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This week Fraser and Federico take a look at a leisure activity on iOS: watching video.
On the latest episode of Canvas, Fraser and I covered the best options for watching video on iOS. Whether you want to watch movies, TV shows, online video, or something else, there are plenty of options on iOS. You can listen here.
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It’s been a busy year for Italian indie studio Bloop. Airmail for OS X has been around for a while, but Airmail for iOS was introduced just seven months ago as an iPhone-only app. A couple months later, Bloop brought Airmail to the iPad with extensive keyboard support and great new features like smart folders and saved searches, which was enough for Federico to switch to Airmail full time. Today, Bloop released version 1.2 of Airmail for iOS, which picks up where version 1.1 left off with some great new functionality.
One of my favorite features of Airmail is its integration with other apps and services. Airmail makes it simple to get information out of my email and into the apps where I need it whether that’s sending an attachment to Dropbox or the text of an email to 2Do. Version 1.2 adds additional integrations including the ability to send attachments to iCloud Drive and emails to Day One or Ulysses. Bloop’s expansion of integrations into even more apps and services is smart and should make the app appeal to an even wider audience.
Notifications have also gained new functionality. You can now turn on ‘Do Not Disturb’ on an account-by-account basis, which should be a great help to people who manage multiple email accounts. Notifications can also be tied to a location. I can imagine this coming in handy if you’re on vacation and don’t want to get notifications until you get home. Email senders can be muted, which eliminates notifications from those senders. Blocking senders is similar, but in addition to muting the sender it automatically archives the email you receive.
In addition to the foregoing, Airmail 1.2 adds:
Bloop has covered a lot of ground since the beginning of 2016. After having seen so many free email alternatives come and go, it’s reassuring to see Bloop continue to innovate and refine Airmail on iOS and the Mac and charge a fair price for an excellent app.
Airmail 1.2 for iOS is available on the App Store for $4.99.
David Smith is an independent developer who launched his first iOS app in 2008. He’s seen a lot of change in the App Store since then, which he chronicles in an insightful post on his blog. Smith examines the revenue his apps have generated since 2012 and the pattern is unmistakable. Around 2013, the majority of his revenue flipped from being primarily from paid sales to advertising.
Looking back, Smith concludes that:
…the change is mostly been in the App Store market, rather than in my own attitudes. In many cases adding advertising to my apps has been something I’ve fought and resisted as long as possible. But in the end the pragmatic answer has been to not swim upstream and instead follow where my customers have moved to.
The market has been pulling me along towards advertising based apps, and I’ve found that the less I fight back with anachronistic ideas about how software “should” be sold, the more sustainable a business I have.
Smith readily acknowledges his experience is just one data point in a large App Store. If you’ve followed the fortunes of independent app developers over this period though, his conclusion rings true.
Be sure to visit Smith’s website to see the charts breaking down the components of his apps’ revenue. The short-term impact of app launches on overall revenue is an interesting footnote to the post’s main focus.
Some games are as much about art and the experience they create as they are about gameplay. Monument Valley comes to mind for instance. Gemini – A Journey of Two Stars is a beautiful new game from Echostone Games that falls into the same category and succeeds by being simultaneously stunning and engrossing.
As you start Gemini, two stars have fallen from the sky. You play as the larger star. There are no instructions or tutorials, just subtle visual hints about what you are supposed to do. Tapping the left and right sides of the screen guides your star in those directions.
As you approach the smaller star, the two interact and begin to rise. Get too far away from the smaller star and both start to fall from the sky. This makes for an interesting tension as you try to stay close to the smaller star, which can have a mind of its own, while also completing the game’s tasks.
As you rise through a gorgeous abstract landscape, the sky darkens. If it gets too dark, your stars will fall. To avoid that you need to light beacons by steering your star over them. Lighting up the sky has the added advantage of revealing more of your surroundings. The stunning artwork of Gemini is paired with an equally impressive and soothing soundtrack that sets the tone for the game.
As you lose yourself in Gemini, the game is more about the interaction of the stars than anything else. The dance between the stars and making sure you bring the little star along become the focus. This is a very different game, but the feeling of a connection with the small star that Gemini created as I played reminded me a lot of playing Journey last Summer on my PS4.
Gemini is relatively short. The six stages of the game should take most people no more than 1-2 hours to complete. If you evaluate games by the numbers of levels per dollar you spend, you may be disappointed with Gemini, but as a piece of interactive art, I suspect many people, myself included, will return to Gemini over and over just to enjoy the visuals and soundtrack.
Gemini is available on the App Store at an introductory price of $2.99.
On the heels of Apple’s announcement of an impending App Store cleanup, it has updated its App Review Guidelines to cover app subscriptions, stickers, and SiriKit apps. Among other guidelines, Section 3.1.2(a) states that:
While the following list is not exhaustive, examples of appropriate subscriptions include: new game levels; episodic content; multi-player support; apps that offer consistent, substantive updates; access to large collections of, or continually updated, media content; software as a service (“SAAS”); and cloud support.
The availability of subscriptions for apps that are ‘continually updated’ provides additional clarity to an issue that was hotly debated and discussed among developers since subscriptions were announced shortly before WWDC.
The App Review Guidelines also include an entire section on stickers.
Whether your app contains a sticker extension or you’re creating free-standing sticker packs, its content shouldn’t offend users, create a negative experience, or violate the law.
Section 4.4.3 includes a link for making infringement claims and states that if you cannot back up your rights to content contained in stickers with documentation, your sticker packs and extensions will be removed from the App Store. Repeat violators risk having their developer accounts revoked.
With respect to SiriKit, section 2.5.11 of the Guidelines provides:
Apps integrating SiriKit should only sign up for intents they can handle without the support of an additional app and that users would expect from the stated functionality. For example, if your app is a meal planning app, you should not incorporate an intent to start a workout, even if the app shares integration with a fitness app.
This guideline seems to be designed to avoid confusion that could be created by an app without clear SiriKit functionality accessing SiriKit.
Apple has announced a plan to clean up the App Store. Apple’s developer site states it plainly:
To make it easier for customers to find great apps that fit their needs, we want to ensure that apps available on the App Store are functional and up-to-date. We are implementing an ongoing process of evaluating apps, removing apps that no longer function as intended, don’t follow current review guidelines, or are outdated.
Beginning September 7, 2016, the same day as the event at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium where Apple is expected to unveil the iPhone 7, App Review will begin evaluating all existing apps on the App Store to determine if they are functional and meet App Store guidelines. Some of the highlights:
In addition, Apple announced in an email to developers that going forward, app names will be limited to 50 characters. Apple explained that long app names, which developers use to try to influence search results, provide no value for customers, particularly because they are too long to display in full on the App Store.
Eight years and over two million apps later, the App Store is long overdue for a cleanup. Abandoned and broken apps create a real discovery problem for customers. We are well past the time when the number of apps served as meaningful bragging rights for Apple keynotes. The directness in tone and relatively short time frame given to developers to make changes to apps sends a clear message – Apple is serious about cleaning up the App Store. Developers with neglected apps had better pay attention if they want to remain on the App Store.
Pastebot by Tapbots was an early iOS clipboard manager that facilitated copying text, links, images and more. Today, Tapbots announced that it is bringing Pastebot to the Mac. As Tapbots did with Tweetbot for Mac, Pastebot is available as a public beta. As Tapbots explains:
We have been wanting to do a full blown Pastebot for Mac long before we first released it on the iPhone. Paul wrote a fantastic little utility app called PTH Pasteboard Pro on the Mac which I had always wanted to rewrite as a Tapbots app, but we were just too busy with iOS. After the release of Tweetbot 2 for Mac, it only made sense to have Todd start on Pastebot for his next big project. So we are very excited to release Pastebot for Mac…as a public beta.
I have been testing Pastebot for Mac for several weeks and it’s got some great features like the ability to create custom filters that allow you to transform clipped text in various ways.
If you are interested in joining the public beta, head on over to tapbots.com/pastebot.
The Remaster trio are reunited to give their thoughts and experiences of playing No Man’s Sky, and also take a look at why there’s such a backlash against the game.
We had a good discussion on No Man’s Sky, its strengths and shortcomings, and managing expectations on this week’s Remaster. You can listen here.
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