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More Than Stickers: Exploring iMessage App Utilities

It has been nearly a full year since Craig Federighi introduced the iMessage App Store to developers at WWDC. Coming out of that keynote, it was easy to guess that sticker packs might become a hit with users, but the big unknown surrounded the idea of more powerful iMessage apps. Would anyone actually want to use iMessage for anything more than basic messaging?

The challenge with creating a great iMessage app is similar in ways to that of creating a great Apple Watch app. In most cases it requires taking an existing app and stripping functionality down to its simplest form, while still retaining the overall usefulness and power of the full app. And as is true with Watch apps, some iMessage apps tackle the challenge well, while others fail to be useful due to slow or overcomplicated interfaces.

The first year of the iMessage App Store has been dominated by stickers, but amidst the crazy sharks and flaming pizza, there are a number of interesting and creative apps serving as helpful utilities as well. I have tried out iMessage apps for ordering food, managing files, sharing calendars, sending payments, planning meetings, and more. What follows is a list of some of my favorites.

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Trails is Your GPS Tracker and Logbook for iPhone & Apple Watch [Sponsor]

When you start your next outdoor adventure, make sure you bring along Trails. Trails is a GPS tracker and logbook that gathers statistics like altitude, ascent and descent, speed, pace, and duration. It also includes topographic maps available for offline use when you have no data connection. Soon, Trails will add a dashboard display with summary statistics and graphs of your activities using a customizable date range and with optional filtering by tags.

Trails takes advantage of the latest Apple hardware and features like 3D Touch, Spotlight search for tracks and waypoints, Siri to start and end a trip, a Today Widget, and AirDrop sharing. In addition, with a Series 2 Apple Watch, you can start recordings, use it as a second screen to display live statistics, and gather heart rate and calorie data.

Trails features a wide array of ways to export and share the data you collect like integration with Apple’s Health app, GPX export, the ability to upload to Trails.io to share your trips, like the hike through San Francisco embedded above, local WiFi sharing, and full database backups. You’re in full control of your data. You don’t have to signup for anything to get started, your data isn’t uploaded anywhere without your permission, and there are no ads to get in the way.

Trails has a special promotion for MacStories readers. Trail is giving away 10 one-year subscriptions to Trails Pro. Just enter your email address here by 9:00 pm US Eastern time on June 4, 2017. Winners will be selected randomly and be given a code that they can redeem for the one-year subscription by contacting the Trails team.

Our thanks to Trails for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Joe Steel’s 2017 tvOS Wish List→

Good follow-up by Joe Steel (who’s been covering and critiquing the Apple TV for a while) to last year’s tvOS wishes, which were already spot-on.

I found his assessment of the Siri Remote sadly relatable:

This remote was an abomination that should have never made it out of the design lab it was drafted in. It was conjured up by designers from another world who only had TV remote controls described to them using words in their native tongue. I want something that can be held comfortably, doesn’t shatter, and has asymmetry that you can feel to know what you are holding, and what you are pushing, without looking at the tiny monolith. I wanted it in 2015, and I still want it.

Whatever touch surface they include should be fine-tuned to work with a human thumb instead of whatever capuchin monkey the remote’s original designers were imagining.

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A Year of Google Maps & Apple Maps→

Justin O’Beirne is back with another in-depth analysis of Google Maps and Apple Maps, with a focus on how Google has taken a different approach over the past year:

Shortly after I published my Cartography Comparison last June, I noticed Google updating some of the areas we had focused on:

Coincidence or not, it was interesting. And it made me wonder what else would change, if we kept watching. Would Google keep adding detail? And would Apple, like Google, also start making changes?

So I wrote a script that takes monthly screenshots of Google and Apple Maps.1 And thirteen months later, we now have a year’s worth of images.

The screenshot comparisons in his post perfectly demonstrate Google’s iteration and Apple’s relative stagnation.

Speaking from personal experience, Google Maps has considerably improved in my area in the past year, while Apple Maps has remained essentially the same. Which isn’t to say that Apple Maps is bad – Google simply has an edge over local business information and they’re evolving at a faster pace than Apple. To me, Apple Maps looks and feels nicer; Google Maps seems smarter and it has modern features I’d like Apple to add.

I wonder what Apple has in store for WWDC and if they should consider separating Maps from their monolithic software release cycle in the summer.

(See also: O’Beirne in May and June 2016.)

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Game Day: Steredenn

I live near a huge arcade called the Galloping Ghost that’s packed with classic arcade games. I visit once or twice a year and am always struck by how hard some of the early space shooters, like Defender, are. I got the same feeling the moment I launched Steredenn, a fast-paced, insanely difficult space shooter from French indie game studio Pixelnest that is equal parts addictive and fun.

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Apple Goes All-In on Apple Newsroom for PR and Refreshes Executive Bio Pages→

Benjamin Mayo reports on a couple of changes found on Apple’s website:

Apple has today officially transitioned away from its aging press portal in favor of the modern Apple Newsroom, which combines company press releases, photo coverage and other news into one place. All links to apple.com/pr now redirect to apple.com/newsroom.

At the same time, the company has also updated its executive biography pages with a fresh design update to fit in with the company’s recent website design trends and adopts the San Francisco typeface, finally retiring the Lucida Grande font.

These are both minor, but welcome changes. It made no sense for Apple to continue publishing press releases on both the legacy press portal and Apple Newsroom. The design changes to executive bios were inevitable as well; this moves things one step closer toward retiring all old design on the company’s website.

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Readdle Brings Split View Drag & Drop to Their iPad Apps

In my iOS 11 wish list for iPad and concept video, I focused on system-wide drag & drop – a feature that could reshape how iPad users move documents and data between apps. Readdle, makers of the popular Spark and PDF Expert, aren’t waiting for Apple to add a native drag & drop framework to iOS, though. Today, in addition to the release of Documents 6, the company is updating most of their iPad apps with a custom drag & drop feature that simplifies the transfer of documents between two apps in Split View. I’ve been testing this functionality for the past week, and, even if it’s not system-wide iOS drag & drop, it’s been enough to pull me back into Spark and PDF Expert – at least for now.

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