Posts in Linked

App Review Downtime Announced→

Each year around the Christmas holiday, Apple’s App Review team takes a break from reviewing the thousands of apps that pour into the App Store on a typical day. During the break, new apps and app updates are not accepted. This year is no different. According to Apple’s Developer news site:

The busiest season on the App Store is almost here. Make sure your apps are up-to-date and ready for the winter holidays. New apps and app updates will not be accepted December 23 to 27 (Pacific Time), so any releases should be submitted, approved, and scheduled in advance. Other iTunes Connect and developer account features will remain available.

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Google Introduces Featured Photos Screensaver for macOS→

Popular Google+ photos have been available via Google’s Wallpapers app on Android and on Google Fiber and Chromecast devices, but today, Google is bringing them to macOS too. Google’s Featured Photos Screensaver rotates through a selection of high-resolution photographs that have been publicly shared on Google+ and don’t include people in them. Each photo also includes information about the photographer that took the shot and links to more of their work. If you’re a photographer and want your photos to be considered for inclusion in the app, you can learn more here.

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Panic Discontinuing Status Board→

Panic announced that it is discontinuing its Status Board app and remove it from the App Store within the next couple of weeks. Status Board was inspired by the custom webpage pictured above that Panic developed and displayed on a large display in its offices to track company statistics. Panic brought its status board to iOS in 2013 with pre-made modules and the ability to create custom widgets and display the whole thing on an iPad or TV.

Panic decided to discontinue Status Board for a few reasons:

First, we had hoped to find a sweet spot between consumer and pro users, but the market for Status Board turned out to be almost entirely pro, which limits potential sales on iOS — as we’ve learned the hard way over the past couple of years, there’s not a lot of overlap right now between “pro” and “iOS”. Second, pro users are more likely to want a larger number of integrations with new services and data sources, something that’s hard to provide with limited revenue, which left the app “close but not quite” for many users. Finally, in the pro/corporate universe, we were simply on the wrong end of the overall “want a status board” budget: companies would buy a $3,000 display for our $10 app.

I’m sad to see Status Board go. One of the first programming projects I ever created was a custom Status Board widget. I’ve used the app on and off over the years and just last weekend I was thinking I should revisit it and make myself a board for my current projects. I may still do that because despite the fact that Status Board will no longer be supported, it will remain available to anyone who previously purchased it and will continue to work until something in iOS changes that breaks it.

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Mac App Store Results Polluted with Questionable Results→

Justin Pot, writing for How-To Geek, walks through some damning examples of apps on the Mac App Store that seem designed to create the false impression that they’re apps like Microsoft Excel:

Seemingly official applications of dubious value are way to easy to accidentally find by searching. It’s understandable that Apple wants the App Store to appear full, but leaving things seemingly designed to deceive people is hardly an answer.

This is an issue I raised in June in the context of the problem of app discovery where I cited similar tests run by Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac on the iOS App Store. My point was that developers suffer from ineffective search results polluted with irrelevant and questionable results. But as Pot demonstrates from the reviews of the apps he uses as examples, Apple’s customers also suffer when they purchase an app thinking it’s something that it’s not.

Apple has made some progress in cleaning up search results in the iOS App Store. However, in an all too familiar trend, Pot shows that the Mac App Store lags behind its sibling store and needs attention.

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The New MacBook Pro Is Kind of Great for Hackers→

Adam Geitgey:

A million hot takes have been posted about how the late-2016 MacBook Pro with USB-C is the undeniable proof that Apple doesn’t care about developers anymore. They took away all the ports! No Esc key! It’s just a more expensive MacBook Air!

But in some ways, the new MacBook Pro is the most techy and expandable laptop Apple has ever made. They are trusting their pro users to wade into murky USB-C waters in search of the holy grail of a universal, open standard for moving data and power between devices.

I’m not here to change your mind about the MacBook Pro. Yes, it’s probably too expensive and more RAM is better than less RAM. But everyone posting complaints without actually using a MBP for a few weeks is missing out on all the clever things you can do because it is built on USB-C. Over the past week or two with a new MacBook Pro (15in, 2.9ghz, TouchBar), I’ve been constantly surprised with how USB-C makes new things possible. It’s a kind of a hacker’s dream.

His examples make me wish the iPad Pro had a USB-C port to plug anything into it without having to buy adapters.

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iOS 10 and Default Apps→

Kirk McElhearn, writing for Macworld, returns to the issue of iOS not having the ability to set different default apps:

We’re at iOS 10, and Apple still hasn’t allowed users to make these choices. It seems ridiculous that, with a mature operating system, we’re still locked into Apple’s default apps. It’s not rocket science to make these changes; after all, there are protocols that funnel requests to specific handlers, the same way they do on the Mac. Let us choose the apps we want to use: It’s time to let iOS users have the same freedom of choice as Mac users.

I’ve argued in favor of third-party default apps many times in the past (see ‘Personalization’ here). Clearly, this isn’t a technical problem per se; I think Apple is more concerned about the strategic and security implications of default apps.

Opening up system default apps to any third-party app could result in users choosing alternatives for Apple Music, Maps, and Photos/Camera (among others). These apps are key to Apple’s ecosystem of services and iPhone experience as a whole. They are essential differentiators, unlike, say, TextEdit or Calendar. The comparison between default apps on macOS and iOS only goes so far – I believe Apple sees certain iPhone apps as more important than their Mac counterparts and critical to controlling the iOS ecosystem.

Should Apple allow a third-party to replace the Health app? What about iMessage (a new platform inside iOS) or FaceTime? Bringing user-configurable default apps to iOS isn’t as easy as flipping a switch – there are ramifications that go beyond opening .txt files in an alternative text editor on macOS.

I think there should be the option to set different defaults for some iOS apps, and I think we will get such feature, albeit in a limited fashion. Look at SiriKit and the rollout of a few domains in iOS 10.0; that’s a good indicator of how Apple tends to tackle these problems. Different default apps would be welcome for iPad productivity (especially the web browser and email client), but I’d be surprised if Apple rolled out extensive support to change just about any default system app on iOS.

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Canvas, Episode 24: Workflow – Third-Party Apps→

This week Fraser and Federico continue the Workflow series by looking at integrating Workflow with third-party apps.

In the latest episode of Canvas, our Workflow series continues with an in-depth look at third-party app integrations and several examples of our own workflows.

If you haven’t listened to the previous episodes of the series yet, you’ll want to go back and start from there.

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Improving Integration with Apple Music for iOS Apps→

Allen Pike has a good summary of how limited the media player framework is on iOS, especially for developers who want to create apps that integrate with Apple Music:

In the meantime, these limitations mean that any music app that attempts to play Apple Music tracks will be seriously limited, require odd workarounds, and behave problematically depending on user behaviour. In the spirit of giving users a quality experience, we’re stuck with the same limitation that other sophisticated audio apps have today: no Apple Music.

The explanation is a bit technical in places, but I think we can all relate to some limitations he details: apps can’t modify Music playlists on the user’s behalf, queue management is severely limited, and fading a song out is a private API.

There could be an entire ecosystem of music utilities and alternative players based on the streaming service – think how professional DJ apps, tagging services like Shazam and SoundHound, or music discovery apps could take advantage of a direct integration with Apple Music. I hope Apple will consider some of these suggestions for next year.

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