Posts in news

Apple Posts iPhone X Videos Promoting Face ID and Animoji

Apple has posted four videos highlighting exclusive iPhone X features. Three of the videos focus on Face ID and Apple Pay, while the fourth spotlights Animoji.

One Face ID video is a broad introduction to the iPhone X, Face ID, and using Apple Pay with Face ID. The other two Face ID videos have a narrower focus. One demonstrates that Face ID works even if you change your look. The spot features a woman with different hair styles, jewelry, glasses, makeup, and clothing unlocking her iPhone X with each new look. The other Face ID video shows that the feature works in complete darkness.

The final spot embraces the Animoji karaoke phenomenon. As a woman sings All Night by Big Boi, a series of Animoji sing along with her just like the many Animoji karaoke videos that have been posted to Twitter and elsewhere.

The four short videos, which you can view after the break below, are available on YouTube and will likely begin showing up on television soon.

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Spark: The Future of Email [Sponsor]

Email steals precious time from everyone. Spark recovers those lost moments by identifying what’s important and organizing it all for you neatly and automatically.

Spark’s smarts start with its Smart Inbox. Messages are categorized as Personal, Notifications, and Newsletters making it easy to focus your efforts on what’s important and save the rest for later.

Powerful search makes it simple to find messages no matter where you may have filed them. Spark’s natural language search thinks like you do. Just search for messages the way you would if you were asking a friend.

Notifications can spin out of control quickly with email too, sending you alerts about everything. Spark filters out the junk with Smart Notifications that only notify you of what you need to know now.

In addition, Spark features beautifully designed card-style calendar invitations that can be accepted with just one tap, the ability to send later and set up reminders for messages that don’t receive a reply, message snoozing, and Quick Replies that let you acknowledge a message with a single tap. Spark also has customizable gesture actions and works with Dropbox, Box, iCloud Drive, and more. Spark looks great too with a beautifully threaded design that makes following a conversation simple.

As if that weren’t enough, in just a few short months, Spark 2.0 will introduce Spark for Teams, which will change the way teams collaborate.

The future is now. Download Spark today for free and take control of your inbox.

Thanks to Spark for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Apple Posts ‘Sway’ Holiday Ad Featuring AirPods and Apple Music

Just ahead of Thanksgiving in the United States, Apple posted their annual holiday ad on YouTube earlier today. The company’s holiday commercials have become a tradition in recent years, and they tend to carry a message that goes beyond advertising the specific features of Apple products.

This year’s ad, titled Sway, is all about AirPods and Apple Music. The video is set on Tuesday, December 19, and follows a woman who starts dancing and walking down a street as she listen to Sam Smith’s Palace on her AirPods. The performance continues after she bumps into a man walking by and the two start dancing together in the snow while sharing AirPods. The ad cuts back to reality and the tagline “move someone this holiday” appears. As with holiday ads in previous years, Apple picked a beautiful song to accompany the video; the incredible choreography nicely complements the idea of sharing a moment with someone through music.

Apple’s 2017 holiday commercial follows last year’s ‘Frankie’s Holiday’ and 2015’s ‘Someday at Christmas’ featuring Andra Day and Steve Wonder. You can watch the video below.

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Animal Crossing Debuts on iOS a Day Earlier Than Expected

This past Friday, Nintendo America announced via Twitter that Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp would be available on iOS worldwide on November 22nd.

Instead, the game showed up unexpectedly early on November 21st. This isn’t the first time Nintendo has surprised fans with an early release. In September, after announcing a release date for a major update to Super Mario Run on the App Store, Nintendo released that game a day early too.

In a move that may be in response to complaints that some levels of Super Mario Run required an in-app purchase, Animal Crossing is up front about its pricing, imposing a popup during the setup process that explains that Leaf Tickets, which are an in-game currency, can be purchased, but are optional. Before you can get started, there are also other instructions and a 99 MB update to download. It’s a laborious process but doesn’t take long if you have a good Internet connection.

Animal Crossing is based on Nintendo’s 3DS title Animal Crossing: New Leaf - Welcome amiibo and includes some of the same characters. You play as the manager of a campground, building your campsite and interacting with animals you meet. As you play, you collect items and complete tasks for the animals you meet. The materials you collect are used to craft items to decorate your campsite. Leaf Tickets, which you can earn in-game or purchase as an In-App Purchase can be used to purchase accessories for your campsite or speed up the construction of items.

I have only just scratched the surface of Animal Crossing, but it looks great, especially on an iPhone X. The game’s colors are vivid, and it takes full advantage of the iPhone X’s display. While not as deep as the Animal Crossing games available on Nintendo’s hardware, Pocket Camp looks like a fun way to spend some time over the long Thanksgiving weekend in the US. I’m also looking forward to connecting with friends who have Nintendo accounts to see what kinds of campsites they build.

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is available on the App Store as a free download.

HabitMinder: The Healthy Habit Reminder and Tracker [Sponsor]

Forming good habits can be hard, but if you do, it can change your life. HabitMinder makes it easier to form new, healthy habits than ever before.

Each goal you set in HabitMinder has a dedicated screen. There are so many built-in habits that you’re likely to find one that suits your needs, but you can set up your own too. Next, personalize your habit by picking from dozens of colors and hundreds of icons. To stay on track, set reminders for yourself, so you never forget about your new goal.

From HabitMinder’s Today view, you can swipe left on a goal to reveal quick actions, so you can get in, log a habit, and get out in seconds. HabitMinder has a widget and an Apple Watch app too. When you want to see where you stand, check the Statistics screen for an overview of your progress.

Up next for HabitMinder is iPad support and iCloud support. HabitMinder has a pure black mode coming for iPhone X users too.

Habits are hard to form but can lead to meaningful change like Sally Rooney’s recent story in The New Yorker of how her fainting spells were cured by tracking her water intake with our other app, WaterMinder. So whatever your goal, download HabitMinder today to get started.

Special Offer: Sign up for our newsletter with this link by December 1, 2017 and you’ll be entered to win one of 25 promo codes to create an unlimited number of habits in HabitMinder.

Thanks to HabitMinder for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Apple Delays HomePod

Apple issued an official statement to TechCrunch and other news outlets today saying that the release of the HomePod would be delayed until 2018. Originally announced at WWDC in June with a promised ship date of December 2017, Apple’s statement says the HomePod will be released in ‘early 2018,’ and the smart Siri-enabled speaker will be available initially in the US, UK, and Australia.

The full text of the statement made to TechCrunch is as follows:

“We can’t wait for people to experience HomePod, Apple’s breakthrough wireless speaker for the home, but we need a little more time before it’s ready for our customers. We’ll start shipping in the US, UK, and Australia in early 2018.”

Apple Posts ‘What’s a Computer’ Video Promoting the iPad Pro

In a new video posted on YouTube called ‘What’s a Computer?’, Apple follows a girl as she leaves home on a bicycle and travels around a city with her iPad Pro. Set to ‘Go’ by Louis the Child, the girl uses FaceTime to chat with friends, marks up a screenshot of her chat, and sends it via Messages. Later she’s seen writing a report in Microsoft Word. In the middle of writing, she sees a praying mantis, swipes up to access the Dock, and takes a quick photo of it.

In the next scene, the girl draws with Procreate using the Apple Pencil. Later, she’s seen sitting in a park taking notes on ‘Bugs in the City’ using GoodNotes, and then reads a Wonder Woman comic book on the subway ride home. The video ends in the girl’s backyard. She’s lying in the grass typing away on her iPad Pro. When a neighbor asks her what she’s doing on her computer, the girl replies ‘What’s a computer’ making the not-so-subtle point that an iPad Pro is more than enough computer for many tasks.

Apple Encourages Developers to Update to watchOS 4

In a short note to developers on its Developer News and Updates site, Apple is encouraging developers to:

Take advantage of increased performance, new background modes for navigation and audio recording, built-in altimeter capabilities, direct connections to accessories with Core Bluetooth, and more. In addition, the size limit of a watchOS app bundle has increased from 50 MB to 75 MB.

The carrot of new functionality comes with something of a stick as well. After April 1, 2018, watchOS 1 app updates will no longer be accepted and all updates must be native apps built with the watchOS 2 SDK or later. New app submissions must be built with the watchOS 4 SDK.

Apple Fixes iPhone X Bugs with the Release of iOS 11.1.2

Not long after the iPhone X was released, there were reports that the screens of the devices became unresponsive when the temperature dropped rapidly. That issue along with ‘an issue that could cause distortion in Live Photos and videos captured with iPhone X’ were fixed in iOS 11.1.2, which was released a short time ago.

iOS 11.1.2 can be downloaded by going to Settings ⇾ General ⇾ Software Update.