Posts in Linked

Apple’s Watch Face Problem→

Jason Snell today published the article I’ve been itching to write, outlining the current mess that is Apple’s watch face ecosystem. The Apple Watch in so many ways is in its best position ever, which makes the lack of coherence in Apple’s watch face strategy particularly surprising.

As Apple continues to create new watch faces at a regular clip, those faces have grown more and more fragmented in what they can do. The Siri face introduced last year was an interesting new direction for watch faces, yet it remains one of a kind in many ways. The Series 4 Watch’s Infograph faces come with a whole new set of complications, all of which are wonderful except that they don’t work on other faces, nor do older complications work on the new faces. This lack of compatibility is frustrating enough, but what may be even more vexing is that Apple itself hasn’t even provided new complications for all of its apps, only some of them – I’d love a Podcasts complication on my Infograph face, but it simply doesn’t exist.

Snell offers up a handful of suggestions for where Apple should focus its watch face efforts going forward, all of which earn my total agreement. He writes:

Every face needs to be modernized and support the new complication styles, at least on Series 4. Key system apps and features like Messages and cellular status should be available on all faces. Every face design should be more flexible.

And moving forward, Apple should allow developers even more power in building complications. Complications should be able to appear when they have something to say and disappear when they don’t—for example, I’d love for a Timer complication to appear when I’m running a timer, but the rest of the time I’d rather not see it. If complications truly are the best face of Apple Watch apps, the developers of those apps need more power to build good ones.

Every one of these ideas is entirely reasonable, and would go a long way toward fixing the current watch face mess. I know we just got watchOS 5, but I hope watch faces are a strong area of focus for Apple in next year’s watchOS 6.

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More Than 70 New Emoji Coming Later This Fall Are Now Available in the iOS 12.1 Beta→

Apple has announced that later this fall, it will release more than 70 new emoji. The emoji, which will be released when iOS 12.1 is shipped, will be included on the Mac and Apple Watch too.

The new glyphs, which are based on the characters approved by the Unicode Consortium as part of Unicode 11.0, include a wide variety of themes. For people, there are new options for gray, red, and curly hair, and for bald people. The new set of emoji also includes new foods, animals, sports, and other activities like travel.

Among the animals added are a raccoon, kangaroo, lobster, swan, parrot, peacock, and llama. Foods include leafy greens, a cupcake, a bagel, moon cake, mango, and salt. Sports have added a softball, frisbee, lacrosse stick and ball, and skateboard. There are new emotive smiley faces too.

Looking to next year, Apple says that for Unicode 12.0, which will be the basis for emoji released in 2019, it is working with the Unicode Consortium to add disability-themed emoji. Although the emoji announced today will be officially released until later this fall, you can try them now as part of the iOS 12.1 beta and public preview released today.

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Apple Adds More Than 30 Worldwide Companies to Business Chat→

Apple introduced Business Chat at WWDC in 2017 and launched it with iOS 11.3 this past March. Today, Apple confirmed to TechRadar that the feature, which began as a beta with a handful of US business partners, has been rolled out worldwide.

As we explained in our overview of iOS 11.3:

Business Chat is a way for businesses to communicate with their customers directly over iMessage. Apple’s goal with Business Chat is to elevate the customer service experience to take advantage of the best native features of iOS, such as iMessage’s inherent privacy and security, iMessage apps, Apple Pay, and integration with Maps, Safari, and Spotlight.

Initially supported by only a handful of US companies like Discover, Hilton, Lowe’s and Wells Fargo, the roster was expanded in July to include Dish, Aramak, Four Seasons, Harry & David, and American Express. With today’s launch, that list has been expanded significantly to include companies based in Europe and Asia, as well as additional companies in North America. According to TechRadar, the additions include more than 30 companies:

Europe

  • Matchesfashion (UK)
  • nPower (UK)
  • Robins & Day (UK)
  • buddybank (Italy)
  • Engie (France)
  • La Redoute (France)
  • AXA Insurance (Switzerland)
  • Swisscom (Switzerland)
  • Vodafone Germany
  • NH Hotels (Europe) 

North America

  • 1800 Contacts 
  • DirecTV Now
  • Fairmont Hotels including the Claremont Club & Spa in Berkeley
  • Kimpton Hotels
  • Freshly 
  • Macerich Malls  including Scottsdale Fashion Square and Santa Monica Place
  • Mall of America 
  • Men’s Wearhouse 
  • Jos A. Bank
  • Overstock.com
  • Quicken Loans 
  • SnapTravel (US, Canada)
  • West Elm
  • Hendrick Automotive Group
  • Four Seasons (Canada) is expanding to 88 properties around the globe, 100+ languages
  • Lithia Group

Worldwide

  • Burberry

Asia

  • Telstra (Australia)
  • Harvey Norman (Australia) 
  • KDDI (Japan)
  • Credit Suisse (Singapore and Hong Kong)

Much like Apple Pay, Business Chat is the sort of feature that isn’t likely to see significant user adoption until a large enough pool of businesses use it to reach most iPhone owners. Still, today’s broad rollout in multiple countries shows that the service is beginning to get traction. It will also be interesting to see how much longer Business Chat retains the ‘beta’ label.

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An In-Depth Explanation of Computational Photography on the iPhone XS→

Outside of Apple employees, one of the people most knowledgeable about the iPhone’s camera is Sebastiaan de With, designer of the manual camera app Halide. It is fitting, then, that Sebastiaan would publish what I believe is the best explanation of the iPhone XS camera system to date. Following up on a piece he wrote about the new camera’s hardware changes, the subject of today’s article is software – specifically, all the work of computational photography on the iPhone XS and XS Max.

The piece starts with an explanation of the iPhone’s new Smart HDR feature, then details the exact reasons why selfies on the new iPhones appear to employ skin smoothing (a theory he soundly debunks). Finally, Sebastiaan details the problem that the XS camera poses for RAW camera apps like Halide, and shares about the forthcoming solution Halide’s team came up with: something they call Smart RAW.

There are too many excellent, informative tidbits to quote here, so I highly recommend you check out the article in full. This year’s iPhones are so full of interesting changes to the way the camera works, most of which are undocumented by Apple – as Sebastiaan says, it is “a whole new camera” in many ways.

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iPhone XS Line Capturing Selfies with the Appearance of Skin Smoothing→

The iPhone XS and XS Max have been in the hands of users for a week now, and during that time many selfies have undoubtedly been taken on the new devices. Some users have noticed an unexpected difference with their selfies, however: their skin looks smoother and less realistic than it should. Juli Clover reports on this for MacRumors:

When taking a selfie in a situation where lighting is less than ideal, such as indoors or outdoors in areas with lower lighting, the iPhone XS Max appears to be applying a drastic smoothing effect that can hide freckles, blemishes, and other issues.

In full outdoor lighting the problem is less apparent, which has led to speculation that the skin smoothing is actually a result of some heavy-handed noise reduction techniques.

You can test the new camera yourself with an iPhone XS Max and an older iPhone like an iPhone X model by taking selfies indoors and outdoors and comparing the differences between the two. In almost all cases where the lighting is low or uneven, photos captured with an iPhone XS Max look dramatically different.

9to5Mac has a quote from one user, Abdul Dremali, who said, “Apple reached out to me yesterday and are working on this issue actively.” That isn’t necessarily confirmation that a skin smoothing effect is being applied, but it does indicate that something’s happening with the XS front-facing camera that wasn’t intended.

There’s often one controversy or another surrounding the launch of a new iPhone, such as antennas not working properly or iPhones bending under pressure. This issue doesn’t seem quite like those past problems, as it should be a quick fix in software if something’s not functioning correctly. In 2018 there’s a lot that happens in software every time a photo is taken on an iPhone; it wouldn’t surprise me if a small tweak arrives in iOS 12.0.1 that helps skin remain natural to the eye no matter the lighting conditions. One way or another, we should hear more from Apple before long.

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Connected, Episode 211: That’s Enough To Shrink Some Jeans→

The guys debate the Mac’s future being tied to the quality of Marzipan apps before sharing their impressions of the iPhone XS Max and the Apple Watch Series 4. Some advice on how to listen to the show correctly is also shared.

On this week’s episode of Connected, we talk about iPad apps on the Mac and share our thoughts on new iPhones and Watches after nearly a week of usage. You can listen here.

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Apple Rolls Out TestFlight Public Invite Links→

Benjamin Mayo, writing for 9to5Mac:

Apple is rolling out a new TestFlight feature which enables developers to share a public URL for an app beta. Customers can simply open the link on their iPhone or iPad and automatically enroll into the beta testing group through the TestFlight app.

This feature was announced back at WWDC in June but has only just started showing up for developers inside the App Store Connect interface. Previously to public links, developers had to manually ask people for email addresses and then send out invite in emails to each person individually.

As someone who’s routinely testing dozens of apps for review purposes, this sounds a lot more convenient than the current email-based invitation system, both for developers and users. By default, developers don’t see the names and emails of users who sign up with a link. I have a feeling this option is going to be frequently used for public betas with large pools of testers.

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Apple Completes Acquisition of Shazam→

Late last year, Apple announced that it had agreed to purchase Shazam, the music-discovery service. The acquisition was held up for a time by an investigation by the European Commission, which ultimately said the deal is not anti-competitive and could go forward. Today Apple announced that the deal had been completed.

In a press release, Apple said:

Shazam has been downloaded over 1 billion times around the world, and users identify songs using the Shazam app over 20 million times each day. With pioneering innovation in music identification, Shazam helps people discover, interact with and share video, audio or printed content across devices and mediums — and allows music fans to follow their favorite artists and share in the thrill of discovery.

Apple also announced that Shazam would soon be offered ad-free to all users.

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