Apple Highlights Apps with watchOS 4.2 Features for Skiers and Snowboarders

Apple released watchOS 4.2 in December with new workout APIs for skiing and snowboarding workouts. Those additions have allowed third-party developers to offer an enhanced workout experience to Apple Watch Series 3 users when they hit the slopes. In a press release today, which was timed with the release of updates to several popular skiing apps, Apple said:

Developers are taking advantage of the built-in GPS and altimeter in Apple Watch Series 3 as well as custom workout APIs released in watchOS 4.2 to enable tracking of specialized metrics. App updates for snoww, Slopes, Squaw Alpine, Snocru and Ski Tracks now track new metrics on the slopes including:

  • Total vertical descent and horizontal distance
  • Number of runs
  • Average and maximum speeds
  • Total time spent
  • Calories burned

The new workout features include other benefits for skiers and snowboarders too:

Apps can auto pause and resume and users will get credit towards their Activity rings; workout information will also be recorded to the Health app on iPhone with user permission. Using Siri, users can start Slopes and snoww to track their runs using just their voice.

Apps that take advantage of the new watchOS 4.2 features are also spotlighted in the App Store’s Today section and include:

There’s more Apple could do to improve the overall experience of developing for watchOS, but it’s good to see the workout APIs continue to expand and third-party developers take advantage of them.

WatchKit as a “Sweet Solution”→

Marco Arment (who’s been struggling with Watch app development for a while now) makes the case for WatchKit to be either discontinued or substantially expanded as, in its current form, it hinders the creation of more powerful apps.

Developing Apple Watch apps is extremely frustrating and limited for one big reason: unlike on iOS, Apple doesn’t give app developers access to the same watchOS frameworks that they use on Apple Watch.

Instead, we’re only allowed to use WatchKit, a baby UI framework that would’ve seemed rudimentary to developers even in the 1990s. But unlike the iPhone’s web apps, WatchKit doesn’t appear to be a stopgap — it seems to be Apple’s long-term solution to third-party app development on the Apple Watch.

When I first read his post, I thought that asking Apple to discontinue and replace WatchKit was perhaps too much. But after spending some time reorganizing my Watch favorites and complications last night and this morning, I agree with Marco. My favorite apps on the Watch are all made by Apple and are not based on WatchKit. The only exception is Workouts++ (which, as a workout app, has specific privileges). The only third-party Watch apps I regularly use besides Smith’s app are Things and Shazam (which is somewhat ironic) and they’re both accessed via complications; they’re okay, but I don’t love them because they’re often slow to sync data with their iPhone counterparts or take too long to launch and be in a usable state. When I’m out and about, I still don’t trust Watch apps to be as reliable as iPhone apps.

Despite three years of watchOS updates and more powerful hardware (I use a Series 3), the Apple Watch still doesn’t feel like the rich, diverse, and vibrant app platform that the iPhone is. Some might say that’s precisely the point – it doesn’t have to be because the Watch works best through notifications and complications. However, I often ask myself if such argument is the wearable equivalent of Aesop’s sour grapes – real Watch apps wouldn’t make sense anyway. Like Marco, I wonder what would happen if only Apple exposed real watchOS development tools to app makers.

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Game Day: Bring You Home

Earlier this month Alike Studio released Bring You Home, a charming puzzle game about a blue alien on a quest to save its pet from thieves. It’s a delightful game that showed up one day with little fanfare. The game, from the creators of Love You to Bits, was teased almost a year ago, but its sudden appearance on the App Store means it hasn’t gotten the coverage it deserves. That’s a shame because this is a low-key but captivating game that should appeal to a wide audience.

Exploration is at the core of Bring You Home. As soon as the alien’s pet is whisked away, it leaps out the window after the thieves landing face-first on the ground. Time rewinds, and you’re shown how to swipe panels up and down until there’s a cart of hay under the window to break the alien’s fall. It’s a simple mechanic similar to the hit game Framed but executed with a style and personality that fits Bring You Home.

The goal is just as simple. By manipulating the environment around the alien, you help steer it from scene to scene in pursuit of the thieves. As you move through Bring You Home, new layers are added to the gameplay. Instead of just cycling through panels vertically, you can swap their position horizontally too. Next, the game adds multi-step puzzles, which require you to rearrange the scene, pause, and make further adjustments. Along the way, there are also collectible photos featuring your alien and his pet, which is a nice touch suggesting that it’s ok to explore, fail, and explore some more.

There is an absurd logic to each of the nearly 50 levels of Bring You Home, which rewards thoughtful examination. There are no time limits or penalties for failure, which encourages a leisurely, calm approach. Sure, you can power through Bring You Home quickly, but that’s not the point. Trial and error is part of the fun. This is a game best-enjoyed at a pace at which you can absorb each scene’s brightly-colored, playful animations.

Bring You Home is a Universal app that’s also available on the Apple TV. The game looks great on a big screen TV, but the controls work better on an iOS device, so on balance, I prefer to play on my iPad. Also, achievements are tracked in Game Center, and your progress is synced between devices via iCloud, which I always appreciate.

Bring You Home is a relaxing game with a playful, sweet personality that will appeal to kids and adults alike. The puzzles range from easy to challenging without ever becoming frustrating, which makes it an excellent choice for relaxing on a quiet afternoon.

Bring You Home is available on the App Store.

WiFi Explorer: Scan, Monitor, and Troubleshoot Wireless Networks [Sponsor]

Optimizing your WiFi network doesn’t have to be difficult. With WiFi Explorer, you can scan the networks around you, troubleshoot issues that slow yours down, and keep things humming along as conditions change.

The trouble with setting up a WiFi network is that it can be hard to understand how other networks affect yours. WiFi Explorer eliminates the guesswork by providing a rich, graphical visualization of all the networks within range. You can see exactly where you’ve got channel conflicts with overlapping networks and make changes accordingly. It’s invaluable information for fine-tuning your network.

Whether you’re setting up or optimizing your home network or troubleshooting an enterprise network, WiFi Explorer is a fantastic solution. The app reports signal quality based on the signal-to-noise ratio and signal strength, scanning and collecting data continuously so you can analyze it in real-time or save it to study later. There’s also a handy advanced tab with all sorts of network configuration data that’s a lifesaver when you’re troubleshooting a network issue.

WiFi Explorer is incredibly advanced, but if you’re an IT or WLAN professional who needs even more, there’s a Pro version of the app just for you. WiFi Explorer Pro adds active and passive scan modes, integrated spectrum analysis, enhanced filtering, support for networks with hidden SSIDs and remote sensors, dark and light themes, and more.

WiFi Explorer has a special limited-time offer just for MacStories readers. Use the coupon code MACSTORIES30 at checkout to get 30% off on WiFi Explorer or WiFi Explorer Pro.

Thanks to WiFi Explorer for supporting MacStories this week.

The Evolution of Alto’s Odyssey→

iMore’s Serenity Caldwell and Luke Filipowicz put together a great Q&A with Team Alto to discuss the making of Alto’s Odyssey.

Here’s my favorite bit, which only adds to my love for this game:

One of the big breaks in the new game’s theming came from the lives of Team Alto’s members themselves. “Things really clicked when we reflected as a group on how much our lives had changed since the release of Alto’s Adventure,” wrote Cymet. “The team had grown, some of us had moved away from the homes we knew to live in other places, and we had all experienced big personal upheaval in different ways.

“What we arrived at was a desire to capture the feeling of going outside your comfort zone, exploring the unfamiliar, and accepting that the concept of ‘home’ is related to the people close to you, not any one place. In many ways, this is what led us to the grandeur of Alto’s Odyssey’s setting. This idea of a fantastical place far from what you know as home, where you learn to see the beauty in embracing the unknown.”

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Connected, Episode 181: Headspaced Against My Will→

Federico has a surprise for the group, then goes on to teach about Things 3 before Stephen complains about its repeating task support. In a shocking turn of events, Myke has the need for a Mac app.

I had a lot of fun on this week’s episode of Connected. You don’t want to miss the surprise I’d been keeping from the group. You can listen here.

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Anchor 3.0 Exhibits a New Level of Maturity for the Podcasting Service

Anchor today launched a major new version of its iPhone app, alongside a new web experience for creators. Anchor 3.0 is a ground-up redesign that takes lessons learned in past versions and applies them for the purpose of making podcasting as effortless and accessible as possible.

My prior experience with Anchor has been limited, but every time I’ve given it a try, I came away impressed. The latest update to Anchor isn’t so much about flashy new features, but more about demonstrating a new level of maturity: the interface is now cleaner and easier to navigate, the task of recording and publishing podcasts has never been simpler, and there are new built-in tools available to creators to help make recordings professional-grade.

In preparing this story, I wanted to approach the app as a new user might, documenting the experience of getting set up and creating a new show. Anchor has always done fairly well at being user-friendly, but I think that’s more true now than ever before.

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Smart Speakers and Speech Impairment→

Steven Aquino covers an important accessibility angle of smart speakers that I’ve never truly considered:

Since the HomePod started shipping last week, I’ve taken to Twitter on multiple occasions to (rightfully) rant about the inability of Siri—and its competitors—to parse non-fluent speech. By “non-fluent speech,” I’m mostly referring to stutterers because I am one, but it equally applies to others, such as deaf speakers.

This is a topic I’ve covered before. There has been much talk about Apple’s prospects in the smart speaker market; the consensus seems to be the company lags behind Amazon and Google because Alexa and Google Home are smarter than Siri. What is missing from these discussions and from reviews of these products is the accessibility of a HomePod or Echo or Sonos.

As I see it, this lack of consideration, whether intentional or not, overlooks a crucial part of a speaker product’s story. Smart speakers are a unique product, accessibility-wise, insofar as the voice-first interaction model presents an interesting set of conditions. You can accommodate for blindness and low vision with adjustable font sizes and screen readers. You can accommodate physical motor delays with switches. You can accommodate deafness and hard-of-hearing with closed captioning and using the camera’s flash for alerts.

But how do you accommodate for a speech impairment?

A human assistant would know how to deal with stuttering, dialects, or even just the need to repeat a part of a sentence you got wrong. None of the modern digital assistants currently goes beyond being a slightly humanized command line activated by voice, and I wonder who will get there first.

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