Charles Joseph, developer of Picky, on the enhancements coming to the MediaPlayer framework in iOS 10.3:
I was genuinely surprised and elated to find that yesterday’s iOS 10.3 beta finally adds what looks like proper queuing functionality to MPMusicPlayerController and I excitedly tweeted about it. Scott Edwards asked if I could “explain why that’s important to a non programmer”, so I’m going to try to do that here.
Alternatives to Apple’s Music app (like Picky) need to be able to access and play the user’s iTunes library, unless they’re part of a streaming service (like Spotify) or providing their own syncing and library management and companion apps (quite the tall order). While developers can build incredibly advanced playback functionality with tools like AVFoundation, that’s only possible for an increasingly smaller subset of users’ libraries: only locally downloaded, non-DRMed content — nothing stored in the cloud and nothing downloaded from Apple Music. People are storing more and more of their music in the cloud and expect third-party apps to be able to keep up.
It sounds like Apple is listening to feedback from developers of third-party music players. The changes documented in the iOS 10.3 beta so far don’t address all the concerns Allen Pike covered last year, but it’s a good first step. I’m curious to see how apps will take advantage of the improved API.
Question: I need a workflow to publish meeting notes that I’ve recorded in Apple’s Notes app as a Google document, placing the document in a specific shared folder on Google Drive. (Michael Welsh, @michaelwelsh)
There is no easy way to automate Notes and Google Docs with Workflow alone, but we can implement the Zapier...
Question: Can you recommend a shopping list app? I intend to share a shopping list (not limited to groceries alone) with my family members too. (Anonymous)
If you’re looking for a dedicated shopping list app, I know AnyList is a solid solution for iOS and the web, with good sharing options and an elegant...
I’ve talked before about how I like to be woken up in the morning by my girlfriend with a good cup of espresso. We’re on two slightly different schedules: I usually go to sleep a couple of hours after her, and she tends to wake up considerably earlier than I do. And because she...
Federico and Myke talk about what they’re excited for in 2017.
On the latest episode of Remaster, we also talked about the updated Pokémon Bank online service and considered what might be announced at videogame conferences this year. You can listen here.
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Federico’s back, Stephen is the Mac mini Spokesperson and Myke needs to buy some stuff.
On this week’s Connected, we also had some interesting discussions about home automation (which Myke likes) and sleep tracking (which Myke doesn’t like – yet). You can listen here.
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Nice change to Apple.com currently propagating across various international versions. Here’s a comparison of the same webpage before and after the switch to San Francisco. I’ve never been a fan of the mixture of San Francisco and Myriad on the Apple website, and I dig the refreshed look. Looks like the transition to San Francisco is finally complete.
With today’s release of the first iOS 10.3 beta for developers, Apple announced two changes that have been highly requested by iOS users and the developer community. iOS 10.3 will offer a developer API to standardize how apps can ask users to rate an app or write a review on the App Store, and developers will get the ability to directly respond to customer reviews on both the iOS and Mac App Store.
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Apple seeded the first beta of its next major iOS update, iOS 10.3, to developers earlier today. Following updates that focused on photography and emoji, iOS 10.3 will bring a variety of enhancements and tweaks to system apps and services, although it appears to be lacking any meaningful (and highly anticipated) iPad improvements.
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