This week, Myke and Federico console Stephen over the Mac mini before discussing Siri and the next version of iOS.
This week on Connected, a discussion on Siri for iPhone (and maybe Mac in the future), plus some first thoughts on what iOS 10 could bring. You can listen here.
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Jeff Benjamin, writing at 9to5Mac:
Schiller is now in charge of all App Stores, taking over responsibilities from Eddy Cue, which most prominently include the iOS App Store and the Mac App Store.
It’s been less than three months since the move occurred, but we’re already beginning to see a change in the way the App Store operates. For example, we’re now seeing more regular updates of the Best New Apps section at the top of the App Store’s Featured page. In a tweet today, Schiller acknowledged the changes and indicated that more changes were on the way.
I’ve been noticing the same, particularly on the front page, which makes sense. The App Store used to be refreshed every Thursday with Editor’s Choice and featured apps. Frequent updates to the ‘Best New Apps’ section could help in promoting apps multiple times throughout the week.
Amazon announced two additions to the Echo family this morning – the portable Tap and the Chromecast-like Dot. Dan Moren has a breakdown of the announcement and details.
I’m relatively new to the Amazon Echo (I shared the story of how and why I bought one on Connected), but, like many others, I’m liking it a lot. In my three weeks with the Echo, the ability to play music, set timers, and turn my lights and espresso maker on and off from anywhere around the kitchen without having to wait for Siri is starting to become second nature.
(In theory, this is exactly what Siri on the Apple Watch should do. Realistically, though, the Watch is simply too slow and HomeKit commands fail too often.)
Amazon is doing good work with expanding the Echo’s list of supported third-party services (unlike Apple). I’m intrigued by the Dot.
As first reported by MacRumors, Apple has today launched @AppleSupport, a support account on Twitter:
Apple today created an official Twitter support account to provide customers with tips, tricks, and tutorials about the company’s product and services. One of the account’s first tweets provides users with step-by-step instructions on how to turn lists into checklists in the stock Notes app on iPhone.
Apple’s presence on social media is slowly but surely expanding. This is now the second support account that Apple runs on Twitter, following last October’s launch of @AppleMusicHelp which provides help and tips relating to Apple Music.
Casey Newton has a must-read story on the struggles of Pixite (makers of Pigment, among other apps) and the modern app economy:
For a time, Pixite was a shining example of the businesses made possible by the app economy. Like thousands of other developers, Pixite’s founders took what had been a side project and turned it into a full-fledged career. But the company’s recent financial problems illustrate a series of powerful shifts in the industry toward consolidation and corporatization.
For all but a few developers, the App Store itself now resembles a lottery: for every breakout hit like Candy Crush, hundreds or even thousands of apps languish in obscurity. Certain segments of the app economy remain vibrant — ludicrously profitable, even. Apps for massive social networks, on-demand services like Uber, and subscription businesses like Netflix and Spotify remain in high demand. Then there’s gaming: Last year, 85 percent of all app revenues went to games, according to App Annie. Supercell, the top-grossing developer of Clash of Clans, reported revenue of $1.7 billion in 2014. (It spent $440 million on marketing.)
The folks at Pixite have made some mistakes along the way, but the general shift on the App Store is undeniable.
Agile Tortoise’s development of Drafts never seems to slow down. Today, version 4.6 was released with a long list of new features and refinements. Here are my favorites:
There are also some treats in Drafts 4.6 for power users too:
With version 4.6, Drafts continues its steady pace of innovation by continuing to redefine what a text editor can be, which is why it has been one of my go-to text editors for many years now.
Drafts 4.6 is a free update for existing customers, and $9.99 for new users.
Josh Constine, reporting on Slack’s plans to roll out voice and video chat this year:
The imminent release of voice and video chat could make offices noisier, but it will certainly make Slack more of a comprehensive communication solution rather than a tool plugged into a suite of other products. That might convince companies Slack is worth paying for.
Given Slack’s focus on making work searchable, it’s easy to imagine that years down the line, Slack could use voice recognition to create transcripts of your voice or video meetings.
Here’s what I wrote when Slack acquired Screenhero in January 2015:
We use Slack at Relay, and, like many others, I like its integration with other services and apps. I always wondered if Slack would ever take on Skype, and I’m curious to see if what they’re building could be a possible solution for podcasters who are forced to use Skype today.
More than a year later, we use Slack intensively every day, and Skype is only being used to hold audio conversations with multiple people. If Slack’s take on voice chat supports channels and group calls and is sleek and stable enough, I think podcasters may want to keep an eye on it.
(Would Ecamm make a Slack Call Recorder, though? Would Slack consider automatically archiving those voice chats?)
Andrew Webster, writing on the upcoming game by my friend Sam Rosenthal, who’s collaborating with Ryan Cash and Snowman (makers of Alto’s Adventure):
When he was still a student at the University of Southern California, Sam Rosenthal started working on a game about building a house of cards. It was inspired in part by the Radiohead song “House of Cards,” which Rosenthal felt sounded “like a gentle plea to knock down a structure in favor of something new.” The game let you create structures, then break them down so that you could rebuild them in different ways. Rosenthal wanted the deconstruction and reconstruction to gradually tell a coming of age story about the wistfulness of adolescence, and the way important, sometimes devastating events can impact your life. “The longer the idea sat with me,” he says, “the more it became a lens that I use to see the world.”
After graduation, he worked various industry jobs, designing puzzles for Disney’s mobile hit Where’s My Water? and characters for Activision’s ubiquitous Skylanders series. The idea from school stuck with him, and in his spare time, he continued to tinker with it. A few years later, in 2013, Rosenthal met up with budding game designer Ryan Cash, and the two shared the projects they were working on. Cash had an early version of a snowboarding game, which would go on to become mobile hit Alto’s Adventure. Rosenthal revealed an early version of Where Cards Fall.
No gameplay images or videos yet, but I can already tell this will be worth paying attention to.
