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Apple Experimenting with Apple TV Top Charts and Featured Section

Last week, equinux, the maker of Live TV, an Apple TV app for streaming live German television, noticed something strange. Live TV, which was featured on the German Apple TV App Store and ranked among the top free Apple TV apps in Germany, seemed to disappear from the store shortly after an update to the app was launched.

In turns out, Apple now hides an app in the charts once you’ve installed it. Give it a try: Go install TV Pro Mediathek (VOD for German TV content) from the App Store (currently #3 Top Grossing in Germany) and then go back in to the App Store: boom – it’s gone from the charts and the next-placed app has moved up.

We have confirmed that the same phenomenon occurs in the US Apple TV App Store using the AMC television network’s Apple TV app. If you download the AMC app, which is currently featured and ranked among the top free apps in the US, and then force quit the store by double clicking the Home button on the Siri Remote and swiping up on the App Store app, the next time you launch the App Store, AMC will no longer be on the Featured page or on the top free app chart.

This is an interesting experiment. Screen real estate is at a premium on the Apple TV App Store. By eliminating apps that a customer has already downloaded, Apple is able to present customers with more new apps. The change does mean, however, that the charts are not true top charts, but instead, top charts of apps someone hasn’t already downloaded.

This change makes a lot of sense, especially on Apple TV. In my own experience, I am less likely to browse deep into the Apple TV App Store than I am on iOS App Store or Mac App Store. By limiting the Featured page and charts to apps that are new to me, it’s easier to discover new apps without paging past the ones I already downloaded.

Timing for Mac Tracks Your Time So You Don’t Have To [Sponsor]

Timing for Mac.

Timing for Mac.

Have you ever spent all day in front of your Mac, just to wonder where the heck all that time went?

Or tried to bill a client, but couldn’t reconstruct how many hours you spent working for them?

You could use a time tracker. But to be honest, manual time tracking sucks. You have to start and stop timers, enter what you did, and so on. And if you forget that, you are back to square one.

Not so with Timing.

Instead of making you do all the work, Timing automatically tracks how you spend your time. It logs which apps you use, which websites you visit, and which documents you edit. You can easily categorize activities into projects.

Also, your data is not uploaded to anyone’s server. It stays safe on your Mac at all times.

Still not convinced? Download the free trial (direct link) now and on Friday review all the gory details of what you did this week. (But don’t blame Timing when you see all those hours wasted on Facebook and elsewhere!)

You can purchase Timing on the Mac App Store or check out the website at timingapp.com. The app is 20% off this week at $19.99 – that already pays for itself by recovering just half an hour of unproductive or unbilled time.

Our thanks to Timing for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Twitter for iPhone Gets Extended 3D Touch Support with Peek & Pop

With an update released earlier today on the App Store, Twitter has extended integration with 3D Touch in their iPhone app (previously limited to quick actions on the Home screen) to peek and pop previews in the timeline and other sections of the app.

With the latest version of Twitter for iPhone, you’ll be able to press on tweets, links, pictures, and profiles to bring up a 3D Touch preview of the content. By swiping a peek upwards, you’ll also gain access to shortcuts to either share via direct message and iOS extensions or, in the case of profiles, mute, block, and report a user.

Twitter’s extended 3D Touch support isn’t as advanced as Tweetbot – for instance, peek and pop previews don’t seem to work in the Notifications tab – but it’s a step forward regardless.

You can get the latest version of Twitter for iPhone from the App Store.

Pixelmator 3.5 Adds Selection Tools and a Photos Extension

Pixelmator 3.5 was released today with three new tools - Quick Selection, Magnetic Selection, and a retouch extension for Apple’s Photos app. Pixelmator has been my go-to image editor for a long time. I use if for everything from screenshot editing for MacStories and creating assets for my own website, to retouching family photos. As many readers may know, we started a Telegram channel a couple months ago called The MacStories Lounge. One of Telegram’s strengths is its media integration. I figured, what better way to test the new Pixelmator selection tools than to create a Telegram sticker – of Federico.

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Apple Denied Key Exemption for Retail Stores in India→

Bloomberg reports that Apple has been denied a key exemption that will likely scuttle Apple’s plans in the short term to open official Apple Retail Stores in India:

India’s finance minister has ratified a decision that Apple Inc. must meet local sourcing rules to open its own stores, according to people familiar with the matter, dealing what may be a fatal blow to the iPhone maker’s effort to open retail outlets in the country.

Minister Arun Jaitley decided to support the decision by India’s Foreign Investment Promotion Board that Apple will have to procure 30 percent of components locally if it wants to sell through its own retail stores, said the people, asking not to be identified because the matter is private. The company makes most of its products in China and doesn’t currently meet that criteria.

It comes after another government panel had recommended, in late April, that Apple be granted the exemption. But more significantly, today’s move comes after Tim Cook visited India in his first official trip to the country as CEO of Apple.

The decision by India’s finance minister may not be the last word, as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi could theoretically intervene. During Cook’s trip to India he met with Prime Minister Modi and Apple’s retail plans were reportedly discussed, as was Modi’s “Made in India” program which encourages foreign companies to manufacture in India. In public comments during the week Cook suggested that Apple was looking to establish a facility in India that would refurbish old iPhones for resale in India, but had no plans for other manufacturing at this stage.

If you’re interested in reading more about Cook’s week-long tour of India and China (which occurred last week), I wrote about the context of the trip as well as providing a timeline of what actually happened.

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Igloo: An Intranet You’ll Actually Like [Sponsor]

In this day and age, there’s no shortage of ways to collaborate. You can use shared FTP drives, company-wide chat apps, or maybe you can use the one that thing that’s been neglected for a while: your corporate communications portal. While each app might serve a purpose, the sheer volume (and fragmentation) can be overwhelming for people at work these days.

That’s why you should try Igloo. It combines department spaces, team calendars, corporate file sharing, internal communications capabilities, social features, and plenty more—easily.

At Igloo, they think your way is the best way, they just want to support you, and make your way better.

Work has evolved and your tools should too. Never email yourself a file again. Bring your company into the 21st century - send your IT guy to try Igloo Software for free.

Igloo is an intranet you’ll actually like.

Our thanks to Igloo for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Twitter Gives Tweets More Room to Breathe

Twitter announced some big changes today that are designed to encourage conversations and media sharing. The 140 character limit of a tweet becomes a more significant constraint as you add more ‘@names’ to a conversation or attach media to a tweet. The changes announced by Twitter, which go a long way toward addressing those constraints, will be rolled out over the coming months in Twitter’s own app and will be available to third-party Twitter clients.

Replies

Large group conversations on Twitter are hard. The more people you add to a thread, the fewer characters you have left to communicate with the group. With the upcoming change to replies, ’@names’ of up to 50 people will no longer count toward the 140-character limit of a tweet. The tweet will still be seen only in the timelines of the people @replied, but eliminating ‘@names’ from the character count should facilitate conversations among more people. I am happy to see this change overall, but I wonder whether Twitter has gone too far by allowing up to 50 ‘@names’ in a single tweet.

The change to ‘@names’ will also eliminate the quandary about what to do when you want to start a tweet with someone’s ‘@name’ that is not a reply. With the changes announced, these tweets will be treated like any other tweet and be visible to all of your followers, eliminating the need to use the convention of a period before an ‘@name’ to ensure that everyone who follows you sees the tweet.

Media

When Twitter rolls out the changes announced, photos, videos, and GIFs will not count against the 140 character limit of a tweet, which should encourage the use of more media in tweets. The existing limits of four photos, or one video or GIF per tweet still apply. Links that are pasted into a tweet and not generated by attaching media will also still count against the 140-character limit.

Retweets

Finally, Twitter announced that you will be able to retweet your own tweets. Though this struck me as strange at first, it eliminates the need for things like the ubiquitous ‘ICYM’ tweets and will allow you to share an @reply, which would normally only be visible to its recipients, with all your followers.

VSCO to Lead iOS Photography Sessions at Apple’s New Union Square Store→

As we highlighted yesterday, among the components of Apple’s new Union Square store are Creative Sessions that will be held in what Apple has dubbed ‘The Forum.’ Today, VSCO announced a partnership with Apple highlighting iOS photography:

From May 26th until July 7th, Apple Union Square will host four Creative Sessions, each led by an established photographer from the VSCO community. Each photographer will share their story, inspiration, and creative process, and will lead a hands-on lesson based on their unique style and techniques.

VSCO is the maker of a popular iOS photo editor of the same name.

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Apple Promotes Alternate Conferences and Events Surrounding WWDC

Apple’s history with events scheduled around WWDC has been stormy. In 2013, CocoaConf scheduled an alternative conference for developers who were unable to get a ticket to WWDC called CocoaConf Alt. The conference was set to coincide with WWDC until CocoaConf organizers received an email from the Intercontinental Hotel that they could not hold the conference due to a contractual conflict with Apple. More recently, AltConf (originally AltWWDC and changed) planned to stream the 2015 WWDC keynote and State of the Union presentations at the Metreon Theater across the street from Moscone West. Initially, Apple threatened legal action, but ultimately, agreed to allow AltConf to stream the sessions that Apple streamed itself.

That bit of recent history makes today’s news that Apple is affirmatively promoting alternative conferences all the more welcome. Not only is Apple promoting AltConf, but also Layers, a fantastic design-centric conference that I attended last year and highly recommend.

In addition to alternative conferences, Apple is promoting a couple of high-profile community events – the Beard Bash, hosted by The Loop and iMore, and The Talk Show Live, hosted by Daring Fireball.

Apple’s acknowledgement of some of the best events surrounding WWDC is welcome and the sort of thing that gets me excited for WWDC.