New Year, New Audio Setup: SoundSource 6 from Rogue Amoeba
This week Myke and Federico catch up with the current progress in the new Pokemon games, before discussing No Man’s Sky, Zelda Wii U and a tonne of news and announcements from the Video Game awards and the PlayStation Experience Event.
News-packed show on Virtual this week. You can get the episode here.
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This week, Federico, Myke and what’s left of Stephen discuss some Evernote follow-up, recent App Store drama and what’s going on with Twitter clients.
On this week’s Connected, we discuss recent App Store rejections (Transmit’s iCloud Drive feature has been reinstated) and the conclusion of my Twitter article. Get the episode here.
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Earlier this week, Panic was forced to remove Transmit’s ability to send files to iCloud Drive following a request by Apple. Fortunately, Apple has reversed their decision (as it happened for the PCalc widget) and a new version of Transmit has been released on the App Store.
As I argued last night on Connected, there could be an issue within Apple that leads to confusion with apps that can be promoted and rejected at the same time. We don’t, however, know the extent of this probable issue, and I don’t think speculating about internal conflicts is worth much (as with most things Apple, speculation isn’t useful).
We can (and should continue to) point out unfair and unreasonable rejections, especially for apps that aren’t made by popular companies such as Panic. Hopefully this latest string of questionable rejections and reversals will allow Apple to improve their internal App Review processes and make sure these cases become less frequent in the future.
With a blog post, mobile development testing and feedback service HockeyApp has announced they’ve been acquired by Microsoft.
From the HockeyApp blog:
Microsoft has been a HockeyApp customer with many apps since the early days back in 2011, so they were already familiar with the stability and quality of our service. Creating the best developer experience is key to both Microsoft and HockeyApp, this includes delivering industry leading tools for the major mobile platforms: iOS, Android and Windows. We saw the potential of the added abilities and resources of Microsoft to make our platform even better. It may sound cliché, but it really does feel like a match made in heaven.
We want to be very clear about the most important thing: we remain dedicated to our mission of making the best mobile app development feedback and testing distribution platform in the world. Your HockeyApp apps and accounts will continue to work and the team has not stopped working on advancing the platform. Throughout the next few months, we’ll reveal more about our plans with Microsoft.
In a separate blog post, Microsoft has also shared details of what to expect from the near future of HockeyApp:
In the coming months, we will introduce new iOS and Android SDKs for Application Insights based on the features of HockeyApp. Application Insights offers a 360-degree view of application usage, availability, and performance across both client and server/cloud application components. Integrating HockeyApp crash reports with Application Insights usage analytics will extend device support for Application Insights across all major mobile platforms and make application analytics an ambient part of the application development cycle with support for all tiers of a modern “mobile first, cloud first” solution.
It’s not surprising to see HockeyApp becoming part of Microsoft following TestFlight and Crashlytics joining Apple and Twitter, respectively. Mobile development testing has become essential to the app economy, and big companies want to control that part of the stack.
As a user, I always preferred HockeyApp to the original TestFlight. HockeyApp was fast, its Timeline view was excellent (see all beta builds from newest to oldest), and it was always more reliable than the old TestFlight. The new TestFlight, though, is much easier and integrated than third-party beta testing services: developers can add up to 1000 external testers using Apple IDs rather than device UDIDs. That alone has been a massively welcome change: I only need to give my email address to developers, and then I can download an app without going crazy with certificates and UDIDs.
Most of the betas I try for MacStories have switched to the new TestFlight. It’s just too convenient and integrated. I do think, however, that there’s still room for services like HockeyApp, which offers developers more insights, cross-platform support, and the ability to avoid Apple’s often problematic web services. It’ll be interesting to see where Microsoft takes HockeyApp.
This week Federico and Myke discuss music influenced by video games, revisit the Wii U as a viable platform, celebrate 20 years of PlayStation, give their first impressions of the new Pokemon games and bemoan what EA have done to Peggle.
Make sure to listen to the second Crying album I mentioned, and go check out USgamer’s retrospective on the original PlayStation. You can get the episode here.
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Rob Rhyne, in response to Allen Pike’s post about the lack of a great app to record podcasts, has a few ideas about pricing professional software:
Professionals use your software to make money. If you can find a way for them to do their job faster or better, they will pay nearly any price. Did you purchase the maximum spec for your last computer or did you buy the cheapest you could find? Professionals always trade money for productivity. The real trick is building a product that makes them faster and better. Solve that problem and you can name your price.
I completely agree with Rob. Even on iOS, developers should consider creating professional software that’s aimed at a specific audience willing to pay what is a considered a “premium” on the App Store. There are examples of developers that understand this well, such as Teleprompt+, Numerics, Omni’s apps, and TrialPad.
If you can build a customer base that needs your app to get work done faster, there’s a good chance they’d be willing to pay higher prices and reward you with commitment to the product, constant suggestions and bug reports, and no inclination to be curious about competing products, even if they’re cheaper. I believe that’s true on any platform and digital marketplace.
For more on this topic, check out Michael Jurewitz’s blog posts from last year.
Stephen, Myke and Federico discuss accents, social networks, web browsers and the Today widget fiasco. Myke has a headache again.
Back from the Twitter discussion of last week, we talk about Apple’s confusing policies for Today widgets and our different setups for Safari and Chrome on iOS and OS X. You can get the episode here.
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The year is about to end, and as usual Spotify has launched a Year in Music microsite for global and personal trends.
The global stats are cool, but largely unsurprising. What I really like is the breakdown of your personal listening habits by genre, artist, day of the week, season, and more. You can even see the split between desktop and mobile device streaming, and, if you’re a Premium subscriber, the location of your favorite artists on a chart.
I’m a big fan of Spotify’s use of data to improve algorithms, and this is another nice experiment. If you’re into this kind of visualizations, I also recommend the excellent Exist.io service, which supports Spotify (and many other wearable devices/apps).
As for my top songs:
Death Cab for Cutie and Tegan and Sara? Looks about right.
I missed this update to the Apple Watch website when Apple refreshed it last week (via TUAW). The Watch microsite has been updated with more details for timekeeping and fitness features, revealing more details about customizable complications, watch faces, fitness and activity tracking, and more.
Many watches include a few specialized functions — known in watchmaking as complications — that go beyond telling the time. But Apple Watch comes with a full range that can be added to most faces. Some complications are traditional, such as moon phases or sunrises and sunsets. And some are unique to Apple Watch, like stock quotes, weather reports, your next calendar event, and a daily activity tracker. When you tap a complication, Apple Watch opens the corresponding app.
Use the built-in speaker and microphone for quick chats, or seamlessly transfer calls to your iPhone for longer conversations. To mute an incoming call, just cover Apple Watch with your hand.
Apple Watch shows your daily activity at a glance. To see your progress and trends over longer periods of time, there’s Fitness, an Apple Watch companion app on your iPhone. You can view your activity history, workouts, and achievements by the day, week, or month. And the Fitness app can share your activity and workout data with the Health app on your iPhone, where it can be accessed by your favorite third-party health and fitness apps.
You can read our original overview of the Apple Watch here.
