An In-Depth Look at Apple’s Approach to Accessibility→

Mashable published a profile of Jordyn Castor, a 22-year-old Apple engineer on its accessibility design and quality team. Castor, who has been blind since birth, joined Apple full-time last year after interning there in college. As she explains to Mashable:

“I realized then I could code on the computer to have it fulfill the tasks I wanted it to,” says Castor, whose current work focuses on enhancing features like VoiceOver for blind Apple users. “I came to realize that with my knowledge of computers and technology, I could help change the world for people with disabilities.

In addition to speaking with Castor, Mashable interviewed Sarah Herrlinger, senior manager for global accessibility policy and initiatives, who explained Apple’s approach to accessibility:

a notable part of the company’s steps toward accessibility is its dedication to making inclusivity features standard, not specialized. This allows those features to be dually accessible — both for getting the tech to more users, as well as keeping down costs.

Mashable’s piece is a must-read for Jordyn Castro’s inspiring personal story and its insight into the unique way Apple approaches accessibility. Instead of treating accessibility as a special, add-on feature that is purchased separately, it’s built into the operating system itself. That, combined with the work Apple has done to make accessibility features easy for developers to adopt, reveals a pragmatic approach designed to encourage broad-based adoption, making Apple’s accessibility innovations available to as many people who need them as possible.

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Game Day: Neon Drive

Neon Drive by Fraoula is a devilishly difficult 80s-themed driving game that immediately reminded me of the campy short film, Kung Fury. The unapologetic, over-the-top style of Neon Drive is a big part of its charm and adds to the fun of the game, which is available for OS X and iOS. The mechanics of Neon Drive are incredibly simple, but the mastering the game requires precise timing. Well-placed checkpoints provide just enough of a sense of progress though, to make Neon Drive more fun than frustrating.

Neon Drive is part endless runner, part rhythm game. The controls are about as basic as they could be – on iOS you steer your car across lanes by tapping the left side of the screen to move left and the right side to move right. On the Mac, you can accomplish the same thing with the left and right arrow keys or other preset key combinations. Each of Neon Drive’s levels is accompanied by an 80s synth soundtrack that adds to the game’s atmosphere as you dodge obstacles. The first time you hit an obstacle, your car is temporarily slowed down with the screeching sound effect of a needle scratching across a record that distorts the soundtrack. Hit a second obstacle and it’s game over. Fortunately, if you cross a checkpoint, you don’t have to restart from the beginning.

Neon Drive features seven very difficult levels. Getting past the first level felt like a major accomplishment even in normal mode. I’m not great at games that require perfect timing, so your mileage may vary, but despite the difficulty, I found Neon Drive fun and addicting in the same way a game like Canabalt is.

Neon Drive's look and soundtrack are a big part of its appeal.

Neon Drive’s look and soundtrack are a big part of its appeal.

I played Neon Drive on my iPhone 6s Plus, iPad Pro 12.9, and 2015 Retina MacBook Pro. The games are virtually identical on iOS and OS X, but I’d give the edge to the iOS version because there’s something about tapping the screen directly that makes Neon Drive a little more immediate and fun. On OS X, Neon Drive got my laptop’s fans roaring almost immediately, which detracts the game some. My one wish for Neon Drive is for Fraoula to bring it to the Apple TV, where I think its simple mechanics would work well with or without a controller.

Despite being frustratingly difficult to master, Neon Drive is a blast to play and does a fantastic job of making you feel like you are playing a real 80s arcade game.

Neon Drive is available for $3.99 on the App Store and $9.99 on the Mac App Store.

Apple Introduces Searchable WWDC 2016 Transcripts→

A few years ago, Matt Thompson of NSHipster.com created ASCIIwwdc, fully-searchable transcripts of WWDC sessions going back to 2010. ASCIIwwdc is still creating transcripts of WWDC sessions, but a couple of years ago Apple began offering its own searchable WWDC transcripts.

Apple's searchable WWDC transcripts let you jump to any point in a video where a search term is mentioned.

Apple’s searchable WWDC transcripts let you jump to any point in a video where a search term is mentioned.

Yesterday, Apple introduced the its latest set of transcripts for the 2016 WWDC sessions. You can read the transcripts as single documents, search across all videos going back as far as 2012, or search within individual videos, which is a great way to find every mention of a topic that cuts across multiple videos. As you read a transcript, you can click on phrases to jump directly to the corresponding point in the related video, which makes navigating hours of video simple and fast. Transcripts of the 2016 WWDC sessions and for prior years are available on Apple’s developer website.

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WeatherTunes Lets the Climate Choose Your Music

To provide you with the right music, services like Apple Music and Spotify aim to provide playlists based on certain moods or activities. A lot of the time, these collections offer a variety of curated selections that, while good, don’t consider other contextual factors such as location or time.

weatherTunes is a divergence from the normal discovery music service, offering suggestions that are based on the weather in your current location. By pulling weather data like temperature, humitidy, and cloudiness, the app can provide a selection of songs that it believes fits the conditions.

To guarantee that it plays the best songs for you, weatherTunes will ask for a genre of music – and that’s it. After you hit play, the app will play you a continuous stream of music from YouTube, the videos showing if you swipe up. If you’re concerned that streaming YouTube videos may eat up your data, here are your numbers to note: developer Ari Amanatidis told me that he estimates that each song takes up around 3-5 MBs, with an hourly rate between 60-80 MBs.

From my testing, weatherTunes does exactly what it claims; with the weather nice today, I was able to get upbeat songs that fit the environmental mood. Other than the occasional back-to-back song, I haven’t had any issues using weatherTunes for listening to music.

Coupled with a well-designed interface, weatherTunes’s functionality makes this tool a winner. You can pick it up in the App Store for $0.99 (iPhone only).

iOS Developer Academy to Open in Naples, Italy in October 2016→

The first European iOS app development center, previously announced by Apple in January, will officially open in October 2016. The center, now called iOS Developer Academy, will be hosted at the Università di Napoli Federico II:

The Università di Napoli Federico II (Naples, Italy) today announced it will host Europe’s first ever iOS Developer Academy in a new partnership with Apple that will see hundreds of students given the practical skills and training on developing apps for the world’s most innovative and vibrant app ecosystem. The iOS Developer Academy will officially open in October 2016 with more than 200 students taking part in the first year and more to follow in the years ahead.

Students will take part in a nine month curriculum designed and supported by Apple, with a dedicated facility at the new Campus in San Giovanni a Teduccio. The facility includes labs and access to the latest Apple hardware and software.

Great news for the Italian iOS developer community. More details are available at the official website here.

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Apple Release macOS Sierra Beta→

According to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required), in addition to the release of the iOS 10 public beta, Apple released the public beta of macOS Sierra today. As with the iOS 10 beta, it is not advisable to install the Sierra beta on your primary Mac’s drive. Of course, if you decide to download Sierra beta anyway, be sure to back up your data. You can sign up to get access to the Sierra beta at beta.apple.com.

Among other things, Sierra adds Siri to the Mac, Apple Pay on certain websites accessed with Safari, enhancements to Photos, a Universal Clipboard that works between iOS devices and Macs, and Auto Unlock of your Mac with your Apple Watch instead of a password, which requires you also run the iOS 10 and watchOS 3 betas. For more coverage of what’s new in macOS Sierra check out our WWDC coverage.

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Apple Releases iOS 10 Public Beta→

Joanna Stern reports for the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) that Apple has released the public beta of iOS 10. Apple released a beta version of iOS 10 to developers at WWDC on June 13, 2016. At the time, Apple promised a public beta of iOS 10 would be released in July. A second beta was issued to developers just this past Tuesday. Today, Apple made good on it’s WWDC promise by releasing a public beta of iOS 10 that is available for anyone to download.

However, just because you can download the iOS 10 beta doesn’t mean you should, especially on your primary device. The consensus among people who have tried the first two developer betas seems to be that it is more stable than most early iOS betas, but it still has many bugs and there is no guaranty that your third-party apps will work properly. Nor is it easy to roll back to iOS 9.3 if you have second thoughts after installing iOS 10.

With iOS 10, Apple has made significant changes to notifications and Today widgets, redesigned the Music app, added features to Photos and Messages, and much more. For a complete run-down of what’s new in iOS 10, check out Alex Guyot’s coverage for MacStories during WWDC.

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Roadblock for OS X Review

Content blockers arrived with a splash on iOS last Fall when iOS 9 was released, but have only recently begun showing up on the Mac App Store. Last month I reviewed 1Blocker, a Safari content blocker that replicated its successful iOS app on the Mac. Today, Obied Corner released Roadblock for Mac, which takes its iOS content blocker and adds some compelling new features. What makes Roadblock unique, is its focus on profiles, allow you to set up different sets of content blocking rules for different use cases, and its simplified approach to creating complex custom rules. Despite a few limitations that I discuss below, these two features make Roadblock extremely powerful and an excellent choice if you are looking for a content blocker for your Mac.

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