Posts in Linked

New Emoji Announced for 2018→

Today the latest batch of emoji approved for addition to the Unicode standard was announced. Jeremy Burge at Emojipedia has the scoop:

The emoji list for 2018 has been published which adds 157 new emojis to the standard. This brings the total number of approved emojis to 2,823.

The latest emoji set includes (finally!) a redhead option, along with a superhero and super villain, kangaroo, llama, bagel, cupcake, and much more.

Emojipedia has created a video featuring designs of the newly approved emoji in a style resembling Apple’s emoji set. While we won’t get a glimpse at Apple’s own designs until later in the year, the video does a great job providing a preview of what we can expect.

In recent years it has become tradition for Apple to add the newest emoji to a point release of iOS, so if that pattern holds, we’ll get our hands on these newest emoji options with iOS 12.1 or 12.2 before the end of the year.

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What Is Apple’s Video Strategy?→

Pavan Rajam shares a broad look at Apple’s video-related efforts, evaluating the company’s current position and its potential for greater impact in the fast-shifting market.

Today, there is no meaningful exclusive video content on Apple platforms. Apple, thus far, has relied on its design and engineering prowess to differentiate its video offerings.

It’s clear this strategy isn’t working.

The iTunes Store is arguably the best transactional video storefront, but that alone is not enough to stop consumers from adopting subscription services. The TV app has a great UI and cross app integration, but that does not justify the $150 price to get it on your TV. Apple TV is the best designed, most capable streaming video box on the market, but that isn’t enough to justify its premium pricing when the same streaming services are available on every other platform with a significantly lower cost of entry.

Rajam’s overview makes clear the significant challenges Apple faces in this market. Though the company is making heavy investment in developing original content, it’s unknown what the plan for distributing that content will be: will it be widely available across all platforms, or exclusive to Apple hardware? Both approaches have clear benefits and drawbacks, so the question goes back to what the bigger goal is.

Apple ultimately has to decide what is more important: Apple TV as a premium hardware product line or a streaming video service that runs across all of its platforms.

I expect that by the end of this year, whether Apple’s video content is released by then or not, we will at least have the answer to that question.

Currently, a big reason video services like Netflix thrive is that they’re available to a huge number of customers – regardless of what TV, phone, or computer you own, you can get Netflix. It would be against industry practice for Apple to create a video streaming service that’s exclusive to its hardware. Hollywood likely wouldn’t appreciate that either, as creators want their work shared as widely as possible. For those reasons, I have a hard time seeing Apple launch a service that isn’t, at the very least, available to users on some other platforms.

If Apple did make its service available on select other platforms, such as Android and the web, it could still position Apple TV as the only way to watch its shows on the big screen. Non-Apple users would still have access to the service, but if Apple does its job and creates truly compelling new shows that people love, many of those users may then be willing to splurge for a premium set-top box. Asking anyone to pay $150 for access to a streaming service is a hard sell, but if you can first hook people on shows they love, they’ll eventually want to watch those shows in a way that’s most comfortable: on their TV.

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Slack Overhauls Emoji Support Across Platforms→

In other emoji-related news, Slack today announced that they’re going to support new emojis (including those from Emoji 5.0 released in 2017) across multiple platforms. If you use Slack on a regular basis, you know that the company has been notoriously slow over the past couple of years in adopting the latest emojis despite having launched features based entirely on them.

As noted by Jeremy Burge at Emojipedia, however, better emojis on Slack have brought a deeper change for Slack users on non-Apple platforms:

Users of iOS or macOS will see the least change to design in this release, as Slack previously defaulted to using Apple designs on all platforms.

Apple’s emoji designs remain the set displayed when accessing Slack on any Apple platform.

Those using on Windows, Android, or any non-Apple platform will see a consistent set between: but it’s not what you might expect. Google’s emoji designs are being used for all non-Apple platforms now as shown by this alert:

And:

While Apple’s emoji font is entirely owned and copyrighted by Apple, Google’s emoji font (named Noto Color Emoji) is provided with an open source license which allows other projects to use this within the terms set out in the SIL Open Font License. Given this, it’s possible that Slack believes it is on firmer ground to be using Noto Color Emoji rather than embedding Apple emoji images on competing platforms.

Jason Snell argues that this move will lead to a different emoji experience for Slack users who access the service from non-Apple platforms:

The result is emoji fragmentation, where different users of Slack will see different versions of the same general concept. Also, users like my friend Erika might prefer one set of emoji designs to another, but they no longer have a choice in the matter.

That’s the bad news. The good news, at least, is that Slack is rolling out support for new emojis, including gender splits and skin tones, that it previously didn’t.

I wonder if Apple’s apparent push toward locking their emoji designs to the iOS ecosystem may have played a role in Slack’s decision to implement an open-source emoji set instead (see also: WhatsApp). Still, I’m happy that I can share all modern emojis on Slack; I’ll have to rethink some of my typical emoji reactions now.

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Emoji Use in Apps Leading to App Store Rejections→

Over the last several weeks, a few different emoji-related App Review stories have been shared by developers on Twitter. Though it’s common practice to use emoji throughout an app’s interface, Apple has begun rejecting some apps for just this reason.

Emojipedia founder Jeremy Burge researched the issue and summarized what seems to be a shift in Apple’s handling of emoji use. In a piece titled “Apple’s Emoji Crackdown” he walks through his current understanding of what’s permissible regarding emoji use, and what isn’t – though with the caveat that none of this has been officially addressed by Apple yet. He concludes:

It would be a shame to see emojis banished from all apps due to potentially over-zealous app reviewers.

Using an emoji as a core part of an app’s UI, or in-game character seems to be a fairly clear overstepping of the mark, and now that Apple has begun enforcing this, I don’t expect that side of things to change.

It’s understandable there is much confusion about this right now, especially as the Apple Color Emoji font until now has been treated by many as a font like any other. If…thought about as “a set of images created and owned by Apple”, the terms for what seems reasonable do shift.

Despite the lack of word from Apple on an official policy change, the signs don’t look good. Apple owns the rights to its emoji designs, and there is currently no way for developers to license those designs, so we may begin seeing a lot less emoji use in apps soon.

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Sebastiaan de With Tackles RAW Photo Editing→

Editing RAW photo files can be intimidating for beginners. There are a seemingly endless number of adjustments that can be made, and it’s not always clear what each does. However, if you take the time to learn the tools and shoot RAW images on your iPhone or another camera, the results can be stunning.

Sebastiaan de With, the designer of Halide, an excellent RAW camera app for iPhone, has published the second in a series of articles about shooting and editing RAW photos. As de With explains at the outset of this second article in the series:

This guide will walk you through the basics of RAW editing and adjustment. Most of these pointers also apply to editing RAW files from other cameras, but some parts focus on iOS editing workflows and how to transfer your RAW files from your iPhone to your Mac or PC.

The remainder of the article is full of great tips and eye-opening examples of what can be done on a Mac or iOS to edit RAW photos. If you’re interested in photography on any platform, this is a must-read article. In an upcoming installment de With will cover advanced editing and editing with depth channels.

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Connected, Episode 178: The Tiny Heads Trend→

It’s January, so it’s time to spin up the iPhone rumor machine, but first Stephen and Federico consider what a “Snow Leopard” iOS release could look like. Lastly, one of them has switched to DuckDuckGo.

On this week’s episode of Connected, we talk about recent rumors of iOS 12 and I explain why I’ve been using DuckDuckGo as my search engine for the past couple of weeks. You can listen here.

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Questioning the Snow Leopard Moment→

If you’ve followed Apple for any length of time, you’ve no doubt encountered someone reminiscing about Mac OS X Snow Leopard or wondering whether the time was right for some products’ ’Snow Leopard’ moment. Snow Leopard, which was released in 2009, has become synonymous with a software release focused on stability and bug fixes instead of new features.

Michael Steeber at 9to5Mac takes an in-depth look at the legend behind Snow Leopard and questions whether it’s deserved. As Steeber notes, Snow Leopard was marketed as having no new features, but it was far from bug-free. Nonetheless, the release’s marketing message, a general perception that the quality of Apple’s software declined in subsequent years, and other factors, have led to Snow Leopard’s mythological status. As Steeber puts it:

…a kernel of truth persists underneath the mythology. Improvements to iOS and macOS, no matter how small, contribute to a better experience for everyone. Fixing bugs might not be as marketable as shiny new Animoji or a fresh design, but maintenance can only be deferred so long. If Apple can knock stability out of the park in 2018, maybe the legend of Snow Leopard can finally be put to rest.

I suspect Snow Leopard’s reputation, which has become conventional wisdom at this point, will persist regardless of what happens this year. Still, it’s instructive to see how we got to this point and worth noting for the next time a similar meme circulates.

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Full Breakdown of Audio That HomePod Can and Can’t Play→

We know the HomePod works great with Apple Music, but for those who aren’t Apple Music subscribers, what audio content can the HomePod still play for them – with Siri support, and without?

Serenity Caldwell has put together a comprehensive guide for iMore that answers that question in exacting detail, filling in the gaps left by Apple’s official marketing disclosures.

For iTunes Match subscribers, it’s good news.

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