TechCrunch Shares Demos of ARKit Apps Coming to iOS 11→

TechCrunch’s Matthew Panzarino attended an ARKit demo event yesterday and got a taste of a wide variety of augmented reality apps coming to iOS 11. The apps shown off represent a broad range of categories including Ikea’s home decorating app, an interactive version of the popular children’s story, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and a game based on The Walking Dead TV series that lets you fight zombies in your backyard.

As Panzarino notes, each of the apps demonstrated rely on very few onscreen controls or no controls at all other than the change of perspective accomplished by moving an iOS device. The apps also take very different approaches to prompting users to scan for flat surfaces when started, something which I expect to coalesce around consensus best practices as developers get their apps into the hands of customers. But perhaps most impressive of all is what developers have accomplished since WWDC. The development time, as Panzarino describes it, has been:

Incredibly short, all things considered. Some of the apps I saw were created or translated into ARKit nearly whole sale [sic] within 7-10 weeks. For asset-heavy apps like games this will obviously be a tougher ramp, but not if you already have the assets.

The TechCrunch roundup of six ARKit apps includes short descriptions and a video demonstration of each. The two demos that impressed me the most are Ikea’s app and the AR version of A Very Hungry Caterpillar, which you can watch after the break below, but be sure to head over to TechCrunch to see all the videos because each is a unique interpretation of what is possible with ARKit.

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YouTube Revamps Logo, Adds Dark Mode for Web, Playback Speed Adjustment for Mobile, with More Coming Soon

YouTube today introduced a new logo and announced a host of improvements to its service across mobile and web platforms – some of which launch today, while others are coming soon.

After testing with limited groups for a time, YouTube’s Material Design web update is now being rolled out to all users. With it comes the exciting addition of a Dark Theme – a feature I hope makes its way to the service’s mobile apps soon.

YouTube’s iOS app received a minor update today that brought two primary changes: a redesigned header dominated by white space and the new logo, and new playback speed controls. Playback speed can be set as slow as 0.25x or as fast as 2x, with several options in-between. You’ll find the controls in a video’s settings menu, which can be accessed from the top-right corner of the screen.

Perhaps more exciting than the new features launching today are those coming in the near future, such as adaptive video:

Soon, the YouTube player will seamlessly change shape to match the video format you’re watching, such as vertical, square or horizontal. That means you’ll always get the best viewing experience automatically – including vertical videos with no black bars on the sides!

A new gesture to switch videos with a single swipe is also coming soon, and lastly a revamped area below the video player for improved browsing.

Pedometer++ Updated With Achievements and a Redesigned Widget

Pedometer++ 3.0 is here with new ways to motivate you to get moving and view your step counts. David Smith’s step counting app has been on the App Store since the introduction in 2013 of the iPhone’s M7 chip that collects motion data. Since then, Smith has continuously refined the app by enhancing visualizations of your step counts, adopting new technologies like the Apple Watch, and adding ways to motivate users like the delightful confetti that’s launched when you reach your step goal.

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Elgato Introduces Five New Eve HomeKit Devices

Adding to its collection of HomeKit-supported devices, Elgato today introduced five new devices that are coming soon, each of which serves different areas of the home.

  • Eve Thermo is a second-generation connected radiator valve that brings the typical benefits of a smart thermostat to the world of radiators. It includes capacitive touch control on-device, doesn’t require a connected bridge, and starts shipping September 26.
  • Eve Smoke is a smart smoke detector that can not only set off an alarm, but also trigger different HomeKit notifications and scenes. One of the benefits is that in addition to offering a ten-year battery life, you can also check the device’s state using Siri or your iPhone to ensure it’s working properly.
  • Eve Lock enables control of locking and unlocking a door via HomeKit, even if you’re away from home. It can also automatically lock the door every time it shuts. It’s powered by an internal battery and uses Bluetooth.
  • Eve Window Guard monitors the state of a window, so you can easily see if it’s open or closed from your iPhone. It also can sense when the window is being tampered with and will send a notification to let you know.
  • Eve Aqua makes watering the lawn or plants easy by allowing you to set up and manage irrigation schedules from your phone. You can also activate and monitor irrigation on-demand.

Besides the Eve Thermo, every other new Eve device is currently without a shipping date.

It’s always good to see more devices enter the HomeKit ecosystem, especially now that Apple will soon have HomePod, a voice-powered HomeKit hub, on the market. Hopefully the combination of HomePod’s launch and the changes Apple has in store for HomeKit in iOS 11 will lead to a renewed enthusiasm for Apple’s ecosystem among smart device makers.

Amazon Announces Multi-Room Music for Echo Devices→

In a press release today, Amazon announced the newest feature addition to its Echo devices:

Amazon today announced an all-new Alexa feature that lets you control and synchronize music across multiple Amazon Echo devices in your home. Starting today, you can target music to a specific Echo device or a group of devices—just ask. Soon, this ability will be extended to control multi-room music on other connected speakers using simply your voice.

The feature is currently only available on Echo devices, but Amazon has also announced a couple new tools to help expand Alexa-powered audio to other speakers. There’s a new Alexa Voice Service SDK that device makers can adopt to enable their speakers to play music in sync with Echo devices. That SDK will be made available early next year. And there is also a new set of Connected Speaker APIs, available today, which allow third-party speakers to be controlled via an Alexa-enabled device.

It should be noted that multi-room audio is only available through a handful of music services. Amazon Music, Pandora, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn are available today, while Spotify and SiriusXM support is coming soon.

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The Sweet Setup Launches ‘Learn Ulysses’ Video Course

Today The Sweet Setup launched a new ‘Learn Ulysses’ course that’s designed to help users get the most out of the powerful writing app.

The meat of Learn Ulysses is its seven video guides that walk through key aspects of the app in detail. Videos cover the following topics:

  1. Getting to Know Ulysses
  2. Writing Tips and Tricks
  3. The Ulysses Toolbar
  4. Main Features
  5. iPhone & iPad Apps
  6. Backup & Restore
  7. Powerful Search, Find, & Replace

Each video can be either streamed or downloaded, and they are all accompanied by full transcripts. The videos I’ve seen are of the highest quality; the team at The Sweet Setup has handled well the difficult task of going deep into Ulysses while still making everything easy to understand.

In addition to the seven main videos, Learn Ulysses includes bonus content such as a quick reference cheat sheet of additional features and keyboard shortcuts for the app. My personal favorite bonus is the included series of setup interviews, where different writers share exactly how they use Ulysses in their daily workflows. Some of these are in video form, while others are written. I always love hearing how others use a powerful app, as it helps me find new practices to adopt.

The regular price for Learn Ulysses is $29, but during launch week it’s available at 20% off for a discounted rate of $23. You can purchase the course here.

Apple and Accenture Announce Enterprise Partnership→

Apple and Accenture announced that they are teaming up to help Accenture’s enterprise clients integrate iOS into their businesses. According to Apple’s press release.

Accenture will create a dedicated iOS practice within Accenture Digital Studios in select locations around the world. Experts from Apple will be co-located with this team. Working together, the two companies will launch a new set of tools and services that help enterprise clients transform how they engage with customers using iPhone and iPad. The experts will include visual and experience designers, programmers, data architects and scientists, and hardware and software designers.

Among other things, the two companies plan to collaborate on integrating existing back-end systems with iOS, building Internet-of-Things tools, and migrating legacy enterprise applications and data to iOS.

Today’s announcement marks another milestone in Apple’s iOS enterprise push, which began in earnest in 2014 when Apple partnered with IBM.

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Tim Cook on Apple’s Social Responsibility→

Last week, Apple CEO, Tim Cook, toured the Midwest and Texas. Cook stopped in Ohio at a manufacturer of equipment used by Apple in the production of iPhones, announced a massive data center in Iowa, and capped off the week in Austin, Texas to spotlight Apple’s Swift curriculum for community colleges. In an interview with the New York Times, Cook put the trip in perspective:

The reality is that government, for a long period of time, has for whatever set of reasons become less functional and isn’t working at the speed that it once was. And so it does fall, I think, not just on business but on all other areas of society to step up.

One area where Apple is trying to make a difference is in education. Cook said,

…he had chosen to focus on getting the curriculum to community colleges, rather than four-year colleges, because “as it turns out, the community college system is much more diverse than the four-year schools, particularly the four-year schools that are known for comp sci.”

That’s a thoughtful approach designed to do more than just educate and bring a new generation of programmers to Apple’s software platforms. The courses are still in their infancy, but by bringing them to institutions that are already more diverse than four-year colleges, Apple hopes to address diversity in the tech sector too.

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Ulysses: The Ultimate Writing App for Mac, iPad, and iPhone [Sponsor]

Ulysses is a powerful text editor carefully hidden beneath a distraction-free writing environment. It’s a design that allows you to concentrate on your writing with the confidence that when you need them, Ulysses’ pro-level tools are just a click or tap away.

Ulysses, which won an Apple Design Award in 2016, is available on macOS and iOS and its documents sync via iCloud, so the app and your documents are available whenever and wherever you need them. Ulysses helps you keep track of everything too by organizing your writing into groups comprised of sheets. Each group, which can be nested inside other groups, can be assigned a name and icon and the sheets inside it can be sorted manually, by title, by modification date, or by creation date.

But Ulysses goes even further to help you manage your writing. You can set writing goals and attach notes, keywords, and images to sheets. Then, when you’re looking for something you wrote, you can create filters based on keywords, search terms, and dates that are stored in the sidebar with your groups. When you’re finished, you can export to a bunch of different formats including Markdown, plain-text, HTML, ePub, PDF, and DOCX and easily publish to WordPress blogs and Medium.

Ulysses is a free download on the App Store and Mac App Store. Normally you can try the app for 14 days before deciding whether to subscribe for $4.99 per month or $39.99 per year. Students can subscribe for six months at a time for $10.99. However, Ulysses has a special deal for MacStories readers. Use this link for a full 1-month trial on all your devices.

Our thanks to Ulysses for sponsoring MacStories this week.