With Myke pondering life in the woods, Stephen and Federico talk about Clips and what the Mac and iPad can learn from each other before quizzing each other on their preferred platforms in a battle for eternal nerd glory.
A fun episode of Connected this week, with a special final segment. You can listen here.
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Starbucks launched a new iMessage app recently, and yesterday they announced a nice incentive for users to give it a try:
Now you can send Starbucks Gifts with iMessage with Apple Pay. Be one of the first to send a $5 or more Starbucks Gift via iMessage and receive a $5 Starbucks Gift for yourself - while supplies last.
The promotion ends on April 23rd, or after 45,000 people have taken advantage of it – whichever comes first.
The process of sending a gift card through iMessage is extremely simple. Assuming you already have Apple Pay setup on your device, you just select the style of gift card – options include things like ‘Congrats,’ ‘Thanks So Much,’ and ‘Happy Birthday’ – select a quantity of $5, $10, or $25, then hit ‘Buy’ and authorize Apple Pay. The whole process takes mere seconds.
While the idea of sending gifts through iMessage had never occurred to me before, Starbucks has convinced me that it can be a great experience.
Kurt Schlosser, writing for GeekWire:
The Living Computers: Museum + Labs in Seattle is home to some of the most noteworthy machines ever created. But a new exhibit opening this week will showcase what one official at the Paul Allen-founded institution called “the most important computer in history.”
Lāth Carlson, executive director of Living Computers, added to that designation by saying the metal box with a keyboard is “also the most boring to look at.” But for fans of computing and Apple in particular, the Apple I that once sat in founder Steve Jobs’ office is exciting for a whole host of reasons.
The piece states that only about seven Apple I computers remain operable today, and Living Computers’ model is one of those seven. Carlson shares, “We’re going to be running Steve Wozniak’s version of BASIC that he wrote on it.”
If you’re in the Seattle area, it sounds like a great exhibit to check out.
Microsoft unveil specs of their upcoming Project Scorpio, and Shahid explains what makes a developer ‘First Party’.
On this week’s Remaster, Shahid helps us understand the differences between first-party and second-party game studios. You can listen here.
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Great take by Sebastiaan de With on why Apple needs to cater to the pro community and care about the Mac Pro again:
The same kind of huge leaps are happening in gaming and game development; a powerful modern GPU is a requirement for working on and using VR and AR, one area Apple is said to be working on. Demand and interest in 3D work, for design, game and software development, and video is bigger than ever and growing exponentially.
Without a truly top-tier workstation, Apple will miss out on a huge segment of digital creatives that can craft the future of human-machine interaction — something way beyond tapping a piece of glass. It would lack a Mac workstation with the raw computing power to prototype VR and AR interactions, build game worlds, simulate complex models and render the effects of tomorrow’s great feature films all the while offering those same creatives a platform to create for its own mobile devices.
The Mac Pro user base may be a single-digit percentage of all Macs sold, but it’s a group of users with an important indirect effect on the Apple ecosystem. Very often, they are the same users who make the movies, videogames, TV shows, music, and apps we put on our devices every day. They are few people who create highly influential content millions of others use, enjoy, and rely upon. And Apple has realized they don’t want to let that community go.
Twitter today disclosed future plans for its API platform and published a public roadmap where developers can track the company’s progress.
One of the most significant changes announced is that later this year the company will be unifying its API platform, combining the strengths of its Gnip APIs with its more affordable REST and streaming APIs. This will simplify the platform and provide more powerful APIs at, in theory, lower costs to developers with smaller-scale needs – though pricing plans have not been announced at this point.
The announcement post contains many details on the API platform’s future, but a few specific things are highlighted which launch today or in the short-term future:
- Today, we launched the Account Activity API, which provides access to real-time events for accounts you own or manage, with delivery via webhooks.
- Today, we also launched a set of new Direct Message API endpoints that will enable developers to build on the new Direct Message features we recently announced.
- Later this year, we’ll launch a new set of tools that enable developers to sign up, access, and manage APIs within a self-managed account. This will including the ability to get deeper access and more features, all with a transparent pricing model.
- We’ll also be shipping a new Search API that provides free access to a 7-day lookback window with more sophisticated query capabilities and higher fidelity data retrieval than is currently available. We’ll also provide a seamless upgrade path to full-fidelity 30-day or full archive lookback windows.
Twitter’s openness regarding its plans should be an encouragement to anyone who depends on third-party Twitter clients like Tweetbot or Twitterrific. The Direct Message API, for example, will now support media attachments like the official Twitter app.
Although it may be some time before we see today’s announcements bring specific benefits to third-party apps, Twitter has had a rocky relationship with developers in the past, and today’s announcement is a sign of commitment to its API platform and developers.
From Cabel Sasser’s latest Panic report (as always, a great read):
If you remember, 2016 was the year we killed Status Board, our very nice data visualization app. Now, a lot of it was our fault. But it was another blow to our heavy investment in pro-level iOS apps a couple years ago, a decision we’re still feeling the ramifications of today as we revert back to a deep focus on macOS. Trying to do macOS quality work on iOS cost us a lot of time for sadly not much payoff. We love iOS, we love our iPhones, and we love our iPads. But we remain convinced that it’s not — yet? — possible to make a living selling pro software on those platforms. Which is a real bummer!
Giving more tools to companies like Panic to make professional, powerful software for iOS is one of the challenges Apple faces along with making the OS itself more capable. There should be more iOS-first and iOS-only Panics and Omni Groups around.
See also: last year’s episode of Remaster on Firewatch (which you should go play right now if you haven’t).
Apple comes clean on what’s going on with the Mac Pro, but Federico still isn’t buying one. Myke gets excited about new Samsung phones and Stephen feels old when thinking about Twitter.
A good episode of Connected this week. We talk about the implications of Apple’s Mac Pro news and our relationship with Twitter. You can listen here.
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Music Business Worldwide reports on a new, multi-year deal Spotify has struck with Universal Music Group. One change tied to the deal is that some new albums from Universal will be exclusive to Premium subscribers for a two-week window. Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek shares:
“We know that not every album by every artist should be released the same way, and we’ve worked hard with UMG to develop a new, flexible release policy. Starting today, Universal artists can choose to release new albums on premium only for two weeks, offering subscribers an earlier chance to explore the complete creative work, while the singles are available across Spotify for all our listeners to enjoy.”
Another change brought by the new deal is highlighted at the end of the article. Quoting a Spotify press release:
‘The new agreement will also provide UMG with unprecedented access to data, creating the foundation for new tools for artists and labels to expand, engage and build deeper connections with their fans.’
Although this information is spun by Spotify as a positive, it may be concerning to any more privacy-conscious users.
