Connected, Episode 182: Wireless Charging Denier →

Linked By Federico Viticci

Federico and Myke slander Stephen’s good name before talking about iPhone and headphone rumors and Amazon’s acquisition of Ring.

Also on this week’s episode of Connected: a discussion about the long-term impact of Apple’s Beats acquisition and the company’s approach to an increasingly growing ecosystem of smart devices. You can listen here.

WatchKit as a “Sweet Solution”→

Linked By Federico Viticci

Marco Arment (who’s been struggling with Watch app development for a while now) makes the case for WatchKit to be either discontinued or substantially expanded as, in its current form, it hinders the creation of more powerful apps.

Developing Apple Watch apps is extremely frustrating and limited for one big reason: unlike on iOS, Apple doesn’t give app developers access to the same watchOS frameworks that they use on Apple Watch.

Instead, we’re only allowed to use WatchKit, a baby UI framework that would’ve seemed rudimentary to developers even in the 1990s. But unlike the iPhone’s web apps, WatchKit doesn’t appear to be a stopgap — it seems to be Apple’s long-term solution to third-party app development on the Apple Watch.

When I first read his post, I thought that asking Apple to discontinue and replace WatchKit was perhaps too much. But after spending some time reorganizing my Watch favorites and complications last night and this morning, I agree with Marco. My favorite apps on the Watch are all made by Apple and are not based on WatchKit. The only exception is Workouts++ (which, as a workout app, has specific privileges). The only third-party Watch apps I regularly use besides Smith’s app are Things and Shazam (which is somewhat ironic) and they’re both accessed via complications; they’re okay, but I don’t love them because they’re often slow to sync data with their iPhone counterparts or take too long to launch and be in a usable state. When I’m out and about, I still don’t trust Watch apps to be as reliable as iPhone apps.

Despite three years of watchOS updates and more powerful hardware (I use a Series 3), the Apple Watch still doesn’t feel like the rich, diverse, and vibrant app platform that the iPhone is. Some might say that’s precisely the point – it doesn’t have to be because the Watch works best through notifications and complications. However, I often ask myself if such argument is the wearable equivalent of Aesop’s sour grapes – real Watch apps wouldn’t make sense anyway. Like Marco, I wonder what would happen if only Apple exposed real watchOS development tools to app makers.

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AppStories - Ep. 44 - 31 minutes

App Culture: Mindfulness and Meditation Apps

Federico

John

AppStories Episode 44 - App Culture: Mindfulness and Meditation Apps

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30:59

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AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

Federico and John talk about the trends and app culture surrounding mindfulness and meditation apps.

A Richer Save Menu for Things

By Federico Viticci

Federico

Earlier this week, I published my in-depth look at Things’ new automation features, which revolve around a powerful URL scheme that now allows you to integrate Things with other iOS apps. As I mentioned in the story, I wanted to provide Club members with more advanced examples to showcase what can be built once...

The Evolution of Alto’s Odyssey →

Linked By Federico Viticci

iMore’s Serenity Caldwell and Luke Filipowicz put together a great Q&A with Team Alto to discuss the making of Alto’s Odyssey.

Here’s my favorite bit, which only adds to my love for this game:

One of the big breaks in the new game’s theming came from the lives of Team Alto’s members themselves. “Things really clicked when we reflected as a group on how much our lives had changed since the release of Alto’s Adventure,” wrote Cymet. “The team had grown, some of us had moved away from the homes we knew to live in other places, and we had all experienced big personal upheaval in different ways.

“What we arrived at was a desire to capture the feeling of going outside your comfort zone, exploring the unfamiliar, and accepting that the concept of ‘home’ is related to the people close to you, not any one place. In many ways, this is what led us to the grandeur of Alto’s Odyssey’s setting. This idea of a fantastical place far from what you know as home, where you learn to see the beauty in embracing the unknown.”

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Connected, Episode 181: Headspaced Against My Will →

Linked By Federico Viticci

Federico has a surprise for the group, then goes on to teach about Things 3 before Stephen complains about its repeating task support. In a shocking turn of events, Myke has the need for a Mac app.

I had a lot of fun on this week’s episode of Connected. You don’t want to miss the surprise I’d been keeping from the group. You can listen here.

Smart Speakers and Speech Impairment →

Linked By Federico Viticci

Steven Aquino covers an important accessibility angle of smart speakers that I’ve never truly considered:

Since the HomePod started shipping last week, I’ve taken to Twitter on multiple occasions to (rightfully) rant about the inability of Siri—and its competitors—to parse non-fluent speech. By “non-fluent speech,” I’m mostly referring to stutterers because I am one, but it equally applies to others, such as deaf speakers.

This is a topic I’ve covered before. There has been much talk about Apple’s prospects in the smart speaker market; the consensus seems to be the company lags behind Amazon and Google because Alexa and Google Home are smarter than Siri. What is missing from these discussions and from reviews of these products is the accessibility of a HomePod or Echo or Sonos.

As I see it, this lack of consideration, whether intentional or not, overlooks a crucial part of a speaker product’s story. Smart speakers are a unique product, accessibility-wise, insofar as the voice-first interaction model presents an interesting set of conditions. You can accommodate for blindness and low vision with adjustable font sizes and screen readers. You can accommodate physical motor delays with switches. You can accommodate deafness and hard-of-hearing with closed captioning and using the camera’s flash for alerts.

But how do you accommodate for a speech impairment?

A human assistant would know how to deal with stuttering, dialects, or even just the need to repeat a part of a sentence you got wrong. None of the modern digital assistants currently goes beyond being a slightly humanized command line activated by voice, and I wonder who will get there first.

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Unread Gains Inoreader Integration and Automatic Safari Reader Option →

Linked By Federico Viticci

As John and I recently discussed on AppStories, there’s never been a better time to use RSS. There are several powerful services to choose from (we both like Inoreader), and the selection of modern RSS clients for iOS is also solid these days.

Unread, now developed by Golden Hill Software, is one of the more elegant options based on comfortable gestures and a focused reading experience. I linked to the app in November when it received support for the iPhone X and iPad multitasking; in the post, I noted that I still wanted to see Unread gain Inoreader integration and haptic feedback on the latest iPhones.

With version 1.9 released today, Unread now fully supports Inoreader and plays subtle taps for different kinds of swipe gestures. Syncing subscriptions with Inoreader supports the full range of options available on the service: in addition to unread and starred articles, you can view your active searches, browse websites by folder, or open articles for individual subscriptions. Along with the aforementioned Taptic Engine integration, I also want to point out that Unread 1.9 supports one of the lesser known Safari View Controller features on iOS: in the app’s settings, you can now enable an option to load Safari View Controller in Reader mode by default when you tap any link in the app.

Unread isn’t my default RSS client (I use Fiery Feeds 2 now), but I keep the app on my devices when I feel like I want to take a more relaxed approach to reading articles I’ve starred.

Unread 1.9 is available on the App Store.

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Alto’s Odyssey Review: Desert Tranquility

By Federico Viticci

The sky above the desert has chosen a peculiar, almost plum-like shade of purple tonight as I’m nimbly moving past tall silhouettes of cacti and palm trees, when I see the black contours of a rock. My experience tells me that, in most cases, rocks have to be avoided, so I jump. While airborne, I glance at the dune ahead of me, and decide to attempt a backflip. The sky in the distance is a sight to behold – a full moon, barely visible among the clouds, faintly illuminates a panorama of ancient ruins left to age and crumble. In fact, the horizon is so beautiful, I don’t see another rock waiting just ahead of me as soon as I stick the landing. I hit the rock and fall face down in the sand. It’s game over.

I try again.

An angry lemur is chasing me, probably because I, once a mountain shepherd and now a tourist with a sandboard and little knowledge of lemur manners, woke the creature who was resting in his hut. His only goal, apparently, is to attack me and stop my speedy exploration. But I just need to make it to the next chasm and leave him behind, shaking his tiny lemur fist at me as I backflip over the void. That shouldn’t be too hard.

He’s fast though. Suddenly, I see a potential way out: a rushing water stream connects to a narrow wall, which I can vertically ride to hop onto a vine where I can grind, jump, and backflip to build up speed and escape the lemur. Seems easy enough. My jumps are precise and I elegantly make it onto the vine. But the lemur isn’t giving up – he’s right behind me. 10, 9, 7, 5 meters behind – he’s going to catch me. But we’re at the end of the vine now, and if I jump, I’m going to land and sprint. I take the leap and start my backflip. I think I made it. Except the lemur also jumps, grabs me, and I’m face down in the sand again. It’s game over.

I keep trying.