Posts in news

Apple Posts New iPhone Advert: “Amazing Apps”

Apple’s third advert featuring the new “If it’s not an iPhone, it’s not an iPhone” tagline was today posted online. The new advert, “Amazing Apps”, focuses on highlighting the huge amount of apps (“over one and a half million”) available on the App Store, and the notion that apps on the iPhone are “hand-picked” and “awe-inspiring”.

This is an iPhone, and it comes with something amazing. An App Store with over one and a half million of the best apps available. That’s over one and a half million, hand-picked, awe-inspiring, just plain surprising, who knew a phone could do that, apps. If it’s not an iPhone, it’s not an iPhone.

You can watch the new advert below the break, or on YouTube.

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Apple Posts Four New Apple Watch Commercials

Apple has posted four new commercials for the Apple Watch today, showcasing the device’s capabilities for private communication and fitness, as well as a variety of third-party apps for international users. The new commercials follow the same stylistic choices and presentation of the first Apple Watch ads that debuted in April.

In the first two ads, called Closer and Goals, the company demonstrates how it’s possible to stay in touch with others and achieve a healthier, more active lifestyle using Apple Watch. In Closer, Apple Watch use cases include Digital Touch, making phone calls, using the Watch as a remote for music, and even playing games. Rather than showing the Watch as a gadget that absorbs a user’s time and attention, the message is that Apple Watch can bring people closer to each other in new ways.

In Goals, on the other hand, the company shows how the fitness tracking capabilities of Apple Watch can extend beyond workouts. From brisk walks to yoga and even filling the last three minutes of the activity rings with jumping jacks in the bedroom, achieving goals with Apple Watch includes workouts, but it can be more than that. Also in this case, Apple puts the focus on some of the fitness-oriented third-party Watch apps that have been released so far.

Lastly, in the Beijing and Berlin commercials Apple Watch is presented as a travel companion and a useful extension to the iPhone. While Apple has previously marketed the iPhone as a handy device for traveling thanks to its camera, built-in maps, and rich app ecosystem, the Watch is shown as having more or less the same role but in a more discreet and contextual fashion. These two ads are more focused on the story of Apple Watch as an everyday companion, and traveling to another city or country enables the company to easily condense features and apps in 30 seconds.

As I wrote when the first Apple Watch commercials were released:

Notably, the ads never dwell on each example too long, using multiple mini-stories to convey the glanceable, spontaneous, and brief nature of Watch interactions. With simple and elegant ads Apple is saying that the Watch is a device to get out of technology obsession and let apps come to us (and vice versa) only when necessary.

You can watch the ads below or on Apple’s YouTube channel.

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Apple Releases New iPod touch, New Colors for Entire iPod Line

Apple this morning released an updated slate of iPods, featuring a big update to the internals of the iPod touch and updated colors for the entire line of iPods. The new iPods are available for purchase now on the Apple Online Store and Apple Retail Stores.

“iPod touch gives customers around the world access to Apple Music, the App Store and iOS, the world’s most advanced mobile operating system, starting at just $199,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s vice president of iPhone, iPod and iOS Product Marketing. “With big advancements like the A8 chip and the 8 megapixel iSight camera, customers can experience next-level gameplay, take even more beautiful photos and enjoy their favorite music, TV shows and movies.”

The iPod touch can now be purchased in space gray, silver, gold, pink, blue, and red. The same new colors are available for the iPod nano and shuffle, also updated today with new colors but without changes in price or tech specs.

The new iPod touch now has an 8 megapixel rear camera, a big increase from the previous 5 megapixel camera. The internals have also been brought up to date with a 64-bit A8 processor and an M8 Motion chip to track steps and elevation. The iPod touch still starts at $199 for a 16 GB device, with the 32 GB model available at $249 and $299 for 64 GB, but there’s also a new 128 GB model for $399. Today’s update to the iPod touch is the first since Apple released the fifth generation iPod touch in October 2012.

Aside from the new colors, the iPod nano and iPod shuffle remain the same feature-wise, including the pre-iOS 7 style icons on the iPod nano. The iPod nano costs $149 and the iPod shuffle costs $49.

Apple Pay Launches Today in the UK

Update: Apple Pay is now available. But in a last minute change, Apple has removed HSBC and First Direct from its list of participating banks and they are now listed as “coming soon”. We captured this image less than 24 hours ago which showed both these financial institutions as participating banks. One of our readers, Mitch got in contact with HSBC and they told him that support had been delayed by 2 weeks due to “some issues”. We understand that HSBC and First Direct will support Apple Pay on July 24. One other minor change is that MBNA, which was previously listed as “coming soon” is now listed as a participating bank.

After weeks of speculation, The Telegraph reports that Apple Pay will be available today in the UK. The UK is the second country to support Apple Pay, following the initial launch in the United States in late October 2014. Earlier today, several users on Twitter began noticing Apple Pay setup screens on their iPhones, suggesting that Apple was getting ready to roll out the service.

The Telegraph quoted VP of Apple Pay Jennifer Bailey:

“In America we’re not as advanced in using contactless as the UK, we’re only transitioning to chip and pin now,” she said. “Today there’s virtually no contactless from a card perspective - Apple Pay is the first contactless for the most part.”

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Design Your Next iPhone App with OmniGraffle [Sponsor]

Design your next iPhone app with OmniGraffle and a brand new iOS 9 stencil available to everyone on Stenciltown. (That’s right. Stenciltown.)

All the tools are included to do nearly anything involving shapes, design, layout, drawing, images, iconography – you name it. In practice, that means it’s easy to mock up your next iPhone or iPad app.

Download a free trial of OmniGraffle for Mac, or purchase for iOS and get started right away. And simply search for “iOS 9” in Stencils to start designing your next iPhone app.

Our thanks to OmniGraffle for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Apple Launching iOS 9, OS X El Capitan Public Betas Today

Following the official introduction at WWDC last month, Apple is launching the first public betas of iOS 9 and OS X 10.11 El Capitan today. According to Ars Technica, betas for the general public will be available later today; both iOS 9 and El Capitan public betas should be available to any user with an Apple ID interested in installing them.

The public betas will soon be available from Apple’s Beta Software Program website and they follow the launch of the third developer beta seeded to registered iOS and OS X developers yesterday. With the public betas, Apple aims to offer a larger pool of users the possibility of testing the upcoming versions of the operating systems for Mac and iOS devices, with built-in tools to provide feedback and report issues during the beta testing period. As usual, Apple recommends to keep a backup of a stable version of iOS and OS X before installing the public beta.

It’s worth pointing out that, at this stage, third-party apps from the App Store can’t be updated to take advantage of the new features in iOS 9 and OS X 10.11, which could limit the potential benefit of trying a public beta for some users. On iPad, for instance, only Apple’s pre-installed apps can use the new multitasking features in iOS 9. For this reason, users interested in installing the public betas should also keep in mind that developers can’t submit apps and updates with iOS 9 and El Capitan features to the App Store – therefore, it’d be best not to leave negative reviews for features missing in apps that can’t be updated to take advantage of them yet.

Apple’s public beta website with more information will be updated at this link later today. You can read our overviews of iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan here and here.

OmniGraffle: Design How You Like [Sponsor]

Get creative with OmniGraffle – beautiful document creation on your Mac, iPad, and iPhone with a swiss-army-knife app designed for everybody: novices and pros alike.

All the tools are included to do nearly anything involving shapes, design, layout, drawing, images, iconography – you name it. In practice, that means it’s easy to mock up an iPhone app, whip up an organizational chart or brainstorm a bit with Automatic Layout, share rough web designs with a client, and even export assets for finished projects.

There’s a lot inside OmniGraffle, and it’s free to try out for Mac. Purchase it for iOS and get started now. Start-to-finish design. Mockups in minutes.

Our thanks to The Omni Group for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Jony Ive’s Promotion to Chief Design Officer Now Official, Alan Dye and Richard Howarth Assume Vice President Roles

Alan Dye (VP, User Interface Design), Jony Ive (Chief Design Officer) and Richard Howarth (VP, Industrial Design)

Alan Dye (VP, User Interface Design), Jony Ive (Chief Design Officer) and Richard Howarth (VP, Industrial Design)

Jony Ive’s promotion to Chief Design Officer at Apple, first announced in a profile of Ive by Stephen Fry in late May, came into effect yesterday. Alongside Ive’s promotion, and also telegraphed in Stephen Fry’s article, Alan Dye and Richard Howarth also assumed their respective new roles yesterday as Vice President of User Interface Design and Vice President of Industrial Design.

All three promotions were made official yesterday with an update to Apple’s Leadership page. You can read the updated profile pages for Jony Ive, Alan Dye and Richard Howarth.

In Stephen Fry’s article from May, he asked Ive why he gave up control to Dye and Howarth:

When I catch up with Ive alone, I ask him why he has seemingly relinquished the two departments that had been so successfully under his control. “Well, I’m still in charge of both,” he says, “I am called Chief Design Officer. Having Alan and Richard in place frees me up from some of the administrative and management work which isn’t … which isn’t …”

“Which isn’t what you were put on this planet to do?”

“Exactly. Those two are as good as it gets. Richard was lead on the iPhone from the start. He saw it all the way through from prototypes to the first model we released. Alan has a genius for human interface design. So much of the Apple Watch’s operating system came from him. With those two in place I can …”

[via MacRumors]