A sleek and intuitive game library app for casuals and pros
On this week’s episode of AppStories, we consider the state of Apple’s built-in apps and whether it’s getting harder for third-party developers to compete with them.
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Today Apple is officially launching its latest service, Apple Card, but only to a subset of users ahead of a broader rollout later this month. The new credit card is limited to US users running at least iOS 12.4, and today it will only be available to certain people who signed up on Apple’s website to be notified about Apple Card. If you’re part of that chosen group, applying for Apple Card can be done right inside the Wallet app, where the card will be added for immediate use upon credit approval; a physical credit card is also mailed out if you choose to receive one, built from titanium. For those who don’t get invited for early access, the full Apple Card launch will arrive before the end of August.
Milanote is the perfect tool for organizing your next creative project. The Mac and web app, which also has a companion iPhone app, is an incredibly easy way to create beautiful visual boards of ideas and inspiration that you can organize any way you’d like.
Conceived initially to fulfill the needs of the cofounders’ design agency, Milanote has grown to over 250,000 users that include teams at companies like Apple, Nike, Netflix, and Uber. The strength of Milanote is its flexibility. You can combine notes, images, files, and links all in one place and then connect them using drag and drop. Because Milanote uses a freeform canvas, the app makes it simple to find connections between ideas that you’d miss in a traditional notes app. The Milanote boards you create are private by default, but they can be shared with colleagues allowing you to work collaboratively with team members too.
The latest addition to Milanote is its iPhone companion app that lets you gather photos, notes, to-dos, and links on the go. You can then organize everything when you return to your Mac. It’s a great way to ensure that you can capture ideas even when you’re away from your Mac.
Milanote has a special offer just for MacStories readers. For a lifetime 20% off on a Milanote Pro account, which adds unlimited notes, links, images, and file uploads as well as powerful board and content search to Milanote’s free plan, use the coupon code ‘macstories20’ at checkout. So don’t delay, head over to Milanote’s website to learn more and sign up for a Milanote Pro account.
Our thanks to Milanote for supporting MacStories this week.
Last week, The Guardian reported on Apple’s Siri grading program in which contractors listen to snippets of audio to evaluate the effectiveness of Siri’s response to its trigger phrase. That article quoted extensively from an anonymous contractor who said they and other contractors regularly heard private user information as part of the program.
In response, Apple has announced that it is suspending the Siri grading program worldwide. While suspended, Apple says it will re-evaluate the program and issue a software update that will let users choose whether to allow their audio to be used as part of the program.
In a statement to Matthew Panzarino, the editor-in-chief of TechCrunch, Apple said:
“We are committed to delivering a great Siri experience while protecting user privacy,” Apple said in a statement to TechCrunch. “While we conduct a thorough review, we are suspending Siri grading globally. Additionally, as part of a future software update, users will have the ability to choose to participate in grading.”
In an earlier response to The Guardian, Apple had said that less than 1% of daily Siri requests are sent to humans as part of the grading program. However, that’s not very comforting to users who are left wondering whether snippets of their daily life are part of the audio shared with contractors. Consequently, I’m glad to see that Apple is re-examining its Siri quality-control efforts and has promised to give users a choice of whether they participate.
On this week’s episode of Connected:
Stephen is back from repairing Macs and ruined the intro. Federico explains what’s going on with iOS 13 Beta 5, and Myke is excited about the second coming of the Galaxy Fold. Then, the guys discuss Apple’s Q3 results.
You can listen below (and find the show notes here).
Connected, Episode 254
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This has been a year of new creative projects for me. In addition to some personal endeavors that have yet to see the light of day, I joined Federico as the co-host of Adapt, a new iPad-focused podcast on Relay FM. Learning the art of expressing my Apple takes in speech rather than text has been an adventure in itself, but I’ve also grown to cultivate a very different skill: audio editing.
When I was charged with editing this iPad-focused podcast, I naturally turned to an iPad-based editing tool: every episode of Adapt has been edited in Ferrite Recording Studio, and I’ve never even tried using another app. Most podcasters I’m familiar with edit in Logic, but my Mac mini is purposely utilized as little as possible, so I knew when I dove into podcasting that I wanted an iPad-based solution if at all possible. On multiple occasions I’ve heard and read Jason Snell extol the virtues of Ferrite, so that was the app I turned to.
Getting started with podcast editing, even with an app like Ferrite that’s built for it, can be extremely intimidating. There are lots of settings, and unless you have previous experience working with audio, you likely have no idea what any of them do. I learned a lot from Ferrite’s user guide in the early days, and the aforementioned Jason Snell articles on Six Colors. And before long, I found an editing setup that worked well for me. Now, I want to share it with you.
Apple’s path to a home-brewed mapping solution has been long and perilous, but it’s almost arrived.
12 years ago the iPhone launched with Google powering its pre-installed navigation software; five years later, the botched debut of Apple’s own Maps app led to the firing of a key Apple executive; Apple Maps has steadily improved over the years, but seemingly its biggest weakness is that it has never truly contained Apple’s own maps. The app is Apple’s, but the maps have always come from other sources.
Last year, Apple announced a coming change that had been years in the works: Maps would soon contain the company’s own maps, and they would be transformative. The new maps started rolling out in the US last fall with iOS 12, and Apple claims they’ll cover the entire US by the end of 2019.
Timed with the spread of its first-party mapping data, Apple is giving the Maps app a big upgrade in iOS 13 that represents the company’s biggest push yet to overtake Google Maps as the world’s most trusted, go-to mapping service. Apple Maps in iOS 13 represents – if you’re in the US at least – Apple’s purest vision to date for a modern mapping service. Here’s everything that it brings.
Ken Case, writing for The Omni Group:
In 2019, we think it’s time to retire our custom document browser in favor of using Apple’s built-in document browser—and with our iOS 13 updates this fall we’ll be doing just that. Instead of seeing our custom file browser, you’ll be presented with the standard iOS document browser—just like in Apple’s own iWork apps. Using Apple’s browser, you’ll be able to store and sync your documents using Apple’s built-in iCloud Drive, or third-party commercial options like Box—or even in cloud- or self-hosted collaborative git repositories using Working Copy.
Syncing through OmniPresence will still be an option, but it will no longer be the only integrated option. In fact, it might be the least privileged option: since OmniPresence isn’t its own separate app, it won’t be listed in the document browser’s sidebar where you find your other document storage solutions. Instead, it will present itself on iOS much like it does on Mac—as a folder of synced documents. We’re not trying to drive people away from using OmniPresence—but in 2019 we don’t think it makes sense to push people towards it either. OmniPresence is not a core part of our apps or business, and in 2019 there are lots of great alternatives. Seamless document syncing is essential to our apps—but exactly where and how those documents are synced is not!
This is an excellent change and one I hope more apps move toward. The document browser in iOS is essentially a special view of the Files app which is used as the root file management UI in document-based apps that adopt it. As Case points out, all of Apple’s iWork apps support the document browser, and several key third-party apps do too such as PDF Viewer, MindNode, and Pretext. The document browser not only enables users to store an app’s files in any file provider they wish, but its other primary benefit is offering a single unified file browsing experience for users on iOS. As more apps adopt the document browser, that unified experience becomes more a reality for iPad and iPhone users.
The timing of the Omni Group implementing the document browser is surely no surprise: this fall Apple’s Files app is being upgraded with support for external storage devices like USB drives, a new Column view, shared iCloud Drive folders, and more. By adopting the document browser in apps like OmniOutliner and OmniGraffle, the Omni Group gets the advantage of having all these new Files features built right into their apps.
Apple has just published its financial results for Q3 2019. The company posted revenue of $53.8 billion. Apple CEO Tim Cook said:
“This was our biggest June quarter ever — driven by all-time record revenue from Services, accelerating growth from Wearables, strong performance from iPad and Mac and significant improvement in iPhone trends,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “These results are promising across all our geographic segments, and we’re confident about what’s ahead. The balance of calendar 2019 will be an exciting period, with major launches on all of our platforms, new services and several new products.”
Apple’s revenue guidance for Q3 2019 fell between $52.5 billion and $54.5 billion, with gross margin estimated to be between 37% and 38%.
Going into today’s earnings call, Yahoo Finance said that analysts, who were not expecting extraordinary financial results from Apple, would be focused on News+ and other revenue generated by services,
But according to Bloomberg’s MODL consensus, iPhone sales are expected to fall 10.3% in Q3, pushed lower by the ongoing trade war between the U.S. and China.
The same consensus, however, also points to an increase in sales of iPads, Macs, wearables like the AirPods and Apple Watch, and services by as much as 14.4%. Don’t forget, Apple recently revamped its iPad and Mac lineups, and released a new version of the seemingly ubiquitous AirPods.
In the year-ago quarter (Q3 2018), Apple earned $53.3 billion in revenue. During that quarter Apple sold 41.3 million iPhones, 11.6 million iPads, and 3.7 million Macs. As announced on Apple’s Q4 2018 earnings call, however, the company no longer reports unit sales for any of its products.
