Apple has released the first big update in over a year for its Clips video creation tool. Following the trend begun in iOS 12, which added Animoji support to FaceTime, now all Animoji and Memoji characters can also be used inside Clips. Though I would have expected such an update a year ago, it’s nevertheless good to see. Besides Animoji and Memoji, Clips 2.1 only adds a couple other small new features, like a fresh batch of Mickey and Minnie stickers, a ‘Let It Snow’ winter poster, and support for right-to-left languages. After spending some time with the update, there are a couple nice implementation details related to Animoji that deserve highlighting.
Chirp 2.0 Offers a Remarkably Full-Featured Twitter Experience on Apple Watch
It’s time for Apple Watch apps to grow up, and Chirp for Twitter is leading the charge.
Chirp 2.0 debuted today, offering a full-featured Twitter experience on the Apple Watch. Chirp was already the prime Twitter client on watchOS, but with version 2 the app becomes something truly special: an iPhone-quality app on the Watch. Thanks to SwiftUI and other new developer tools Apple has built for watchOS, Chirp can do all the things you would expect from a full-featured iOS app, such as load your whole timeline, with liking and retweeting functionality, display videos and open links embedded in tweets, offer tweet composition, full user profiles, DMs, and much, much more.
Watch developer Will Bishop has been shipping impressive apps for a while, but Chirp 2.0 undoubtedly represents his best work yet.
Apple News Debuts Daily Email Newsletter→
Benjamin Mayo, reporting for 9to5Mac:
Apple News is expanding its mail notifications with a new ‘Good Morning’ daily newsletter. Previously, users could opt in to receive email alerts from Apple News about select featured stories. The company appears to be formalizing that into a regular daily newsletter.
If you were already signed up to receive emails from Apple News, you’ll now receive this new daily newsletter; personally, I never cared for the previous emails focusing on featured stories, but this newsletter looks more suited to my interests, so I’ve just signed up. Here’s how the first new email describes itself:
Welcome to the new Apple News email, now coming to your inbox every morning with top news, smart analysis, and fascinating features. We’ll bring you the best stories from the most trusted sources — everything you need to be informed (and entertained) as you start your day. Enjoy!
Apple News used to have a digest section where, at different times during the day, you could get a quick overview of several important stories of the day in a similar curated fashion to what this newsletter represents. The digest disappeared following the debut of Apple News+, which is a shame because it was one of my favorite features of the app. I’m hopeful this newsletter will serve as an adequate replacement, despite not being quite as convenient as the in-app digest.
If you’d like to start receiving the newsletter, or you’re already subscribed but don’t like the idea of a daily email, you can visit appleid.apple.com and adjust your email subscriptions from the ‘Messages from Apple’ page.
Apple Announces Winners of the Inaugural Apple Music Awards
Apple has made a habit of honoring some of the top apps, music, books, podcasts, and more on an annual basis at year’s end, and this year is no different. However, one change to the format for 2019 is that Apple has split out music as its own separate awards category dubbed the Apple Music Awards. There are five distinct awards given, with some winners chosen by Apple’s editorial team while others are determined by streaming data:
The winners for Global Artist of the Year, Songwriter of the Year and Breakthrough Artist of the Year were hand-selected by Apple Music’s global editorial team of experts and tastemakers and given to artists who have true passion for their craft, who boldly defy conventions in the category and who embody a sense of humanity, where listeners are drawn as much to who they are as to their music. The awards for Album of the Year and Song of the Year are based on streaming data and reflective of what Apple Music customers have been listening to (on repeat) this year.
The 2019 Apple Music Awards winners are:
- Global Artist of the Year: Billie Eilish
- Breakthrough Artist of the Year: Lizzo
- Song of the Year: “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X
- Album of the Year: “WHEN WE FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?” by Billie Eilish
- Songwriter of the Year: Billie Eilish and her brother FINNEAS, for co-writing “WHEN WE FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?”
In addition to a dedicated Apple Music Awards page inside the Apple Music service itself, Apple will be celebrating the awards with a globally live-streamed performance from the big winner, Billie Eilish, whose breakout album was streamed on Apple Music over a billion times in 2019, the most of any album on the service. Eilish will be performing at the Steve Jobs Theater on December 4 at 6:30 p.m. PST.
The physical awards Apple designed for winners feature, of course, a few special touches. Apple explains:
Each award features Apple’s custom silicon wafer suspended between a polished sheet of glass and a machined and anodized aluminum body. The wafers start as a perfect 12-inch disc of silicon with nanometer level flatness. Copper layers are deposited and patterned by ultraviolet lithography to create connections between billions of transistors. The result of this multi-month process, before it is sliced into hundreds of individual chips, is stunning and distinctive. In a symbolic gesture, the same chips which power the devices that put the world’s music at your fingertips sit at the very heart of the Apple Music Awards.
2019’s Apple Music Awards could effectively be called the Billie Eilish Awards, so it will be interesting to see if a similar trend continues from year to year, with artists earning several of the limited number of award possibilities. It seems reasonable to expect Apple will try to avoid that moving forward, but since certain awards are determined entirely by popularity, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a regular occurrence. You never know which artists may have a major standout year.
Express Mode for Apple Pay Now Available with Transport for London→
Benjamin Mayo, reporting for 9to5Mac:
If you are in London, you can now travel using Apple Pay on the Underground network without having to use Touch ID or Face ID authentication.
This means that you don’t need to hold up the queue at the turnstile when travelling the Underground. You can simply tap and go with either iPhone or Apple Watch.
Express Transit has been a feature since iOS 12.3 but it requires partnerships with the transit networks in order for the feature to work. Apple announced the new support for the London Underground today with a new web page and sending out notifications to iPhone and Apple Watch users in the United Kingdom.
One particularly interesting detail about Express Mode is that it enables a special Power Reserve state for your iPhone or Apple Watch. When your device is set up for Express Mode, and its battery is close to depletion, iOS and watchOS will automatically save a certain amount of power so you can still use your device for transit access for another five hours after Power Reserve kicks in. This will undoubtedly reduce a lot of anxiety for people who regularly deplete their battery, and would otherwise want to keep an alternate transit access method as a backup. Power Reserve is available on the iPhone XR and newer, and Apple Watch Series 4 and newer.
Even setting aside Power Reserve, the convenience of no longer needing to pre-authenticate with Express Mode is a significant user experience improvement for transit customers. The feature’s also available in my home of New York City, but only in an extremely limited rollout; I can’t wait for it to be part of my daily commute.
AirPods Pro: Seven Observations One Month Later
AirPods Pro released just one month ago, with no Apple event, no big presentation or even exclusive stories with press, just an Apple Newsroom press release, followed by initial reviewer impressions a day later, and the day after that they were in users’ hands. When rumors first circulated about a new, premium AirPods model, I...
The Best iOS List-Making Apps
The season of lists is upon us: gift shopping lists, wish lists, baking lists, and on the lists go. iOS’ built-in Reminders and Notes apps can be tremendous list-making tools, but the App Store also has plenty of more specialized options for meeting a variety of needs. Here are some of the best...
Actions by Moleskine Adds Reminders Import, Shortcuts with Parameters, and Context Menus
The new year approaches, and with it arrive dreams of being a more productive you – which of course involves choosing the perfect task management system for your needs.
In a timely move, Moleskine’s elegant task manager, Actions, was updated today with a new Reminders import feature, so you can instantly migrate any or all of your Reminders lists and tasks into Actions. The update also supports two new iOS 13 features: shortcuts featuring parameters and context menus.
More Apple Services, Please
It’s funny to think that just a few short years ago, Apple was the company that could get hardware and software right, but had significant struggles with services. Things began to change leading up to the debut of Apple Music in 2015, but the narrative of poor services continued long past then, leading me in...