Posts in Linked

Canvas, Episode 8: Apple Mail→

You might think of Apple Mail as being a slightly weak client but, as we shall see, it’s more powerful than you think. We tackle some of the special smart mailboxes that exist in Apple Mail, look at notifications and composing mail.

On the latest episode of Canvas, we covered the email client that millions of users deal with on a daily basis: Apple Mail. We have an episode coming about third-party email options, but, in the meantime, there’s quite a bit to discover in Mail, too. You can listen here.

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All New watchOS Apps to Be Native Starting June 1→

During the weekend, Apple announced that, starting June 1, all new watchOS app submissions will have to be native – written with the watchOS 2 SDK.

This, of course, doesn’t enforce existing watchOS 1.0 apps (built with the first SDK) to be updated for watchOS 2, so it’ll be interesting to see how Apple will handle developers who launched a watchOS app last year, saw a muted response, and then ignored watchOS 2 due to a lack of incentives.

In my experience, the performance of watchOS 2 apps has only been marginally better than old watchOS 1.0 ones, and I haven’t heard of developers rushing to support watchOS 2 as a must-rewrite-everything effort. If I had to speculate, perhaps new iPhone apps for iOS 10 or later could only support watchOS 3 – but, again, that wouldn’t solve the issue for watchOS 1.0 apps currently on the App Store. Quite a curious conundrum.

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On the 9.7” iPad Pro’s Color Gamut→

I’ve been waiting for someone to explain the practical benefits of the new Retina display in the 9.7-inch iPad Pro. Craig Hockenberry has done the hard work and wrote about it with clear examples to understand the differences:

After using this iPad for a couple of weeks, I’ve realized it’s like the advances of Retina in an important way: I never want to use a lesser display again. And as with higher density, I think it’s obvious that Apple will eventually update all its products to use this improved screen technology. I can’t wait!

It also wouldn’t surprise me to see these wider color gamuts coming to the cameras in our devices. All iOS devices currently create images in the sRGB gamut, while professional gear can produce images in ProPhoto or AdobeRGB. High dynamic range (HDR) photos need a wider range of color, too.

He’s also writing a book about color management for developers. It sounds like this is going to be an important area for iOS developers to learn going forward.

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Stanford’s iOS 9 Class Has Started on iTunes U→

Stanford University has published an iOS programming course (CS193P) on iTunes U annually since the very first iPhone SDK was released. Back then, the course was taught by Apple engineers, which was unheard of at the time, and a perhaps a sign of greater openness to come. There are still a lot of good basic lessons on Objective-C, model-view-controller patterns, and other fundamentals in that first lecture series, even though Cocoa Touch APIs have changed substantially over the years. But, perhaps my favorite lecture from that first class is a short talk Loren Brichter gave on the development of Tweetie, his Twitter client that was the first app to feature pull-to-refresh and was eventually purchased by Twitter.

Now, seven years later, Stanford has begun posting lectures for Developing iOS 9 Apps with Swift. It helps to have some basic object oriented programming experience before taking on this class, but don’t let that discourage you. When I started teaching myself programming I watched that first lecture series over and over, stopping to research things I didn’t understand as I went. And even if you’re not interested in learning to program for iOS, go back and watch Loren Brichter’s talk, it’s a fascinating time capsule of how far iOS has come and the clever tricks programmers used in 2009 to get around the technical limitations of early iPhones.

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Connected, Episode 87: Ticci on the Scene→

A sleep-deprived Myke joins Federico and Stephen to talk about WWDC, new MacBooks and App Store search.

On this week’s Connected, the first details of our upcoming trip to San Francisco for WWDC, some fun speculation on Apple’s announcements, and some hints on what we’re announcing tomorrow at MacStories. You can listen here.

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New Promo Video for Apple Music Starring Taylor Swift→

Apple just posted a new video on the YouTube Beats 1 channel promoting its Apple Music streaming service. The video, called Taylor Mic Drop, features Taylor Swift who picks a ‘Getting Ready to Go Out’ playlist from Apple Music. When she sees The Middle by Jimmy Eat World, she plays it, dancing and lip syncing along to the music. The video is fun and does a nice job of highlighting what Apple Music calls Activity Playlists.

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MLB’s At Bat iPad App Live Video Viewing Up 86% Thanks to Picture in Picture→

Sarah Perez, reporting for TechCrunch, on the effect iOS 9 multitasking had on MLB’s At Bat app since they added support for Split View and Picture in Picture two months ago:

During these first two weeks, MLB fans spent 20 percent more minutes per day, on average, watching live video on iPad compared with the 2015 season, when multitasking was not available. (MLB says that any form of multitasking behavior was counted here, not just spilt-screen viewing.)

In addition, fans who were using the new multitasking features and watching live video of MLB games in the At Bat application were spending 162 minutes per day on average consuming MLB.TV on iPad. That’s an increase of 86 percent from the 2015 season.

Picture in Picture fundamentally transforms the video experience of an iPad. Now imagine if two of the biggest video services around also realized this.

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Slack Making It Easier to Add Reminders to Messages→

Slack is a fun product to use (and company to observe) because they’re constantly challenging how things should get done in a team collaboration service. Their latest addition to the desktop client lets you easily attach reminders to messages with a contextual menu:

Once this becomes available on iOS too, I think I’m going to use it a lot.

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