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TestFlight, One Year Later→

Nick Arnott has taken a look at TestFlight a year after its relaunch and I agree with his overall take. I write about apps for a living (I currently have 74 betas in my TestFlight), and the simplicity of Apple’s system is unparalleled. I just need to give developers my email and that’s it.

I also agree with Nick’s comments on frustrations with using TestFlight. I hope that Apple will continue tweaking these aspects going forward.

I’ve experienced a few minor frustrations with as a user though. For example, I can’t accept an invitation from my computer — I have to accept an invitation from the device I want to test on. Also, TestFlight emails don’t contain any release notes. With other services like HockeyApp, developer release notes are included in the email, so you can decide from the email if you care about the update or not. Lack of these release notes from TestFlight means you’ll have to tap through to the app and view on your testing device to see if you want the update or not.

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“Laughing and Crying My Way Through the New Google Photos”→

My first watch of this video hit me emotionally in a way that’s hard to articulate. The film itself is a new kind of uncanny valley for digital artifacts: Assistant and its algorithms combined these clips in a way that no reasonable person would attempt. Ever. The result is surreal, random, creepy, sad, and oddly funny. It had to be a coincidence of timing that I had only just returned from visiting Grumpy on his deathbed. But partly because of that timing, this video present came at a moment when I was primed to appreciate it. Maybe it won’t be long before services try (and fail) to do this sort of thing on purpose, offering us narratives that highlight timely memories, or videos designed to fill anticipated emotional needs. My photos are still uploading.

Ryan Gantz has shared a personal story about photos he took at family events and how Google Photos put them all together automatically. The result is indeed funny and weird at the same time, but Ryan ended up appreciating it anyway.

There have been some interesting discussions about privacy and the value of Google Photos over the past week. So far, I agree completely with Manton Reece:

My family photos are the most important files I have on my computer, and I very rarely share any photos of my kids publicly. But ironically I’m willing to overlook some of the privacy concerns around this exactly because the photos are so valuable to me. I want multiple copies in the cloud, and I want the power of search that Google has built.

“Kind of creepy but I appreciate it” seems to be a common theme around Google Photos.

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Connected: Intellectual Ambiguity→

This week, Stephen and Myke talk to Russell Ivanovic about Google Photos and then go on to make their WWDC predictions.

I couldn’t join Myke and Stephen this week, and, as usual, they did a great job at covering Google’s announcements and predictions for WWDC 2015. You can listen to the episode here.

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What Twitter Can Be→

Chris Sacca’s essay on what Twitter can become is worth a read if you’re interested in the future of the company. The piece contains several interesting ideas for enhancements to Twitter’s curation, discovery, and timeline design – this bit on Nuzzel in particular:

A third way to organize content from Twitter is to highlighting what the Tweets are linking to. If you’ve used Nuzzel (disclosure: one of our portfolio companies) you know exactly what I mean and how simple yet magical that experience can be. If you haven’t used it, try it. Nuzzel makes Twitter better.

Want to know what are the most popular articles linked to on Twitter? That should be a channel. What are the most popular sites linked among the people we follow or people that our friends follow? Great channel. Which books are people Tweeting about? Channel. Which videos are garnering the most attention? Channel. Any particular .gifs blowing up? Channel.

I use Nuzzel every day, and I love it. As I argued last year, I’m a fan of Twitter’s experiments with the timeline on iOS, but I also believe they should experiment more and break free of old ideas about Twitter. I disagree with some of Sacca’s proposals, but the entire piece is spot-on.

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Apple’s Privacy and Cloud Services→

Thomas Ricker, writing for The Verge in response to Tim Cook’s speech on privacy and cloud services:

Arguably, Google Maps is better than Apple Maps, Gmail is better than Apple Mail, Google Drive is better than iCloud, Google Docs is better than iWork, and Google Photos can “surprise and delight” better than Apple Photos. Even with the risks.

If Apple truly cares about our privacy then it should stop talking about how important it is and start building superior cloud-based services we want to use — then it can protect us.

As John Gruber eloquently commented:

There’s much I would quibble with regarding Ricker’s piece, but his conclusion, quoted above, is spot-on. Apple needs to provide best-of-breed services and privacy, not second-best-but-more-private services. Many people will and do choose convenience and reliability over privacy. Apple’s superior position on privacy needs to be the icing on the cake, not their primary selling point.

This is a tricky scenario: is machine learning the only way to build intelligent services and client apps for the future? Google Photos is showing impressive results in recognizing places, objects, and people – but at the cost of letting Google’s cloud analyze your entire memories and visual history. It’s only natural for some people not to be okay with that today.

Will consumers start demanding that sort of intelligence going forward? Is there any way to build intelligence at scale without being creepy? Is privacy a product or a feature?

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Apple Support Document on HomeKit and Apple TV→

Following the launch of the first HomeKit devices yesterday, Apple has published an official page with a list of compatible products and a support document detailing the setup process for HomeKit.

In that document, Apple confirmed the long-rumored “hub” feature of Apple TV:

If you have an Apple TV (3rd generation or later) with software version 7.0 or later, you can control your HomeKit-enabled accessories when you’re away from home using your iOS device.

Sign in with the same Apple ID on your iOS device and Apple TV, and you’ll be able to use Siri commands to remotely control your accessories.

Earlier today, The New York Times reported that Apple won’t announce any new Apple TV hardware at its upcoming WWDC. Considering that HomeKit (which is rumored to get some stage time next week) can already work on the current-gen Apple TV, it’s no surprise Apple may prefer to sell the current model and wait to get the next generation just right. It’ll be interesting to see Apple’s plans for the Apple TV as a connected home hub unfold over the next few months.

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Clips 1.2→

Clips, developed by Clean Shaven Apps, is an app I use on a daily basis to copy multiple bits of text and move them between apps using a widget, an action extension, and a fantastic custom keyboard – one of the few keyboards I keep on my devices, in fact. I reviewed the app when it came out last September, and I’ve been using it since.

Today, Clips 1.2 has been released with a refreshed design, Apple Watch support, and a faster keyboard. While I’m not sure why I’d want to use Clips on my Watch, I believe it can be useful to those who use the app to store text they access frequently and not as a temporary holding place for clipped items. I’m a fan of the new dark design and the increased contrast between URLs and plain text, and I continue to appreciate the time the app saves me when composing articles, researching topics, and collecting a bunch of notes from different apps with just a few taps. Clips is the epitome of iOS 8’s extensibility features for productivity apps, and it’s one of my must-have utilities.

Clips 1.2 is available on the App Store.

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Pinterest Introduces Buyable Pins→

Mike Isaac, writing for The New York Times:

Pinterest, the online social bookmarking site, has long claimed to be a way to help people discover new things in the real world. Soon you will be able to buy those things, too.

The San Francisco-based company announced Tuesday that it will now let users purchase things from inside of pinned items, in what is its first foray into bringing e-commerce to the platform. The new product, named “Buyable Pins,” allows sellers large and small to essentially stick a “buy” button on items that they post to the site.

Buyable Pins will launch in the United States initially, and the service will support on Apple Pay on iOS.

Considering how Pinterest reinvented the wish list on mobile, it only makes sense for them to jump into the e-commerce business in a mobile-first fashion. Pinterest says that items will be “handpicked” and that they won’t make money off transaction fees, relying on promoted pins (ads) to let advertisers promote their products on the service.

They also made a great promo video for the new feature, which you can watch below.

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Microsoft Acquires Wunderlist→

In a blog post, popular task management service Wunderlist has announced they’ve been acquired by Microsoft. Wunderlist, like Sunrise, will remain an “independent” app for now, but it’ll likely be more closely tied to Microsoft services in the future.

Here’s Wunderlist CEO Christian Reber on the company’s blog:

Over the next few months as Wunderlist becomes a part of the Microsoft family, we’ll introduce a host of new features, continue growing the ecosystem of partner integrations and progress in delivering Wunderlist to billions of people. We are excited and can’t wait to share with you what we have been working on–watch this space!

The Microsoft blog has also motivated the acquisition and shared details about pricing going forward:

The addition of Wunderlist to the Microsoft product portfolio fits squarely with our ambition to reinvent productivity for a mobile-first, cloud-first world. Building on momentum for Microsoft Office, OneNote and Skype for Business, as well as the recent Sunrise and Acompli acquisitions, it further demonstrates Microsoft’s commitment to delivering market leading mobile apps across the platforms and devices our customers use – for mail, calendaring, messaging, notes and now tasks.

And:

Customers can expect the app to remain free in all of its existing markets. There will be no price changes for Wunderlist Pro or Wunderlist for Business customers and the service will continue to support a wide range of third-party apps and integrated services.

As I tweeted yesterday, I believe Microsoft has been doing some interesting acquisitions lately and Wunderlist meets the requirements for a cross-platform app that can integrate with other apps and services. Like Sunrise, Wunderlist has an API that allows other services and developers to plug into its platform to access a user’s tasks and projects – like Slack and Scanbot. Wunderlist wanted to build an ecosystem of apps for your todo list, and it’s easy to see how Microsoft could benefit from it.

More importantly, Wunderlist already integrates with Sunrise, allowing you to see tasks alongside calendar events natively.

I’m curious to see for how long Microsoft will keep these two apps as standalone services that don’t have the Microsoft brand or only work with Microsoft services. Sunrise, for instance, also supports Todoist, one of Wunderlist’s biggest competitors. Will Microsoft keep this third-party friendly approach as it keeps controlling more apps?

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