Super Mario Run Launching on December 15

With a press release issued this morning, Nintendo has announced that Super Mario Run – the company’s first Mario game for iOS devices revealed at Apple’s September event – will be released in one month, on December 15.

From the press release:

The first-ever mobile game featuring the most iconic video game hero of all time goes on sale for iPhone and iPad on Dec. 15 in United States time zones. Super Mario Run can be downloaded from the App Store at no cost, and players can try elements of the game’s three modes for free.

“The wait is almost over for a Super Mario game that can be played on mobile devices,” said Doug Bowser, Nintendo of America’s Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing. “Developed under the direction of Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto,Super Mario Run brings a new take on the series’ beloved action-platforming gameplay to iPhone and iPad for the first time.”

Super Mario Run will be available in 151 countries next month, and it’ll be a free download from the App Store. A single $9.99 In-App Purchase will unlock all three game modes, which we previously detailed in our overview of Super Mario Run.

Super Mario Run will be modeled after the tradition of “endless runner” games for iOS that can be controlled with one hand by tapping on the screen to make Mario jump.

Update: You can watch a new gameplay video of Super Mario Run below.

Designed by Apple in California, a Photographic History of Apple Design to Be Released November 16th

In a press release, Apple announced the release of a hardbound book, Designed by Apple in California, documenting twenty years of Apple design work. The book is dedicated to the memory of Steve Jobs. According to Jony Ive:

“The idea of genuinely trying to make something great for humanity was Steve’s motivation from the beginning, and it remains both our ideal and our goal as Apple looks to the future,” said Jony Ive, Apple’s chief design officer. “This archive is intended to be a gentle gathering of many of the products the team has designed over the years. We hope it brings some understanding to how and why they exist, while serving as a resource for students of all design disciplines.”

Designed by Apple in California includes 450 beautiful photographs of Apple products past and present by photographer Andrew Zuckerman and will go on sale at Apple.com and select Apple Stores on November 16, 2016. Apple’s press release provides further detail on the production of Designed by Apple in California:

“Designed by Apple in California” is available in two sizes and printed on specially milled, custom-dyed paper with gilded matte silver edges, using eight color separations and low-ghost ink. This linen-bound, hardcover volume was developed over an eight-year period.

The smaller version of the book (10.20” x 12.75”) will cost $199 and the larger version (13” x 16.25”) $299.

The price is steep, but the photographs are undeniably gorgeous. Here’s a selection of photos shared by Apple.

Dissecting the Most Profitable iMessage Apps→

Ariel Michaeli, writing on the appFigures blog:

When it comes to making money, users seem to be fine with paid apps. Unlike the iOS App Store, on the iMessage App Store only 7% of top grossing apps are free(mium). That’s just 13 apps!!!

The remaining 93% of apps (187, to be precise) cost between $0.99 and $4.99, with the majority (61%) having a price of $0.99 and 36% having a price of $1.99. The remaining 4 apps split between the other price tiers.

Monetizing upfront is great for developers because it’s simple and easy to implement, but it’s also a sign of a store that isn’t mature. If the iMessage App Store matures similarly to the iOS App Store—which is likely considering it’s the same audience and device—we’ll see a strong shift towards freemium. For now, developers should make the most out of it.

Speaking from personal experience, the iMessage App Store’s top charts are a constant source of discovery for new paid sticker packs from indie artists. These first numbers from September seem to be holding up so far.

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Take the Touch Bar For a Spin on Any Mac→

Daniel Jalkut’s Red Sweater Software released a free Touch Bar simulator for the Mac. The app, Touché, generates a floating Touch Bar simulator on your Mac’s screen. Touché requires macOS 10.12.1 or later, but there’s a catch. Not all builds of 10.12.1 support the Touch Bar. If you download Touché and it tells you you need a more current version of Sierra, click the ‘More Info’ button to get a link to a version of macOS that works with Touché.

Although clicking a simulated Touch Bar is not the same experience as the real thing, I found it interesting to see what tools were available in Apple’s built-in apps like Pages, Numbers, and GarageBand and imagine what using the Touch Bar is like.

Touché is available from Red Sweater’s website as a free download.

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Phil Schiller Explains Apple’s Motivation Behind the Touch Bar→

The first reviews of the MacBook Pros with Touch Bars have begun to hit the web. In connection with his review of the new laptops on Backchannel, Steven Levy spoke to Phil Schiller, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, about the motivation behind the Touch Bar and recent criticisms leveled against Apple’s new MacBook Pros.

Levy raised the perennial question of why Apple didn’t just make a touchscreen MacBook Pro. In response, Schiller told Levy it’s not possible to design for a pointing device like a touchpad or mouse and a touchscreen without designing to the lowest common denominator:

“Our instincts were that it didn’t [make sense to do a touchscreen], but, what the heck, we could be wrong—so our teams worked on that for a number of times over the years,” says Schiller. “We’ve absolutely come away with the belief that it isn’t the right thing to do. Our instincts were correct.”

Schiller also bristled at the suggestion by Levy that the Touch Bar represents what Levy characterized as the ‘overall annexation of the Macintosh platform’ by iOS. Schiller responded that the Touch Bar:

“…is pure Mac,” he said. “The thought and vision from the very beginning was not at all, ‘How do we put iOS in the Mac?’ It was entirely, ‘How to you use the [iOS] technology to make a better Mac experience?’”

I look forward to trying the Touch Bar. With it only available on one line of laptops, it remains to be seen how widely it will be supported by third-party developers, but what I’ve seen planned for Adobe’s products, Sketch, 1Password, and other apps makes me optimistic.

There’s a fine line between whether bringing iOS technology to the Mac is in the service of creating a better Mac experience or amounts, as Levy characterizes it, to ‘the annexation of the Mac platform,’ but just as certain iOS gestures made sense to bring to the touchpad, the Touch Bar feels like a natural way to migrate Mac app toolbars to the keyboard and enhance the manipulation of linear content like audio and video.

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Secrets: A Beautifully Simple Password Manager, Now Free on the App Store [Sponsor]

Secrets is a simple, secure password manager for Mac and iOS. With version 2.0 released this week, the app is adopting a freemium model so you can try it for free on all your devices.

Secrets lets you securely store confidential information such as passwords and bank details. The app leverages industry-standard encryption algorithms to provide secure storage, plus macOS and iOS native features to automatically fill logins on webpages. Thanks to an action extension for iOS, you’ll be able to log into your favorite sites directly from Safari. The app can also generate one-time passwords for services that support two-factor authentication.

At the same time, Secrets has a clean and beautiful user interface that is easy to use and functional. Logins are displayed with rich icons, which are also synced across all your devices with iCloud.

With version 2.0, Secrets is now based on a freemium model: the app is free to download and use with up to 10 items; with a $9.99 In-App Purchase ($19.99 on macOS), you’ll unlock unlimited items and iCloud sync.

Secrets 2.0 is available on the App Store for iOS and macOS.

Our thanks to Secrets for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Google Play Music Gets Smart→

Google is revamping Google Play Music with intelligence that it says will deliver the right music at the right time using machine learning. According to a post by Elias Roman, Lead Product Manager for Google Play Music, Google’s streaming music service will go beyond just figuring out what you like from the music you listen to. The update will also take into account context – things like your location, what you’re doing, and even the weather.

As Roman describes it:

To provide even richer music recommendations based on Google’s understanding of your world, we’ve plugged into the contextual tools that power Google products. When you opt in, we’ll deliver personalized music based on where you are and why you are listening — relaxing at home, powering through at work, commuting, flying, exploring new cities, heading out on the town, and everything in between. Your workout music is front and center as you walk into the gym, a sunset soundtrack appears just as the sky goes pink, and tunes for focusing turn up at the library.

In addition, Google has redesigned the Google Play Music home screen to emphasize your favorite music by putting it right at the top of the screen and adjusting what’s shown based on your context. The service will also automatically create an offline playlist of recently played songs for subscribers to listen to when they have no data connection.

It’s not surprising to see Google take Google Play Music in this direction. One of Google’s biggest competitive advantages is the data it knows about you from its many products. This sort of assistive technology is already baked into products like Google Photos and it seems natural to bring the same smarts to Google Play Music too.

Google Play Music will begin its world-wide roll-out to sixty-two countries this week on iOS, Android, and the web.

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Game Day: F1 2016

From time to time, a game comes along that is designed to test iOS hardware and see just how far it can be pushed. In the past, we’ve seen that with games like the Infinity Blade series. In September, the torch was passed to F1 2016 by Codemasters, a racing game that got stage time during Apple’s iPhone 7 event.

F1 wasn’t demoed on stage in September, but Phil Schiller’s comments about the game caught my attention. He specifically called out F1’s use of wide color gamut, haptic feedback, and the iPhone 7’s new stereo speakers, claiming that with the iPhone 7’s new A10 chip and GPU, F1 would bring console-level gaming to iOS. He was right.

F1 was released this week and it’s impressive on every level. I played F1 on my iPhone 7 Plus, iPad Pro, and Apple TV and it was great on each, but it was fantastic on the iPhone 7. The combination of hardware-stretching performance and integration of iPhone 7-only features sets F1 as a benchmark against which other triple-A iOS games will be measured.

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Canvas, Episode 23: Workflow - Variables and Built-in Actions→

This week Fraser and Federico continue the Workflow series with a look at how to use Variables and Workflow’s built-in actions.

On the second episode of Canvas’ Workflow series, we cover one of the key features of the app, variables, which are key to building workflows. In the second half of the show, we talk about Workflow’s built-in actions and some of its system integrations.

If you haven’t listened to the first episode of the series yet, you’ll want to go back and start from there.

  1. Workflow - The Basics
  2. Workflow - Variables and Built-in Actions

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