Posts in Linked

Controversy Surrounds Proposed Frowning Pile of Poo Emoji→

There’s a debate raging in the halls of the Unicode Consortium, and the fate of creative expression hangs in the balance. Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an overstatement, but the same could be said of some of the concerns raised in the dispute over the ‘Frowning Pile of Poo’ emoji. The unhappy pile, depicted above in an Emojipedia mockup, is under consideration for inclusion in the emoji lexicon alongside the happier version next fall, which has some Consortium members steaming mad.

BuzzFeed News published a story about the controversy today. Two typographers, Michael Everson and Andrew West, are leading the lobbying efforts against the frowning poo. Author Charlie Warzel reporting on a memo that Everson sent to the Consortium:

“Organic waste isn’t cute,” Everson wrote, aghast that the technical committee would even deign to consider additional excremoji. “It is bad enough that the Emoji Subcommittee came up with it, but it beggars belief that the Unicode Technical Committee actually approved it,” he wrote. Everson continued:

“The idea that our 5 committees would sanction further cute graphic characters based on this should embarrass absolutely everyone who votes yes on such an excrescence. Will we have a CRYING PILE OF POO next? PILE OF POO WITH TONGUE STICKING OUT? PILE OF POO WITH QUESTION MARKS FOR EYES? PILE OF POO WITH KARAOKE MIC? Will we have to encode a neutral FACELESS PILE OF POO?”

West penned a note to the Consortium voicing similar concerns.

It’s not clear yet what will become of ‘Frowning Pile of Poo.’ Final decisions on next year’s new emoji are still months away. One thing’s for sure though, form a committee, and literally, anything can become a drama.

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Unread 1.8 Gets iPhone X and iPad Split View Support, Readability Improvements→

I’ve been a fan of Unread, the elegant RSS reader for iOS, since it came out in early 2014. I stopped using it when I moved to Inoreader as my RSS service (and also because Unread wasn’t receiving major updates anymore), but Golden Hill Software recently acquired the app, and development pace has picked up again.

With today’s version 1.8, Unread is finally gaining support for Split View and Slide Over on the iPad, allowing you to read articles next to your favorite note-taking app or Twitter client. In addition to these iPad multitasking improvements, Unread is now compatible with the iPhone X, and its readability mode should be more accurate as it’s now based on Mozilla’s fork of the popular third-party tool.

I still would like to see Inoreader integration and support for the Taptic Engine as well as drag and drop in Unread. I would love the ability to pick up an article from the main list and drop its URL in another iPad app. For now though, this is another much needed update that modernizes the app’s codebase and puts it on the same base level of other iOS 11 RSS clients. Unread 1.8 is available on the App Store.

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Connected, Episode 166: The Warm Water of Bribery→

iPhone X pre-orders are in, and reviews are out. There’s drama surrounding both.

On this week’s episode of Connected, I also explain why I recently bought an Nvidia Shield and we discuss how our iPhone X preorder plans worked out. You can listen here.

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iPhone X, Face ID, and Hidden Notification Content→

An interesting tidbit from Steven Levy’s first impressions of the iPhone X: by default, the content of notifications on the Lock screen is hidden, and it’s only displayed once you look at the iPhone and thus authenticate yourself.

Alternatively, a good way to see when you’ve been recognized is to notice the generic messages on the lock screen saying “you have a notification” from Facebook, Gmail, or wherever. When you and your iPhone X make that turn-on connection, those flesh out with the actual content of the message. (This feature—withholding potentially private alerts until the phone was unlocked—had previously been available as an option but now is the default.)

What I find intriguing is the fact that – if I’m reading this right – the feature has been turned on by default for the iPhone X, as if to underline the role of Face ID. This option, in fact, isn’t new: on any existing device running iOS 11, you can go to Settings ⇾ Notifications ⇾ Show Previews and enable When Unlocked to achieve the same effect. On the Lock screen, the content of notifications (titles, preview messages, and media attachments) won’t be shown until you place your finger on the Touch ID sensor.

It seems like Apple sees Face ID as not only technically superior to Touch ID (more secure, powered by machine learning), but also as a better user experience for dealing with notifications – otherwise, why would they make it the default setting? I’m curious to play with this and see if I revert to the old option or not.

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Motherboard Reviews Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp→

Most of the world has to wait until late November for Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp to arrive on iOS, but if you live in Australia or New Zealand, you can play the game now. Jed Whitaker has an early review at Motherboard where he provides additional details about the game’s free-to-play mechanic and stacks it up against Animal Crossing: New Leaf, a 3DS game on which Pocket Camp is based.

According to Whitaker:

One major change to the Animal Crossing formula here is that almost all items must be crafted instead of simply purchased, and the time it takes to craft something passes in real time. The game starts out by having every item only take one minute to craft, but three hours in, wait times get much longer, and you can pay real world money to purchase the premium currency, Leaf Tickets. These can be used to craft items instantly and to basically speed up every facet of the game.

Wait times in Pocket Camp are three hours. By comparison, New Leaf wait times are three days, which Whitaker points out should make Pocket Camp more tolerable to fans of the franchise. Still, if you simply must have an item right away and can’t wait a few hours, you can buy Leaf Tickets as an In-App Purchase.

Fans of the Animal Crossing series may also need to lower their expectations a little. At launch, there are only 40 animals to befriend in Pocket Camp, a small number compared to the over 300 available in New Leaf. Still, even if it’s not as deep as other incarnations of the series, Pocket Camp looks as though it strikes a good balance that should make the free-to-play aspects of it tolerable.

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Apple Opens iPhone X App Submissions to Developers→

Apple has notified third-party iOS developers via its News and Updates website that they can download Xcode 9.0.1 and submit iPhone X apps for review in advance of the new iPhone’s release on November 3, 2017.

Download Xcode 9.0.1, test your apps in the iPhone X simulator, and capture screenshots. Then submit your updated apps and metadata in iTunes Connect today.

Earlier in the day, Apple told Reuters that customer demand for the iPhone X has been ‘off the charts’ since pre-orders began at 12:01 AM Pacific on October 27th.

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Apple Pay’s Expansion and Apple Pay Cash→

At the Money 20/20 conference earlier this week, Jennifer Bailey, Apple’s VP of Apple Pay, revealed some new stats about the service and announced an expansion to four new major markets. Ingrid Lunden has the full story at TechCrunch, but this part about Apple Pay Cash (the peer-to-peer payment feature announced at WWDC that hasn’t launched yet) stood out to me:

When Apple Pay Cash is turned on, for example, it will operate like Venmo, allowing users to transfer money quickly to each other via iMessage, Siri and other channels — a service that “thousands” of Apple employees are now already using in a closed beta before the service is turned on more widely later this year in an iOS 11 update.

But in addition to that, users will also be able to take that money and spend it directly at retailers and others that accept Apple Pay.

So you’ll not only be able to send money to other people over iMessage, but Apple Pay Cash will effectively be its own card that can be used at any physical store or website that supports Apple Pay (like our own Club). I’m intrigued.

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