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Apple Is Building a Media Platform Like Never Before

Have you ever watched the construction of a new building while knowing nothing about what the finished product would be? You track its progress a piece at a time, clueless about the end goal until finally there comes a point when, in a single moment, suddenly it all makes sense.

Apple’s media ambitions have been like that for me.

In recent years, Apple has taken a variety of actions in the media space that seemed mostly disconnected, but over time they’ve added up to something that can’t be ignored.

  • 2015: Apple Music and Apple News launched.
  • 2016: Apple Music redesigned; TV app debuted.
  • 2017: App Store revamped with dedicated games section; Apple Podcasts redesigned; TV app adds sports and news.
  • 2018: Apple acquires Texture; iBooks redesigned and rebranded Apple Books.
  • 2019: Apple’s video streaming service launches?

Apple already has control of the hardware that media is consumed on, with its ever-expanding iPhone business and suite of complementary products. It has invested significant effort into building the apps media is consumed in, as evidenced above. And finally, it’s also building the paid services media is consumed through.

And the company is doing these things at a scale that is unprecedented. Once not long ago, Apple’s primary media platform was iTunes. Now, hundreds of millions of users consume media every day through Apple’s suite of spiritual successors to iTunes:

  • Apple Music
  • Apple TV (the app)
  • Apple Podcasts
  • Apple Books
  • Apple News
  • And the App Store

Apple has one unified goal, I believe, driving all its media efforts: it aspires to utilize hardware, software, and services to provide the entirety of a user’s media experience. If you consume media, Apple wants to provide the full stack of that consumption, from media delivery to media discovery. My aim in this story is to share an overview of how that goal is being fulfilled today.

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Pokémon Quest Arrives a Day Early on iOS

Initially slated for release on June 28th, Pokémon Quest has arrived on iOS a day early. The game, which debuted on the Nintendo Switch, is free-to-play with In-App Purchases. The Pokémon and their entire environment adopt a unique, blocky style in Quest. You start with just one Pokémon collecting more and evolving them as you progress through the game’s levels set on Tumblecube Island. In all, the game features the first 151 Pokémon from the series’ Kanto region.

Attacks are automated, but special attacks are available, though timer-limited. To speed up the timers, which are tied to other elements of the game too, players can purchase tokens using In-App Purchases. The game is playable without tokens but slow going.

I haven’t spent much time with Pokémon Quest yet, but my first impression is that it makes a solid companion to the Switch version of the game. After years of pundits calling for Nintendo to abandon hardware and become a mobile-first app company, it’s satisfying to see Nintendo make a comeback with the Switch and for it and The Pokémon Company use iOS to supplement game experiences on Nintendo’s console where the experiences are complementary.

macOS Mojave Public Beta Now Available→

Following yesterday’s release of public betas for iOS 12 and tvOS 12, today Apple opened the beta of macOS Mojave to the general public.

To accompany the beta release, Jason Snell has published a fantastic – and extensive – overview of Mojave on Six Colors:

For a few years now, it’s seemed that any forward movement macOS might make was coming in lockstep with Apple’s other platforms, most notably iOS. What was new to the Mac was generally something that was also new to iOS, or was previously available on iOS.

With macOS Mojave, available today to the general public as a part of a public beta, the story is different. macOS Mojave feels like a macOS update that’s truly about the Mac, extending features that are at the core of the Mac’s identity. At the same time, macOS Mojave represents the end of a long era (of stability or, less charitably, stagnation) and the beginning of a period that could completely redefine what it means to use a Mac.

Is macOS Mojave the latest chapter of an ongoing story, the beginning of a new one, or the end of an old one? It feels very much like the answer is yes and yes and yes.

Beta software is always full of problems, so hop on the Mojave train with caution. That said, if you’d like to join the beta program, you can sign up here.

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Apple Releasing Schoolwork App for Teacher and Student Assignment Collaboration Today

At an education-focused event held in Chicago this past March, Apple previewed an app called Schoolwork for teachers and students, which the company released today.

By integrating features for teachers and students, the app is meant to serve as a central location for coordinating assignments and collaborating. The free iPad app allows teachers to distribute announcements and assignments to students as well as materials like links, PDFs, and other documents. Teachers can also create assignments that take students to specific activities within apps that support Schoolwork. Class performance can be monitored too:

Schoolwork and the apps supporting it give teachers new insight into how their students are performing, helping them tailor their teaching to the needs and potential of each student. Teachers have a snapshot of class performance and can check on an individual student’s progress across activities — progress within apps or projects they’ve created.

Students can use the app to access assignments, track their progress, and access materials from their teachers.

Schoolwork helps students track their assignments.

Schoolwork helps students track their assignments.

Schoolwork looks like an good way to streamline the process of distributing and tracking assignments between teachers and students. However, some of the most compelling features of Schoolwork require apps to support it. Apple says apps like Explain Everything, Tynker, GeoGebra and Kahoot! already support Schoolwork, and hopefully, others will follow suit.

Schoolwork should be available to teachers on the App Store soon. In the meantime, you can learn more about the app on Apple’s Education page.

AppStories, Episode 61 – Attention Revisited: iOS 12 Notifications, Do Not Disturb, and Screen Time→

On this week’s episode of AppStories, we take a close look at the tools coming in iOS 12 to help monitor and control time spent on iOS devices and compare those to what they wished for in Episode 56.

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iOS 12 Beta: Our Favorite Tidbits and Hidden Features (So Far)

Apple released the first public beta of iOS 12 today, allowing non-developer testers to check out the new features and improvements in the next major version of iOS, set to be released sometime in the fall. While it’s always good practice to avoid installing a beta OS on your primary devices, the public beta seed typically ensures a minimum level of stability and functionality that isn’t always guaranteed with the first developer builds seeded at WWDC. If you’re interested in installing the public beta of iOS 12, you can find more details here.

We covered the big themes of iOS 12 and its most important functionalities in our original overview earlier this month. In this article, I want to focus on something different: showcasing my favorite small features and tidbits that I’ve come across in iOS 12 since installing the beta on both my iPhone X and iPad Pro a few weeks ago. While these features may change (or be removed altogether) between today and iOS 12’s final public release, they should give you an idea of the nice and hidden details you can expect from the latest iOS 12 beta. Let’s take a look.

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Apple Opens iOS 12 Public Beta→

Apple has released the first public beta of iOS 12. The first developer beta of iOS 12 was released at WWDC on June 4, 2018. iOS 12 includes new features such as Memojis, Siri Shortcuts, new notification, Do Not Disturb, and Screen Time features and settings for managing time spent on iOS devices, updates to Apple Books, Photos, Stocks, and Voice Memos apps, support for up to 32 simultaneous FaceTime users, ARKit 2.0, and more, which we cover in depth in our our iOS 12 overview.

You can sign up for the beta program here, but be sure to follow the instructions, which include backing up your iOS device, because it’s still early in the iOS 12 beta release cycle. There will be bugs and running a beta always runs the risk of data loss.

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Connected, Episode 198: The Prompt→

To celebrate five years of podcasting together, Myke, Federico and Stephen do what they do best: talk about iOS betas, ponder photo management and screw up a round robin.

On this very special, Prompt-themed episode of Connected, we discuss the changes coming to Photos in iOS 12 and round up some excellent apps we’ve been using lately. You can listen here.

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The Numbers Behind Monument Valley 2’s First Year→

Once an app has spent a while on the App Store, it’s difficult from a user perspective to know just how well or poorly the app has done. It’s unusual for developers to share detailed financial figures, though it does happen every now and then. One team that’s led the charge in this area is ustwo, creators of the Monument Valley series of games. For the first Monument Valley, ustwo shared comprehensive statistics for the game’s performance in its first and second years. Today, year one of Monument Valley 2 has received the same open treatment. Head of studio at ustwo games, Dan Gray, writes:

I’ve heard this kind of data has really helped some developers get a handle on what they might expect from a successful premium launch, and given that it’s bloody hard making premium mobile games nowadays, if there’s anything we can do to help other teams to succeed then we’re going to do it. Admittedly Monument Valley is a bit of a unicorn in this space with regards to how well it’s performed over the years (succeeding on a level we could never have expected or predicted), but we hope this latest set of data might help others to set a yard stick for something towards the top end of profitability.

Monument Valley 2 had a unique launch that almost no other apps could hope for, debuting on-stage during last year’s WWDC keynote. However, after the success of the first game, the sequel was certainly bound to get off to a great start no matter how it launched.

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