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How Adobe is Reimagining Photoshop for the Mobile Era→

Harry McCracken, writing for Fast Company:

What wasn’t instantly obvious, however, was exactly how to translate Photoshop into an experience that made sense on the iPad and other mobile devices. In 2011, Adobe released three “Photoshop Touch” iPad apps—Eazel, Color Lava, and Nav—which were complements to Photoshop in its full-strength form rather than stand-alone tools. Then in 2012, it introduced an app called Photoshop Touch, which took a smallish subset of desktop Photoshop’s features, stripped out most of their advanced features, and rejiggered the interface so it worked with touch input.

This year, the company started all over again. It discontinued development of Photoshop Touch—which was available for iPhones and Android devices as well as iPads—and announced that Photoshop’s future on the iPad and other mobile devices would henceforth involve smaller, specialized tools rather than anything that retained Photoshop’s traditional everything-and-the-kitchen-sink flavor.

Adobe has done a rather phenomenal job in its transition from boxed software to the subscription-based Adobe Creative Cloud, as its latest quarter’s record revenue figures clearly demonstrate. Over that same period, Adobe has also invested substantially in developing apps for mobile devices, and most significantly, the iPad. In fact earlier this year in May I looked at the number of iOS apps developed by Adobe, and at the time they had 50 apps in the App Store that had been updated within the last year (another 59 had been pulled from sale or not been updated in over a year).

As McCracken’s story makes clear, Adobe’s strategy for mobile devices isn’t about slimming down their flagship desktop products so that they can run on mobile devices. Instead, Adobe has focused on creating apps for specific tasks, whether it be Photoshop Fix for retouching photos or Photoshop Mix for combining and blending images and layers together. In that way, Adobe claims that they can offer a better mobile product, that can in some ways offer a better experience than on the desktop.

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Craig Federighi Discusses Swift on The Talk Show→

Episode 139 of The Talk Show with John Gruber:

Apple senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi joins the show for a wide-ranging half-hour discussion about Swift — Apple’s new programming language that just went open source.

Next, John Siracusa returns to the show to follow up on Federighi’s segment on Swift. Other topics include Apple’s new Smart Battery Case for the iPhone 6/6S, and our mutual (and perhaps futile) desire to head into this week’s premiere of Star Wars: The Force Awakens knowing as few spoilers as possible.

A great episode of The Talk Show, ready for your morning (or evening) commute. It is fantastic (and kind of amazing) to hear an Apple Executive discuss what can be a deeply technical topic, outside of WWDC. There’s also a transcript of the Federighi segment for those of you who would prefer reading the discussion.

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Sidefari Adds iPhone Support with Updated Safari View Controller Extension

Sidefari's new iPhone extension.

Sidefari’s new iPhone extension.

I first covered Sidefari by Francisco Cantu last month, noting how such a clever idea had arisen from Apple’s limitations in the multitasking framework of iOS 9 for iPad:

Sidefari essentially acts as an on-demand Safari View Controller built into an app that does nothing else, and that’s been made available for Split View. In its simplicity, I find Sidefari to be an ingenious idea for an app that uses a built-in technology to work around a limitation of Apple’s multitasking design in iOS 9. By using Safari View Controller, Sidefari comes with a series of Safari features available by default (such as autofill and Reader); for Safari users, this is a superior alternative to using Safari and a browser like Chrome in Split View, as third-party browsers can’t access user data and settings from Safari.

I’ve been using Sidefari extensively on my iPad: while other third-party browsers exist with support for Split View (notably, both Google Chrome and the Google app can be used to browse webpages alongside Safari), Sidefari brings the convenience of having an instance of Safari that looks and behaves like the system browser. This convenience applies to design and security features, but also to everyday tricks like holding the address bar to open a URL or built-in Reader mode.

Yesterday, Cantu updated Sidefari with iPhone support and other minor improvements on the iPad. On the iPhone, the app now offers an action extension to open any link modally in Safari View Controller from any app. This is reminiscent of Browsecurely in that you can summon Safari views from apps that don’t support them– like Twitter’s official app – and it works well. On the iPad, the app has two new options: the address bar now doubles as a search box for Google search so you can type any query in it, and you can set a Home page to open with an icon in the main view. Both additions are quite handy if you want to save a little bit of time when using Safari and Safari View Controller simultaneously (the latter doesn’t let you tap the address bar to search manually, nor can you access bookmarks with it).

Sidefari has become one of my must-have utilities on the iPad, and I’m glad it’s on the iPhone too. Sidefari is available at $0.99 on the App Store.

Apple Music Gets Taylor Swift 1989 World Tour Video Exclusive→

Re/code’s Peter Kafka:

Apple and Swift are syncing up for a multi-pronged deal that will give Apple exclusive rights to a Swift concert video that debuts on Sunday, December 20, as well as her help on a big Apple Music marketing campaign. Swift, apparently, will get a nice check in return.

It’s easy to see what Apple gets out of the deal, because an Apple spokesperson was happy to talk about it: Access to the concert video will be limited to Apple Music subscribers — that includes both the 6.5 million people (or more) who are paying for the music service, as well as anyone in the free, three-month trial.

It’s kind of amazing to look back at the history of Apple and Taylor Swift in the last six months. Back in June, Swift published a widely circulated criticism of Apple for not compensating artists during the three-month trial period of Apple Music. Famously, Apple responded swiftly to the criticism and within hours (on a Sunday no less) announced that they would change their plans and pay rights holders on a per-stream basis during the trial period. A few days after Apple’s backflip, Swift announced that her album 1989 which was not available on any streaming music services, would be available on Apple Music.

Now Apple is paying Swift to launch ‘The 1989 World Tour - Live’ video, exclusively on Apple Music. Re/code’s Peter Kafka is also reporting that Apple has also obtained the rights to use Swift’s name and likeness in Apple Store promotions and Swift-branded iTunes gift cards. Taylor Swift is also today’s interview guest on DJ Zane Lowe’s show on Beats 1, you can find showtimes here.

Filmed at Sydney’s ANZ Stadium in front of 76,000 fans, this exclusive concert film captures the excitement and energy of the hottest pop artist in the world. Interspersed with footage from her sold-out world tour and loaded with superstar guests, The 1989 World Tour - Live will be available exclusively on Apple Music starting 20 December.

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How Apple’s Smart Battery Case Recharges Your iPhone→

Good point by iLounge’s Jesse Hollington, writing on Quora, about the difference between third-party battery cases and the way Apple’s new battery case has been designed to recharge an iPhone (via Zac Cichy):

Notice the missing step? You’re only recharging your iPhone battery once instead of twice. The fact that Apple’s case doesn’t have a switch means that you don’t really have an option to turn it on when you need it or off when you don’t — if your iPhone is inside the case, it’s being powered by the case. If you do this at the beginning of the day, as soon as you disconnect from the charger, that means that the iPhone remains at 100% until the case battery is depleted, then the iPhone gets powered from its internal battery. The fact that the case is integrated into iOS to provide power status is an added bonus as you get a clearer view as to what your overall battery capacity is.

If you remember to have a fully charged iPhone before putting it into Apple’s case, then it’ll run off the case’s battery instead of draining its own. Thus, if you always keep it on and charge both overnight, the iPhone will always start using the case’s battery first in the morning. That’s smart indeed – too bad I can’t try it on the iPhone 6s Plus.

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For the Good of the Business→

Curtis Herbert has some wisdom for indie developers running a business:

What happens when the developer, designer, and the “evil” business/marketing person are all one in the same? You get a blog post out of it! Welcome to my inner struggles with Slopes as I’ve tried to turn it into a serious business.

Over the last few months I’ve learned that there is a need to compromise on some of my ideals. Well, compromise might not be the right word. I think some of the things that we think compromise our ideals actually don’t, when done right. I think as a designer / developer I was too quick to dismiss things I needed to implement to help my business be healthy just because of some preconceived “Apple would never do this” notion.

I would say that this applies to a lot of creative endeavors online. Many of us are fixated on ideals of elegance and perfectionism that aren’t healthy for the business, which ultimately results in failure to monetize and survive. A great product doesn’t sell by itself.

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The Numbers of Apple’s New TV App Store So Far→

A month after the launch of the new Apple TV and associated App Store, the folks at appFigures have released some numbers on the TV apps available to users:

The long awaited Apple TV App Store opened about a month ago, and since we happen to be into apps that got us pretty excited. We started tracking the new store when it had just opened in late October, and have been keeping a close watch on its progress for a little over a month now. Armed with a database full of apps we set out to share some of the things we’re seeing.

These are some fascinating stats – I wasn’t expecting Education apps to be high in the list and, given Apple’s promotion during the Apple TV introduction, I imagined we’d see more Shopping apps.

With over 60% apps available for free and 85% of them priced between $0.99 and $2.99, it’ll be interesting to see what happens when and if some console games come to the platform.

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Tweetbot Upgrades to CloudKit Sync→

The latest version of Tweetbot for iOS has upgraded its iCloud syncing engine to CloudKit, bringing faster performance for timeline, DM, and mute filter sync. From the release notes:

This update is all about sync. We’ve switched our syncing engine to use CloudKit which will provide you with faster, more consistent syncing between your iOS devices and Macs. It also sets up a foundation for some cool features we have planned for future releases. We know improved syncing doesn’t sound too exciting, but it will provide a better underlying experience.

From a user’s perspective, nothing’s changed – Tweetbot still uses iCloud and you don’t have to change anything in your preferences. However, Tweetbot is now using a better version of iCloud, with near-instant sync of changes between devices.

I’ve been running this version of Tweetbot with CloudKit sync for a few weeks, and it’s a very nice upgrade from the old iCloud sync. I’ve often left two devices running with Tweetbot in the foreground at the same time, and I’ve seen the timeline scroll on one device just a second after I stopped scrolling on the primary device. It’s impressive.

If you haven’t tried iCloud sync in Tweetbot in a while, go check it out again. Tweetbot 4.3 is available on the App Store (my review of Tweetbot 4.0 is here).

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