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.
Apple confirmed the official release date of watchOS 3 at a media event held today at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. watchOS 3 will be released on Tuesday, September 13th.
Announced at WWDC in June, watchOS 3 features a new dock for faster launching of your favorite apps, new watch faces, fitness sharing and competition, a new Breathe app to help manage stress, HomeKit integration, stickers and some of the other features found in Messages for iOS, the ability to unlock your Mac, and more.
Apple hasn’t announced a Golden Master seed of watchOS 3 yet, but it will presumably be released to developers later today. Usually the last developer release before a public launch, the GM seed will allow developers to make finalize their watchOS 3 apps and submit them to the App Store.
It’s been a busy year for Italian indie studio Bloop. Airmail for OS X has been around for a while, but Airmail for iOS was introduced just seven months ago as an iPhone-only app. A couple months later, Bloop brought Airmail to the iPad with extensive keyboard support and great new features like smart folders and saved searches, which was enough for Federico to switch to Airmail full time. Today, Bloop released version 1.2 of Airmail for iOS, which picks up where version 1.1 left off with some great new functionality.
One of my favorite features of Airmail is its integration with other apps and services. Airmail makes it simple to get information out of my email and into the apps where I need it whether that’s sending an attachment to Dropbox or the text of an email to 2Do. Version 1.2 adds additional integrations including the ability to send attachments to iCloud Drive and emails to Day One or Ulysses. Bloop’s expansion of integrations into even more apps and services is smart and should make the app appeal to an even wider audience.
Notifications have also gained new functionality. You can now turn on ‘Do Not Disturb’ on an account-by-account basis, which should be a great help to people who manage multiple email accounts. Notifications can also be tied to a location. I can imagine this coming in handy if you’re on vacation and don’t want to get notifications until you get home. Email senders can be muted, which eliminates notifications from those senders. Blocking senders is similar, but in addition to muting the sender it automatically archives the email you receive.
In addition to the foregoing, Airmail 1.2 adds:
Undo send, a feature that already existed in Airmail for OS X and that can be set to delay the sending of an email 5 or 10 seconds to allow you to prevent its sending;
Email Label sync when your iOS device is connected to a power source;
An Apple Watch complication that launches Airmail’s Watch app from certain Apple Watch faces;
Dynamic Type support;
Preview support for EML and Win.dat email file formats; and
MDM server support to configure and manage Airmail for teams.
Bloop has covered a lot of ground since the beginning of 2016. After having seen so many free email alternatives come and go, it’s reassuring to see Bloop continue to innovate and refine Airmail on iOS and the Mac and charge a fair price for an excellent app.
David Smith is an independent developer who launched his first iOS app in 2008. He’s seen a lot of change in the App Store since then, which he chronicles in an insightful post on his blog. Smith examines the revenue his apps have generated since 2012 and the pattern is unmistakable. Around 2013, the majority of his revenue flipped from being primarily from paid sales to advertising.
Looking back, Smith concludes that:
…the change is mostly been in the App Store market, rather than in my own attitudes. In many cases adding advertising to my apps has been something I’ve fought and resisted as long as possible. But in the end the pragmatic answer has been to not swim upstream and instead follow where my customers have moved to.
The market has been pulling me along towards advertising based apps, and I’ve found that the less I fight back with anachronistic ideas about how software “should” be sold, the more sustainable a business I have.
Smith readily acknowledges his experience is just one data point in a large App Store. If you’ve followed the fortunes of independent app developers over this period though, his conclusion rings true.
Be sure to visit Smith’s website to see the charts breaking down the components of his apps’ revenue. The short-term impact of app launches on overall revenue is an interesting footnote to the post’s main focus.
Some games are as much about art and the experience they create as they are about gameplay. Monument Valley comes to mind for instance. Gemini – A Journey of Two Stars is a beautiful new game from Echostone Games that falls into the same category and succeeds by being simultaneously stunning and engrossing.
As you start Gemini, two stars have fallen from the sky. You play as the larger star. There are no instructions or tutorials, just subtle visual hints about what you are supposed to do. Tapping the left and right sides of the screen guides your star in those directions.
As you approach the smaller star, the two interact and begin to rise. Get too far away from the smaller star and both start to fall from the sky. This makes for an interesting tension as you try to stay close to the smaller star, which can have a mind of its own, while also completing the game’s tasks.
As you rise through a gorgeous abstract landscape, the sky darkens. If it gets too dark, your stars will fall. To avoid that you need to light beacons by steering your star over them. Lighting up the sky has the added advantage of revealing more of your surroundings. The stunning artwork of Gemini is paired with an equally impressive and soothing soundtrack that sets the tone for the game.
As you lose yourself in Gemini, the game is more about the interaction of the stars than anything else. The dance between the stars and making sure you bring the little star along become the focus. This is a very different game, but the feeling of a connection with the small star that Gemini created as I played reminded me a lot of playing Journey last Summer on my PS4.
Gemini is relatively short. The six stages of the game should take most people no more than 1-2 hours to complete. If you evaluate games by the numbers of levels per dollar you spend, you may be disappointed with Gemini, but as a piece of interactive art, I suspect many people, myself included, will return to Gemini over and over just to enjoy the visuals and soundtrack.
Gemini is available on the App Store at an introductory price of $2.99.
Instagram has been around since 2010 and had begun to show its age. Until recently, Instagram stubbornly held on to a skeuomorphic icon so dated that it became a meme of sorts. Instagram was also slow to adopt new iOS features like extensions. In the past few months though, a positive trend has emerged...
I take a lot of bad photos. I also take a lot of screenshots. At some point, I want to delete both, but deleting multiple unwanted photos or screenshots is tedious. Fortunately, there’s an easy way to select multiple photos in the iOS Photos app. From any photo view in the Photos app, tap...
Question: It’s been some time since Content Blocker introduced on iOS/macOS. After the dust settles, I wonder what app you’re using for Content Blocker. (Jung)
I’ve used a combination of a couple different content blockers on iOS and OS X. The first is 1Blocker, which started on iOS and was later released for OS...
Question: I work in IT, and we receive pages when we get support tickets. The page system works by emailing a message to our cellphone. Each major carrier in the US lets you send an email as an SMS. However, these emails don’t come across in one thread – each email starts a new one....
On the heels of Apple’s announcement of an impending App Store cleanup, it has updated its App Review Guidelines to cover app subscriptions, stickers, and SiriKit apps. Among other guidelines, Section 3.1.2(a) states that:
While the following list is not exhaustive, examples of appropriate subscriptions include: new game levels; episodic content; multi-player support; apps that offer consistent, substantive updates; access to large collections of, or continually updated, media content; software as a service (“SAAS”); and cloud support.
The availability of subscriptions for apps that are ‘continually updated’ provides additional clarity to an issue that was hotly debated and discussed among developers since subscriptions were announced shortly before WWDC.
The App Review Guidelines also include an entire section on stickers.
Whether your app contains a sticker extension or you’re creating free-standing sticker packs, its content shouldn’t offend users, create a negative experience, or violate the law.
Section 4.4.3 includes a link for making infringement claims and states that if you cannot back up your rights to content contained in stickers with documentation, your sticker packs and extensions will be removed from the App Store. Repeat violators risk having their developer accounts revoked.
With respect to SiriKit, section 2.5.11 of the Guidelines provides:
Apps integrating SiriKit should only sign up for intents they can handle without the support of an additional app and that users would expect from the stated functionality. For example, if your app is a meal planning app, you should not incorporate an intent to start a workout, even if the app shares integration with a fitness app.
This guideline seems to be designed to avoid confusion that could be created by an app without clear SiriKit functionality accessing SiriKit.
