New Year, New Audio Setup: SoundSource 6 from Rogue Amoeba
I play and record just enough music to find metronome apps very useful. Taptronome is one of the best I’ve seen, with full-screen visual feedback, customizable click sounds, fine-grained control of subdivisions and beat emphasis, all with intuitive, gesture-based settings that are easily adjusted with one hand.
Taptronome is free on the App Store. An Apple Watch addition is said to be in the works.
Apple launched a redesign of their website today, integrating the product presentation and shopping experiences into one and tweaking the navigation bar with different menu items and icons.
Notably, the separate store.apple.com website is no more, as it now simply leads to apple.com with store pages available at apple.com/shop/ URLs.
Knowing what I know about the old online store, this was a massive behind-the-scenes undertaking, but the result looks and works like what most people would have expected all along. (Someone should count the instances of “finally” in the headlines about this change.) The old two-site approach was like having separate rooms in a physical retail store — a showroom up front, and a sales room in the back. Now it’s just one room. (And in another subtle parallel to the physical Apple stores, the website now uses a shopping bag instead of a cart.)
Speaking to TechCrunch, an Apple spokesperson explained why the company decided to make this change:
“We redesigned Apple.com knowing that our customers want to explore, research and shop in one place,” said an Apple spokesperson in a statement. “The new Apple.com takes the very best of our existing site and our online store to give customers one simple destination to learn and buy without navigating between two different sites. We’ve also improved several of the site’s features to make shopping easier than ever for our customers.”
The updated website will likely make for an easier shopping flow – especially on smartphones – as there’s less switching contexts between viewing and buying because everything’s integrated. It’ll be interesting to see if updating the store with new products will still require Apple to bring the store down, or if they will appear and propagate for everyone across the world like the new website did today. Probably a good change, but let’s pour one out for Is The Apple Store Down.
As noted by The Verge, Microsoft Outlook is now available for the Apple Watch after Microsoft updated the Outlook iPhone app today. The Outlook Watch app enables users to reply to emails directly on the Watch through various quick reply options or via dictation.
Besides replying to emails on the Watch, there’s an Outlook glance which enables users to review their inbox or see what’s next on their calendar. Finally, Outlook’s custom notifications on the Apple Watch add support for archiving and scheduling emails as they arrive.
Tom Warren from The Verge tried the new Outlook Apple Watch app wrote:
By default, Outlook notifications on the Apple Watch now show a lot more of the email body instead of cutting it short after a couple of sentences. While you still can’t reply instantly from a notification, you can now tap on the Outlook icon in the notification to launch a dedicated Outlook Apple Watch app that lets you see an overview of email and reply to any messages using quick replies or dictation.
Apple’s Eddy Cue and Jimmy Iovine spoke to USA Today reporter Marco della Cava about Apple Music’s early numbers:
One month after unveiling its new streaming music service, Apple has locked in 11 million trial members, company executives tell USA TODAY.
“We’re thrilled with the numbers so far,” says Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet software and services, adding that of that sum 2 million have opted for the more lucrative family plan at $14.99 a month for up to six people.
Whilst there are still 2 months of the Apple Music free trial period before user’s credit cards start being charged, there’s little doubt that those numbers represent a solid launch. For those curious about how those numbers compare to other services, Spotify announced in early June this year that they had “more than 20 million subscribers and more than 75 million active users”.
Cue also revealed to USA Today that July was a record breaking month for the App Store:
July also brought a fiscal high-water mark for the company’s App Store, which did a record $1.7 billion in transactions, “with particular momentum in China,” says Cue. That brings the total amount paid to app developers to $33 billion, up from $25 billion at the end of 2014.
MedCity News has shared the story of Ken Robson, Apple Watch user who was able to correctly self-diagnose a heart ailment thanks to Apple Watch heart rate data:
When he got to the hospital, Robson told staff that he had been tracking his heart rate on the watch, and had two weeks of back data. “Going in with the data certainly reduced my stay by a couple of days,” he told MedCity News. It also assured that he could have the operation nearly immediately.
Because the hospital could check his Apple Watch data, Robson did not have to wear a heart monitor for a week before the medical team at Scripps Mercy could confirm the diagnosis of sick sinus syndrome.
Reda Lemeden’s collection of every iTunes icon ever made brings back memories. I clearly remember so many Apple fans being upset for the big redesign of 2010.
Here’s another example of how watchOS 2 will, potentially, improve the experience of using apps on Apple Watch. August announced an Apple Watch version of their app to unlock smart locks with a tap. Because of WatchKit 1.0, it wouldn’t be uncommon for the August app to take several seconds to launch, be slow, or occasionally crash. Exactly not the kind of experience you’d want when standing in front of a locked door that you want to open with the convenience of a smart device (just use your keys at that point).
The couple of watchOS 2 apps I’m using so far are already considerably faster and more reliable than their WatchKit 1.0 counterparts. While not completely native to the Watch, watchOS 2 apps will benefit from speed improvements besides access to sensors, and that should help companies such as August when it comes to everyday performance and enjoyment.
Alex Kantrowitz, writing for BuzzFeed:
Starting today, some U.S. Twitter users will see a News tab appear in their Twitter apps.
The experimental feature, part of Twitter’s effort to make its best content easy to find, inhabits the middle tab of the app’s navigation bar and brings up a list of headlines that are trending on the platform. When you click a headline, you’re taken to a story screen with an image, headline, block of text from the story, and the top tweets discussing it.
I feel like I can no longer make the joke that Twitter keeps experimenting without supporting basic iOS features. This looks like a good summary of trending news on Twitter, but it’s also no Nuzzel, and I wonder how quickly it’ll be supplanted by Project Lightning (“Moments?”) when it launches.
Maybe I should start coming up with punchlines about their iPad app in the meantime.
Aleksandar Vacić of Radiant Tap has written about the process behind the iOS 9/watchOS 2 update for his app, Run 5k:
Run 5k for watchOS 2 will tap your arm when you need to change pace during the training run thus not interrupting your music, ever. And at the end, you will see your results right on the watch app.
When you get home, you take the Watch off, place it anywhere close to your iPhone and while you shower all the data will be synced over. You can check your results in either Run 5k or in Apple’s own Activity app. Or in any other 3rd party app that’s leveraging Apple Health platform.
It’s not just that they’ll be faster. watchOS 2 apps will have a deeper access to Apple Watch hardware that will start making them more independent from the iPhone and personal – truly, as this is the kind of data that not even an iPhone can simulate on its own. I have a feeling this will be a massive change for fitness and health apps on the Watch this Fall.
