Posts in Linked

The Astonishing File System→

I like how Ben Brooks describes going back to OS X after using an iPad Pro as his primary computer:

It’s like going home to your parents house for the holiday. It’s home and that’s really nice. But it’s also home and that is really chaotic for most of us. So while it is always nice to visit home, you never want to really stay at home. You want to be back at your home.

That’s what the Mac feels like to me now. I really like Mac OS X, and the MacBook, and would have no problems using them, but knowing what it is like to be on iOS only now — with that knowledge — there’s no way I don’t want to be on iOS.

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Nintendo’s Miitomo App Launching in the U.S. and Europe on March 31→

With a press release published this morning, Nintendo has announced that Miitomo – the free-to-start social app for iOS – will be launching on Thursday, March 31 in the United States and several European countries.

On March 31, Miitomo, the company’s first-ever smart device application, is launching in the United States and several other countries. Miitomo is a free-to-start social experience that lets users spark one-of-a-kind conversations with friends in a whole new way using Mii characters. The app recently launched in Japan and was downloaded more than 1 million times in its first three days of availability, while achieving the #1 most downloaded free app status in both the App Store and Google Play storefronts.

Alongside Miitomo, Nintendo is also introducing a web version of the eShop to browse digital games from any web browser. The eShop for the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U was launched in 2011 without a web counterpart.

Featuring an expanded catalog of more than 2,000 games, this digital store can be accessed on personal computers or smart devices. The shop serves as an additional purchase option to Nintendo eShop on Wii U and Nintendo 3DS, with all purchases being sent directly to users’ Nintendo 3DS or Wii U systems for download. Users can now easily find and purchase games that are new, popular and on sale, as well as use filters to search by genre. Purchases of games from this site, as well as Nintendo eShop, will earn My Nintendo Gold Points.

Leading up to the international rollout at the end of the month, users can pre-register for Miitomo here.

See also: initial details of Miitomo and the My Nintendo service, and Miitomo first impressions.

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FBI Accessed San Bernardino Shooter’s iPhone Without Apple, Drops Litigation→

Sheera Frenkel and Hamza Shaban, writing for BuzzFeed:

The Justice Department (DOJ) announced Monday that it had successfully accessed data on the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters and that it was dropping its case against Apple to help unlock the phone.

Investigators are no longer seeking Apple’s help to penetrate the device, according to a court filing by the DOJ Monday.

A week ago the Department of Justice successfully postponed a court hearing after revealing that the FBI had been approached by a third party who had a possible method to unlock the iPhone (subsequently rumored to be Israeli firm Cellebrite). That method appears to have paid off, with the Department of Justice asking the court to vacate the order compelling Apple to assist the FBI and writing in its Status Report to the court that:

The government has now successfully accessed the data stored on Farook’s iPhone and therefore no longer requires the assistance from Apple Inc. mandated by Court’s Order Compelling Apple Inc. to Assist Agents in Search dated February 16, 2016.

In response to the Department of Justice’s Status Report, Apple issued a response to The Verge and other media outlets:

From the beginning, we objected to the FBI’s demand that Apple build a backdoor into the iPhone because we believed it was wrong and would set a dangerous precedent. As a result of the government’s dismissal, neither of these occurred. This case should never have been brought.

We will continue to help law enforcement with their investigations, as we have done all along, and we will continue to increase the security of our products as the threats and attacks on our data become more frequent and more sophisticated.

Apple believes deeply that people in the United States and around the world deserve data protection, security and privacy. Sacrificing one for the other only puts people and countries at greater risk.

This case raised issues which deserve a national conversation about our civil liberties, and our collective security and privacy. Apple remains committed to participating in that discussion.

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Apple’s Next 40 Years→

Great post by Horace Dediu on how to look at Apple’s evolution over the next four decades:

My simple proposal is to think of Apple (and actually any company) as a customer creator. It creates and maintains customers. The more it creates, the more it prospers. The more customers it preserves the more it’s likely to persevere. This measure of performance for a company is not easy to obtain. It’s not a line item in any financial report.

The closest figure we have is that today Apple has one billion active devices in use. We’re not told of the total users or total customers because Apple cannot count people or wallets as accurately as it can count active devices. But as imperfect as it is, this number gives us a way to get close to counting customers.

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Shazam Gains Deeper Apple Music Integration with iOS 9.3→

One of the changes in iOS 9.3 – an API to add Apple Music tracks to playlists and the user’s library – especially made sense for apps like Shazam. And sure enough, Shazam for iOS has been updated with the ability to add tagged songs to any playlist and find all tagged songs in a ‘My Shazam Tracks’ playlist on Apple Music. There’s also support for playback of entire songs without leaving Shazam.

These features have been possible for Spotify users for a while now, and it’s nice to have them for Apple Music as well.

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Five Years of Sword & Sworcery→

“When I look back after five years, I am most surprised by how such a huge audience was willing to embrace something like Sworcery,” adds Vella. “It’s such a slow, meandering game built to be a music box for Jim’s beautiful soundtrack. You fight shapes, lose health over time, read a book that collects thoughts. You are meant to just stand and look at moody pixel art. All of it seems really damn strange. But millions of people did it. They meandered and fought shapes and stood and looked. They listened to Jim’s music. Thinking about it like that kind of floors me.”

Andrew Webster looks back at five years of one of the seminal indie games for iOS. Sword & Sworcery is still fantastic today – it’s even been updated for iOS 9 – and I can’t wait to see what Superbrothers is working on next.

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Apple Is Working on a TV Series About Apps→

Emily Steel, reporting for The New York Times:

Apple announced on Thursday that it was working with the entertainer Will.i.am and two veteran TV executives, Ben Silverman and Howard T. Owens, on a new show that will spotlight the app economy.

“One of the things with the app store that was always great about it was the great ideas that people had to build things and create things,” Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet software and services, said in an interview.

A docu-series about apps sounds like something I’d binge watch.

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Apple Is Selling Microsoft Office 365 as an Accessory for the iPad Pro→

James Vincent, writing for The Verge:

Apple wants the iPad Pro to replace Windows, and to convince customers it’s bringing in a familiar face or two: Microsoft’s Office Suite. As part of the ordering process for the new iPad Pro, buyers are given the option of adding a subscription for Office 365 — the only non-Apple accessory to appear in the order form. Office 365 bundles in the mobile apps and full Mac versions of a number of old standbys, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. (You can also choose between the Home, Personal, and University tiers, each of which offers different features.)

The Microsoft Office apps for iOS are easily some of the best apps available, particularly for the iPad. Whilst they aren’t yet at feature parity with their Windows and Mac counterparts, they are remarkably close in many respects. I’ve been using the Word, OneNote and Excel iPad apps extensively in the recent weeks, and I have been really happy with how they work.

It is worth noting that Microsoft Office is actually free to use on the 9.7” iPad Pro, but requires an Office 365 subscription if you want to edit documents on the 12.9” iPad Pro. This disparity is because of Microsoft’s rather odd policy in which Office is free to use on any device with a display smaller than 10.1” - but for devices with a larger screen, an Office 365 subscription is required.

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