Billings Pro 2 is out, with full support for iOS 9 multitasking features. I mentioned Billings Pro in August, and adding these features to the set of iOS (and Apple Watch) features I covered extends its usefulness for freelancers and business owners even further.
Posts in Linked
Billings Pro 2 with iOS 9 Multitasking Features→
Nintendo’s LINE Stickers→
Andrew Webster on Nintendo’s latest mobile product:
Most recently, the North American Line store was updated with stickers from Nintendo’s beloved life sim Animal Crossing, no doubt to help promote the new 3DS game Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer. I spent the necessary $2 to acquire them immediately; I didn’t realize how much I needed an animated sticker of rock star dog KK Slider playing a guitar until I had it. In Japan, Nintendo recently released a second sticker pack, this one based on the wonderful new Wii U shooter Splatoon, and I absolutely cannot wait until Nintendo releases them in the English-speaking world. (Because they definitely will, right?)
I had no idea Nintendo offered LINE stickers.
I like how Nintendo is trying different mobile approaches before launching their full game initiative with DeNA. You have to wonder if amiibo (a lucrative segment for Nintendo) will ever get its own iPhone app.
Google Maps Gets Apple Watch App→
Google has released an update to its Google Maps app for iOS today, including a new version for Apple Watch. I was curious to check out Google Maps’ debut on the Watch: while I knew that they couldn’t replicate the experience of Apple’s excellent Maps app, I was hoping that watchOS 2 would give them some room for experimentation.
Instead, Google has shipped a basic Watch app that shows a list of directions for Home and Work addresses configured in the iPhone app. I guess this could be useful if you’ve been looking for a way to print out directions on your Watch’s screen, but I don’t know why you wouldn’t use your iPhone for that, with proper navigation tools and spoken feedback. Missed opportunity for Google considering they could have at least included a complication for quick access to the app.
Thankfully, you can check out ETA 2.0 for iOS, which has been updated for watchOS 2 and that includes a great complication for traffic information, public transit support, and more.
Pixar Development Team Tests iPad Pro and Apple Pencil→
Ben Lovejoy, writing at 9to5Mac:
Michael B. Johnson, who heads the Pixar team that develops the tools used to create its animated movies, tweeted that his team had been given the chance to test the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil – and described palm-rejection as perfect.
Lovely of our friends from Apple to stop by to let us take iPad Pro & Pencil for a test drive: pic.twitter.com/t3LGw7xcMD
— Michael B. Johnson (@drwave) September 28, 2015
@kalmichael It has perfect palm rejection as far as we were able to see.
— Michael B. Johnson (@drwave) September 28, 2015
Palm rejection has been one of my primary concerns following the iPad Pro announcement. If it’s good enough for Pixar, it sounds like it should perform fairly well for the rest of us, too.
Update: Don Shank, artist at Pixar, has shared a picture of a drawing on an iPad Pro on Instagram (via Harry McCracken).
Here’s some of his most interesting comments:
pressure sensitivity is great. Each individual app determines how pressure data is used. So its effect can vary from preset to preset. But I got some very light delicate lines all the way to thick bold lines very nicely. And shading with the side of the pencil was pretty awesome.
yes! You can rest your hand anywhere and it totally ignores it and it just reads the pencil. It’s pretty amazing. I did a number of scribbles but I didn’t take pictures of any of them.
I was using Procreate in this photo. Apple Notes and 53’s Paper were also working with Apple Pencil as well. Pixelmator is another favorite but the version they had on the iPad wasn’t yet taking advantage of the pencil.
“Just Press the Button and Start Talking”→
Daniel Jalkut on Siri’s new behavior:
Apple “broke” the haptic feedback associated with invoking Siri, by “fixing” the problem that there had ever been any latency before. Have an iPhone 6s or 6s Plus? Go ahead, I dare you: hold down the home button and start talking to Siri. You will not escape its attention. It’s ready to go when you are, so it would be obnoxious of it to impose any contrived delay or to give taptic feedback that is uncalled for. Siri has become a more perfect assistant, and we have to change our habits to accommodate this.
Great little detail of Siri that I didn’t notice until today. Siri seems to agree, too.
How Does the iPhone 6s Camera Compare to Every Other iPhone Generation?→
In the past eight years, each new advancement in iPhone camera technology has made dramatic improvements to image quality. The new 12-megapixel iPhone 6s iSight camera is no exception. With 50% more megapixels than the last four iPhone 8-megapixel models, the iPhone 6s boasts a number of key improvements including: improved auto-focus, local tone-mapping, noise reduction, and colour separation, with that fancy “deep trench isolation” technology Apple is raving about.
In this follow-up post to my previous iPhone comparisons, I present a 9 iPhone comparison from all iPhone versions taken with Camera+ including: the original iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3Gs, iPhone 4, iPhone 4s, iPhone 5, iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, and the new iPhone 6s, in a variety of real-life situations to test each iPhone camera’s capabilities.
Lisa Bettany’s annual iPhone camera comparison is always well worth a read. Make sure to tap on the examples for more details, and check out Lisa’s explanation of the photos.
What If You Used iOS 9’s Low Power Mode All the Time?→
Matt Birchler has asked the question I imagined many would come to ask after the launch of iOS 9:
One of my favorite new features of Apple’s iOS 9 is Low Power Mode. This feature is designed to kick in when you reach 20% battery remaining, and give you a little more time before you have to race to a charger. And while most iOS 9 reviews covered this mode briefly and determined it worked as advertised, I wondered what would happen if you used Low Power Mode all the time. I was surprised that no reviewer seems to have done this, so I took it upon myself to give it a try. I don’t have any standardized battery tests that I can do, so I simply spent the last 2 weeks alternating between using Low Power Mode all day, and not using it at all and comparing the differences. My findings are rather remarkable.
As I explained, I advise against leaving Low Power Mode enabled all the time because it’ll alter your iPhone experience across system apps and third-party ones. Still, fascinating findings with impressive results.
Live Photos and Capturing Memories→
Great take by MG Siegler on Live Photos:
You know the scene in almost every movie where a person is looking at an old picture of a loved one when suddenly it triggers their memory of the moment and we’re taken back to a live version of the scene? In a small way, that’s Live Photos. It’s hard to see right now because these iPhones with the functionality are brand new and so the memories are still fresh in our heads. But just imagine what these Live Photos will be like when you look at them in a year? Or ten years? They’ll be memories, captured in time.
See also: Jeremy Olson on capturing moments of a child’s life with Live Photos.
Office Apps for iPad Pro to Require Office 365 Subscription→
Writing for Ars Technica, Peter Bright reports that the iPad Pro version of Office for iOS won’t offer the same free tier available for smaller iPads, which was later confirmed by Microsoft to the publication.
The Office apps on the current iPads offer both viewing and editing documents for free. A handful of features require Office 365 subscriptions, available as in-app purchases, but the core editing capabilities are all zero cost.
Install those same apps on the iPad Pro once it arrives in November, however, and all those editing features will go away. Office on the iPad Pro will require an Office 365 subscription for any and all editing.
This is part of Microsoft’s “cut-off” policy that identifies devices above 10.1 inches as computers that are too big to get the Office apps for free. I’m curious to see how they’ll handle this in the same app for multiple iPads.