its support teams, is instituting refresher training, and has introduced new internal tools and systems for combating abuse.

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Jony Ive Discusses Apple’s Design Process and New Book

By John Voorhees

Earlier today, Apple announced Designed by Apple in California, a coffee table book featuring photography of its products and design process that goes on sale tomorrow. In connection with announcement, Jony Ive was interviewed by Japanese design website Casa Brutus. Ive describes the motivation behind the creation of Designed by Apple in California, but also has a lot to say about Apple’s design process. My favorite part is at the beginning of the video where Ive describes how his team nurtures ideas:

One of the things that we’ve learned is the importance of listening. Because as we all know, the very best ideas can very often come from the quietest voice. Ideas are extremely fragile. Ideas are not predictable in terms of when you’ll have them and how many you are going to have. And so over the years, we’ve really created at team and an environment that I think really increases the probability of good ideas and when they actually arrive I think nurtures them.

As Ive speaks, the video shows designers at work in Apple’s studio creating prototypes of Macs, iPhones, and other items. If you are interested in design or the creative process in general, this is a must-watch video.

Designed by Apple in California, a Photographic History of Apple Design to Be Released November 16th

By John Voorhees

In a press release, Apple announced the release of a hardbound book, Designed by Apple in California, documenting twenty years of Apple design work. The book is dedicated to the memory of Steve Jobs. According to Jony Ive:

“The idea of genuinely trying to make something great for humanity was Steve’s motivation from the beginning, and it remains both our ideal and our goal as Apple looks to the future,” said Jony Ive, Apple’s chief design officer. “This archive is intended to be a gentle gathering of many of the products the team has designed over the years. We hope it brings some understanding to how and why they exist, while serving as a resource for students of all design disciplines.”

Designed by Apple in California includes 450 beautiful photographs of Apple products past and present by photographer Andrew Zuckerman and will go on sale at Apple.com and select Apple Stores on November 16, 2016. Apple’s press release provides further detail on the production of Designed by Apple in California:

“Designed by Apple in California” is available in two sizes and printed on specially milled, custom-dyed paper with gilded matte silver edges, using eight color separations and low-ghost ink. This linen-bound, hardcover volume was developed over an eight-year period.

The smaller version of the book (10.20” x 12.75”) will cost $199 and the larger version (13” x 16.25”) $299.

The price is steep, but the photographs are undeniably gorgeous. Here’s a selection of photos shared by Apple.

Take the Touch Bar For a Spin on Any Mac →

Linked By John Voorhees

Daniel Jalkut’s Red Sweater Software released a free Touch Bar simulator for the Mac. The app, Touché, generates a floating Touch Bar simulator on your Mac’s screen. Touché requires macOS 10.12.1 or later, but there’s a catch. Not all builds of 10.12.1 support the Touch Bar. If you download Touché and it tells you you need a more current version of Sierra, click the ‘More Info’ button to get a link to a version of macOS that works with Touché.

Although clicking a simulated Touch Bar is not the same experience as the real thing, I found it interesting to see what tools were available in Apple’s built-in apps like Pages, Numbers, and GarageBand and imagine what using the Touch Bar is like.

Touché is available from Red Sweater’s website as a free download.

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Phil Schiller Explains Apple’s Motivation Behind the Touch Bar →

Linked By John Voorhees

The first reviews of the MacBook Pros with Touch Bars have begun to hit the web. In connection with his review of the new laptops on Backchannel, Steven Levy spoke to Phil Schiller, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, about the motivation behind the Touch Bar and recent criticisms leveled against Apple’s new MacBook Pros.

Levy raised the perennial question of why Apple didn’t just make a touchscreen MacBook Pro. In response, Schiller told Levy it’s not possible to design for a pointing device like a touchpad or mouse and a touchscreen without designing to the lowest common denominator:

“Our instincts were that it didn’t [make sense to do a touchscreen], but, what the heck, we could be wrong—so our teams worked on that for a number of times over the years,” says Schiller. “We’ve absolutely come away with the belief that it isn’t the right thing to do. Our instincts were correct.”

Schiller also bristled at the suggestion by Levy that the Touch Bar represents what Levy characterized as the ‘overall annexation of the Macintosh platform’ by iOS. Schiller responded that the Touch Bar:

“…is pure Mac,” he said. “The thought and vision from the very beginning was not at all, ‘How do we put iOS in the Mac?’ It was entirely, ‘How to you use the [iOS] technology to make a better Mac experience?’”

I look forward to trying the Touch Bar. With it only available on one line of laptops, it remains to be seen how widely it will be supported by third-party developers, but what I’ve seen planned for Adobe’s products, Sketch, 1Password, and other apps makes me optimistic.

There’s a fine line between whether bringing iOS technology to the Mac is in the service of creating a better Mac experience or amounts, as Levy characterizes it, to ‘the annexation of the Mac platform,’ but just as certain iOS gestures made sense to bring to the touchpad, the Touch Bar feels like a natural way to migrate Mac app toolbars to the keyboard and enhance the manipulation of linear content like audio and video.

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