IKEA’s Trådfri Lighting System Adds HomeKit and Alexa Support

After a miscommunication in August, IKEA has added Alexa and HomeKit support to its Trådfri smart lighting system, which it originally promised back in May. The lighting system includes a gateway, remote controls, and LED lightbulbs that can be mixed and matched in different configurations at prices that are competitive with rival systems. For example, two Trådfri bulbs, a remote, and the required gateway costs $79.99 compared to two similar Philips Hue bulbs and a gateway for $69.99. Each gateway controls up to 10 lightbulbs using one of IKEA’s remotes, an iOS app, Amazon’s Alexa App, Apple’s Home app, or your voice via Amazon and Apple’s smart assistants.

The addition of Alexa and HomeKit support means the Trådfri lighting system can be integrated with smart home accessories from other companies and controlled with any Alexa or Siri-enabled device. The IKEA Trådfri app, which can be downloaded for free from the App Store, lets users control their Trådfri lights, customize settings like the warmth of the the light, and set timers.

The release of HomeKit-enabled devices has accelerated this year. An increasing number of manufacturers like IKEA are also hedging their bets by integrating Alexa support alongside HomeKit support, which is good for consumers who benefit whether they’ve chosen one system over the other or assembled a hybrid Alexa/HomeKit environment.

Connected, Episode 166: The Warm Water of Bribery→

iPhone X pre-orders are in, and reviews are out. There’s drama surrounding both.

On this week’s episode of Connected, I also explain why I recently bought an Nvidia Shield and we discuss how our iPhone X preorder plans worked out. You can listen here.

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Nintendo Disappointed by Super Mario Run Profits

As part of its earnings report, Nintendo announced today that its iOS game, Super Mario Run, has not yet reached ‘acceptable profits.’ At this point, nearly a year after the game’s debut, it’s hard to imagine when, if ever, that point will be reached barring a major shift in the game’s business model.

Super Mario Run took the App Store by storm in December 2016 breaking download records and topping the charts around the globe. But the game, which is free to download costs $9.99 to unlock all the levels. That’s a steep price by App Store standards for games. About a month later, the Wall Street Journal reported that Super Mario Run had been downloaded 78 million times and earned $53 million in revenue.

In contrast, Nintendo says that Fire Emblem, which was released in February and features a free-to-play model, has met its profit objectives. The same in-game consumables model has been adopted for Animal Crossing: Pocket Park, which is available in Australia and New Zealand but won’t debut in the rest of the world until late November.

I’m not a fan of free-to-play games in general, although they can be done tastefully. Perhaps Nintendo’s profit expectations for Super Mario Run were too optimistic from the start, but it’s hard to argue against free-to-play for a company like Nintendo when even its most beloved franchise is perceived a failure on mobile platforms.

watchOS 4.1 Introduces Apple Music Streaming and New Radio App

Today Apple released the latest software for Apple Watch: watchOS 4.1. This update includes the previously announced Apple Music streaming, including over cellular, plus the introduction of a brand new Radio app.

In past versions of watchOS, independent music playback was limited to the small assortment of songs and playlists that could be stored locally on Watch hardware. Due to how slow music syncing was, I always considered it too much of a hassle to keep my favorite music accessible on the Watch. Today’s update lifts those prior restrictions, though, in a big way. Now Watch owners who are also Apple Music subscribers can stream music, not just from their own library, but also from the service’s full catalog of over 40 million songs. This works over cellular on the latest Series 3 models, but it also can be done over Wi-Fi with non-cellular models. Even if you don’t plan to stream music sans-iPhone, watchOS 4.1 still includes the added benefit of restoring access to your full iCloud Music Library on Series 3 models: past versions of watchOS allowed this, but watchOS 4 limited your selection to synced music only.

Independent music streaming from the Apple Watch is made even better by the addition of a new built-in watchOS app: Radio. The Radio app enables streaming content from Beats 1 or select other radio stations, such as ESPN, NPR, and genre-based stations. While I would have been more excited by a Podcasts app, it’s great to see more of Apple Music’s features make their way to the Watch.

For owners of the Series 3 Watch with cellular, there’s one last notable update: a new toggle in Control Center for activating and deactivating Wi-Fi on the Watch. So if your Watch gets stuck on a slow or unreliable Wi-Fi connection, you can easily disconnect and fall back to LTE.

For most users watchOS 4.1 is a fairly minor update with little to get excited about – but for those sporting a Series 3 Watch with cellular, it’s simply transformative. Paired with AirPods, the Apple Watch can now serve as a powerful and worthy successor to the iPod line. There’s something downright liberating about going iPhone-free while staying connected and available, and bringing 40 million songs along with you.

iPhone X Review Roundup

iPhone X first impressions and reviews were published today. Some reviewers have had Apple’s latest iOS device for about a week, while others have had it less than 24 hours. Here’s our roundup of the most interesting insights from what has been published so far.

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Microsoft Aligns Features of Skype’s Desktop and Mobile Apps

Over the summer, Microsoft introduced a new Skype app for iOS with a multitude of new features that seemed designed to maintain its relevance in a social media-dominated world. At the time, Microsoft also introduced a preview version of the Skype desktop app that incorporated some of the same features. Today, Microsoft announced that the desktop app has exited preview mode and is being rolled out across several platforms.

The new Skype desktop app includes a lot of new features, but one of the most fundamental that should be welcome to all users is the unification of messaging across platforms. That means messages you receive through Skype will be available whether you’re using the app on a Mac, iOS, Windows, an Xbox, or another device.

In addition, Skype now includes cloud-based file sharing of up to 300 MB of data, customizable themes, and different ways to organize your chat list. Notifications have also been centralized with reactions to your messages, @mentions in group chats, and instances where you have been quoted available in one place. To jump to the spot in the conversation where the notification appears, just click on it. There’s a chat media gallery where you can access all photos, links, files, and other items sent to you too.

Microsoft has added many other bells and whistles. Chat conversations can take advantage of add-ons like event scheduling, sending money to friends and family, searching for GIFs, and more. Video calls and text-based messages can include reactions to let others know your mood, status updates, Twitter-style @mentions, and bots from third parties too. If there was any doubt that Microsoft wants to expand beyond simple voice and video calling, the latest updates to Skype’s apps should put that to rest.

The new version of Skype has begun rolling out to users. If you don’t want to wait for the update to show up, you can manually download it from Skype.com now.

iPhone X, Face ID, and Hidden Notification Content→

An interesting tidbit from Steven Levy’s first impressions of the iPhone X: by default, the content of notifications on the Lock screen is hidden, and it’s only displayed once you look at the iPhone and thus authenticate yourself.

Alternatively, a good way to see when you’ve been recognized is to notice the generic messages on the lock screen saying “you have a notification” from Facebook, Gmail, or wherever. When you and your iPhone X make that turn-on connection, those flesh out with the actual content of the message. (This feature—withholding potentially private alerts until the phone was unlocked—had previously been available as an option but now is the default.)

What I find intriguing is the fact that – if I’m reading this right – the feature has been turned on by default for the iPhone X, as if to underline the role of Face ID. This option, in fact, isn’t new: on any existing device running iOS 11, you can go to Settings ⇾ Notifications ⇾ Show Previews and enable When Unlocked to achieve the same effect. On the Lock screen, the content of notifications (titles, preview messages, and media attachments) won’t be shown until you place your finger on the Touch ID sensor.

It seems like Apple sees Face ID as not only technically superior to Touch ID (more secure, powered by machine learning), but also as a better user experience for dealing with notifications – otherwise, why would they make it the default setting? I’m curious to play with this and see if I revert to the old option or not.

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Gladys Adds iPhone Version and iCloud Sync

Gladys, developed by Pavlos Tsochantaris, is one of the shelf apps we’ve been covering on MacStories since the release of iOS 11 and, as I wrote last week, the one I’ve been using on my two iPad Pros. Not only does Gladys implement many of the ideas I would have liked to see in a native shelf for iOS 11, but the app has gone beyond my expectations with the ability to save multiple data types for dropped items, as well as a file provider extension to view all your saved items in iOS 11’s Files app.

With today’s version 1.1, Gladys is also gaining a permanent spot on my iPhone’s Home screen (which I shared in Issue 100 of MacStories Weekly for Club MacStories members). Gladys is now a universal app for the iPhone and iPad, and it can sync items across devices thanks to built-in iCloud integration. In my early tests with the app, everything worked as expected: CloudKit-based sync is fast and reliable, with changes made on one device (such as a link dragged from Safari into Gladys on the iPad) propagating in less than two seconds to the other.

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