When Twitter rolled out support for longer tweets yesterday, we mentioned that Tweetbot – the popular third-party client – would soon support the new format natively. Tapbots has released updates to the iOS and macOS apps today that let you view and create longer tweets (where media, polls, and quotes don’t count against 140 characters) without having to rely on Twitter’s official app. You can get the iOS update here.
Posts in Linked
Tweetbot Updated with Support for Longer Tweets→
Sketch Updated with Improved Vector Editing→
Bohemian Coding, the maker of Sketch, the popular vector design program, announced a significant update to the app today. Sketch 40, simplifies and improves the editing of complex vector shapes:
In Sketch 40, you can now simply press the Enter key on [a complex shape with multiple subpaths and points] to reveal all the points and paths contained within it, no matter how many layers are there. With multiple points selected, across different layers, you can adjust them at once without the need to select each layer individually.
Bohemian Coding also improved existing text transformation features, which are contained behind an Options button in the Inspector, by making them non-destructive. Complete release notes describing other enhancements and bug fixes in Sketch 40 are available here.
Sketch, which moved to an annual license model for upgrades in June, is $99 and available on Bohemian Coding’s website.
Google Photos Introduces Movie Concepts→
In addition to improvements for sharing between users, Google has announced a new feature for Google Photos dubbed ‘movie concepts’. Automatically generated like the service’s previous slideshows and Assistant creations, movie concepts are based on “creative concepts” – themes found in your photos that go beyond recent uploads.
As Google writes:
We’re also upping our game when it comes to automatic creations. Google Photos has always made movies for you using your recently uploaded photos. Now we’re going further, with new movies that are based on creative concepts — the kinds of movies you might make yourself, if you just had the time. And they’re not only limited to your most recent uploads.
And:
Look out for a concept to commemorate the good times from this summer, and another one for formal events like weddings. And you don’t need to do a thing — these movies get made automatically for you.
Here’s an example of a concept created by Google Photos:
Casey Newton, writing for The Verge, has more details:
Tim Novikoff, who joined Google last year when it acquired his video-editing company, Fly Labs, said the feature takes advantage of Google’s advancements in deep learning and computer vision. The idea, he said, was “let’s leverage this to make movies that are emotionally powerful — that make your really smile, or even make you cry and reminisce and show your family.”
More concept movies are planned. “You can imagine where this goes,” Novikoff said. “Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Little League highlights, dance recitals. All the things that people do, we can make special movies around them.”
The new feature comes less than a week after the launch of iOS 10, which includes Memories – a feature of Apple’s Photos app that creates personalized movies based on location, dates, and people recognized in your photo library. From Google’s description and Novikoff’s comments, it sounds like movie concepts will be more advanced than iOS’ automated creations, but we’ll have to test them in practice and see if the promise holds up. I’m curious to compare Apple’s Memories to Google Photos’ concepts.
iOS 10 Actionable Notifications, the Lock Screen, and 3D Touch→
Junjie, developer of Due for iOS, on changes to the Lock screen and actionable notifications in iOS 10:
To my surprise, when users upgraded their iOS 9 devices to iOS 10 this week, I started receiving feedback that they were no longer able to snooze or complete their reminders from their Lock Screen. Many thought I’ve removed the feature from Due, or that there was a bug with Due in iOS 10. Of course, neither of which is the case.
[…]
Unlike iOS 8 and iOS 9, swiping a notification from right to left in iOS 10 no longer reveals the notification actions. Instead, depending on the device that you use, it now displays either View and Clear on non-3D Touch devices, or just Clear on 3D Touch devices.
[…]
So while users can now access all four notification actions in iOS 10, they need to go through an additional, unintuitive step of pressing the View button. However, for users with 3D Touch enabled phones like the iPhones 6s and 7, pressing firmly on the notification will reveal the notification actions menu.
I was talking about this with my girlfriend earlier today, and it’s something I didn’t consider in my review. For some reason, she can’t use 3D Touch. Every time she presses on the screen, she ends up swiping or activating tap & hold accidentally. I don’t know what it is about the way she grips the phone or touches the screen – we’ve tried every setting, and she just can’t take advantage of 3D Touch in her daily iPhone usage. She ended up disabling 3D Touch altogether because it’s useless to her.
Here’s a problem, though: with iOS 10’s notification design, this means she can’t swipe on a notification and have instant access to actions. There’s an extra step:
- Swipe notification on the Lock screen;
- Tap the new ‘View’ button;
- Tap actions in the expanded notification.
Step 2 is what people who don’t use 3D Touch need to go through now, and it feels like a regression. I wish I had mentioned this in my story, but I didn’t think of it because I use 3D Touch and pressing notifications is second nature to me.
Perhaps Apple could improve this by automatically expanding a notification with a long swipe. Instead of revealing two buttons – View and Clear – a long swipe to the left could trigger the View button, expand a notification, and avoid the additional tap required for non-3D Touch users in iOS 10.
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.
Remaster, Episode 18: Going Pro→
This week Federico and Shahid discuss Shigeru Miyamoto being on-stage at the Apple iPhone event, and Sony’s new PlayStation hardware.
We had a good discussion about Nintendo’s future with iOS on the latest episode of Remaster. You can listen here.
Sponsored by:
- Squarespace: Enter offer code INSERTCOIN at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.
Canvas, Episode 19: iOS 10→
This week Fraser and Federico discuss - what else? - iOS 10.
We talked about iOS 10 extensively on the latest episode of Canvas – and we already started thinking about what could be improved in future versions. You can listen here.
Sponsored by:
- MartianCraft: Training crafted just for you
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.
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.
Sponsored by: