Run your always-on Plex Media Server in the cloud without the need for an always-on PC or network-attached storage device (NAS). With Plex Cloud, you’ll be ready to go in 60 seconds or less, easily streaming and accessing your media remotely on all your Plex enabled devices. Too easy!
Plex Cloud is invite-only for now, and priority is being given to Plex Pass subscribers. The cost of Plex Cloud is $60/year in the US, and that gives you unlimited storage in Amazon Drive for your media. This is a great new initiative from Plex, and it seems like a fantastic deal – even if you just use it as a backup of your local copy of your media.
Revealing how the mixes operate for the first time to BuzzFeed News, Apple claimed a potential advantage over similar algorithmically personalized playlists, including Spotify’s Discover Weekly and Pandora’s Thumbprint Radio: deep historical knowledge of individual users’ tastes and habits, based on years of data carried over from iTunes.
If you gave high ratings to a song or album in your old iTunes library, or just played it a lot more than others, you’ll find that behavior reflected in your My Favorites Mix. Meanwhile, the My New Music Mix algorithm serves recently released songs — as well as songs that Apple Music knows you haven’t played before — that the service’s music experts have flagged as similar to others in your taste profile. Apple Music executives suggested even more personalized playlists will follow in the series; but only after prototypes have been vetted, with all possible outcomes — intentional and otherwise — given careful consideration.
This explains why the ‘My Favorites Mix’ playlists have (anecdotally) been spot-on for people I talked to. As I previously noted, back-catalogue songs from artists you’re not familiar with (essentially, Discover Weekly) would be a good addition to Apple Music’s mixes.
We’re very excited to announce today that we’re making it easier than ever by expanding our collaboration with Apple and bringing Sonos into Apple’s physical and online retail stores. Two of our most popular speakers — the PLAY:1 and PLAY:5 — will be available later today at Apple.com in the USA, at 468 Apple Stores around the world starting October 5, and Apple.com in the coming weeks in most markets outside of the USA.
Better still, those who buy a Sonos system at Apple retail stores or at Apple.com between today and December 31 will receive a free three-month Apple Music Gift Card.
And:
This is a big deal — both for our companies, and for music lovers around the world who can now experience Sonos and Apple Music like never before. We know the best way to discover Sonos is by experiencing it first hand, which shoppers in more than 140 Apple Stores will be able to do with a hands-on Sonos and Apple Music demo featuring a guided Sonos app experience on the iPad Pro.
This makes sense given the popularity of Sonos, the problem it solves (it is, effectively, an ecosystem for audio), and its integration with Apple Music. I’m a Sonos customer, and their products fill a specific niche: good-looking speakers for the home with great audio quality and none of Bluetooth’s annoyances. Does that seem familiar?
On the other hand, a closer partnership also gives Apple a way to study and learn how and why people buy Sonos devices. If I were a company playing around with the idea of releasing a smart speaker, studying Sonos’ line is something I’d consider. I’m curious to try their hands-on demo with the iPad Pro.
Paul Pixel - The Awakening by Xoron GmbH is a classic adventure game reimagined for touch. The game is set in a post-apocalyptic world where alien space zombies have overrun the Earth. I felt like a change of pace this week and when I saw Paul Pixel, the combination of retro game art and zombies caught my eye. By and large the game delivers with a fun story, great artwork, chiptunes, and wry sense of humor, though it is fairly short and not difficult.
The story opens with zombies emerging from a spaceship before cutting to Paul Pixel’s home where the game begins. The first order of business is to escape the zombie-infested city, but ultimately, Paul must save the world. The mechanics of Paul Pixel are simple - tap where you want Paul to walk, tap things you want him to interact with or pick up, and tap a hand icon in the corner of the game to access your inventory.
In classic adventure game style, all of the dialogue in Paul Pixel is text-based. The dialogue is kept relatively short in most cases, with a touch of humor that helps to keep the text from getting tedious. If you tap a character and get the same interaction a second time though, it would be nice if there was a way to skip through the text more quickly.
The colorful pixel art of Paul Pixel is the handiwork of artist Paul Veer and adds a lot to the experience of the game. Because the pace of the game is relaxed, I enjoyed sitting back to absorb the vibrant colors and surprising detail of each scene. The soundtrack to Paul Pixel is solid too. In a fitting touch, all of the music was composed on an original Commodore C64 SID.
Paul Pixel does a great job of capturing the vibe of old-school adventure games, but with updated artwork and gameplay designed for touch. The release notes are up front about the fact that the game will only take 2.5 - 3 hours to play. Paul Pixel is also not that difficult, which may make this game a non-starter for some, but I have found that on balance, the story, humor, artwork, and soundtrack more than make up for its shortcomings.
According to the developers a Mac and Apple TV version of Paul Pixel will likely be made too, with the Apple TV version bundled with the iOS game at no additional cost. I can’t wait to see Paul Pixel on tvOS. The vivid artwork and chiptunes feel like they would be great on a TV and the simple game mechanics should work well with the Siri Remote.
iOS 10 introduced seven domains that third-party developers can use to hook into Siri. One of those domains lets VoIP providers like Skype use Siri. Apple also debuted CallKit with iOS 10, which lets VoIP providers tie into the Lock screen of the iPhone in the same way the built-in Phone app does.
Today, Microsoft updated Skype for iPad (and presumably an iPhone update, which is a separate app, will be coming soon) to take advantage of both new iOS 10 APIs. Now you make Skype calls with a variety of spoken commands via Siri like ‘Call Federico with Skype’ or ‘Make a Skype call to Federico.’ The first time you try it, you will be prompted to go to Settings to turn on Siri integration, which is off by default.
Skype’s access to the Lock screen means that calls you receive will show up on, and can be answered from, the Lock screen and the full-screen interface that appears everywhere else in the iOS UI when a call comes in, just like a standard phone call. Previously, all Skype could do was send a notification that a call recipient could tap to answer. Now when a call comes in, the only difference from a standard phone call interface is that the alert on the Lock screen indicates under the caller’s name that the call is using Skype.
The Skype update also works closely with the Apple’s Contacts app. If you grant permission to Skype to use your contacts, you can tap and hold the call icon on a contact card to get a popup that will include the option to initiate a call via Skype. Skype will also take any Skype contact data that it finds in the Contacts app and add it to its own contact list.
A rich Shazam notification in iOS 10. Also, a great song.
I was recently watching a movie with my girlfriend, and it had a great soundtrack. After scrubbing the video back to open Shazam on my iPhone for the third time, I remembered that Shazam offered an automatic tagging feature to let the app continuously listen in the background to recognize songs. Shazam’s auto-tagging isn’t meant to be active all the time, but we were home, with my iPhone charging next to me, and it seemed like a perfect time to try it.
To my surprise, Shazam started pushing tagged songs using iOS 10’s new notification framework. Their implementation is a great example of what developers can achieve with rich notifications: a notification can be expanded and you’ll be presented with a custom view showing the song’s title, artist, album artwork, and global number of Shazams by users. But that’s not all – you can also tap on the artwork to listen to a song’s preview inside the notification without opening the Shazam app. If you want to act on the notification, there are three quick actions (another change made possible by iOS 10) to buy the song, add it to a playlist on Apple Music, or share it.
Once I realized I could catch up on tagged songs from Notification Center, I left Shazam running and enjoyed the rest of the movie. At the end, I went through my notifications, listened to each audio snippet, and saved a few songs in my Apple Music playlists.
The final result would have been the same in iOS 9, but the experience wouldn’t have been as nice (or as fast) without rich notifications. I’m looking forward to more apps adopting similar notification features in the next few months.
Yesterday, Benjamin Mayo reported that Apple published public webpages for “some landmarks and points of interest” listed in Maps:
Apple is now publishing public web pages for landmarks and POI in its Apple Maps database: here’s one such place. The website link shows details about the place such as location, name, telephone number and reviews. The design is identical to the cards in the iOS 10 Maps app.
When on an Apple platform, these URLs appear to act as deep links into the native Maps app. If viewing in Chrome or on a non-Apple device like Android, the fallback webpage is loaded. The purpose for these URLs is unclear, but it may possibly foreshadow a larger move by Apple to offer its own online mapping service to compete with Google Maps on the web.
I did a bit of digging, and I discovered that you can open any Apple Maps place or address in another web browser if you reformat the URL properly.
Apple introduced the Taptic Engine with the iPhone 6s, where it replaced the old vibration motor and was also used to provide haptic feedback for when you activated 3D Touch. This year with the iPhone 7, Apple has improved the Taptic Engine and it plays a critical role in simulating the press of the Home button, which is no longer a physical button. But the Taptic Engine in the iPhone 7 goes even further with the introduction of System Haptics, where a number of UI elements in iOS will now also provide tactile haptic feedback when you activate them.
I have had my iPhone 7 for nearly a week now, and these new System Haptics have been a great delight to discover, and use. These System Haptics are mostly subtle and feel very natural, so you may not have even noticed them. Below I’ve compiled a list of all the places in iOS that I’ve noticed them appear.
If you’ve skipped here to see how the heck it works, I don’t blame you. The short answer: incredibly, miraculously well in many instances. And pretty rough in others. Apple says this is still in beta and it is. It has trouble with leaves, with chain link fences and patterns and with motion. But it also handles things so well that I never thought possible like fine children’s hair and dog fur, shooting pictures with people facing away and objects that are not people at all.
What does it have major trouble with? Fine lines, wires, chain link, glass, leaves. Anything that merges with the edges of your subject a bunch of times could confuse it. The closer to the subject the harder it is for it to distinguish. Motion, too, is a no. If the subject moves a bit, ok. If it moves too much you get ghosting, as you do in HDR mode — because there is compositing involved.
Let’s look at some examples and I’ll dissect what works, what doesn’t and how the mode is applying the effect in each image. In each case, I’ll include both the standard and Depth Effect image for comparison.
Panzarino reports that Portrait works on non-human subjects as well (which Apple didn’t originally mention) and that it uses new body detection systems and a “sliding scale” mechanism to apply blurs for the background. Fascinating explanation – with some good points on how Apple could improve Portrait mode in the future.
