On the last two episodes of Canvas, we’ve covered two major features of iOS 11 for iPad – drag and drop, and new multitasking. These are a good starting point to understand iOS 11’s essential improvements to the iPad and I feel like Fraser and I were able to explain our different ways of working on iOS. You can listen to the episodes here and here.
Posts in Linked
Canvas: iOS 11’s Drag and Drop & Multitasking→
ESPN for Apple TV Launches MultiCast Feature, Enabling Multiple Simultaneous Streams→
Todd Spangler has a story for Variety on an improvement to the ESPN Apple TV app that should make the most avid sports fans very happy.
A new version of the ESPN App for Apple TV’s tvOS, available Wednesday, includes a feature called MultiCast that provides the ability to view up to four simultaneous live streams at once. On any given day, ESPN users can choose from 30 or more live events airing across its networks.
From everything I’ve seen, the implementation of this feature appears well designed and well thought through. As seen at the top of the image above, MultiCast makes a number of different customization options available to users. You can watch anywhere from one to four different streams at once, and depending on the number you have playing, the screens are resized and optimized for the best viewing experience.
While I don’t see myself using MultiCast often, I know there are bigger sports fans than me who constantly flip between different games at certain times of year, such as during the upcoming college and professional football seasons.
Walmart’s Vudu Streaming Service Launching Apple TV App Soon→
Dani Deahl reports for The Verge:
Walmart has confirmed a native app for Vudu, its video streaming service, is set to become widely available on Apple TV beginning August 22nd.
Vudu is one of the major players in the video streaming space, so its arrival on Apple TV is welcome. What that arrival will look like, however, remains to be seen. The service offers a digital marketplace where users can buy or rent films, but it’s unlikely those options will exist on Apple TV due to Apple’s policy of taking a 30% cut of all In-App Purchases. More likely, the new app will simply serve as a way to play films that are already in your library.
The Internet Archive Brings Back HyperCard→
Today is the 30th anniversary of the introduction of HyperCard, a system for building interactive media. HyperCard featured database features, form-based layouts, and a programming language called HyperTalk, which made it a powerful and flexible tool that had a loyal following. To mark the occasion, the Internet Archive has built on its previous Macintosh emulation project to bring HyperCard back through emulation.
As Jason Scott describes it on the Internet Archive Blog:
HyperCard brought into one sharp package the ability for a Macintosh to do interactive documents with calculation, sound, music and graphics. It was a popular package, and thousands of HyperCard “stacks” were created using the software.
Additionally, commercial products with HyperCard at their heart came to great prominence, including the original Myst program.
The Internet Archive already has a collection of HyperCard stacks that you can try using its browser-based emulator, and if you have stacks you created, you can upload them to add to the collection. HyperCard played a big role in exposing a generation to programming and influenced the architecture of the web we use today, so it’s fantastic to have the opportunity to take it for a spin again.
IKEA Smart Lighting System Adds HomeKit Support→
MacRumors reports that IKEA has updated its Trådfri smart lighting system to support Apple’s HomeKit API. The product includes a gateway that requires an Ethernet network connection, remote controls, and LED lightbulbs that can be mixed and matched in different configurations at prices that are lower than many competing systems. Each gateway can control up to 10 lightbulbs with one of IKEA’s remotes or a free app available on the App Store.
In May, IKEA promised HomeKit support would be added to Trådfri later in the year. In a response to a customer inquiry on Facebook, IKEA confirmed that HomeKit support has been added to the latest version of the Trådfri gateway firmware. HomeKit support is also now listed on the Trådfri product page along with Amazon Echo and Google Home support. Existing Trådfri owners can take advantage of HomeKit support by upgrading their gateways to the latest firmware version.
According to MacRumors, Trådfri also works with Philips’ Hue system, though that support is not currently listed on IKEA’s product page.
Update: According to MacRumors, which has updated its post, IKEA has issued a clarification on its Swedish Facebook page that the Trådfri lighting system does not yet support HomeKit, the Amazon Echo, or Google Home.
There has been information going out today about the compatibility of TRÅDFRI. We can now inform you that TRÅDFRI is not yet compatible with Apple, Amazon and Google. The plan is that everything will work as we’d like this fall. We are very sorry for the confusion!
Steven Levy on Apple Putting Voices in Users’ Heads→
Last week we reported on a new cochlear implant that was designed to integrate in special ways with an iPhone. This week, Steven Levy has more details for WIRED on the work that went into bringing this product to fruition.
To solve the huge problem of streaming high-quality audio without quickly draining the tiny zinc batteries in hearing aids, Apple had previously developed a new technology called Bluetooth LEA, or Low Energy Audio. The company released that (but didn’t talk about it) when the first Made for iPhone hearing aids appeared in 2014…“We chose Bluetooth LE technology because that was the lowest power radio we had in our phones,” says Sriram Hariharan, an engineering manager on Apple’s CoreBluetooth team. To make LEA work with cochlear implants he says, “We spent a lot of time tuning our solution it to meet the requirements of the battery technology used in the hearing aids and cochlear implants.” Apple understood that, as with all wireless links, some data packets would be lost in transmission—so the team figured out how to compensate for that, and re-transmit them as needed. “All those things came together to figure out how to actually do this,” says Hariharan.
This story perfectly demonstrates how solving accessibility issues may require a lot of hard work and investment, but in the end it can produce results that are truly life-changing.
Embracing the Notch→
Max Rudberg played around with some ideas for a future iPhone with a notch in the status bar and a virtual Home button:
Apple’s accidental release of the HomePod firmware prompted Steven Throughthon-Smith’s to go digging through and uncovering a lot of exciting pieces on the upcoming high-end iPhone, codename D22. Allen Pike then had an interesting take on what that new form factor could mean for the UI.
Allen’s idea of how the UI will change on the new phone match many of my own thoughts. iOS 11’s large navbars seems like the biggest hint of upcoming change, and moving the left and right navbar items next to the home button allows for a much more convienient bottom oriented navigation. And everything just seems to fit.
I wanted to explore how this could look with a little more graphical polish, to try and figure out which way Apple would be most likely to go. I’ve used the same App Store Top Charts-screen as Allen did.
His mockups encapsulate why the next few weeks are going to be so fun – we think we know what the next iPhone is going to be like, but we also know nothing of its software. And an all-screen iPhone is, by definition, all about the flavor of iOS it runs.
I prefer the mockups that embrace the notch with a seamless transition of the title bar into a split status bar, but I could see a return to the old-school black status bar too. I haven’t felt this excitement around the new version of an iPhone from the design and developer community in years.
Google Earth Gets a Big iOS Update→
Google Earth got a big update on the web and Android earlier this year. Today, Google released the same features for the iOS version of the app.
The update features four major additions to Google Earth. ‘Voyager’ is designed to help you plan your next trip with over 140 stories organized by topic like ‘Museums Around the World,’ ‘Mexico City Street Food,’ and ‘Beautiful Hiking Destinations in Canada.’ When you pick a location, Google Earth offers ‘Knowledge Cards’ that you can pull up from the bottom of the map. Cards include galleries of photos for your chosen locale as well as basic facts and links to Knowledge Cards for points of interest and related searches. If you’re at a loss of where to go, tap the ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ icon in the toolbar and Google Earth will whisk you off to a random destination to explore.
Finally, ‘Postcards’ is a basic screenshot utility built into Google Earth. If you find a map angle you like, tap the camera icon to create a link and screenshot and share it with the iOS share sheet. Oddly though, you cannot share Postcards via Messages.
Google Earth is available on the App Store.
HomePod’s Firmware and the Next iPhone→
Brian Barrett, writing for Wired on the biggest iPhone scoop in months:
When developer Guilherme Rambo saw that Apple had released firmware for the upcoming HomePod speaker, he thought it must have been a mistake. The HomePod doesn’t come out until December, after all. Curiosity piqued, he started digging through the code, where he found perhaps the last thing he expected: Apple’s next iPhone.
While some details regarding Apple’s redesigned, high-end iPhone—called the iPhone 8 or iPhone Pro, though no one outside Cupertino knows the official name yet—had previously leaked, Rambo found in the HomePod not rumors or hints but Apple’s own documentation of one of its biggest releases in years. It confirms a new look with a slimmer bezel, the death of the home button, and a powerful new face-recognition feature. It’s the biggest bombshell Apple leak in years—and it came from Apple itself.
If it was an accident, this is a remarkable slip-up for Apple – not only was a glyph depicting an unreleased iPhone found in the HomePod firmware uploaded to Apple’s public servers – itself quite a curious story – but Rambo and the ever-proficient Steven Troughton-Smith are finding all kinds of references by digging into the software. From face unlock with support for facial expressions and an infra-red camera to major changes to the status bar (which is going to support a split mode) and the expected removal of the Home button, it sounds like the next iPhone is going to change the most basic iPhone interactions we know. We’re far from rumor territory at this point: we’re looking at references and APIs scattered throughout a firmware file uploaded on Apple’s servers.
Beyond changes to the core of iOS though, I’m interested to see how much iOS 11 was designed with this next iPhone in mind. The large title bars and new safe area inset APIs always seemed like obvious hints; I think Allen Pike is on the right track with his idea of title bar controls being docked at the bottom, next to the virtual Home button (which follows the theme of thumb-friendly navigation this year). But what about ARKit with the addition of a 3D-capable front-facing camera? And will a possible function area around the Home button be programmable by developers to add custom buttons and shortcuts, à la Touch Bar/iPad Shortcuts Bar?
As always, hardware leaks and rumors only tell one half of the future iPhone story, and to me that’s not even the most interesting part anymore. It’s all about the implementation of the hardware and software together, the constraints Apple faced, and the trade-offs they chose. This has never been more apparent than this year: we all seem to know what the next iPhone is going to look like, but nobody knows how iOS will work on it. The next Apple event is going to be a fun one.