New Year, New Audio Setup: SoundSource 6 from Rogue Amoeba
This time Federico and Myke discuss the news from Paris Games Week, and Nintendo’s investor meeting.
If you wanted to hear our initial take on Nintendo’s mobile announcements, this week’s Virtual should cover it all. You can listen here.
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Ryan McLeod, Chase McBride, and Brice Tuttle created Gravity, an iPhone app which ingeniously used the 3D Touch display of the iPhone 6s to turn the device in a digital scale and weigh objects with an accuracy of ~1-3 grams. Alas, the app has been rejected from the App Store:
With the force values linearly correlated to weight, turning any force into a weight was going to be as simple as recording the force of known weights and creating a linear regression. It’d even be possible to use some statistics to predict how well the calibration went (there are many factors that can throw off a calibration). We opted to use coins for calibration, with a framework that made it easy to internationalize in the future.
[…]
To make a long story short the final answer over the phone was that the concept of a scale app was not appropriate for the App Store.We were—and still are—bummed to say the least, but we understand some of the reasons Apple might not be allowing scale apps at this time.
I understand why Apple may not be sure about an app that requires placing a spoon on screen. Still, I hope that, eventually, novel uses of 3D Touch like Gravity will be accepted on the App Store. Make sure to read the technical details behind Gravity (and watch the video as well).
See also: weighing plums with 3D Touch.
Another of the criticisms mentioned in early reviews for the new Apple TV is lack of Siri search for Apple Music. In a statement sent to BuzzFeed, Apple has confirmed a software update will enable the feature early next year:
One of the most useful features of Apple’s new Apple TV is its Siri-enabled universal search. It’s something Apple TV owners have been asking about for years — the ability to quickly and effectively search across multiple video platforms simultaneously. And now that Apple’s enabled it for video, the company is working to extend it to music as well. In a few months, Apple TV owners will be able to tell the device to find a song or album the same way they’d tell it to find a movie.
Apple confirmed to BuzzFeed News that Siri is coming to Apple Music on Apple TV at the beginning of next year.
Hopefully Siri search on Apple TV will also be extended to the App Store.
Speaking of Apple TV reviews and criticism to the setup experience, Nilay Patel explains in his review for The Verge:
Take setup again: yes, the tap-to-get-settings-from-an-iPhone feature is cool, but you can’t restore anything from a previous Apple TV, so when you first get started you have to head into the App Store and search for and download every streaming app you use. Then, once you’ve got them all, you have to authenticate all of them individually — even apps like HBO Go and Watch ESPN that require the same cable provider TV Everywhere username and password. And the iPhone Remote app doesn’t work with the new Apple TV yet, so you’re stuck either swiping around the onscreen keyboard or digging up a laptop to enter an activation code. It’s frustrating — I found myself reluctant to download new apps because I didn’t really want to log in yet again. If the future of TV is really apps, adding new apps has to be virtually frictionless.
That’s a fair criticism, and I’m surprised that Apple hasn’t figured out a universal “Download & Login” setup flow for TV apps yet. It also sounds like a typical American problem – the issue with cable bundles and provider logins applies to the States, but I’m not sure how it’d reflect, for instance, on European countries.
The Apple TV embargo lifted last night, and the first reviews have been published with a general consensus that the device is a worthy upgrade with some annoyances for search and logging into apps.
I recommend starting with Christina Warren’s review, which gives a great overview of the platform and the brand new Siri remote:
Swiping faster on the touchpad moves faster across the interface, slower goes slower. Movements are extremely precise and never felt out of control. The remote is Bluetooth — not IR — so you don’t need direct line of sight to navigate — which is nice. On some Bluetooth-based remotes, I’ve noticed lag between a selection and what happens on screen but the Siri remote always keeps up.
Tapping the Menu button will take you back one level or give you a menu of an app you’re in. Tapping the home button will bring you to the core home screen. Double tapping the home button opens up an app switcher, so you can easily navigate between screens. If you want to close out an app, swiping up on the trackpad will dismiss it.
Earlier this week, Apple published new documentation regarding the Apple News Format (via Benedict Evans), which will allow all publishers to deliver native articles with richer experiences to their Apple News channels. Currently, only selected publishers have access to the Apple News Format.
In an updated reference page, Apple describes the Apple News Format, which is still listed as “Coming Soon” for publishers:
Apple News Format is the custom JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) document format for News content. With Apple News Format, you can create beautifully crafted layouts with iOS fonts, rich photo galleries, videos, and animations—all optimized for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
In addition, Apple has detailed an API for publishers on Apple News, which can be used to publish Apple News Format articles as well as “retrieve, update, and delete articles you’ve already published, and get basic information about your channel and sections”. An API reference is available here, and Apple has included links to CMS plugins for WordPress and Drupal.
Last, Apple has also released a News Preview tool for OS X to preview Apple News Format documents in the Xcode simulator. It’s available as a beta download here.
You can read our review of Apple News for iOS 9 here.
This week, Stephen is questioned about his growing Apple collection, Myke wonders why he bought an Apple TV and Federico ponders his iPad future.
On this week’s Connected, the final segment is all about the iPad Pro. You can listen here.
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Serenity Caldwell and Jason Snell, writing for iMore, have already put together a transcript of Apple’s Q4 2015 earnings call. This is where you want to go to get all the details shared by Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri earlier today, such as this tidbit on the iPhone Upgrade Program:
Rod: On the Upgrade Program, can you envision a time ever, maybe in the U.S. or elsewhere, where you would not have to come into an Apple Store to take advantage of the upgrade? You might be able to do that somewhere else?
Tim: That’s a really good question. We actually solved that problem back in 2007, but then quickly had to change it in order to scale in a major way. And so that is something that we is always in our mind, that one day from a customer experience point of view, we would like to make things as easy as possible for the customer. And to some degree, you can already do that with buying online. But there are many different plans and so forth that people buy that they have to come in for. Yes, over time we’d love to have that automated, working with our partners with service providers.
Writing for Polygon, Dave Tach has an in-depth overview of how games will be installed and work on the new Apple TV:
Before app slicing, Apple treated apps as all-or-nothing bundles. That meant that you couldn’t start playing Barbie: War until the multi-gigabyte file that included levels one to 10 (and all of the resources created for other devices, resources you didn’t need and would never use) finished downloading. But with a combination of App Thinning, slicing and on-demand resources, users can get the essential components of a game — things like the executable code, the splash screen that loads when you launch the app, the title screen artwork — in the initial download and reserve downloading for, say, levels eight to 10 until players approach them by completing the prerequisite levels. Levels four to 10 live in the cloud, tagged, and Barbie: War’s developers can say when the game should start downloading the assets tagged for specific levels.
This is possible because Apple provides developers with cloud-based storage accessible at any time — or on demand.
Tach goes on to explain how tvOS will manage app installations, and he also interviewed some game developers on their thoughts on the new Apple TV. I’m really curious to see how all this will work in practice.
