Google Adds Find Your Phone Feature for iOS Devices

By John Voorhees

Google continues to improve and refine its ‘My Account’ features with a service that complements Apple’s ‘Find iPhone’ feature. Google’s ’Find Your Phone’ which has been available for a while for Android phones, allows Google users to:

find their iOS device and lock it by redirecting users to iCloud.com;
call an iOS device;
leave a callback number on an iOS device’s screen;
log out of your Google account;
contact your mobile carrier; and
locate a local lost and found using Google Maps.

To access Find Your Phone, log into your Google ‘My Account’ page on the web or use the Google iOS app on another iOS device.

Alto’s Adventure Adds Zen Mode and Sharable Gameplay Photos

By John Voorhees

Alto’s Adventure, one of my all-time favorite iOS games, is getting a couple fantastic features today. The first is a zen mode that lets you play as long as you want without having to restart when you crash. If you fall, you can simply pick yourself up and resume from right where you are. There also aren’t any collectables, removing all of the potentially stress-inducing aspects of the game. It’s just you snowboarding down the mountain and doing tricks. The new mode is accompanied by a soothing new soundtrack that fits well with the more relaxed feel of zen mode.

Alto’s Adventure also adds the ability to take snapshots of gameplay. Pausing the game by tapping the pause button in the lower left hand corner of the screen lets you enter photo mode.¹ Once paused, you can pinch, zoom, and pan the scene to frame the shot and then take a snapshot that can be shared using the system share sheet.

Zen mode and the new photo feature enhance Alto’s Adventure by making it even easier to soak in the stunning visuals and soundtrack of the game. As much as I like the new features, though, I like that both are neatly tucked away in the interface so neither interferes with the way the original game works.

Version 1.3 of Alto’s Adventure is a free upgrade to existing customers. New customers can purchase Alto’s Adventure for $3.99 on the App Store.

If you don’t see a pause button, don’t worry, it’s there. The button just fades from view over time. ↩

Apple Experimenting with Apple TV Top Charts and Featured Section

By John Voorhees

Last week, equinux, the maker of Live TV, an Apple TV app for streaming live German television, noticed something strange. Live TV, which was featured on the German Apple TV App Store and ranked among the top free Apple TV apps in Germany, seemed to disappear from the store shortly after an update to the app was launched.

In turns out, Apple now hides an app in the charts once you’ve installed it. Give it a try: Go install TV Pro Mediathek (VOD for German TV content) from the App Store (currently #3 Top Grossing in Germany) and then go back in to the App Store: boom – it’s gone from the charts and the next-placed app has moved up.

We have confirmed that the same phenomenon occurs in the US Apple TV App Store using the AMC television network’s Apple TV app. If you download the AMC app, which is currently featured and ranked among the top free apps in the US, and then force quit the store by double clicking the Home button on the Siri Remote and swiping up on the App Store app, the next time you launch the App Store, AMC will no longer be on the Featured page or on the top free app chart.

This is an interesting experiment. Screen real estate is at a premium on the Apple TV App Store. By eliminating apps that a customer has already downloaded, Apple is able to present customers with more new apps. The change does mean, however, that the charts are not true top charts, but instead, top charts of apps someone hasn’t already downloaded.

This change makes a lot of sense, especially on Apple TV. In my own experience, I am less likely to browse deep into the Apple TV App Store than I am on iOS App Store or Mac App Store. By limiting the Featured page and charts to apps that are new to me, it’s easier to discover new apps without paging past the ones I already downloaded.

WWDC 2016

By John Voorhees

John

WWDC is an important week. The vast majority of the contacts I have made in the development community have their origins at WWDC or were reinforced there. It’s also the one and only time each year when I get to see many of my nerd friends who are scattered across the globe. This year...

Member Requests

By John Voorhees

Question: As amazing as the iPhone 6s Plus camera is for shooting video, I find it cumbersome to sort through multiple videos with different resolutions and/or framerates. For instance, I have 4K/30fps videos as well as 1080p60fps, 1080p120fps, and 720p240fps. All are amazing for their intended use, but sorting them is madness! Is it possible...

Q&A

By John Voorhees

Question: Sunrise Calendar is sunsetting in August. I’ve learned some alternatives and read individual reviews from MacStories for apps like Fantastical, Outlook, Moleskine Timepage, and Calendars 5. But how do they compare? (Denken, @denkeni)

Federico

The short version: I haven’t found another calendar app that comes with a) the same third-party service integrations of the...

Ongoing Development

By John Voorhees

Anatomy of an App Launch App launches can be scary because there is so much you don’t control – like App Review and the press, for instance. But with a little luck, and the experience to know how to recognize and capitalize on an opportunity, app launches can also be a whole lot of fun....

Pixelmator 3.5 Adds Selection Tools and a Photos Extension

By John Voorhees

Pixelmator 3.5 was released today with three new tools - Quick Selection, Magnetic Selection, and a retouch extension for Apple’s Photos app. Pixelmator has been my go-to image editor for a long time. I use if for everything from screenshot editing for MacStories and creating assets for my own website, to retouching family photos. As many readers may know, we started a Telegram channel a couple months ago called The MacStories Lounge. One of Telegram’s strengths is its media integration. I figured, what better way to test the new Pixelmator selection tools than to create a Telegram sticker – of Federico.

Twitter Gives Tweets More Room to Breathe

By John Voorhees

Twitter announced some big changes today that are designed to encourage conversations and media sharing. The 140 character limit of a tweet becomes a more significant constraint as you add more ‘@names’ to a conversation or attach media to a tweet. The changes announced by Twitter, which go a long way toward addressing those constraints, will be rolled out over the coming months in Twitter’s own app and will be available to third-party Twitter clients.

Replies

Large group conversations on Twitter are hard. The more people you add to a thread, the fewer characters you have left to communicate with the group. With the upcoming change to replies, ’@names’ of up to 50 people will no longer count toward the 140-character limit of a tweet. The tweet will still be seen only in the timelines of the people @replied, but eliminating ‘@names’ from the character count should facilitate conversations among more people. I am happy to see this change overall, but I wonder whether Twitter has gone too far by allowing up to 50 ‘@names’ in a single tweet.

The change to ‘@names’ will also eliminate the quandary about what to do when you want to start a tweet with someone’s ‘@name’ that is not a reply. With the changes announced, these tweets will be treated like any other tweet and be visible to all of your followers, eliminating the need to use the convention of a period before an ‘@name’ to ensure that everyone who follows you sees the tweet.

Media

When Twitter rolls out the changes announced, photos, videos, and GIFs will not count against the 140 character limit of a tweet, which should encourage the use of more media in tweets. The existing limits of four photos, or one video or GIF per tweet still apply. Links that are pasted into a tweet and not generated by attaching media will also still count against the 140-character limit.

Retweets

Finally, Twitter announced that you will be able to retweet your own tweets. Though this struck me as strange at first, it eliminates the need for things like the ubiquitous ‘ICYM’ tweets and will allow you to share an @reply, which would normally only be visible to its recipients, with all your followers.