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Posts in iOS

Chrome for iOS Gets ‘Physical Web’ Support for Beacon Discovery

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.

View Lyrics for Apple Music With the Musixmatch Widget on iOS

I wrote about the Musixmatch widget last year, noting how its integration with the iOS media player and Notification Center was “too good to pass up”:

Here’s how it works: start playing a song in Apple’s Music app, open Notification Center, and Musixmatch will show you synced lyrics that follow the song you’re listening to. If you’re used to the traditional Musixmatch experience (in the iOS app or one of their desktop integrations, such as Spotify), you’ll recognize the service’s display of lyrics and timeliness – only as a widget on iOS.

I was listening to some playlists on Apple Music today and, to my surprise, the widget is already compatible with any song streamed from the service without an update required. Simply install Musixmatch, put its widget in Notification Center, and play a song in the new Music app. Musixmatch will match the song with its large database of officially licensed song lyrics, and upon opening Notification Center you’ll have to wait a second for the lyrics to load and be displayed in real time alongside the currently playing song. No setup, no search or music ID required.

If you care about song lyrics like I do, this is a great user experience, especially because it works out of the box. I wonder if Apple will eventually add built-in lyrics to Apple Music, but, until that time, the Musixmatch widget is a handy addition to the service.

Migrating from Beats Music to Apple Music

Like many others today, I started the three-month free trial of Apple Music. I’m curious to check out Apple’s streaming service combined with curation, Beats 1, and Connect features, and I’ve been eagerly anticipating this product for quite some time. I’ve been listening to music via streaming services since I found a way to start using Spotify in 2009, so when a big player like Apple enters this market, I pay attention.1

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Instapaper Launches Notes, Bringing Annotations to Articles

I’m a voracious web reader. I spend most of my working days either writing or checking Twitter, NewsBlur, Nuzzel, Techmeme, and The Tech Block looking for interesting stuff I can link to or longer articles I want to read later. When I’m not writing or looking for stories, I spend my time reading and playing videogames. I read a lot. And Instapaper has always appealed to my reading taste with a thoughtful design, fair business model, and powerful features.

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Sunrise Launches on Apple Watch

Sunrise, the calendar app/platform acquired by Microsoft earlier this year, has always been about integrating your schedule with as many devices and services as possible. Pierre Valade and his team wanted to build a calendar app that could go beyond a traditional representation of calendar events, and this meant opening up Sunrise to third-party services like Todoist, Wunderlist (now also part of Microsoft), Songkick, and more. Sunrise’s willingness to integrate deeply with users’ workflows can even be seen in Meet, a custom keyboard that brings Sunrise’s scheduling features to any app.

Sunrise is launching on Apple Watch today, with another integration that rethinks a core aspect of the app for a new device. Sunrise for Apple Watch, which I’ve tested over the past month, puts the focus on viewing what’s coming up, with an elegant UI and a glance that make it easy to check and act on upcoming events.

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ETA Brings Travel Times and Traffic Status to Apple Watch

I first covered ETA back in September, and I noted how the app simplified the process of getting travel times for favorite locations by taking advantage of a widget in Notification Center:

ETA’s best feature is actually a way to never open the app itself. Taking a clue from Apple’s Today Summary in Notification Center, Eastwood created an iOS 8 widget that lets you see driving times in the Today view and tap them to quickly load directions in your mapping app of choice (Google Maps, Apple Maps, or Waze). Your preferences for walking/driving directions and time of arrival are carried over to the widget, which is simple, elegant, and useful.

Today, ETA 2.0 has been released with a new design, the ability to show multiple routes and traffic information, and an Apple Watch app that lets you quickly view travel times and traffic directly from your wrist.

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