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On this week’s episode of AppStories, we consider the effect on third-party apps of PDFKit, the system Markup extension, changes to Notes, and password AutoFill for apps.
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Apple Music is rolling out a new automatically-generated playlist called ‘My Chill Mix’ to subscribers. The music streaming service already includes a ‘My Favorites Mix’ and a ‘My New Music Mix,’ which show up every Wednesday and Friday respectively.
‘My Chill Mix,’ which will be added to subscribers’ ‘For You’ tab and updated every Sunday, features slower tempo music based on your Apple Music listening habits. According to Matthew Panzarino at TechCrunch, ‘a small number of test users got the new playlist yesterday evening.’ Other Apple Music subscribers will have to wait a little while longer. Apple told Jim Dalrymple of The Loop that:
…the new mix will not be available to everyone immediately, but it will show up over time.
It’s good to see that Apple is continuing to experiment with computer-generated playlists, one of the strongest selling points of Spotify, which includes an excellent Discovery Mix and a Daily Mix that debuted last fall. In addition to adding playlists like an up-tempo workouts mix and genre-specific mixes, I would like Apple Music to allow me to tweak its algorithm’s variables to create playlists myself, dialing in the exact balance of genres and favorites versus new music that I want to hear at any particular time.
I’m going to let you in on a couple prevailing facts about Sputnik Eyes, a “homemade” game by Shelly Alon.
The first is that the story, at least in my eyes, makes little sense. It includes – but is not limited to – robots, space, planets, constellations, exploration, Earth, scorpions, hearts, and a rocket ship. It’s a hodgepodge of an idea, one that I immediately misunderstood and hardly plays any role in the overall game.
But the second fact is that Sputnik Eyes is one of the most enjoyable puzzle games I’ve played in a while, and one I can’t seem to stop playing. Equal parts charming and challenging, Sputnik Eyes feels exactly like what a puzzler should in 2017: clean, fun, and to the point.
When you start a level of Sputnik Eyes, you’ll find yourself accompanied by a grid and your robot pals. Each stage has a unique pattern, a series of connected lines that form points, sat on by the bots of varying colors. Take a look at the examples below:
Effectively, Sputnik Eyes is a matching game, one that requires you to pair the robot to its respective colored spot on the map. While it sounds easy in theory, the game throws interesting obstacles in your way, like one-way lines and paths that can only be traveled by a certain color. The more you play, the more complex Sputnik Eyes becomes; eventually, each puzzle seems more crowded than the one before it.
From there, the game can be played in a variety of ways. At the most basic level, you only need to complete the level to move on. However, finish the level in a limited set of moves or within the time period and you’ll receive badges signifying your accomplishments. Although badges have no in-game value, they’re a completionist’s symbol of pride.
I normally like to weave in comments about a game’s design into a review, but much of what makes Sputnik Eyes so endearing is some of its aesthetic choices. One of the best examples is the game’s framing – instead of the game taking up the full screen, it rounds off its corners to give it a distinct look.
Throughout the gameplay and menu navigation, you’ll see carefully crafted animations, character models, and level designs. Motion is utilized exceptionally in Sputnik Eyes, adding touches that make the atmosphere more alive and vivid. And behind it all lies a soundtrack that shifts between ambient and thought-provoking, unafraid to take your attention but simple enough to fade into the background when you’re thinking hard about a puzzle.
All of this is to say that Sputnik Eyes feels created in a way that makes you, the player, feel cared for. When playing, I felt like each piece of the game was built for me to notice, appreciate, and consider as part of the overall experience.
$1.99 and many levels later, I’m thrilled by Sputnik Eyes. Had it been in the earlier days of the App Store, I think it’d be considered a touchstone of the puzzle genre; now, despite the App Store’s continuous growth in its biggest category, Sputnik Eyes still stands out as a must-have for puzzle fans.
If you’d like to pick up Sputnik Eyes, you can do so for $1.99 in the App Store (Universal).
Apple has released the first public beta of iOS 11. The first developer beta of iOS 11 was released at WWDC on June 5, 2017. iOS 11 includes many new features such as a new Files app that makes navigating files on iOS devices easier than in the past and adds several iPad-only features like drag & drop, an app Dock, and enhanced multitasking.
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 11 beta release cycle. There will be bugs and running a beta always runs the risk of data loss.
What if you had someone who would sort through your email and find only the important messages? That is exactly what SaneBox does. After you set it up, SaneBox leaves your important messages in your inbox and moves the rest to a SaneLater folder for reviewing later. That initial inbox purge is powerful because it reduces your inbox to a manageable number of messages. With additional training to tell SaneBox what’s important to you, it only gets better at dealing with the daily deluge of messages.
There’s much more to SaneBox than shuffling unimportant messages into a designated folder, though. If there’s something you never want to see ever again, send it to the SaneBlackHole, which is much easier than unsubscribing to unwanted messages.
You can also set up SaneReminders by sending messages to an address that sends a reminder to you at a later date if the recipient of your message hasn’t responded after a certain amount of time. Or forward messages to SaneReminders to have it pop back into your inbox at a later date when you are ready to deal with it.
SaneBox works on top of your existing email setup. There’s no app to download or new email account to set up. It all works server-side so you can use any email client you want.
Sign up today for a free 14-day SaneBox trial to take back control of your email. MacStories readers can receive a special $25 credit automatically by using this link to sign up.
Our thanks to SaneBox for sponsoring MacStories this week.
The Wall Street Journal released a short documentary called Behind the Glass to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the iPhone’s release on June 29, 2007. The almost ten-minute long documentary cuts between interviews with Greg Christie, former Vice President of Human Interface, Scott Forstall, former Vice President for the iPhone Operating System, and Tony Fadell, former Senior Vice President of the iPod division. The three describe the struggle over whether to base the iPhone’s hardware on a multi-touch interface versus the iPod and the ensuing 2.5-year effort to create the first iPhone.
The interviews are short but recount several anecdotes, including the attempts to find a way to adapt the iPod’s interface to work as a phone and the predictive software used to make the touch keyboard accurate. Even ten years later, the retelling of the stories behind the iPhone’s birth is captivating.
Casual puzzle games that you can pick up and play for a few minutes are a great way to kill time when you’re bored. Since the earliest days of the App Store,1 games have taken advantage of the iPhone’s sensors to create puzzles with realistic physics. Newton, by Binary Games, is a fun and challenging addition to the genre with unique mechanics and gameplay that I’ve enjoyed playing this week.
This week Fraser and Federico reflect on a couple of weeks of intensive use of iOS 11.
On this week’s Canvas, we discussed our experience with iOS 11 after a few weeks of beta usage on our iPhones and iPads. You can listen here.
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On this week’s episode of AppStories, we take a look at the upcoming changes to the App Store announced at WWDC, the challenges Apple will face producing original content about apps, and consider what it will mean for users and developers.
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