When Twitter rolled out support for longer tweets yesterday, we mentioned that Tweetbot – the popular third-party client – would soon support the new format natively. Tapbots has released updates to the iOS and macOS apps today that let you view and create longer tweets (where media, polls, and quotes don’t count against 140 characters) without having to rely on Twitter’s official app. You can get the iOS update here.
Tweetbot Updated with Support for Longer Tweets→
Apple Pay Arrives on Safari
Apple Pay started with point of sale terminals and iOS apps. With iOS 10 and macOS Sierra, Apple has extended Apple Pay to include web-based purchases made with its Safari browser. Despite being limited to Safari, Apple Pay’s combination of simplicity and security has the potential to make it a de facto requirement for online retailers.
macOS Sierra: The MacStories Review
The first thing that may catch the eye of many looking to upgrade their Mac this year is the demise of the classic ‘OS X’ moniker. The end of OS X has been long rumored, and the expectation has often been for the Mac to move to whatever Apple chooses to name their OS 11. This would of course be a change on a massive scale, such as that between OS 9 and OS X was over a decade ago.
This year, with OS X finally seeing the end of its reign, will we be seeing another epochal change in Mac history?
Nope.
After a decade of mispronounced Roman numerals, Apple is ready to let go of the name, but not the number. The full title for the 2016 iteration of the Mac operating system: macOS 10.12 Sierra. OS X may be gone, but OS 10 survives.
Since the mystical OS 11 didn’t come in the aftermath of the last big cat, didn’t come on the heels of version 10.9, and now again hasn’t come to usher out OS X, it’s starting to look like it may never come at all. Let’s all cross our fingers and hope that that’s true, because the bottom line is that OS 11 isn’t needed anymore.
These days, Apple is a very different company than it was when OS X made its debut. The Mac is no longer Apple’s darling. It was long ago pushed aside by the iPod, then the iPhone and iPad, and now even a watch and a TV box. Each of these is its own platform, running its own operating system. Each of these has its place in the new age Apple ecosystem.
With iOS, watchOS, and tvOS all around, the freshly renamed macOS no longer serves the role of scrappy upstart. Today, the Mac is the eldest platform, and macOS needs to focus on stability and productivity. Leave the epochal changes to the young guys.
With this year’s update, named after California’s Sierra Nevada Mountain Range, macOS builds once more upon the strong base of its many predecessors. Trenchant in its restraint, 10.12 shirks sweeping changes in favor of iterative improvements. A perfect example of an update to a mature operating system done right.
Sketch Updated with Improved Vector Editing→
Bohemian Coding, the maker of Sketch, the popular vector design program, announced a significant update to the app today. Sketch 40, simplifies and improves the editing of complex vector shapes:
In Sketch 40, you can now simply press the Enter key on [a complex shape with multiple subpaths and points] to reveal all the points and paths contained within it, no matter how many layers are there. With multiple points selected, across different layers, you can adjust them at once without the need to select each layer individually.
Bohemian Coding also improved existing text transformation features, which are contained behind an Options button in the Inspector, by making them non-destructive. Complete release notes describing other enhancements and bug fixes in Sketch 40 are available here.
Sketch, which moved to an annual license model for upgrades in June, is $99 and available on Bohemian Coding’s website.
Daylite: A Business Productivity App for Mac and iOS [Sponsor]
Daylite is a business productivity app for Mac, iPhone, and iPad.
Organize you and your team’s contacts, calendars, projects, tasks, emails, notes, and new business opportunities all in one app.
Track sales and set reminders for follow-ups. See a full history of all emails, calls, and notes for each customer. Customize your own pipelines to track sales and projects. View your whole team’s calendar to make scheduling meetings simple. Daylite even integrates with Apple Mail so you can update customer info, set tasks and reminders, and add appointments to your calendar – all without leaving Mail.
Automate lead generation from online web forms with Daylite & Zapier integration. When someone fills out a form on your website through Google Forms or Wufoo, a new contact and business opportunity are creating in Daylite. You can then segment leads for specific email campaigns and track all of your communication with them in Daylite.
Always have your business info no matter where you go. Daylite is a native app so you can access your information on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad even when you don’t have an Internet connection.
Read how businesses all over the world are becoming more efficient with Daylite.
Our thanks to Daylite for sponsoring MacStories this week.
Google Photos Introduces Movie Concepts→
In addition to improvements for sharing between users, Google has announced a new feature for Google Photos dubbed ‘movie concepts’. Automatically generated like the service’s previous slideshows and Assistant creations, movie concepts are based on “creative concepts” – themes found in your photos that go beyond recent uploads.
As Google writes:
We’re also upping our game when it comes to automatic creations. Google Photos has always made movies for you using your recently uploaded photos. Now we’re going further, with new movies that are based on creative concepts — the kinds of movies you might make yourself, if you just had the time. And they’re not only limited to your most recent uploads.
And:
Look out for a concept to commemorate the good times from this summer, and another one for formal events like weddings. And you don’t need to do a thing — these movies get made automatically for you.
Here’s an example of a concept created by Google Photos:
Casey Newton, writing for The Verge, has more details:
Tim Novikoff, who joined Google last year when it acquired his video-editing company, Fly Labs, said the feature takes advantage of Google’s advancements in deep learning and computer vision. The idea, he said, was “let’s leverage this to make movies that are emotionally powerful — that make your really smile, or even make you cry and reminisce and show your family.”
More concept movies are planned. “You can imagine where this goes,” Novikoff said. “Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Little League highlights, dance recitals. All the things that people do, we can make special movies around them.”
The new feature comes less than a week after the launch of iOS 10, which includes Memories – a feature of Apple’s Photos app that creates personalized movies based on location, dates, and people recognized in your photo library. From Google’s description and Novikoff’s comments, it sounds like movie concepts will be more advanced than iOS’ automated creations, but we’ll have to test them in practice and see if the promise holds up. I’m curious to compare Apple’s Memories to Google Photos’ concepts.
Google Trips Debuts on iPhone
Google launched a free trip planning app called Google Trips today with a deep set of features that work online and off. The motivation for the app was described by Richard Holden, a Google vice president of product management, to Casey Newton of The Verge in an interview:
We’re doing a great job on the planning stages, but we really need to help consumers when they’re actually at their destination.
I have spent a short time with Google Trips and it looks like Google has delivered.
After signing into Google Trips with the Gmail account I typically use to make travel plans, Trips showed an upcoming trip to Austin and past trips going back to 2008. Tapping on a trip opens a page with buttons to view any reservations the app finds in your Gmail, ‘Things to Do,’ ‘Food & Drink,’ and ‘Saved Places,’ which are any destinations you mark with a star as you browse through Trips’ suggestions.
Trips’ recommendations are further divided into categories like ‘Top Spots’ and ‘Outdoors’ for activities, and restaurants, cafes, and places near where you are staying for food and drink suggestions. Results can be viewed in a list view, where each item can be tapped to view more detail, or on a map. A toggle on the first page of each trip gives you the option to download the trip, a handy feature if you are traveling internationally and want to limit your data use.
Of course, to get the most out of Google Trips, you need to log into it with a Google account. If you are uncomfortable with Trips scanning your Gmail and search history to customize what it presents to you, Trips is probably not the app for you.
Google Trips is an iPhone-only app and is available as a free download on the App Store.
Twitter Reclaims Space for Text in Tweets
Update: As noted below, the changes to how the Twitter character limits are counted are available to third party developers. MacStories has learned that Tweetbot and Twitterrific will both be updated soon to support the changes to Twitter’s APIs.
Tweetbot (pictured in screenshots) and Twitterrific will soon be updated to implement the changes to Twitter’s character limits.
Twitter began rolling out changes that take back space for text in tweets. As Twitter has gradually become a multimedia experience full of images, GIFs, videos, quoted tweets, and other things, each has encroached on the 140 character limit of a tweet leaving less room for text. That just changed.
https://twitter.com/twitter/status/777915304261193728
With a tweet today, Twitter began to roll out features, first announced earlier this year, that exclude certain things from the 140 character count limit. Users will still be limited to 140-character messages, but, as first reported by The Verge last Friday, media attachments (including images, GIFs, videos, and polls) and quoted tweets will no longer count against the 140-character limit, making more room for text.
James Corden Stars in New Apple Music Ad
Airing for the first time last night during the 2016 Emmy Awards, Apple debuted a new extended 2 minute advert for Apple Music featuring James Corden.
The tongue-in-cheek advert sees a serious Corden attempt to pitch ideas for an Apple Music advert to Apple executives Jimmy Iovine, Bozoma Saint John, and Eddy Cue. Corden’s ideas range from the bizarre, with Corden impersonating famous musicians, to the melodramatic, swimming through 40 million Apples. The trio of Apple executives rebuff Corden’s extravagant ideas, simply pointing out that Apple Music is available offline, that there are over 40 million songs, and playlists are handpicked for users.
This is not Apple’s first collaboration with Corden. Earlier this year Apple bought the Carpool Karaoke scripted TV series which was based on the segment that began in the The Late Late Show with James Corden. Corden also appeared with Tim Cook in a Carpool Karaoke skit for the opening video of Apple’s September 6 keynote earlier this month.