With iOS 11 released, apps are starting to receive updates to be compatible with features like the new Files app. In this episode, Fraser and Federico dig into what’s possible for cloud storage.
Speaking of Files, this week’s episode of Canvas is all about iOS 11’s new file manager and what third-party developers can build with file providers. You can listen here.
Sponsored by:
Files on iOS 11 is taking shape, and some problems are emerging. Federico gets sad listening to the others talk about their watches, then slowly disappears as Stephen talks about macOS High Sierra.
On this week’s episode of Connected, we covered some of the issues with the Files app in iOS 11, then Myke and Stephen went over their impressions of the new Apple Watch and Apple TV. You can listen here.
Sponsored by:
Billboard spoke to executive Jimmy Iovine, creative director, Zane Lowe, and head of content, Larry Jackson, about the direction of the music industry and Apple’s roll in its future.
During the interview, Iovine revealed that Apple Music subscriptions have topped 30 million, which is up from the 27 million subscribers quoted during WWDC in June. That’s still materially behind the 60 million subscribers claimed by Spotify, which is planning to go public later this year.
Iovine’s reaction is that the state of streaming today is not enough, but he remains upbeat projecting his trademark enthusiasm in the interview:
“I believe we’re in the right place, we have the right people and the right attitude to not settle for what exists right now.” But ultimately? “Just because we’re adding millions of subscribers and the old catalog numbers are going up, that’s not the trick. That’s just not going to hold.”
The interview is light on specifics about what’s next for Apple Music and what it will take to move streaming forward, but it’s clear from Lowe’s response to how he thinks music streaming must change that the answer involves more than just the streaming music itself:
We need to put context and stories around music. The song itself is obviously the primary passion point – it’s a key that opens the door. But what’s inside the room that is going to make a fan a super fan? Music has become quicker, faster, and there’s more of it. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t create a story around something that is beautiful and that lives and breathes.
Apple Music’s moves into video production, advertising, and similar areas, which are discussed during the interview, may provide a hint of what’s on the horizon. The goal of drawing listeners into the stories behind their favorite artists and music to help grow the audience feels a lot like a reimagining of what was attempted without much success with Apple Music Connect.
There’s been quite a stir over the last week regarding an area of the Apple cloud ecosystem where syncing has remained unreliable for years. Brian Stucki wrote a detailed post on the matter, which John Gruber linked to with echoing sentiments. Today, however, Gruber followed up on his post with an exciting update:
Good news related to yesterday’s item regarding the fact that text replacement shortcuts have never synced reliably between Macs or iOS devices: an Apple spokesperson emailed me to say they checked with the team, and an update that moves text replacement syncing to CloudKit should be rolling out to iOS 11 and MacOS 10.13 High Sierra users in the “next month or so”.
I use text replacement every day across my iOS devices, and haven’t dealt with syncing issues myself, but it’s great to hear that this long-standing problem should soon be put to rest for everyone else. Recent history shows that once a cloud product moves to CloudKit, syncing issues disappear almost entirely – hopefully that will be the case here as well.
Apple today launched a newly revised privacy page on its website that aims to help customers understand the company’s views on the subject. Besides the landing page, there are four main sections: Our Approach to Privacy, Manage Your Privacy, Transparency Report, and Our Privacy Policy. I found Our Approach to Privacy the most interesting, as it walks through, in plain and easy-to-understand language, how privacy is deeply built into an extensive number of Apple apps and features, from Apple Pay and iMessage, to Analytics, Safari, Siri, Health, and more.
The most timely update to the site is the inclusion of a Face ID security white paper. This 6-page PDF goes into impressive detail on how Face ID works, with an emphasis on privacy and several interesting details to be gleaned. One of the feature tidbits is a comprehensive listing of when your passcode will be needed in place of Face ID. Passcode input will be required under the following circumstances:
• The device has just been turned on or restarted.
• The device hasn’t been unlocked for more than 48 hours.
• The passcode hasn’t been used to unlock the device in the last 156 hours (six and a half days) and Face ID has not unlocked the device in the last 4 hours.
• The device has received a remote lock command.
• After five unsuccessful attempts to match a face.
• After initiating power off/Emergency SOS by pressing and holding either volume button and the side button simultaneously for 2 seconds.
Other sections of the document confirm that any third-party app currently supporting Touch ID will automatically support Face ID without any user or developer changes. Also, Face ID can be used for all the same things as Touch ID, such as purchases from the App Store, iTunes Store, and more.
On this week’s episode of AppStories, we give an update on the iOS 11 review and anniversary activities at MacStories and Club MacStories then talk about some of our favorite new apps and updates that show off the new capabilities of iOS 11.
Sponsored by:
Following the completion of its summer camps this year, App Camp for Girls has launched a new app featuring work done by 2017 camp participants. This year’s app includes a set of 14 quizzes and choose your own adventure games. The app’s release notes describe how the app came to life:
In one week, [camp] participants brainstorm ideas, design icons and interface, build their quizzes in Xcode, and make their own swag. Each session culminates in a fun pitch session with a panel of investors and entrepreneurs, where the young developers get to show off their work.
If you’re interested in learning more about this organization, Federico and John hosted the co-founders of App Camp for Girls, Jean MacDonald and Grey Osten, on an episode of AppStories earlier this year.
At a $0.99 purchase price, the App Camp Compendium 2017 app is a small, but simple way to show support for the work App Camp for Girls is doing.
With watchOS 4 and the Series 3 Apple Watch, Apple has made several improvements to how the Watch handles music, untethering listeners from their iPhones. Apple Music subscribers can sync their My Favorites Mix, My Chill Mix, My New Music Mix and the Heavy Rotation section of Music to their watches, for example. In October, Apple will expand users’ options on the Watch by adding Apple Music streaming for subscribers. However, there’s a glaring omission in Apple’s iPhone-free audio strategy: podcasts.
There is no good way to listen to podcasts on an Apple Watch without bringing along an iPhone. As Marco Arment, the maker of Overcast, details on Marco.org,
The Apple Watch desperately needs standalone podcast playback, especially with the LTE-equipped Series 3, which was designed specifically for exercising without an iPhone.
Believe me, I’ve tried. But limitations in watchOS 4 make it impossible to deliver standalone podcast playback with the basic functionality and quality that people expect.
Arment’s article walks through each of several technical challenges in detail, the biggest being syncing progress between a Watch and an iPhone. The post outlines the minimum changes to the watchOS APIs that Arment believes are necessary to build a viable standalone podcast player for the Watch as well as detailing more ambitious changes to Apple’s APIs that would be nice to have.
During the watchOS 4 beta period, I began running without my iPhone. I enjoyed listening to the music synced overnight to my Watch, but it was a taste of untethered freedom that only made me want a standalone podcast player more. Audio playback and syncing undoubtedly pose battery life issues and other challenges, but with the advancements in the Series 3 hardware, I hope we see corresponding API changes that will allow Arment and others to build iPhone-free podcast players.
John Paczkowski of BuzzFeed conducted a fascinating interview with Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller and Johnnie Manzari of Apple’s Human Interface Team about the iPhone’s camera. Much of the discussion is focused on the new Portrait Lighting feature available in the 8 Plus and X. As Paczkowski explains,
The camera’s effects don’t rely on filters. They’re the result of Apple’s new dual camera system working in concert with machine learning to sense a scene, map it for depth, and then change lighting contours over the subject. It’s all done in real time, and you can even preview the results thanks to the company’s enormously powerful new A11 Bionic chip. The result, when applied to Apple scale, has the power to be transformative for modern photography, with millions of amateur shots suddenly professionalized.
Manzari described the extensive process that went into creating Portrait Lighting:
“We spent a lot of time shining light on people and moving them around — a lot of time,” Manzari says. “We had some engineers trying to understand the contours of a face and how we could apply lighting to them through software, and we had other silicon engineers just working to make the process super-fast. We really did a lot of work.”
BuzzFeed’s article is worth a close read because it’s about more than just the camera in Apple’s new and upcoming iPhones. The behind-the-scenes peek at the development process of the many functions that the iPhone’s camera serves is the best example of one of Apple’s biggest competitive advantages: the fusion of hardware and software.
