This time Myke is sad about THPS5, Federico is sad about the Vita, but they are both very happy with Shooty Skies.
On this week’s Virtual, we explore more instances of videogames making us sad, but we make up for it with some fun iOS games. You can listen here.
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This week, the guys talk about their new iPhones, 3D Touch and El Capitan.
On this week’s Connected, we also talked about how we’re using the Apple Watch and our favorite watchOS 2 apps so far. You can listen here.
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App Debuts Reeder 3 Reeder 3 has exited public beta this week, with a final release on the Mac App Store that brings new themes, better extension compatibility, and support for El Capitan. Continuo Continuo is a new simple activity tracker for iPhone that lets you keep track of any activity you’d like to complete on a...
Tweetbot 4 { .icon }
$4.99 - Download Universal iOSApp Tapbots’ latest Tweetbot release brings a variety of refinements and new features to the iPhone, plus a dramatic redesign of the iPad app. Tweetbot 4 builds upon Tweetbot 3 and keeps its popular advanced features (such as timeline sync, filters, and easy access to lists) and...
Relax, It’s the Weekend Shooty Skies iOS Game Free - Download Universal iOS App Created by two thirds of Crossy Road developers Hipster Whale in collaboration with Australian studio Mighty Games, Shooty Skies is a new arcade game for iOS that replaces crossing the road with shooting colorful flying creatures. If you’re familiar with Crossy Road, you’ll quickly...
Apple updated its Privacy website earlier this week with new details on iOS 9 and El Capitan. Matthew Panzarino writes:
If you click your way through it, you’re going to see a product that looks a lot like the pages that are attempting to sell you iPhones. There is a section that explains Apple’s philosophy; one that tells users in practical terms how to take advantage of Apple’s privacy-and security-related features; an entire section on government information requests; and, finally, its actual privacy policy.
Some of the highlights for me, as I didn’t know these details before:
To make it even easier to get to just the right spot in your favorite app, we’ve built support for deep linking into iOS. A user can tap a link and it will open in the corresponding app if the app has been installed and supports deep linking. We do not associate this with your Apple ID, and Apple does not know which links you tap.
On HomeKit:
Apple does not know what devices you’re controlling, or how and when you’re using them. Siri only associates your HomeKit devices with your anonymous Siri identifier, not you personally. Apps supported by HomeKit are restricted by our developer guidelines to using data solely for home configuration or automation services. Data related to your home is stored encrypted in the keychain of your device. It’s also encrypted in transit between your Apple device and those you’re controlling. And when you control your accessories from a remote location, that data is also encrypted when it’s sent. So HomeKit doesn’t know which devices you’re controlling or how you’re using them.
On Siri’s suggestions:
Certain features do require real-time input from Apple servers. For example, event addresses and a user’s location are sent to Apple so that we can provide accurate Time to Leave predictions that take into consideration traffic and local transit schedules. Information like a user’s location may be sent to Apple to provide localized suggestions as well as relevant news and search results. When we do send information to a server, we protect your privacy by using anonymized rotating identifiers so that searches and locations can’t be traced to you personally. And you can disable Location Services, our new proactive features, or the proactive features’ use of your location at any time.
One thing’s for sure – Apple is going all-in on protecting privacy and user data as much as possible.
In my review of iOS 9, I included a link in a Safari footnote mentioning the possibility for developers to activate Safari Reader programmatically in their apps. Apple has some documentation on this: if available, apps can choose to switch Safari View Controller to Reader mode automatically, without requiring users to tap the Reader button first. I wrote that I hadn’t seen any example of the feature, but I was curious.
Newsify, a powerful (and highly customizable) RSS reader for Feedly, has recently been updated with a watchOS 2 app and support for iOS 9 multitasking. Among the various new options, Newsify lets you pick Safari View Controller (called “in-app Safari” in its Settings) for viewing articles, with an additional Reader view that can also be toggled in Settings. This way, every time you tap on an article’s web view in Newsify, it’ll open Safari View Controller in Reader mode by default, stripping away unnecessary content.
Here’s what you can do to try this out. Open Newsify, go to Settings > Article Browser > Globe Button Action and choose ‘Open in Safari’. In the same screen, under Safari Open Action select ‘Open Safari In-App (Reader view)’.
Now, go back to the list of articles, tap one, and tap the globe icon to open the article’s web view. Safari View Controller will open the webpage, briefly load the main content, and then Reader will activate automatically, with the same appearance settings you used the last time you opened it elsewhere on iOS.
I think this is a great way to provide a “readability” mode in apps by combining the benefits of Safari View Controller with the convenience of Safari Reader. I hope that more apps will consider this option.
Fascinating research by The New York Times on Content Blockers and performance gains in iOS 9:
Ad blockers, which Apple first allowed on the iPhone in September, promise to conserve data and make websites load faster. But how much of your mobile data comes from advertising? We measured the mix of advertising and editorial on the mobile home pages of the top 50 news websites – including ours – and found that more than half of all data came from ads and other content filtered by ad blockers. Not all of the news websites were equal.
Don’t miss the charts here. Also, from the related article:
As for me, the test results spurred me to keep Purify enabled on my iPhone. While I’m browsing, the app lets me easily denote a website whose ads I want to allow to be shown, an action known as “whitelisting.”
That means the websites I enjoy visiting that have slimmer ads — like TheGuardian.com, and, ahem, NYTimes.com — will be whitelisted. But sites saddled with ads that belong in digital fat camp will remain blocked for the sake of my data plan.
It’s fascinating to see how many are coming to the same conclusions.
I didn’t read this widely shared article by Horace Dediu two days ago:
Greatness is transcendental. It’s hard to pin down. It inspires debate. It divides as much as it unites. It creates emotions as much as thoughts. It builds legends. It engages and persists. It lives in memory and penetrates culture. It implants itself in our consciousness persistently, to linger and dwell in our minds while we are bombarded with stimuli.
We use words such as “iconic” or “epic” to capture this permanent “mental tattoo” that we get from greatness. As important as this notion is, we struggle to define it. We don’t even have a proper word for it. Perhaps it is what art tries to be, or what drives us to achieve beyond surviving. As vague a notion as it may be, it is one of the most important notions I can think of. Greatness is the cause, perhaps, of our ascent.
A great piece, with a clever conclusion.
