It’s been a good year for the Splitter Critters team. Released to excellent reviews and much fanfare, the game gained traction before ultimately being awarded an Apple Design Award at this year’s WWDC. And with the release of iOS 11, Splitter Critters is adding another reason to love it: augmented reality levels.
Splitter Critters Adds AR Mode with Exclusive Levels
iOS and macOS Text Replacement Gaining CloudKit Syncing Soon→
There’s been quite a stir over the last week regarding an area of the Apple cloud ecosystem where syncing has remained unreliable for years. Brian Stucki wrote a detailed post on the matter, which John Gruber linked to with echoing sentiments. Today, however, Gruber followed up on his post with an exciting update:
Good news related to yesterday’s item regarding the fact that text replacement shortcuts have never synced reliably between Macs or iOS devices: an Apple spokesperson emailed me to say they checked with the team, and an update that moves text replacement syncing to CloudKit should be rolling out to iOS 11 and MacOS 10.13 High Sierra users in the “next month or so”.
I use text replacement every day across my iOS devices, and haven’t dealt with syncing issues myself, but it’s great to hear that this long-standing problem should soon be put to rest for everyone else. Recent history shows that once a cloud product moves to CloudKit, syncing issues disappear almost entirely – hopefully that will be the case here as well.
Apple Introduces Revamped Privacy Site Featuring Face ID Details and More→
Apple today launched a newly revised privacy page on its website that aims to help customers understand the company’s views on the subject. Besides the landing page, there are four main sections: Our Approach to Privacy, Manage Your Privacy, Transparency Report, and Our Privacy Policy. I found Our Approach to Privacy the most interesting, as it walks through, in plain and easy-to-understand language, how privacy is deeply built into an extensive number of Apple apps and features, from Apple Pay and iMessage, to Analytics, Safari, Siri, Health, and more.
The most timely update to the site is the inclusion of a Face ID security white paper. This 6-page PDF goes into impressive detail on how Face ID works, with an emphasis on privacy and several interesting details to be gleaned. One of the feature tidbits is a comprehensive listing of when your passcode will be needed in place of Face ID. Passcode input will be required under the following circumstances:
• The device has just been turned on or restarted.
• The device hasn’t been unlocked for more than 48 hours.
• The passcode hasn’t been used to unlock the device in the last 156 hours (six and a half days) and Face ID has not unlocked the device in the last 4 hours.
• The device has received a remote lock command.
• After five unsuccessful attempts to match a face.
• After initiating power off/Emergency SOS by pressing and holding either volume button and the side button simultaneously for 2 seconds.
Other sections of the document confirm that any third-party app currently supporting Touch ID will automatically support Face ID without any user or developer changes. Also, Face ID can be used for all the same things as Touch ID, such as purchases from the App Store, iTunes Store, and more.
AppStories, Episode 24 – Our Favorite iOS 11 Apps, Part 1→
On this week’s episode of AppStories, we give an update on the iOS 11 review and anniversary activities at MacStories and Club MacStories then talk about some of our favorite new apps and updates that show off the new capabilities of iOS 11.
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App Camp for Girls 2017 Compendium App Released→
Following the completion of its summer camps this year, App Camp for Girls has launched a new app featuring work done by 2017 camp participants. This year’s app includes a set of 14 quizzes and choose your own adventure games. The app’s release notes describe how the app came to life:
In one week, [camp] participants brainstorm ideas, design icons and interface, build their quizzes in Xcode, and make their own swag. Each session culminates in a fun pitch session with a panel of investors and entrepreneurs, where the young developers get to show off their work.
If you’re interested in learning more about this organization, Federico and John hosted the co-founders of App Camp for Girls, Jean MacDonald and Grey Osten, on an episode of AppStories earlier this year.
At a $0.99 purchase price, the App Camp Compendium 2017 app is a small, but simple way to show support for the work App Camp for Girls is doing.
Shazam Launches Redesigned, Faster Apple Watch App
iOS 11 apps have been receiving the most attention in recent weeks, and for good reason – drag and drop, ARKit, and more make it an exciting time for the platform. But watchOS is also seeing significant improvement of late. With watchOS 4 and the Apple Watch Series 3, the Watch feels like it’s beginning to truly mature in several key ways. There’s still a long way to go, but developers are now able to build the most capable, refined Watch apps ever seen. Shazam is a great example of that.
Shazam’s new Watch app is extremely simple, and as I like to say, that’s the way all good Watch apps should be. Launching it presents the familiar blue Shazam button, which upon a tap will begin listening to whatever music is currently playing. After you hit the button, you can turn your wrist away and the app will notify you through a haptic tap when the song’s been identified. In testing on a Series 3 Watch, songs were identified very quickly, taking only 2-3 seconds on every try.
After songs have been identified, they’re stored below the Shazam button in the main app interface. By scrolling with the Digital Crown, you’ll see the last five songs presented in a style similar to watchOS’s revamped Music app: large album covers resembling cards that slide in over each other as you keep scrolling. Tapping an album cover plays a short preview of the song using the Watch’s built-in speaker.
One final thing worth noting is that unlike many other third-party watchOS apps, Shazam is built to take full advantage of the iPhone independence made possible by the new Series 3 LTE Watch. According to an official support document:
Do I need my phone to use Apple Watch Shazam features?
If you have the Watch Series 3 LTE, you can shazam phone-free! If you have an older Apple Watch device you’ll need to have your iPhone connected in order to name that song.
It will likely be a while before we see a significant number of third-party apps updated to support independence from the iPhone, but Shazam is a good start.
Why There Are No Standalone Apple Watch Podcast Players→
With watchOS 4 and the Series 3 Apple Watch, Apple has made several improvements to how the Watch handles music, untethering listeners from their iPhones. Apple Music subscribers can sync their My Favorites Mix, My Chill Mix, My New Music Mix and the Heavy Rotation section of Music to their watches, for example. In October, Apple will expand users’ options on the Watch by adding Apple Music streaming for subscribers. However, there’s a glaring omission in Apple’s iPhone-free audio strategy: podcasts.
There is no good way to listen to podcasts on an Apple Watch without bringing along an iPhone. As Marco Arment, the maker of Overcast, details on Marco.org,
The Apple Watch desperately needs standalone podcast playback, especially with the LTE-equipped Series 3, which was designed specifically for exercising without an iPhone.
Believe me, I’ve tried. But limitations in watchOS 4 make it impossible to deliver standalone podcast playback with the basic functionality and quality that people expect.
Arment’s article walks through each of several technical challenges in detail, the biggest being syncing progress between a Watch and an iPhone. The post outlines the minimum changes to the watchOS APIs that Arment believes are necessary to build a viable standalone podcast player for the Watch as well as detailing more ambitious changes to Apple’s APIs that would be nice to have.
During the watchOS 4 beta period, I began running without my iPhone. I enjoyed listening to the music synced overnight to my Watch, but it was a taste of untethered freedom that only made me want a standalone podcast player more. Audio playback and syncing undoubtedly pose battery life issues and other challenges, but with the advancements in the Series 3 hardware, I hope we see corresponding API changes that will allow Arment and others to build iPhone-free podcast players.
iStat Menus 6 Released
Just ahead of the macOS High Sierra update, Bjango released iStats Menus 6, an update to its comprehensive suite of tools that sit in your Mac’s menu bar and monitor its systems and now, even the weather. With highly customizable notifications, iStat Menus is an excellent way to know what’s going on with your Mac and to be alerted if a problem is on the horizon. I’ve only been trying iStat Menus 6 for a short time, but like what I’ve seen.
Adding a weather widget to iStat Menus is a departure for Bjango, which has previously stuck to system measurements, but I like it a lot. iStat Menus puts the temperature and an icon of current conditions in your menu bar. Clicking on the temperature reveals a wealth of additional information that will warm any weather geek’s heart and help everyone else plan their week.
Notifications are highly customizable too. If there’s a statistic reported by iStat Menus, you can bet there’s a way to be notified of it. Already this morning it warned me of an air quality advisory issued for the unseasonably warm fall day we’re having in Chicago. I’ve also set it up to alert me if I run low on available storage and RAM.
iStat Menus has added a wide variety of additional features too including,
- Additional theme and color options with light and dark menu options.
- Hotkey support for opening and closing menus from the keyboard.
- A new dual line clock option.
- New ways to customize the menu items and their dropdowns.
- A new Notification Center widget with the most popular statistics in one place.
- Improved accessibility and localization.
People familiar with iStat Menus will be right at home with this new version. There are dozens of refinements and new features, but the mission of the app remains the same: to provide a wealth of information in a compact, cleanly-designed interface that keeps users informed. I’ve enjoyed tweaking iStats Menus’ settings today to suit my current setup as I test its new features. I’ve used the app on and off since version 2 or 3, but it’s been at least a couple of years since I last used it. I’m impressed with how far it’s come over the past couple of versions and plan to keep it up and running going forward.
iStat Menus 6 is available from Bjango’s website.
Rescheduling Refined with Drag and Drop in Timepage
Your phone buzzes. It’s a message from a friend asking to reschedule your dinner in an hour for another day. You’ve already put on something nice, so it’s a little inconvenient – but it’s also going to be tedious to make the adjustment on your calendar.
Timepage’s recent update can’t change you back into comfortable clothes, but it can make rescheduling events much easier. As with most iOS 11 app updates, this comes through drag and drop and thankfully works on both iPhone and iPad.