Siliconera reports that Square Enix, the maker of the Final Fantasy franchise and Chaos Rings, is developing an Apple Watch-exclusive role-playing game called Cosmos Rings. Square Enix has a bare bones teaser website up with virtually no information about the game, but Siliconera says that Cosmos Rings:
features the “Time Upstream System” that uses the Apple Watch’s Digital Crown. The game will send you various messages according to your daily step counts as part of an experience that Square Enix says can only be done through the Apple Watch.
Siliconera also says that Cosmos Rings is being produced by Takehiro Ando who worked on the Chaos Rings series of games that originally debuted on iOS in 2010. In addition, Yusuke Naora, who was the art director on several Final Fantasy games and designed characters for Chaos Rings will have a hand in the Cosmos Rings visuals.
Cosmos Rings is slated for release later this summer.
A word cloud of the names of the apps in the Top 200 Grossing charts
You have probably noticed that there are a lot of free apps, apps with In-App Purchases, and games in the Top Grossing charts. I did too, so today I decided to survey the US App Store’s Top 200 Grossing iPhone apps and create some charts to visualize various data points and trends. Included in this article is an analysis which examines the upfront price, In-App Purchases, category, and other details of the apps in the Top 200 Grossing charts.
The rankings will change from day to day, and country by country, but I think the results in this article provide interesting observations from a general perspective, even if some of the exact details may differ depending on the day.
On the centennial episode of Connected, the crew covers #TicciMentee program applications, checks out Scrivener for iOS and considers iOS 10’s widgets and privacy features.
On this week’s Connected, we celebrate episode 100 with a very special surprise and a host of iOS 10 topics. I’d like to thank everyone who has listened to us so far. I’m excited to keep producing Connected every week with Myke and Stephen.
Pixelmator 2.3 for iOS was updated today to add the same Quick Selection and Magnetic Selection tools that were introduced on the Mac with Pixelmator 3.5 in May. The Quick Selection Tool lets you paint over an image with your finger to select it. Magnetic selection grabs the outline of an object based on anchor points you create as you trace around the object with your finger. Pixelmator detects the edges of the object in the image and snaps the section to them. In my brief tests, both selection tools worked well and are particularly well-suited to touch.
In addition to the new selection tools, Pixelmator 2.3 adds many small refinements and other improvements, including:
Apple Pencil pressure sensitivity support for the Quick Selection Tool;
Greater Apple Pencil precision when using the Free Selection Tool;
a ‘tap to invert selection’ button;
improvements to the precision and speed of the Color Selection Tool; and
snap to pixel precision for the Free, Rectangular, and Elliptical Selection Tools.
Starting today, Apple Pay is now available in France for credit and debit cards issued by Banque Populaire, Ticket Restaurant, Carrefour Banque, and Caisse d’Epargne. Apple’s website also notes that support will soon be added for cards issued by Boon and Orange.
Out of the 4 big banks in France, just BPCE is supported (Banque Populaire and Caisse d’Epargne merged to become BPCE in 2009). There is no word on when cards issued by the other three big banks (BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole or Société Générale) will be supported by Apple Pay.
The international expansion of Apple Pay is slowly but surely gaining momentum, with France now the eighth country which has some level of Apple Pay support. Today’s launch in France comes after Apple Pay launched in Switzerland earlier this month, and all 5 of Canada’s big banks signed up for Apple Pay in early May. The other 5 countries with support for Apple Pay are the US, UK, Australia, China and Singapore.
The first Glif, an iPhone tripod mount by Studio Neat, was released in November 2010. Fast forward almost six years to today and Studio Neat is back with an all-new version of the Glif that looks like the best one yet.
Having a tripod mount for your iPhone is surprisingly handy. Club MacStories members may recall that just last month, Graham Spencer and I used the Glif for two very different projects. Graham mounted his iPhone to a Glif to take time-lapse movies of the Australian sky, while I used my Glif with a GorillaPod tripod and microphone to record interviews with developers at WWDC. Those projects, which we described in detail in the Club MacStories Monthly Log, were very different, yet perfectly suited for the Glif.
The latest version of the Glif focuses on three areas. The first is a quick-release lever that makes it easier to get you iPhone in and out of the Glif. The second is multiple mounting points that let you mount the Glif in landscape or portrait mode, or attach additional items to the Glif like a light and microphone that can turn your iPhone into a portable movie rig.
Studio Neat introduces two accessories for the Glif, a handle and a wrist strap.
The third improvement to the Glif is the introduction of two accessories. The first is a handle that screws into one of the Glif’s mounting points. The handle should make it easier to hold your iPhone steady without accidentally covering the camera lens with your finger. The second accessory is a strap that you can loop around your wrist for added protection against dropping your iPhone.
As with previous Studio Neat products, the new Glif is a Kickstarter campaign. Over time, I’ve become more cautious about the Kickstarters I back, especially when it comes to hardware products, but Studio Neat is one of the few companies where I do not hesitate to back a product I want, because it has a solid track record of past success. For a $25 pledge, you will receive the new Glif if the project is funded, while $50 gets you the Glif, handle, and wrist strap. If you want two complete sets of the Glif and its accessories, you can pledge $100.
I’ve been a fan of Keone and Mari’s dance videos since my girlfriend introduced me to their YouTube channel a while back (she’s a dancer, and an avid follower of their work). I often watch choreography videos, but what Keone and Mari create is exceptionally unique. In addition to being masters of their craft, every video they produce blends choreography and story – revealing a deeper meaning to the song they are dancing to. Truly, Keone and Mari’s videos are works of art.
We’re best known for our work as dancers and choreographers, yet we’ve always had a dream to use dance as a medium between different/collaborative art forms. With Mari’s creative writing degree and our love for various art forms we never saw dance being completely independent of the different crafts. Our dream is this: An enhanced eBook with storytelling through dance.
Enhanced eBooks are digital books that include immersive, interactive, and interesting features like video, music, audio narration, animation, photography, and more. While dance videos online have become a norm in the millennial age, we hope to give dance a new home within this enhanced ebook. Imagine following a movement-driven story, that’s accompanied by originally produced music, partnered with interactivity - like flipping through photos, learning a dance, or potentially dictating where in the story you’d like to go next. The imaginative possibilities are truly there. The hope for this creative and visual novel is to have it available on your devices to download or stream.
I would love to see this project happen. Keone and Mari have launched a Kickstarter campaign seeking $45,000 in funding to cover costs for production, artists, and design. With 11 days left, over $24,000 have been pledged, and there are some great rewards for dancers such as tutorials, Q&As, and even private dance lessons.
If you’re interested, you can contribute to the campaign and check out more details on their Kickstarter page.
A major complaint about Apple Music when it rolled out was that it used a metadata-based matching system, which sometimes caused it to incorrectly match songs in users’ music libraries with Apple’s database. Jim Dalrymple reports for The Loop, that:
Apple has been quietly rolling out iTunes Match audio fingerprint to all Apple Music subscribers. Previously Apple was using a less accurate metadata version of iTunes Match on Apple Music, which wouldn’t always match the correct version of a particular song. We’ve all seen the stories of a live version of a song being replaced by a studio version, etc.
According to Dalrymple, the audio fingerprint matching system that Apple is slowly rolling out to Apple Music is the same system that has been available to customers who subscribe separately to iTunes Match. The new matching functionality is being added by Apple at no additional cost to Apple Music subscribers, which means that if you previously subscribed to Apple Music and iTunes Match, there should be no reason to renew your iTunes Match subscription when it expires. As Jim Dalrymple points out, however, you may want to be sure that the new system is working properly before letting Match expire.
We are the first in our industry to use Apple’s ResearchKit as part of our research, this time looking at the impact a patient’s disease has on their day-to-day life.
Glaxo will use the app,
to conduct surveys and use iPhone sensors to collect and track common symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis: joint pain, fatigue, and mood. It will also track activity and quality of life measures for 300 patients over a three-month period.
The app, called GSK PARADE, is available now on the App Store as a free download. Rheumatoid arthritis patients who live in the US and are 21 or older can apply to participate in the study using the app.
Since its introduction last year, ResearchKit has been used to study diabetes, asthma, and a number of other conditions. Last Fall, Apple announced that more than 50 researchers had contributed active tasks in 6 months and more than 100,000 participants had contributed data to ResearchKit. It’s good to see ResearchKit’s use continue to expand in the health care and pharmaceuticals industries.
