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.
Talkshow, which launched about six months ago, will be shutting down effective December 1st. The service allowed groups to have text-based conversations in public. It quickly became a place to assemble panels to comment on live events or just discuss a particular topic. The discussion was limited to the host and guests, but people observing the Talkshow chat could submit questions.
While we have enjoyed the conversations that have happened on Talkshow, and are grateful for the community that has formed around the product, we don’t see it getting big enough to have the impact we had hoped for.
Talkshow’s shutdown is happening in stages over the next month. Talkshow is being removed from the App Store today. On November 8th, active Talkshows will end and tools will be made available to export existing shows. Finally, on December 1, the service will be turned off, which means the app will no longer show existing, inactive Talkshows, even in browsing mode.
Twitter revealed two new features for businesses that use direct messaging as a customer service channel – welcome messages and quick replies. Welcome messages are automated responses to customers who direct message companies. Quick replies present customers with a series of choices to reduce text input and, according to Twitter, are designed to work alongside welcome messages to speed up the customer service process.
These features are designed to help businesses create rich, responsive, full-service experiences that directly advance the work of customer service teams and open up new possibilities for how people engage with businesses on Twitter.
In August, Instapaper was acquired by Pinterest. Today, Instapaper announced that it is making its premium features free to all users. Previously, full-text search, unlimited notes, text-to-speech playlists, and speed reading were premium features that cost $2.99 per month or $29.99 per year. In an email to premium subscribers, Instapaper said:
Now that we’re better resourced, we’re able to offer everyone the best version of Instapaper.
Instapaper is also eliminating all advertising from its website. Premium subscribers will receive a pro rated refund of their current subscriptions.
Pinterest says it has “no new monetization plans to share at this time” for Instapaper. The decision to drop subscriptions, Pinterest says, was simply a matter of the app being “better resourced,” so that it can “offer everyone the best version.”
The battle among read-it-later services has been a long one. By making some of Instapaper’s most powerful features free, Instapaper should be better positioned to compete against its main rival, Pocket.
Apple has released the first iOS 10.2 beta to developers. The update includes:
new Unicode 9.0 emoji support (for a full list of the new emoji, check out this post on Emojipedia);
redesigns of existing emoji;
three new wallpapers, previously seen in Apple’s marketing materials for iOS 10;
a new celebration screen effect in Messages;
a widget for Apple’s built-in Video app;
a setting in the Music app to display star ratings that does not affect Apple Music ‘For You’ recommendations; and
a setting to maintain the Apple Camera app’s settings between uses.
Dang. The ancient Apple emoji — which were never really meant to be seen bigger than 32 × 32 — are redrawn quite well in iOS 10.2! Good job! pic.twitter.com/X6WskExq1D
Jonathan Zufi, author of ICONIC, a coffee table book that celebrates the history of Apple products through beautiful photography, uses the October 27th Apple event to challenge a comment by Phil Schiller in 2012 that Apple is ‘focused on inventing the future, not celebrating the past.’
Although Steve Jobs shut down Apple’s internal Apple museum in 1997 and transferred its collection to Stanford, Zufi points out that Apple has begun honoring past products more often in recent years, especially where doing so highlights the innovations of current products. As Zufi observes:
People love reminiscing about the past, and there are still many Apple fans who love to celebrate the company’s rich product history — its successes and its failures. I’ve heard from readers who simply loved the fact that they sat down with [ICONIC and] a glass of wine and lost themselves for hours reliving these old machines, where they were in their lives when they first came across them, and how much has changed.
That’s why Phil Schiller’s comment about not celebrating the past always bothered me and I’m going to disagree with Phil on this — I’m certain Apple will continue celebrating their past as they blaze the future.
Selling the past short isn’t a prerequisite to embracing the future. Apple’s newfound willingness to look back feels like the mark of a mature company that’s as confident with where it’s been as it is with where it’s going.
Once you’ve created an event from your calendar and added your coworkers to the People field, tap the date picker. Times that work for everyone show in white, yellow indicates availability for one or more people in the group, and red indicates times with no availability. Next, tap the time picker and just drag and drop until it turns green—indicating everyone is available at that time.
After you have found a time that works for everyone and fill out any additional information about your event tapping the checkmark sends an invitation to each invitee and saves the event to your calendar.
Back in April, I did an Ongoing Development column about the difference between trying to find time for projects and making time for them. Recognizing that your time is yours and consciously choosing how you’re going to spend it may seem obvious, but it’s easy to lose control of your own schedule. The first...
The end of the startup chime is a small thing, but as Hackett observes:
…the startup chime is ingrained into the experience of having a Mac, I’m sad to see it go. A Mac without the chime feels broken, even if I know it isn’t. I don’t power down my machines often, but I liked hearing the chime when I power them back up.
It makes me a little sad and nostalgic to lose the Mac’s familiar chime too. It’s not a big deal, but it’s one more link to the Mac’s origins that is gone, which feels like a loss.
Eggggg, by Norwegian developer Hyper Games, bills itself appropriately enough as a platform puker. You play as Gilbert who jumps out a window and into a giant egg to escape his mean Aunt Doris who won’t let him go to a birthday party. The trouble is, Gilbert is allergic to eggs. They make him vomit – a lot. Thrown into a world of eggs and cyborg chickens, Gilbert uses what he’s got – his vomit – to propel him through each level. If Eggggg sounds odd, that’s because it is, but it’s also not as gross as you might expect, and it’s a whole lot of fun.
Eggggg draws inspiration from many sources. The levels are reminiscent of Mario platformers. Each is full of secret items to collect and hard-to-reach areas to explore. Eggggg only has 20 levels, but they are more complex and varied in their look and feel than most mobile games, which makes them a joy to replay.
When I first tried Eggggg, I immediately thought of Adventure Time. Eggggg shares a certain visual absurdity and bizarreness with the popular Cartoon Network show thanks to the fantastic artwork of Brosmind, a design studio based in Barcelona, Spain. But the visual style of Eggggg also harkens back to 90s cartoons like Rugrats. It’s an interesting mix of styles that feels fresh and works well in the game.
Eggggg’s game mechanics are simple, but a little different than you might have seen in other games – not different in a bad way, but they take some getting used to. You can tap on either side of the screen to send Gilbert in that direction. A second tap makes Gilbert jump. So, if Gilbert is running left, tapping the right side of the screen changes his direction and tapping again makes him jump. If Gilbert is already running to the right tapping just makes him jump. Fortunately, the first two levels of the game have no obstacles and are enough practice to get the hang of the controls before you start battling enemies.
Each level includes unique obstacles like chicken-spiders, buzzsaws, chickens in flying saucers, and more. You are timed as you race through each level, which gives you some incentive to go back and try levels again to see if you can beat your time and move up the Game Center leaderboards, though the game is just as fun when you take it at your own pace.
Platformers are hard to get right on mobile devices without joysticks and dedicated buttons. Eggggg’s controls took some getting used to, but I think Hyper Games made the right choice by avoiding dedicated buttons or simulated joystick controls on the screen. The blend of deep Mario-style levels, colorful artwork, and squishy sound effects come together to make Eggggg one of the best platform games I’ve seen on iOS. It’s definitely one worth trying.
