iOS 10.3 Beta Re-Introduces Warning for Old 32-Bit Apps, Suggests Future Incompatibility→

Andrew Cunningham, writing for Ars Technica on a new warning that appears when running old 32-bit apps on the first beta of iOS 10.3:

Beta builds of iOS 10.3, the first of which was issued last week, generate warning messages when you try to run older 32-bit apps. The message, originally discovered by PSPDFKit CEO and app developer Peter Steinberger, warns that the apps “will not work with future versions of iOS” and that the app must be updated by its developer in order to continue running. The apps still run in iOS 10.3, but it seems likely that iOS 11 will drop support for them entirely.

Though the error message doesn’t explicitly mention the app’s 32-bit or 64-bit support, it’s definitely only older 32-bit apps that trigger the warning. Similar messages that did explicitly mention 64-bit support were present in the betas of iOS 10.0, but they were removed in the final release of the software. Apple has required 64-bit support for all new app submissions since February of 2015 and all app update submissions since June 2015, so any apps that are still throwing this error haven’t been touched by their developer in at least a year and a half (developers could add 64-bit support as early as 2013, but most of them opted not to until it became a requirement).

Note how, unlike the warning that was reinstated with iOS 10.1, this alert clearly states that “this app will not work with future versions of iOS” as opposed to “may slow down your iPhone”.

In my review of iOS 10, I had a couple of paragraphs on the warning that iOS displayed when launching a 32-bit app for the first time. The warning didn’t make it to the final version of iOS 10, so I didn’t cover it. I did, however, note that iOS 10 was accelerating the transition to 64-bit across the board.

Requiring apps to be compiled for 64-bit is going to introduce problems for software that is no longer maintained (especially classic iOS games), but Apple is moving toward cleaning up the App Store’s back catalog anyway. Enforcing the 64-bit requirement in iOS 11 wouldn’t be a complete surprise.

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Chrome for iOS Open-Sourced→

Chrome for iOS was historically kept separate from Google’s open-source Chromium project. Chrome uses a rendering engine called Blink on every platform except iOS where it must run WebKit. That made incorporating Chrome for iOS into Chromium complicated, but today Google announced that Chrome for iOS has rejoined Chromium and been added to the open-source repository. Now,

developers can compile the iOS version of Chromium like they can for other versions of Chromium. Development speed is also faster now that all of the tests for Chrome for iOS are available to the entire Chromium community and automatically run any time that code is checked in.

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Connected, Episode 127: Let’s Go to the Theatre, My Dear→

Stephen is away on an important mission. He left Myke and Federico behind to discuss the financial decline of Fitbit, and what’s missing from iOS 10.3. Myke also has some follow up about sleeping and lightbulbs, and Federico has been observing people.

A fun episode of Connected this week, with an interesting discussion of modern trends in iOS usage. You can listen here.

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Why Apple Can’t Lose the Future Services Battle→

Good analysis by Ben Bajarin, who sums up various discussions I’ve read in my Twitter timeline lately about the quality of Apple’s services and the company’s approach to not collecting lots of data:

However, getting useful and good behavioral data is essential for Apple to make better products and services and, more importantly, compete with those services down the road. I’d almost prefer that, instead of Apple’s stance being not only to collect as little data as necessary and also to universally anonymize that data, they would simply say, “Trust us with your data. We will keep it safe and secure and we will deliver you superior products and services because of it.” I could also be satisfied with a hybrid approach where, for the most security conscious customers, Apple gives them the option to keep the existing privacy protocol as well as their differential privacy techniques, but also allow others to opt-in to giving them more data so that things like Siri, News, Apple Music, etc., benefit from that data and thus, deliver those customers a much more personalized and useful service. With some of the recent changes in iOS 10.3, I feel they are getting closer to exactly this scenario.

Ben refers to iOS 10.3’s upcoming iCloud data sharing option – a new (opt-in) setting to share iCloud-related data with Apple.

This is a complex problem: it’s still too early to understand the impact of Differential Privacy, and I don’t think Apple’s services are inherently terrible; but I also agree with the premise that by not collecting data, other companies may capitalize on Apple’s users in the future thanks to smarter services. I’d love to get more details on what Apple is working on for iCloud analytics.

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Super Mario Run Earnings Top $53 Million

Nintendo shared some figures about the performance of Super Mario Run, which debuted last December. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, the game has been downloaded 78 million times, and 5% of users have paid $9.99 to unlock the full game, earning Nintendo more than $53 million in revenue.

Super Mario Run received an update today that adds an Easy Mode, new events, and Korean language support. The game’s Toad Rally mode was also adjusted, so you forfeit fewer toads when you lose a race. It is now easier to gather toads too.

In other Nintendo iOS news, the upcoming unnamed Animal Crossing title on iOS has been delayed until sometime during Nintendo’s next fiscal year, which begins in April. No details were provided regarding the nature of the delay. The previously-announced Fire Emblem Heroes game for iOS appears to remain on schedule for release this Thursday.

Linea: An Elegant Sketching App for the iPad from The Iconfactory

Drawing and sketching apps present difficult interface challenges. On the one hand, they should maximize the space reserved for their intended use – drawing. On the other, they need to include sufficient tools for users to create what they envision. It’s a balance that many apps get wrong. Some are too simple, forcing too many constraints on users, while others are horribly complicated and intimidating to new users. Linea, a new sketching app for the iPad from The Iconfactory, is exceptional because it manages an ease-of-use and approachability that is rare while maintaining just the right set of tools.

Linea is a sketching app, not a full artist’s toolbox. It won’t replace a more complex app like Procreate, but that’s not its purpose. Instead, Linea is focused on delivering the best possible sketching experience whether you are drawing, prototyping an app interface, storyboarding, taking notes, or something else. The point is to get visual ideas down with the least amount of fiddling, which is exactly what Linea delivers.

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Apple Shows Off New Siri Features for the Super Bowl

With the Super Bowl less than a week away, Apple detailed today new and existing Siri functionality to learn about, and prepare for, the game.

Headlining the changes is a “Watch the Super Bowl” command for Apple TV, which will let users jump straight into watching the game live. Apple has rolled out other new commands centered around the players and teams and highlighted other existing Siri queries about stats, rosters, and odds.

Apple’s examples include:

  • When is the Super Bowl and who’s playing?
  • Where is the Super Bowl being played this year?
  • Who is performing at the Super Bowl halftime show?
  • What channel is the Super Bowl on?
  • What channel is the Puppy Bowl on?
  • What is the Patriots record? What about the Falcons?
  • Who had more field goals this season, the Patriots or the Falcons?
  • Who has more rushing yards this season, Tom Brady or Matt Ryan?
  • How many yards did Matt Ryan have last week?
  • What college did Tom Brady play for?
  • Who is the coach for the New England Patriots?
  • Who won the Super Bowl last year?

Of course, Siri will perform other functions like keeping track of your shopping list, directing you to a friend’s house, or booking you a ride home from the bar.

You can check out Apple’s press release on Siri and the Super Bowl here.

Scanbot Adds Todoist Integration→

I love it when two of my favorite apps come together with integrations that speed up and simplify my workflow. Last week, Scanbot – my go-to scanner app for iOS – rolled out a new Todoist integration that lets you scan and save a document as a task.

The feature is explained here, and it’s quite ingenious: tasks are saved with the name of a scanned document, which is also added as an inline attachment inside a task. You can add due dates and times directly from Scanbot, and you can even pick an existing project for automatic upload, which means that as soon as a document is scanned in the app, it’ll be automatically uploaded as a task to a Todoist project.

As I wrote two years ago, I was hoping Scanbot would consider integration with Todoist, and I’m glad it’s out now.

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Dropbox Introduces Smart Sync for Business Customers and Paper Emerges from Beta

Last April, Dropbox announced Project Infinite, a way to see all of your Dropbox files without having to store local copies. Today, Dropbox released the renamed feature as Smart Sync, which is available exclusively to Dropbox Business customers.

An interesting thing happened in the transition to SSD storage. File space on computers began to shrink after growing year after year. The shift posed a problem for Dropbox. By default, Dropbox syncs all of the files it stores to your local drive. Suddenly, customers’ storage on Dropbox could be larger than their local storage. Add to that increases in file sharing and users were left picking and choosing which files to sync, adding friction to what is otherwise a nearly invisible service.

Smart Sync solves that problem for Dropbox Business customers by eliminating the need to store all of your Dropbox files on your local drive. Every file is visible in Finder and can be previewed with Quick Look, but if it has a cloud icon in the corner, the file is stored in the cloud, not on your local drive. As Dropbox explains it:

Users working with just 128 GB of hard drive space can easily comb through terabytes of files to find exactly what they need—right from Windows File Explorer or macOS Finder. Now, they won’t need to take extra steps—like switching to a web browser—just to view files. And whenever they need to access files stored in the cloud, users can download them with a quick double click.

Removing documents looks just as easy: highlight files, right-click, and choose ‘Remove’ from the contextual menu.

Dropbox also announced today that its collaborative document creation product called Paper is officially out of beta. Paper, which is available as an iOS and web app, has come a long way since first entered beta in late 2015, although it still lacks many of the more advanced features of products like Google Docs and Quip.

Dropbox is positioning Smart Sync and Paper as collaboration tools for sharing knowledge with colleagues. As Scott Rosenberg of Backchannel explains in an in-depth piece on Dropbox’s strategy:

Dropbox … think[s] Paper could become a sort of universal glue that connects teammates working together on updating a spreadsheet, designing a web page, reviewing code, or editing a press release. Once in place, it will save you from having to be “an archaeologist,” in [Dropbox CEO Drew] Houston’s phrase, putting an end to excavations of long email threads and chats, treasure hunts for the latest version of a file, and reconstructions of who said what.

That’s the same problem that companies like Slack are trying to solve but from a very different angle. Instead of approaching collaboration from the perspective of messaging, like Slack, Dropbox is approaching it from a content-centric point of view. Also from the Backchannel article, Dropbox’s CTO Aditya Agarwal says:

… the jury’s still out on whether, as he puts it, “everything is going to be keyed off a unit of communication, or communication is going to be keyed off some core unit of content.”

That’s an interesting way of approaching collaboration and one that turns business customers’ love/hate relationship with email on its head in a way that plays to Dropbox’s strengths.

For now, Smart Sync is only available to Dropbox Business customers, though Harry McCracken reports for Fast Company that Dropbox ‘is actively considering how to roll the feature out to consumers,’ which strikes me as an important next move for Dropbox. After all, as Rosenberg points out, Dropbox Business began with ‘engineers and other early adopters [who] embraced Dropbox… [and] started smuggling it into the workplace.