John
AppStories Episode 40 - How Apps Fit Into Our TV and Movie Watching
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35:51
35:51
Federico and John discuss their TV and movie watching habits, hardware, and how they use apps as part of the process.
What Apple Must Do to Establish Its New Video Service→
It’s clear that Apple is building a video service. That much was obvious the moment it hired veteran entertainment executives Zack van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht. But you can’t flip a switch and create a streaming service—not even if you’re Apple. (You could buy one, but Apple has apparently chosen to build, not buy, at least for now.)
What has to happen between now and the day we all sit down and watch the first episode of van Amburg and Erlicht’s first major acquisition to play through our Apple TVs or on our iPads and iPhones?
Great article by Jason Snell on the challenges Apple is facing in building their video streaming service – which, if you’ve been keeping an eye on entertainment news, is perhaps the company’s worst kept secret. (Jason Snell and Myke Hurley have a regular segment about this topic on their Upgrade podcast, which you should listen to.)
Unlike Snell, though, I have a hard time believing Apple will not offer their service on multiple platforms. If the company’s goal is to generate more Services revenue with this product, it’s only reasonable to expect as many people as possible could sign up for it.
Also, from a cultural perspective, I think it’d be wrong to have TV shows (and eventually movies too?) be locked to Apple devices. I was watching the Grammys last night, and there were plenty of Apple Music mentions (and ads) throughout the show; Apple Music, of course, is available both on iOS and Android, which meant everyone watching could access Apple’s Grammys page and playlists. If Apple hopes to create shows that become cultural phenomena like Game of Thrones or Stranger Things, wouldn’t it be best to ensure everyone can enjoy them?
Apple Shares First Series of HomePod Ads→
Joe Rossignol, writing for MacRumors:
Apple today shared its first series of HomePod ads on its official YouTube channel, titled Bass, Beat, Distortion, and Equalizer.
[…]
The music-focused ads are each set to their own song, including Ain’t I by Lizzo, DNA by Kendrick Lamar, Holy Water by Hembree, and All Night by Big Boi. Apple continues to position the HomePod as a “breakthrough speaker” first and “intelligent home assistant” second in the description of each video.
If there was any doubt on how Apple is trying to position the HomePod, these ads have no mention – visual or otherwise – of Siri functionalities at all. They’re just about music. (Personally, I love the style and animations.)
As someone who actually believes in the utility of smart speakers, I’m curious to see how this strategy will play out for Apple this year, and if they’re going to air “lifestyle” HomePod + Siri commercials at some point (as they did many times before).
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Connected, Episode 177: Whatever State Asparagus Is Born In→
After wading through HomePod and iOS 11.3 news, the boys give a status report on how they’re feeling about iOS 11 and High Sierra several months into running the releases.
On this week’s episode of Connected, we covered all the latest news from Apple on iOS 11.3 and HomePod, and we also checked in on our experience with iOS 11 and High Sierra so far. You can listen here.
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HomePod Supports User Presence at Home for Personal Notifications→
Refinery29’s Madeline Buxton has spent one hour testing a HomePod ahead of preorders going live tomorrow, and, like others noted at WWDC ‘17, she came away impressed with the small footprint of the device and its audio quality compared to other smart speakers.
This bit from her story is interesting:
Secondly, although everyone in your apartment will be able to use the speaker, only the person who sets up HomePod on their iCloud account will be able to send texts, set up reminders, and get calendar notifications via voice commands. Google Home and Amazon Echo, meanwhile, can recognize different voices and provide personalized content accordingly. (If you do set up personal notifications on HomePod, these will only be available when you are on the network, so you don’t need to worry about your texts being read aloud at home when you are at work. If you don’t want them read aloud when you’re home, you can go into your HomeKit settings and turn off the notifications.)
To my knowledge, this is the first time we hear that HomePod does indeed support calendar notifications (which aren’t mentioned on Apple’s HomePod webpage). As Benjamin Mayo notes, details on how personalized calendar alerts would work are still unclear.
Update: Refinery29 has updated their story to clarify that HomePod will not support calendar notifications.
In addition, I assume that the ability to detect when the HomePod’s owner is at home is powered by the new user presence feature added to HomeKit in iOS 11. Even without a HomePod, iOS 11 lets you set up HomeKit automations with conditions that determine whether you or someone else is at home. The HomePod, as a HomeKit hub, will likely take advantage of the same API, which, in my experience with HomeKit automation in our apartment, has worked well since my girlfriend and I updated to iOS 11 on all our devices in September.
Changes Coming to Safari 11.1 in iOS 11.3 and macOS 10.13.4→
Apple’s Ricky Mondello has a great thread on some of the improvements for users and web developers coming to the next version of Safari, which is available in today’s betas of iOS 11.3 and macOS 10.13.4.
Among the highlights: animated GIFs can be replaced with silent videos; Intelligent Tracking Prevention is getting even smarter; Safari Reader has an improved parser and support for link blogs; Password AutoFill for Apps, which debuted with iOS 11, now works in web views inside apps. If you’re on the iOS 11.3 beta, you can try the improved Reader on this very post. As for GIFs, here at MacStories we already replaced them with silent .mp4 files loaded via native auto-play (see one in action here), but we’re considering adding support for video content in <img> tags as well. I’m also glad to see Apple expanding support for modern web app technologies including Service Workers and Web App Manifest.
You can find the full documentation for Safari 11.1 on Apple’s website here.
Apple Announces iOS 11.3 with ARKit 1.5, New Animoji, Health Records, Music Videos, and More
In a press release, Apple today announced iOS 11.3, the third major update to iOS 11 set to be released in beta for developers later today, and launching to the general public this Spring. iOS 11.3 will improve upon iOS 11 and features that debuted alongside the iPhone X with new Animoji, a major upgrade to ARKit, the ability to store health records in the Health app, plus other improvements for built-in system apps.