This week, the Connected gang talk about the iOS 9 beta, new iPods and what the future may hold for the iPad.
On this week’s Connected, we elaborated on Apple blocking App Store reviews on the iOS 9 beta and Stephen’s usage of iPods in 2015. You can listen here.
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YouTube has added support for full-screen playback of vertical videos in their latest iOS app update. The new version follows a mobile web redesign and new Android features that will soon come to iOS as well.
While I understand that many people are deeply against vertical videos, the reality is that vertical video makes sense for some cases in the age of smartphones. The ergonomics of big phones make it easier to start shooting in portrait mode without having to rotate the device and wait for the interface to adjust. On the iPhone, for instance, there’s no landscape Lock screen, and a camera shortcut is right there in the portrait Lock screen. Vertical video is ideal for framing people or faces with the front-facing camera – just see how people are watching videos in Snapchat, and you’ll get the idea.
On iOS, FaceTime, selfies, and the majority of the iPhone UI are mostly portrait experiences, and that has changed how people approach media content created on mobile.
TVs and computer monitors are horizontally oriented and horizontal video is how movies and other videos are best experienced – I get that. But, like it or not, we live in an era where a lot of video content is also created by people with phones oriented vertically because it’s faster, easier, or simply better to record that way in some scenarios.
For this reason, I welcome YouTube adding support for full-screen vertical video playback on their platform.
Benjamin Mayo, writing for 9to5Mac:
Apple is today launching its Back to School promotion for 2015. This year, it will give away a free pair of Beats Solo2 headphones with the purchase of an eligible Mac. Customers must either purchase an iMac, MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, or Mac Pro with education pricing to qualify, including build-to-order configurations. The Mac mini does not participate in the deal.
Somewhat curious that Apple isn’t including iPad purchases in this year’s promotion (they have in previous years). An iPad is, in theory, a great device for students and education purposes. However, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more of a push next year after new iPads and iOS 9, and the cheapest Mac starts at $899, not $299 like an iPad mini 2. Beats headphones are a pretty good deal.
Chrome for iOS has been updated today with support for Physical Web, an initiative aimed at interacting with beacons based on the new Eddystone protocol through webpages instead of apps. Now, Chrome’s Today widget on iOS (previously used to open tabs and voice searches) can scan beacons broadcasting URLs nearby and offer to open them in Chrome directly.
From the blog post:
When users who have enabled the Physical Web open the Today view, the Chrome widget scans for broadcasted URLs and displays these results, using estimated proximity of the beacons to rank the content. You can learn more about the types of user experiences that the Physical Web enables by visiting our cookbook and joining the open source community on GitHub.
This is Google’s attempt at improving upon one of the biggest shortcomings of Apple’s iBeacon: app discoverability. iBeacons can achieve great utility if an associated/compatible app is already installed on a user’s device and sends a notification, but iOS doesn’t have a simple, consistent way to browse nearby beacons and start interacting with them right away. With Eddystone and Physical Web, Google is hoping that the transition from OS to discovered beacon and beacon functionality (for the smart device) can be smoother thanks to the web. Here’s how they explain it:
The Physical Web is an approach to unleash the core superpower of the web: interaction on demand. People should be able to walk up to any smart device - a vending machine, a poster, a toy, a bus stop, a rental car - and not have to download an app first. Everything should be just a tap away.
Essentially, Google wants to give every smart device a web address that doesn’t require an app store. This plays in favor of Google’s strengths and, potentially, core business model, but it also sounds like a superior solution for some cases if the overhead of app discovery is out of the equation altogether (for more on the differences between iBeacon and Physical Web, see this). The Physical Web implementation in Chrome for iOS looks clever and well done, and I’m hoping that I’ll get to play with it at some point. Seems crazy that all this is available in an iOS widget.
When I used to work from a Mac every day, Keyboard Maestro was one of my most used apps. Nowadays, my automation needs are satisfied by a combination of Workflow, Editorial, and Pythonista on iOS, but I still have a deep appreciation for the power and versatility of Keyboard Maestro on OS X.
Keyboard Maestro 7.0 has been released today with over 100 new features and improvements. My friend Gabe has a good first look at the new version and the Keyboard Maestro website explains in detail the new options for contextual menus for actions, new triggers, themed palette styles (nice), and more.
If you need to automate tasks on a Mac, you can’t go wrong with Keyboard Maestro. You can download the new version and check out the upgrade options here.
Former Apple designer Linda Dong has a fascinating post on how iAd Producer can also be used to prototype iOS apps:
iAd Producer is a favorite of mine (I actually worked on its design for awhile at Apple) it’s a little-known but extremely powerful tool from Apple. Think of it as “advanced Keynote”, or “actually accessible Interface Builder”. Alas the app is meant for not-so-popular content like iAds and iBooks widgets, but it can easily be repurposed to prototype iOS and Mac apps. It handles UI elements, screen flow, and animation really well. Better yet, an iAd project is based in HTML5, CSS3, and javascript which a lot of designers are already familiar with.
Interesting use case for an app that’s advertised as an iAd content creation tool.
From Jason Snell’s transcript of Tim Cook during the company’s Q3 2015 earnings call:
I am still bullish on iPad, with iOS 9 there’s some incredible productivity enhancements coming in with Split View and Slide Over and Picture in Picture, these things are incredible features. The enterprise business is picking up and more and more companies are either contracting for or writing apps themselves.
And I believe that the iPad consumer upgrade cycle will eventually occur, because as we look at the usage statistics on iPad, it remains unbelievably great. I mean, the next closest usage of the next competitor, we’re six times greater. And so these are extraordinary numbers. It’s not like people have forgotten iPad or anything, it’s a fantastic product.
I’ve said it right after the first beta of iOS 9 and I can only reiterate this after four betas and now that I’m playing with some iPad apps with new features: iOS 9 is a game changer on the iPad. There are several touches on iOS 9 for iPad that feel like Apple is truly optimizing for this device now. It’ll be interesting to see the effect of new iPad software and hardware on sales next year.
Apple has published their Q3 2015 financial results for the quarter that spanned from April to June 2015. The company posted revenue of $49.6 billion. The company sold 10.9 million iPads, 47.5 million iPhones, and 4.8 million Macs, earning a quarterly net profit of $10.7 billion.
“We had an amazing quarter, with iPhone revenue up 59 percent over last year, strong sales of Mac, all-time record revenue from services, driven by the App Store, and a great start for Apple Watch,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “The excitement for Apple Music has been incredible, and we’re looking forward to releasing iOS 9, OS X El Capitan and watchOS 2 to customers in the fall.”
The free version of popular puzzle game Threes has doubled its developers’ profits, as reported by Eurogamer and as Threes developer Asher Vollmer shared in a series of tweets (full collection here).
We released a free version of @ThreesGame one month ago and here’s how it’s doing: It has doubled our daily income. Thanks for playing :)
— Asher Vollmer (@AsherVo) July 20, 2015
It was not a very glamorous game release, but it was a good business decision. Excited to make bigger games now!
— Asher Vollmer (@AsherVo) July 20, 2015
Graphs (with matching y-axises)! On the left: paid profits On the right: ad profits pic.twitter.com/hLv1n1vCo8
— Asher Vollmer (@AsherVo) July 20, 2015
.@NimbleDave a bunch! pic.twitter.com/Q8okZPIG1b
— Asher Vollmer (@AsherVo) July 20, 2015
@danielben Roughly the same actually! So our total profits doubled.
— Asher Vollmer (@AsherVo) July 20, 2015
It’s interesting to look at the stats for the platform split of iOS vs. Android. The majority of free users also comes from iOS.
Making a free version of a paid game with ads may not be the most elegant decision, but it’s a practical one when you want to attract an audience that doesn’t have disposable income to spend on games.
