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Instagram Adds Close Friends Feature to Stories

In development for over a year, Instagram announced today that it is adding a new ‘close friends’ feature to Stories. The new feature, which is rolling out in stages today, lets users limit who can see individual Instagram Stories posts.

Limiting a photo or video to close friends is straightforward. Friends can be added or removed from the ‘Close Friends’ list from the side menu in your Instagram profile. When you’re ready to share a photo or video as part of your Instagram Story, the new feature adds a circular green button with a white star to the bottom of the screen that restricts sharing to people on your close friends list.

When you receive content from people who have added you as a close friend, their avatar at the top of Instagram’s main view will be outlined in green to signal that a close friend has shared something. The image or video is also badged as having been shared by a close friend.

It will be interesting to see how the Close Friends feature impacts Instagram. I like the idea of limiting some of what I share on Instagram with a smaller circle of friends. For many people, I expect the feature will make them more comfortable with sharing more as opposed to moving their entire Stories usage to a private group. However, it also has the potential to drain Stories of much of their content in favor of private silos.

Gaming the App Store→

David Barnard, developer of apps like Weather Up and Launch Center Pro, has written an extensive overview of tactics that are commonly used each day to game the App Store. He writes:

Any one of these tactics might seem somewhat bland individually, but when tens of thousands of apps deploy multiple tactics across many categories of apps, the impact can be measured in hundreds of millions of users and likely billions of dollars.

Tactics mentioned include employing specific keywords, buying fake reviews, implementing misleading subscriptions, and more. The idea is that bad actors can squeeze the most money out of users by following the approach Barnard outlines, which ultimately provides a bad user experience that degrades the App Store’s reputation.

Barnard concludes the article with a challenge to Apple:

Featuring an app is a great carrot, and Apple doesn’t generally feature apps that so blatantly flaunt App Store manipulation and user hostile tactics, but the carrot of getting featured pales in comparison to how much money can be made by gaming the App Store. It’s well past time for Apple to employ more carrots to create great experiences on the App Store, and to use a bigger stick on those manipulating the App Store and creating terrible user experiences for Apple’s customers.

I love this idea as a potential solution to encourage quality apps on the App Store. The revamped App Store from iOS 11 with daily feature articles is great, as are things like the Apple Design Awards at each WWDC, but if Apple wants to retain a strong quality brand for the App Store, it wouldn’t hurt to find more ways to reward good developers.

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Apple Music Coming to Amazon Echo Devices

In a blog post published this morning, Amazon announced that Apple Music is set to launch on Amazon Echo devices next month, starting the week of December 17.

According to Dave Limp, senior vice president of Amazon Devices, Echo users will be able to ask Alexa, the device’s built-in voice assistant, to play their favorite songs, artists, albums, playlists created by Apple’s curators, as well as radio stations available on the service. Beats 1, Apple Music’s own live radio station featuring artist interviews and daily programs, will also be accessible via the Amazon Echo, the company said. The integration will be enabled just like any other skill on the Amazon Echo by connecting your Apple Music account to Amazon’s device using the Alexa app.

“Music is one of the most popular features on Alexa—since we launched Alexa four years ago, customers are listening to more music in their homes than ever before,” said Dave Limp, senior vice president, Amazon Devices. “We are committed to offering great music providers to our customers and since launching the Music Skill API to developers just last month, we’ve expanded the music selection on Alexa to include even more top tier services. We’re thrilled to bring Apple Music – one of the most popular music services in the US – to Echo customers this holiday.”

While Apple Music has long been available on Android in addition to iOS and macOS (and on Sonos speakers in addition to HomePod), the upcoming Amazon Echo integration marks a major shift as Apple Music has never been able to integrate with competing smart speakers through third-party voice assistants. It’ll be interesting to see if the Amazon Echo integration will be more limited than the HomePod’s native Apple Music access, which we’ll make sure to test once Apple Music’s Alexa skill goes live next month.

Made on iPad→

Michael Steeber, writing for 9to5Mac:

The new iPad Pro has ignited conversations about the future of computing and new possibilities for creative work. Paired with a second-generation Apple Pencil, the hardware unlocks potential that has driven many professionals to re-evaluate how iPads best fit in their lives. My own experience with the new iPad Pro has been a journey of discovery. To expand my horizons and help others get more out of their devices, I asked the creative professional community to share their own iPad workflows.

From digital illustration to managing a business, the vast range of ways people are working on iPads proves there’s no one right way or wrong way to use them. Some have embraced iOS as their platform of choice for every task. Some use a Mac and an iPad in concert to create powerful workflows that highlight the capabilities of each device. Others are developing entirely new ways of working that simply couldn’t exist before.

Fantastic idea by Steeber, and a collection of great examples of all kinds of people using the iPad for all kinds of professional work. Another reminder that we – as tech press – can only cover a fraction of the tasks an iPad is able to accomplish.

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Connected, Episode 220: Numeric Professional→

Stephen and Federico walk through their new Mac mini setups, then Federico fights with iCloud in Radar #46282145. Please help.

On this week’s episode of Connected, Stephen and I discuss our new Mac minis and I explain how I’ve started using it for automation. You can listen here.

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  • PDFpen, from Smile: The ultimate tool for editing PDFs. Click here to learn more.
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YouTube Stories Expand to Broader Base of Creators→

YouTube’s take on the popular Stories format from Instagram and Snapchat was previously only available to select YouTubers, but starting today it’s rolling out to all accounts with over 10,000 subscribers. Sarah Perez, writing for TechCrunch:

YouTube is beginning to roll out Stories to a wider set of creators, giving them access to the new creation tools that include the ability to decorate the videos with text, stickers, filters, and more.

The feature is very much inspired by rival social apps like Snapchat and Instagram – except that, in YouTube’s case, Stories disappear after 7 days, not 24 hours.

The idea behind YouTube Stories is to give creators any easy way to engage with their fans in between their more polished and produced videos. Today’s creators are no longer simply turning a camera on and vlogging – they’re creating professional content that requires editing and a lot of work before publication, for the most part.

While I haven’t encountered any of my favorite YouTubers using Stories yet, I hope that changes after today. While Instagram’s IGTV seems like it hasn’t taken off very well, plenty of YouTubers remain heavy users of Instagram Stories. If YouTube Stories can offer a similar experience, without users needing to leave YouTube, it could be a really solid addition to the platform.

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Joswiak Says the XR is Apple’s Most Popular New iPhone and Details the Company’s World AIDS Day Efforts

In an interview with CNET, Apple Vice President Greg Joswiak revealed that the iPhone XR has been the best selling of the latest iPhone models every day since it was launched, a statement that is no doubt aimed at recent reports that XR parts orders have been reduced due to weak demand. Joswiak declined to provide specific sales figures to CNET.

Joswiak also said that Apple would again be marking World AIDS Day by making a donation to support Red, a nonprofit founded by U2 band member Bono. Apple is a long-term supporter of Red and has participated in World AIDS Day in a variety of ways over the years, raising $160 million since the group was founded in 2006.

In the past, the company has made donations based on Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, donated based on Apple Pay purchases, turned store logos red, and worked with music artists and app developers to release special Red-themed content. According to CNET, this year:

The company will donate $1 for every Apple Pay purchase at an Apple Store, Apple.com or through the Apple Store app from Dec. 1 to Dec. 7, and it plans to turn 125 Apple Store logos red in honor of the day.

That’s similar to last year, except that this year the donation does not include in-app transactions, and Joswiak told CNET the App Store is not participating with any special promotions this year. That’s a shame because past Red-themed promotions raised awareness of Red’s efforts to combat AIDS as well as funds to support the group’s work.

Popular iOS Podcast Player Castro Sold to Tiny

Big announcement from Supertop’s blog today:

We have some news to share. Tiny has purchased a majority stake in Castro. We are still shareholders and will continue working on the app full time.

The post goes on to explain the reasons for this transfer of ownership.

Castro has reached a size where the demands of running the business have been pulling us in too many different directions. We haven’t been able to focus as much on the core work of designing and building a product. Selling to Tiny gets Castro access to more resources, contacts and expertise. By growing the team we can specialize our roles to be more focused individually and get more done collectively. We can get back to what we’re good at and what we love doing.

Castro underwent a business model transition earlier this year, moving from paid up front with Castro 2 to free with Castro 3 alongside the launch of the Castro Plus subscription option. It sounds like that shift has led to an increased amount of administrative work for Supertop’s development team, which should be alleviated thanks to this acquisition. The post concludes:

We’ve started work on Castro 4. The plan is to improve the design to bring more listeners into the Castro flow. We’re excited, because for the first time in five years of work on Castro, we’ll have the resources to focus exclusively on it as product designers and developers, without contract work to distract us, and with a team around us to handle the administrative tasks.

Castro is one of the best podcast clients on iOS, so I’m thankful that today’s announcement doesn’t spell its end. On the contrary, it sounds like there’s reason to be hopeful about the app’s future in Tiny’s hands. Only time will tell, of course, so I’ll be curious to watch the app’s update cycle over the coming year.