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Connected, Episode 241: 123 Twitter Client Doesn’t Work→

Stephen returns order to the podcast after two weeks away, Myke reads some Hex color codes and Federico turns on his hype machine.

Some interesting discussions about apps and using Twitter on this week’s episode of Connected. You can listen here.

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Highlights from the Six Colors Transcription of Apple’s Q2 2019 Earnings Call

Where better to get a little ‘color’ on Apple’s earnings than from a full transcript of the company’s earnings call with Wall Street analysts published by Six Colors? As in the past, Jason Snell has transcribed Apple’s presentation to Wall Street analysts along with the question and answer session at the end of the call. Here are a few of the highlights:

The iPad made a strong showing in China with Cook reporting that:

For iPad, we were very happy to return to growth in Greater China, while generating strong double-digit growth in each of our other geographic segments. Our great iPad results were driven primarily by strong customer response to iPad Pro.

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Apple Q2 2019 Results - $58 Billion Revenue

Apple has just published its financial results for Q2 2019, which is the company’s holiday quarter. The company posted revenue of $58 billion. Apple CEO Tim Cook said:

Our March quarter results show the continued strength of our installed base of over 1.4 billion active devices, as we set an all-time record for Services, and the strong momentum of our Wearables, Home and Accessories category, which set a new March quarter record,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We delivered our strongest iPad growth in six years, and we are as excited as ever about our pipeline of innovative hardware, software and services. We’re looking forward to sharing more with developers and customers at Apple’s 30th annual Worldwide Developers Conference in June.

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HomeRun Launches Advanced Daily Routine Feature for Complications and Siri Face

HomeRun 1.2 was released today from developer Aaron Pearce, the latest evolution of the Apple Watch app for controlling HomeKit scenes from your wrist. Its last big update introduced the ability to create custom complications on the Watch, which was a fantastic addition because it enabled users to implement the complications that work best for them personally. Today’s update extends the theme of user customization and programmability, but takes it to a whole new level – exceeding anything I’ve seen from another Watch app before now.

Version 1.2 of HomeRun revolves around one main feature – daily routines – which takes a couple different forms. In each manifestation, however, daily routines equip users to program which actions the app surfaces on their wrist during the course of a normal day.

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AppStories, Episode 109 – Pick 2: Moment and MindNode→

On this week’s episode of AppStories, we take a deep dive into two apps we’ve been using a lot lately, Moment Pro Camera and the recently-released MindNode 6.

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Unlock Creative Lighting with Apollo: Immersive Illumination [Sponsor]

With Apollo: Immersive Illumination, you can unlock unlimited creativity over a single Portrait mode photo with the app’s powerful relighting tools. Apollo enables an infinite number of lighting variations that let you create a dull, dark, spooky, magical, or night club feel to your images. But Apollo isn’t only about theming your photos. You can also create more natural effects by removing lighting from areas of an image, highlighting faces with low emissive lights, or adding other subtle lighting effects.

Apollo sees photos as 3D scenes but hides the technical complexities of the process behind elegant single-finger interactions that allow users to focus on the adjustments to their pictures, which update in real-time. Up to 30 virtual light sources and adjustments to their position, brightness, color, and spread can be applied to a single photo. You can apply masks that alter emitted light and color and adjust parameters like shadow intensity, the range of lighting effects, progressive background removal, and fog effects. Apollo’s features are constantly refined and new ones are added all the time after thorough testing to ensure they work across a wide range of iPhone models and wow users.

To see exactly what Apollo can do for your Portrait mode photos, check out its Twitter and Instagram accounts which are full of stunning examples of the app in action.

Download the Apollo on the App Store today to open a new world of creative lighting for your Portrait photos. Apollo is a one time paid up-front app. There are no In-App Purchases or subscriptions.

Also, just for MacStories readers, Apollo is giving away 51 promo codes for the app that can be redeemed in the App Store. The codes are available on a first-come, first served basis, so don’t wait, visit this link for a chance to win a copy of Apollo.

Thanks to Apollo for supporting MacStories this week.

Apple Responds to The New York Times’ Story on the Removal of Parental Control Apps from the App Store

Yesterday, The New York Times published a story drawing on interviews from makers of parental control apps that had been removed from the App Store or modified at Apple’s insistence. The third-party apps monitored kids’ screen time and limited their access to apps – functionality similar to the Screen Time feature built into iOS 12. The Times suggested the timing of the removals was not a coincidence:

Shortly after announcing its new tools, Apple began purging apps that offered similar services.

The Times also notes that Spotify has complained to EU regulators about Apple, and says other unnamed competitors claim the company is abusing its power to harm them.

Today, Apple responded to the Times’ story on the company’s Newsroom website in a piece titled ‘The facts about parental control apps’:

We recently removed several parental control apps from the App Store, and we did it for a simple reason: they put users’ privacy and security at risk. It’s important to understand why and how this happened.

Apple explains that the apps in question were using Mobile Device Management, which is typically used by enterprises to control employees’ iOS devices. However, MDM poses serious security risks when used in consumer apps from third parties. According to Apple:

Parents shouldn’t have to trade their fears of their children’s device usage for risks to privacy and security, and the App Store should not be a platform to force this choice. No one, except you, should have unrestricted access to manage your child’s device.

In response to the broader suggestion that it was removing apps for competitive reasons, Apple says:

Apple has always supported third-party apps on the App Store that help parents manage their kids’ devices. Contrary to what The New York Times reported over the weekend, this isn’t a matter of competition. It’s a matter of security.

In this app category, and in every category, we are committed to providing a competitive, innovative app ecosystem. There are many tremendously successful apps that offer functions and services similar to Apple’s in categories like messaging, maps, email, music, web browsers, photos, note-taking apps, contact managers and payment systems, just to name a few. We are committed to offering a place for these apps to thrive as they improve the user experience for everyone.

Regardless of its intent, every action Apple takes can have significant economic consequences to its competitors. In that environment, it’s not surprising that stories like the one in the Times are published. It’s the framing of the story – that this is one example of anticompetitive behavior of many – that likely drove the prompt response. Apple has made it clear that services revenue is important to the company’s future, and I suspect it did not want to go into its earnings call Tuesday without having addressed the Times’ story.

Overcast Adds Simple Podcast Video Clip Sharing

Today, Marco Arment released an update to Overcast with a new podcast clip sharing feature. Arment explains why he created the new feature on Marco.org:

Podcast sharing has been limited to audio and links, but today’s social networks are more reliant on images and video, especially Instagram. Podcasts need video clips to be shared more easily today.

I’ve seen some video clips from tools specific to certain podcast networks or hosts, but they were never available to everyone, or for every show. So people mostly just haven’t shared podcast clips, understandably, because it has been too hard.

He’s right. I created a Final Cut Pro template project for making sharable video clips for AppStories, the show I do with Federico. I’ve shared those clips on Instagram and Twitter in the past, but even with a template, the process was more cumbersome and time-consuming than it was worth, so I’ve never shared them as consistently as I’d like.

With its new share feature, Overcast has dramatically simplified the process. When you find a clip you want to share, tap the share button and choose ‘Share Clip…’ – Overcast takes you to a new Share Clip screen that allows you to define the beginning and end of your clip with drag handles. One terrific touch is that as you drag the play head across the start or end of the clip, the double vertical lines that define the termination points of the clip animate, so you know precisely when you’ve lined up the play head properly for previewing your clip’s audio.

Video clips can be shared in portrait, landscape, or square formats.

Video clips can be shared in portrait, landscape, or square formats.

Clips can be shared as portrait, landscape, or square videos and include no badging, Overcast badging, or Overcast and Apple Podcasts badging. Tapping ‘Next’ takes you to a preview of your video where you can see what it looks like before sharing it. When you’re satisfied with your creation, you’ve got two options. First, you can tap the share button and share the video clip to social networks or any other app that will accept an m4v video file. Second, you can tap the link button to share a URL to an overcast.fm page queued to the beginning of your clip, which is a feature that Overcast has had for quite a while.

Overcast's updated clip landing pages include links to Apple Podcasts, Castro, Pocket Casts, and the show's RSS feed.

Overcast’s updated clip landing pages include links to Apple Podcasts, Castro, Pocket Casts, and the show’s RSS feed.

Although the link sharing feature of Overcast isn’t new, Arment has refreshed the landing pages for the links to include badges for Apple Podcasts, Castro, Pocket Casts, and the show’s RSS feed, so users can access the linked show from any of these other popular podcast players or the show’s RSS feed.

Expanding clip sharing to add video support is an excellent addition to Overcast. Whether you’re promoting your own show or want to share a snippet of your favorite show with friends, Overcast has made the process so simple that I expect we’ll begin seeing many more of these clips on Twitter, Instagram, and on other social networks very soon.

Overcast is available on the App Store as a free download.

Marvis Review: The Ultra-Customizable Apple Music Client

Marvis is a music player that launched on iPhone just two months ago, yet in a 3.0 update today expands its usefulness immensely thanks to a major new feature: full Apple Music integration. With today’s release, Marvis joins the growing list of third-party apps that use Apple’s MusicKit API to offer access to and control of your Apple Music library.

Marvis follows in the footsteps of Soor, which Federico reviewed earlier this year, in prioritizing layout customization as one of its hallmark advantages over Apple’s first-party Music app. Pushing beyond what even Soor accomplished though, in Marvis customization is taken to a whole new level, with fine-grained design options that no other app can compare with.

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