Adobe Marks World Emoji Day with Findings of Key Emoji Survey→

Today on World Emoji Day, Adobe has shared the results of its recent survey of 1,000 US emoji users:

Among the emoji users surveyed, the overwhelming majority use emojis to lighten the mood of conversations (93%) and show support to people (91%). Aligned with this finding, emoji users’ top three favorite emojis are ???? (#1), ❤️ (#2), ???? (#3). Interestingly, a majority (81%) of emoji users believe that people who use emojis are friendlier and more approachable.

The survey included participants ages 16-73 who use emoji at least weekly. The full report is interesting to explore, as it lists favorite emoji by users’ gender and the region of the US they live in. Across all tracked demographics, the laughing emoji was most-used, but the differences in runner-ups are well worth checking out.

Yesterday Apple got a head start on World Emoji Day by sharing a preview of its new emoji coming in iOS 13 this fall. Though there aren’t any obvious standouts that seem destined to achieve high levels of use, my personal favorites so far include the sloth and yawning face.

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Apple Previews New Emoji Arriving in iOS 13, macOS Catalina, and More

Tomorrow is World Emoji Day, and Apple is starting the celebration early by offering a sneak peek at some of the new emoji arriving later this year in iOS 13, iPadOS 13, macOS Catalina, and watchOS 6.

In early February the Unicode Consortium, which makes all emoji approval decisions, debuted the full list of 230 emoji coming this year. Apple notes that this group can be consolidated to fifty-nine new emoji designs, many of which include variations – such as the people holding hands emoji, which can be customized in more than 75 ways to have various mixes of gender and skin tone. Another big theme in this emoji release is a set of disability-themed emoji, which Apple is actually responsible for proposing to the Unicode Consortium last year.

The previous two years, new emoji have launched in the x.1 updates to Apple’s software platforms, which often debut in October. If that tradition holds, we’re just a few short months away from gaining access to the 2019 emoji set.

Connected, Episode 251: The Worrier Warrior→

On last week’s episode of Connected:

Myke has a story about the beach, Federico has a plan for NFC stickers, and Stephen has some thoughts on this week’s MacBook news.

You can listen below (and find the show notes here).

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Connected, Episode 251

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Adapt, Episode 5: Desktop-Class Safari and the Magic of OCR→

On last week’s episode of our iPad-focused show Adapt:

Safari is growing up this fall in iPadOS 13 to a true desktop-class browser, and Federico and Ryan detail everything that’s new; also, this week’s challenge involves using apps to perform OCR on a 400+ page PDF.

You can listen below (and find the show notes here), and don’t forget to send us questions using #AskAdapt and by tagging our Twitter account.

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Adapt, Episode 5

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Video Game Narrative Design and Writing Science Fantasy Novels with Carrie Patel (Part 1)→

Today on Dialog, we are joined by video game narrative designer and novelist Carrie Patel. In this first part of our conversation, we explore narrative design in games Patel has worked on at Obsidian Entertainment, including Pillars of Eternity and The Outer Worlds, which is coming to consoles and PC in October.

In this installment of our conversation, Patel explains what narrative design is, how it fits into the video game development process, balancing gameplay and narrative, working collaboratively with a large team from different disciplines, and more. Next week, we’ll dive into Patel’s Recoletta trilogy of novels and how she balances the demands of writing books and working on video games.

You can find the episode here or listen through the Dialog web player below.

Sponsored by:

  • Astropad Studio – Turn your iPad into a professional graphics tablet. Get started today with a 30-day free trial.
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Libratone’s Zipp 2 and Zipp Mini 2 Portable Wireless Speakers: The MacStories Review

I love my two HomePods. One sits in my living room and the other in my studio. When I finish working for the day, I can ask Siri to move my music from the studio to the living room where I continue what I’m listening to as I make dinner and relax. Most of the time, both HomePods are also within earshot for issuing Siri commands to turn lights on and off, add items to my grocery list, and kick off shortcuts.

Here’s the thing though: it’s summertime. I’m spending time outdoors and going on road trips to visit family. Meanwhile, my HomePods remain tethered to the wall by power cords. They’ll be there waiting when I return, but when I’m on the go, my HomePods are useless, which prompted me to start looking at portable speakers that could reach beyond the walls of my home.

My research led me to Libratone’s Zipp 2 and Zipp Mini 2 wireless speakers, two of the only wireless solutions I’ve found that support Apple’s AirPlay 2 audio streaming technology. Libratone sent me one of each model for testing, and I’ve spent the past few months using them in different spots around my house, in my backyard, and at the beach. Both speakers deliver on the versatility I was looking for, extending the ways and places I can play music. However, neither of the Zipp speakers was quite as simple to use or reliable as the HomePod. The few issues I ran into are balanced out in no small measure by the versatility of the Zipp speakers though, which depending on your needs makes them a worthy replacement for or supplement to the HomePod.

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Airmail Zero: Blazingly-Fast Gmail Triage for the Mac and iPhone [Sponsor]

The makers of the Apple Design Award-winning app Airmail are back with Airmail Zero, a brand-new take on Gmail for the Mac and iPhone.

Speed is critical to getting through a mountain of email messages, and you don’t want your email client slowing you down. That’s why Bloop, designed Airmail Zero, the successor to Airmail, from the ground up with speed and efficiency as a top priority.

Airmail Zero is built on an all-new Swift codebase for lightning-fast app launches, and instantaneous message handling. The app has been architected to use virtually zero storage, memory, and CPU to keep everything working smoothly throughout. Sync is speedy, the app works exceptionally well with virtual private networks, and it communicates over HTTPS connections too.

The emphasis on speed extends to Airmail Zero’s design, which is brought to life with custom animations. Email messages are presented in a clean, easy-to-read card interface with simple, intuitive controls for rapidly triaging an overflowing inbox. Add to that a rich set of keyboard shortcuts on the Mac and you’ll find yourself with an empty inbox in no time.

The Mac and iPhone versions of Airmail Zero are free to use with one Gmail account. Subscribe for $0.99/month or $9.99/year and you add multiple Gmail accounts organized in a unified inbox, plus live help from the Airmail Zero support team.

Spend your time answering email instead of managing your email client by giving Airmail Zero a try today on the Mac and iPhone.

Our thanks to Airmail Zero for supporting MacStories this week.

A Timeline of iOS Accessibility: It Started with 36 Seconds

On June 8, 2009, at the end of a two-hour WWDC keynote, Phil Schiller was running through a long list of new features and apps that would be available on the iPhone 3GS, due to ship on June 19 of that year. Phil was pinch-hitting as keynote master of ceremonies for Steve Jobs, who was then on leave, recovering from a liver transplant.

At 1:51:54 in the video, just after he showed off Voice Control and the new Compass app, Apple’s version of the accessibility logo appeared on screen. It’s a stick-style figure with arms and legs outstretched. The icon is still used today.

“We also care greatly about accessibility,” Schiller said, and the slide switched to an iPhone settings screen.

For a total of 36 seconds, Schiller spoke somewhat awkwardly about VoiceOver, Zoom, White on Black (called Invert Colors from iOS 6 onward), and Mono Audio – the first real accessibility features on the iPhone OS platform, as it was then called.

And then it was over. No demo. No applause break.

Schiller moved on to describe the Nike+ app and how it would allow iPhone users to meet fitness goals.

I surveyed a number of liveblogs from that day. About half noted the mention of accessibility features in iPhone OS. The others jumped directly from Compass to Nike+. Accessibility hadn’t made much of a splash.

But in the blindness community, things were very different. Time seemed to stop somewhere after 1:51:54 in the video. Something completely amazing had happened, and only a few people seemed to understand what it meant.

Some were overjoyed, some were skeptical, some were in shock. They all had questions. Would this be a half-hearted attempt that would allow Apple to fill in the checkboxes required by government regulations, a PR stunt to attract good will? Or would it mean that people who had previously been completely locked out of the iPhone would have a way in?

You can probably guess what the answer is, now that we have ten years of an accessible mobile platform in the rearview mirror – now that Apple is widely credited with offering the best mobile accessibility experience available. But it didn’t all happen at once, and not every step along the way was a positive one.

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Excerpt from ‘36 Seconds That Changed Everything.’

As a companion to my audio documentary, “36 Seconds That Changed Everything: How the iPhone Learned to Talk,” I’ve put together a timeline of iOS accessibility milestones from the past ten years. I’ve focused on Apple hardware and operating systems, though there have also been important Apple app updates, and third-party apps that opened doors to new ways of using iOS accessibly. It’s a list that’s simply too long for this article. And, with a few exceptions, I’ve addressed accessibility-specific features of iOS. Many mainstream features have accessibility applications and benefits, even if they don’t fit here directly.

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