Earlier this year, I reviewed RAW Power for macOS and was impressed by its power and flexibility. Yesterday, Gentlemen Coders released a no-compromises version of RAW Power for iOS that matches the macOS version’s features and adds the ability to manage your photo library and make Depth Effect edits to Portrait mode photographs. There are a few rough edges here and there, but by and large, the app delivers on its promise of desktop-class, non-destructive photo editing on iOS devices.
RAW Power for iOS Review
AppStories, Episode 31 – What Makes an App Sticky?→
On this week’s episode of AppStories, we look at apps that have been designed for the iPhone X and consider what makes certain apps ‘sticky.’
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Connected, Episode 168: My Bedroom Has Become a Museum→
Control Center is broken, Myke is broken and Spotify is broken.
On this week’s episode of Connected, we continue our discussion on the iPhone X and talk about music streaming services and smart speakers. You can listen here.
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iOS 11.2 Beta Adds Support for Faster 7.5W Charging with Qi-Based Wireless Chargers→
Juli Clover, writing for MacRumors:
Starting with iOS 11.2, the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X are able to charge at 7.5 watts using compatible Qi-based wireless charging accessories.
Currently, on iOS 11.1.1, the three devices charge at 5 watts using Qi wireless chargers, but Apple promised that faster speeds would become available in a future update. It appears that update is iOS 11.2.
MacRumors received a tip about the new feature from accessory maker RAVpower this evening, and tested the new charging speeds to confirm. Using the Belkin charger that Apple sells, which does support 7.5W charging speeds, the iPhone X was charged from 46 to 66 percent over the course of thirty minutes.
At 7.5W, it’s still not as fast as the 15W supported by the Qi 1.2 spec on compatible Android devices, but it’s good progress nonetheless. I wonder if Apple’s upcoming AirPower mat will also max out at 7.5W, or support up to 15W wireless charging for multiple devices.
Playground AR: A Physics Sandbox for Freeform Play
One of childhood’s simple joys for many of us was getting our creative juices flowing by playing with building blocks. It’s one of those tactile, imaginative outlets that adulthood features far less of. Blocks also brought the added benefit of getting to destroy the work you’d built – a task similarly delightful to the actual building.
Recently my wife and I were babysitting twin 1-year-old boys, owners of a big bucket full of colorful, cardboard bricks. All throughout the night I enjoyed building small towers with the bricks, and the boys would have a blast knocking those towers down. Even when they were on the other side of the room distracted by something else, if they saw me stack three or more bricks together, they’d quickly come running to play demolition crew.
Playground AR is a new app from developer Marc Sureda that uses ARKit to bring the joys of childhood play to all ages – and with no mess to clean up either. The app provides a variety of toys that let you both build and destroy, with a physics system backing it all up to make the experience a delight.
There are three main modes in Playground AR: one is for placing objects in your playground, another lets you better survey and capture photos of what you’ve built, and the last is for picking up and moving existing objects. Objects you can place of course include blocks of varying shapes and sizes, but there are also lots of other fun, interesting toys to experiment with – trucks, helicopters, dice, spinning widgets, and more.
The physics engine is what makes Playground truly shine. Stacking blocks too high, for example, will cause your creation to topple over if the stack isn’t well-balanced. Dominos can be strung together in an elaborate setup then knocked down by a rolling ball. Magnetized blocks will stick together even if gravity or another object forces them to fall. Balloons can be attached to objects, and depending on an object’s weight and the number of balloons, the object will eventually be sent flying into the stratosphere. But I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my favorite physics demonstration: placing bombs and TNT containers in your playground to blow everything up. It’s brilliant.
If you want to spend some time goofing around in an AR sandbox, building and destroying in all kinds of creative ways, you can pickup Playground AR on the App Store for $1.99.
The Original Apple TV: Ushering in a New Era of Entertainment
Today’s Apple TV is its own full-fledged platform. While it is more expensive and less popular than other some other media streamers, the Apple TV has come into its own. The current device can stream 4K HDR content, play games and even be used as a calculator.
The original Apple TV didn’t enjoy such a wide feature set, and it wasn’t treated as a full-blown product by the company, which repeatedly talked about it as a “hobby.”
To understand that attitude, I think it’s important to go back to when Steve Jobs first previewed the device in September 2006.
SongShift 3.0 and Switching Between Apple Music and Spotify
For the better part of this year, I’ve been using both Spotify and Apple Music. In my opinion, each service does a few things exceptionally well, but, unfortunately, I can’t have all of them in a single music app.
Spotify’s discovery tools for both old and new songs are simply unparalleled in the industry: Discover Weekly continues to surprise me on a weekly basis just like mixtapes used to do. Spotify is everywhere (including my Amazon Echo); I like how it organizes releases on artist pages; and, it’s got a richer selection of user-generated playlists. Apple Music, on the other hand, looks much better than Spotify (I love Apple’s focus on album artworks and large photography), features built-in lyrics, is deeply integrated with the Apple ecosystem, and I’m a fan of the social feed launched with iOS 11. In short: Spotify is superior when it comes to discovery for music aficionados and integration with third-party hardware, but Apple Music is nicer and easier to use for iOS users. I can’t choose because I happen to have a foot in both camps.
Stranded Kitesurfer Used His Apple Watch to Call for Help→
John Zilles, a 49-year-old who has been kiteboarding for 20 years, recently found himself stuck at sea after crashing about a mile off the coast of Ventura, California, an area known for great white sharks. Zilles told his story to the Daily Mail:
’I started thinking about all the great white shark sightings in our area, and although I realised I could probably swim in, I couldn’t stop thinking about sharks - it was a real mind bender.
’I realized I had my watch - so called the Ventura Harbor Patrol, explained my situation and asked for help.’
The harbor patrol sent a boat, and Zilles spotted it, but the boat was heading in the wrong direction. Another quick call on his Apple Watch and Zilles was in the boat heading back to safety.
iPhone X, OLED, and Dark Mode Battery Tests→
Neil Hughes ran some battery tests on the iPhone X comparing standard white-background UIs against the “dark mode” generated by iOS 11’s Smart Invert Colors in Safari. The results are remarkable:
Reddit normally features a white background and black text, but with Apple’s smart invert colors option enabled, the back of the screen is now black and the text is white. This is important because black pixels in an OLED are essentially “turned off” and consume far less power — a stark contrast from LCD displays, where the backlight must illuminate all pixels, including black ones.
After three hours with maximum brightness and smart invert colors enabled, the iPhone X battery dropped from 100 percent to just 85 percent.
We then ran the exact same test with an iPhone X running in normal mode — that is to say, Reddit was loaded on Safari with a white background and black test. With the backlight turned up to maximum, the battery drained from 100 percent down to 28 percent.
It’s an extreme comparison, but it proves how dark interfaces could be marketed as beneficial for the iPhone X’s battery life. I wonder if the long-awaited system-wide iOS dark mode could be presented as an energy efficiency feature next year?
(Related: as we mentioned on last week’s Connected, if you have an iPhone app with a custom dark mode, you’ll want to update it so it offers a “pure black” option on the iPhone X. It looks so much better than gray or dark blue.)