Posts in Linked

The iMessage App Store and Paid Stickers→

Ortwin Gentz, one of the developers behind Where To, has noticed that the majority of iMessage apps and sticker packs in the top charts seem to be paid ones. He collected some numbers from the iMessage App Store and concluded:

The distribution of business models is even more interesting. In contrast to the iOS App Store where freemium titles dominate the top-grossing charts, the overwhelming revenue in the iMessage App Store comes from paid titles. This reminds me of the early days of the App Store where In App Purchase wasn’t even available.

Probably the #1 reason for this is the lack of IAP in no-code sticker packs. These sticker packs consist only of the actual artwork and are easy to create for designers who don’t want to code.

Currently, basic sticker packs – the ones that only require dropping a bunch of image files into Xcode – can’t offer In-App Purchases. As soon as Apple offers an integrated solution to bring In-App Purchases to iMessage sticker packs without writing code, I have no doubt we’ll see the iMessage App Store follow the “Free with In-App Purchases” model of the iOS App Store.

Unless Apple is deliberately pushing artists towards paid packs because they do not want to repeat what happened with the App Store? The perception of sticker packs right now reminds me of the early days of the App Store – that good work is worth paying for.

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Copied 2.0→

There’s a great update to Copied, my favorite clipboard manager for iOS, released on the App Store today.

I’ve been using Copied since version 1.0 and it’s a good example of an iCloud-based app that has always worked reliably (same with Ulysses). I use Copied to store bits of text and images and keep them synced across devices. Just this past week, I stored several shortcode templates in Copied for the special formatting of my iOS 10 review. I love the app.

I haven’t had time to properly test the new version yet, but based on a few minutes of playing around with it, I think it has some terrific enhancements. The widget has been redesigned for iOS 10 and it can show more clippings at once. You can now create text formatters (with templates or JavaScript) to reformat text in specific ways before pasting it. There are rules to save clippings into lists based on text matches. There’s a built-in Safari View Controller browser and both extensions (action and custom keyboard) have been rewritten with text formatter integration.

There’s a lot to try in the latest Copied, and I’m already considering some text formatter scripts for my Markdown workflows. Copied 2.0 is a free update on the App Store.

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Connected, Episode 108: Confusion as a Discovery Mechanism→

iOS 10 is here, and Federico has written the definitive review of it.

On the latest episode of Connected, we talk about the launch of iOS 10 and how my review was finalized. You can listen here.

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How RAW Changes iPhone Photography→

Ben McCarthy, writing for iMore:

Editing RAW files feels like a huge leap forward in terms of mobile photography: With iOS 10, the iPhone is evolving from a great camera for taking casual photos with into a capable professional tool. It still has plenty of limitations, but I suspect we’ve passed a tipping point.

But shooting while out and about is one thing. What about using the iPhone in a studio? I gathered together a couple of friends to do a little impromptu photoshoot to see how the iPhone would hold up.

Ben is the developer of Obscura, which I featured in my review yesterday because of its native RAW support on iOS 10. He makes some good points on the limitations and advantages of shooting RAW on iPhone.

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Austin Mann’s iPhone 7 Plus Camera Review in Rwanda→

I consider the iPhone a computer with a camera more than a computer that makes phone calls. Therefore, Austin Mann’s annual iPhone camera review is my favorite of the bunch. I’ve been linking them for the past couple of years, and I find Austin’s approach always fascinating and well-presented.

This time, Austin has outdone himself. To properly test the iPhone 7 Plus’ camera with optical zoom, they’ve flown to Rwanda in collaboration with Nat Geo Travel and Nat Geo Adventure to track gorillas and take close-up pictures, timelapses, test wide-color gamut photos, and more.

He writes:

As many of you know, in the past I’ve created this review in Iceland twice, Patagonia and Switzerland, but this year I wanted to really change things up. With indicators pointing toward possibilities of optical zoom I asked myself: where’s the best place in the world to test optical zoom? Africa of course.

So this year, in collaboration with Nat Geo Travel + Nat Geo Adventure we’ve set out to get you the answers. I’m writing you from deep in the Nyungwe rain forest in southwest Rwanda… we’ve been tracking gorillas in the north, boating Lake Kivu in the west and running through tea plantations in the south… all with the iPhone 7 Plus in hand.

I’ve had a blast playing with the wide spectrum of new features and tech but as always, our mission is to find out the answer to one question:

How does all this new tech make my pictures (and videos) better than before?

The result is beautiful. The video “review” is a mini-documentary/short film about tracking down mountain gorillas, and it’s 9 minutes long. Seeing how they found the gorillas brought a big smile on my face, and you can notice how the zoom interface of the iPhone 7 Plus was useful for that purpose.

Watch it below, and go check out Austin’s photos and summary of the experience here.

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David Smith’s iOS 10 and watchOS 3 App Updates→

I’m a fan of David Smith’s apps for the Apple Watch. He gets what makes an app great on the Watch, and his focus on health and fitness resonates with me. David shipped some solid iOS 10 and watchOS 3 updates today – but Background Refresh in Sleep++ is my favorite:

Sleep++ has been updated to take advantage of the new Background Refresh mechanism in watchOS 3. Now rather than performing all of the sleep analysis in the morning when you wake up, instead it is able to analyze your night while you are sleeping. So when you wake up only the last few minutes of the night need to be processed. The end result of this is that you should barely seen the Analyzing Night progress dialog any more.

I have a feeling that Background Refresh will make me re-evaluate several Watch apps I stopped using (except David’s – one of the very few apps on my Watch).

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Apple Explains Why It Eliminated the Headphone Jack→

Apple seems to get that eliminating the headphone jack will be a tough sell in some quarters. In a packed keynote, Phil Schiller spent a fair amount of time laying out Apple’s case for why switching to the lightning connector for wired headphones and moving to wireless AirPods is the right thing to do. But Apple also spoke to BuzzFeed’s John Paczkowski to add context and the detail that couldn’t fit into the keynote.

Apple’s Dan Riccio explained the challenge this way:

”We’ve got this 50-year-old connector — just a hole filled with air — and it’s just sitting there taking up space, really valuable space,” he says.

Eliminating the headphone jack helped enable the iPhone 7’s new camera, waterproofing, and better battery life. As Paczkowski explains:

The 3.5-millimeter audio jack has been headed to its inevitable fate for some time now. If it wasn’t the iPhone 7, it might have been the iPhone 8 (or, for that matter, the iPhone 6). In the end, it was simple math that did the audio jack in, a cost-benefit analysis that sorely disfavored a single-purpose Very Old Port against a wireless audio future, some slick new cameras, and the kind of water resistance that anyone who has ever dropped an iPhone in the toilet has long wished for.

Anyone who has used Bluetooth headphones knows that they promise freedom, but at the price of friction – charging, spotty connectivity, and poor audio quality. Apple’s answer to those headaches comes in the form of its new W1 chip that adds a layer of ‘secret sauce’ to its newly announced wireless AirPods that promises to eliminate the pain points.

According to John Ternus, vice president of Mac, iPad, ecosystem, and audio engineering at Apple:

“As you can imagine, by developing our own Bluetooth chip and controlling both ends of the pairing process there’s a lot of magic we can do,”

I was sold on wireless headphones a long time ago despite their limitations. That said, I hope Apple’s secret sauce is every bit as magical as claimed because the issues with Bluetooth are real and fixing them is a challenge that no other headphone manufacturer has fully conquered.

You can also follow all of the MacStories coverage of today’s Apple’s keynote through our September 7 Keynote hub, or subscribe to the dedicated September 7 Keynote RSS feed.

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