New Year, New Audio Setup: SoundSource 6 from Rogue Amoeba
This week Federico shares his thoughts on a live-action Metroid short film,
and joins Myke in discussing the final Nintendo Direct of 2015.
This week on Virtual, we discuss Nintendo’s latest announcements from their Direct presentation. You can listen here.
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As reported by TechCrunch, Apple appears to have tweaked the search algorithm of the App Store over the past few weeks, leading to more consistent results:
According to multiple sources, including developers who tracked their own rankings, as well as app store analytics firms, the change that began November 3 included several adjustments. Apps are now ranking in search results on a mix of contextual keywords for the app, including partial keyword matches, along with competitor brand names and other matches.
I’m curious to see how this latest change will affect independent developers over the next couple of months. For better or worse, search – not the Store’s curated Explore section – is still the easiest way to find any kind of app. A major change to the search algorithm can potentially affect the livelihood of thousands of indie developers.
Earlier this week, Spotify announced a feature I’ve long argued would make sense in Apple Music: concert recommendations powered by Songkick.
From the Songkick blog:
As of today, you can now view a personalised list of recommended shows from right inside your Spotify app on iPhone and Android, and in just a few taps purchase tickets seamlessly through Songkick.
Based on the artists you’ve been listening to, the Concerts feature will surface upcoming Songkick events for your favorite bands, as well as undiscovered acts that you’re destined to fall in love with.
Songkick is an excellent service I’ve been using for years to stay on top of concert announcements by my favorite artists. The service works by scanning your music library and external accounts to look for music you listen to. It makes perfect sense to combine this with a streaming service on a smartphone. I still believe concert recommendations would make for a solid addition to Apple Music’s Connect in the future.
Michael Tsai, writing on the latest issue that hit the Mac App Store, preventing users to launch apps they previously downloaded:
I woke up to an inbox full of e-mails from customers reporting that my apps wouldn’t launch. This included new customers who had just purchased from the Mac App Store as well as people who had purchased long ago, hadn’t made any changes, and expected that things would just keep working.
And:
The Mac App Store is supposed to make things easier, but it’s also a single point of failure. Not only is it neglected, but sometimes even the existing functionality stops working. Mac OS X 10.9 introduced a code signing bug that prevented me from submitting updates for several months. In June 2015, there was a month-long iTunes Connect bug that prevented my uploaded build from entering the review queue. And I currently have a bug fix update that Apple has been reviewing for 33 days (with 8 days of waiting before that). When I inquired about the status, Apple told me that everything was normal and that I should just keep waiting. In short, the system is broken on multiple levels, and there is no evidence to suggest that things will get better.
This problem hit me as well – I had to check something on Tweetbot for Mac last night, but it wouldn’t launch. Same with other apps. There is a workaround, but it’s not working for everyone. And, despite the widespread nature of the problem, Apple has said nothing about it.
The Mac App Store lives in a sad state of abandon when compared to its iOS counterpart. For years now, Mac developers haven’t gotten access to the same tools made available to iOS developers. And that’s not to mention the myriad of issues and uncertainty they had to go through when Apple started rolling out sandboxing.
But preventing people from using apps they bought without a proper explanation, affecting third-party developers in the process? Just inexcusable.
Steve Streza, writing on the state of some iPad apps and developers stretching their iPhone UIs for the big screen:
App developers don’t feel this pain as much, because they’re not living on iPad. For 8+ hours a day, they’re stuck using Xcode on a Mac. They aren’t living and breathing the idioms and design patterns of great iPad apps. Instead they’re stuck on Macs, usually sitting on desks with mice or trackpads, using a very underpowered and unwieldy iPad simulator, to build apps you touch with your hands on the couch.
Xcode running directly on the iPad Pro could fix many of those problems. You now have a tablet powerful enough to run an IDE, with a very nice keyboard cover, and a screen big enough to encompass all the functionality of Xcode, capable of testing almost every feature of every iOS device ever made. You can code with your keyboard and test with multitouch. You could work on a desk and take your whole development environment with you on the couch, bed, or plane.
I couldn’t agree more with all the points mentioned by Steve, especially about the potential benefits in education. As I wrote yesterday, the iPad Pro’s hardware demands to be used by new kinds of apps. This includes Apple.
Fortunately, I want to believe there’s some hope here. Over the past few months, I’ve personally heard about an iPad Pro version of Xcode in early stages, being demoed internally at Apple. I don’t know if this will ever actually happen, but it sure would make for a nice surprise at WWDC next year.
My fingers are crossed.
Great piece by Ben Bajarin on the iPad Pro, with an important section in the middle on the mobile generation (which is often unaccounted for in a lot of product reviews):
There is truly something happening with this generation growing up spending the bulk, if not all, of their computing time using mobile operating systems and doing new things with new tools. Being the techie that I am, I was a bit disheartened that my twelve-year-old was getting more out of the iPad Pro and pushing it further limits than I was. But she is a part of the mobile generation after all. For them, the future will look quite different and the tools they use to make that future might look quite similar to the iPad Pro.
Sarah E. Needleman, reporting for The Wall Street Journal on Disney Infinity 3.0 for Apple TV:
The Apple TV version of Infinity 3.0 includes the pad and the usual figurines but also a wireless controller called Nimbus designed specifically for Apple’s device. It features buttons and analog control sticks that gamers are familiar with, as well as Apple’s Lightning connector. It’s made by SteelSeries, a 14-year-old company that specializes in gear for competitive gamers. The controller also works with games played on iPads and iPhones.
On its own, the Nimbus sells for roughly $50 in Apple’s retail stores. When bought as part of Infinity 3.0, it basically comes at a $15 discount. (The Apple TV version of Infinity 3.0 costs about $100; the console versions run for about $65.)
Obviously, Disney can afford to physically bundle the controller inside the game because it comes with figurines to collect and use. But if I were SteelSeries, I’d be seriously looking at more of these partnerships and discounts for high-profile games coming to tvOS – whether they have a physical counterpart or not.
I know quite a few people who, upon setting up a Mac for the first time, immediately set up f.lux on it. f.lux is a free utility that changes the color of your computer’s display to adapt to the time of the day, so it’s warmer and easier on the eyes at night. I was never able to get into it (maybe because I didn’t have the patience), but many people trust it as it’s made their OS X experience better for years.
The f.lux team has built an iOS version of the app – unfortunately, they can’t release it publicly due to App Store restrictions. So, they’ve come up with a beta version that anyone can install with a free developer account and Xcode on the Mac:
Xcode 7, you can install apps directly to your iOS device with a free account from Apple. So we decided to make a beta version of f.lux for people to try.
It’s a few more steps than installing the app store, but there are plenty of harder things even on Pinterest. So, here’s how to get f.lux installed on your iOS device.
Obviously, by sideloading an app like this, you’re installing an app outside of the controlled App Store environment at your own discretion:
By loading an app this way, there are no automatic updates or bug fixes, so this version does a daily update check. If one is available, a message will appear at the bottom of the app, so you can stay up to date when we make fixes.
I’m not sure I’ll finally try f.lux this time, but it’s fascinating to see how popular this beta has become over the past 24 hours on blogs and Twitter. Imagine if, like on the Mac, Apple provided a framework to distribute and install iOS apps outside of the App Store with some security in place and a UI to manage sideloaded apps. Until a couple of years ago, it seemed obvious that it would eventually happen on iOS too.
Apple has contacted us to say that the f.lux for iOS download (previously available on this page) is in violation of the Developer Program Agreement, so this method of install is no longer available.
We understood that the new Xcode signing was designed to allow such use, but Apple has indicated that this should not continue.
I assumed this would happen, and I hope we’ll see an open-source mirror on GitHub soon. f.lux has such a positive impact on lots of people (f.lux for desktop has been downloaded over 15 million times), I think Apple should work with the company to bring it to iOS as well – if only from an Accessibility standpoint.
As an astronomer who works at night with Apple products, I need @JustGetFlux to be able to sleep. @AppStore - let us have healthy iOS too
— Brett Morris (@brettmor) November 12, 2015
Federico talks to Myke and Stephen about the iPad Pro.
On this week’s Connected, we prepared a special episode to discuss my iPad Pro review, how I’ve been using the device for the past week, and what we expect from it going forward. It’s a good one. You can listen here.
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