This Week's Sponsor:

Proxyman

Need to Capture HTTPS for Debugging? Try Proxyman! Works with iOS Devices and Simulators.

My Must-Have iOS Apps, 2015 Edition

Over the past year, I’ve gone all-in with iOS.

Following years of experiments, struggles to switch from a Mac-centric workflow, and encouraging signs of maturity from the platform, I chose to make the iPad my primary computer. I used the iPad Air 2 more than any other iOS device before, and the iPad Pro is filling that role now with great success. After being convinced to give the iPhone 6 Plus a try by a good friend, I realized that a bigger phone was better for my needs, which resulted in an instant 6s Plus purchase a few months ago. The iPhone isn’t only my pocket computer and Twitter machine – it’s my music, my camera (which I used to shoot this video), my portable gaming device, and my stream of living memories thanks to Live Photos.

At this point, I’m only using my MacBook three hours a week to record two podcasts on Skype. Effectively, all my computing – work or entertainment-related – is done on iOS, and I treat my iPhone and iPad with the same care and respect that others would treat their Retina iMacs and Mac Pros. The iPad Pro in particular is the computer that enables me to write and pay the bills. It’s not just a nice thing to have – it’s the tool upon which my livelihood hinges.

It’s not surprising, then, that I’m just as scrupulous when it comes to the apps I choose to get work done. While part of my job is about discovering new apps, such effort isn’t mandated by a shallow pursuit of “new” without merit. I’m constantly on the lookout for tools that can make me faster, produce better content in less time, and approach what I do in different ways. It’s a functional curiosity, not a shtick. The virtuous cycle of finding new apps, trying them, and documenting what trickles down to my daily workflow is at the very foundation of MacStories.

At the end of the year, I always like to take a couple of weeks to look back on the past 12 months and assess the state of my favorite apps. I’ve been doing this in various forms for five years now, but I’ve kept the same criteria in mind: which apps truly help me work from my iPhone and iPad? What are the tools that let me enjoy my devices for personal and professional use as much as possible?

With the increased importance of iOS 9 and the iPad Pro in my life this year and given some growing trends on the App Store, I thought I’d shake things up a little. Instead of having two separate articles for my must-have iPhone and iPad apps, I combined my 50 picks in a single list and organized them in eight categories.

  • Work Essentials
  • Social
  • News
  • Health
  • Home
  • Entertainment
  • Utilities
  • Photo & Video

I believe this makes sense given that only 7 apps out of 50 are not Universal downloads from the App Store. The vast majority of my favorite apps are available on both the iPhone and iPad and I use them on both platforms; it’s more logical to consider them as single entities.

Below, you’ll find my Must-Have iOS Apps for 2015 – the ones that have been essential for my workflow over the past 12 months. At the end of the list, you’ll also find my App of the Year and two Runners-Up. Each app has been listed with a direct link to its App Store page; wherever possible, I included links to previous MacStories coverage as well.

Read more

60 Minutes: What’s Next for Apple→

60 Minutes (the US edition on CBS) today had an in-depth feature on Apple. 60 Minutes’ correspondent, Charlie Rose, spoke to a number of Apple Executives including Tim Cook, Jony Ive, Angela Ahrendts and Phil Schiller.

Apple is one of the most interesting business stories in generations and it finds itself at the heart of some of the biggest issues facing American companies today: the way terrorists may be using encrypted technology to plot attacks, the battle over the corporate tax rate, and the challenges of working in China. We talked about all of that with Apple CEO Tim Cook as part of a journey through the world’s biggest and richest company.

There wasn’t a huge deal of new information in tonight’s program, but Rose’s interview with Tim Cook, particularly regarding encryption and corporate tax rates makes it well worth a watch. Although perhaps more interesting is the brief look at a new design for Apple Retail Stores with Angela Ahrendts, as well as a look inside Apple design’s studio with Ive (complete with cloth-covered tables).

If you’re in the US, you can watch the 60 Minutes segment on Apple on their website. You can also read a transcript of the program here.

Permalink

Workflow Adds Support for Bursts, Live Photo Conversion to GIF

Never to be outdone by changes in iOS, the Workflow team has shipped a revised Photos integration in the latest update to the app, bringing support for bursts and Live Photos with improved GIF generation.

In addition to dedicated ‘Get Latest Bursts’ and ‘Get Latest Live Photos’ actions that will return the latest items from your photo library matching those media types, Workflow’s action extension can now be used to pass a burst or a live photo to a ‘Make GIF’ action. With this simple workflow, for example, you can turn a live photo to a looping animated GIF and preview it with Quick Look directly into the native Photos app. While a number of standalone Live Photo-to-GIF utilities have appeared in the past few months – often with some great advanced controls – this means that a basic conversion can now be done entirely with Workflow and automated any way you want.

Furthermore, because the Make GIF action now supports an unlimited number of images as input, you can create workflows that use hundreds of screenshots or photos to generate a long GIF. You can even pass a video if you want and turn it into a GIF. And the opposite is also true: with the ‘Get Frames from Image’ action, you’ll be able to extract specific frames from GIFs and photo bursts without needing an app for that.

Live Photos are possibly my favorite aspect of the iPhone 6s Plus; having direct support for them in Workflow is just a perfect combination. Workflow 1.4.3 is available on the App Store.

Connected: TicciDo→

This week, people are nose tapping, Dropbox is sunsetting and Myke is colo(u)ring.

Also on this week’s Connected, a discussion on Slack and how we’re using it at MacStories (where the title comes from). You can listen here.

Sponsored by:

  • lynda.com: An easy and affordable way to help individuals and organizations learn. Free 10-day trial.
  • Squarespace: Build it Beautiful. Use code WORLD for 10% off
Permalink

Apple Partners with China UnionPay to Bring Apple Pay to China in 2016

Update (18 December): iMore has a quote from Eddy Cue which lists some of the banks that will support Apple Pay in China; Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China, Bank of Guangzhou, Bank of Shanghai, China Construction Bank, China Ever-bright Bank, China Guangfa Bank, China CITIC Bank, China Merchants Bank, China Minsheng Bank, Industrial Bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Ping An Bank, Postal Savings Bank of China and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank.

Apple today announced a partnership with China UnionPay, which will see Apple Pay available to Chinese customers as soon as early 2016. China UnionPay operates the Chinese inter-bank network and develops the UnionPay Card network – and its role in China is somewhat analagous to that of Visa and Mastercard.

“China UnionPay is dedicated to promoting payment innovations and providing secure, convenient mobile payment experiences for its hundreds of millions of cardholders, aligning multiple parties in the industry,” said Chai Hongfeng, executive vice president of China UnionPay. “We’re very excited to offer Apple Pay among a diverse set of innovative payment options that work with China UnionPay QuickPass.”

Apple says that it is working with China UnionPay to launch Apple Pay with 15 of China’s leading banks, but provides no firm date apart from saying it will available as “soon as early 2016”. According to Apple, the service needs to go through “tests and certification required by Chinese regulators”. At this stage it is unclear which 15 banks will be supported.

China UnionPay cards are issued by over 165 financial institutions and can be used at more than 26 million merchants, 1.9 million ATMs and to date over 5 billion UnionPay cards have been issued. Today’s announcement will likely make China the fifth country to support Apple Pay, with Spain, Singapore and Hong Kong also getting limited support for Apple Pay sometime in 2016.

“Apple Pay has revolutionized the way millions of people pay every day with their iPhone, Apple Watch and iPad,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “China is an extremely important market for Apple and with China UnionPay and support from 15 of China’s leading banks, users will soon have a convenient, private and secure payment experience.”

Today’s Apple Pay announcement is a big deal after a rather lackluster year for the service outside of the US. After launching in the US on October 20, 2014, Apple Pay finally expanded beyond the US in July this year when it lauched in the UK. But the UK launch was a bit of a shambles with just eight banks supporting the service at launch and just one of the “big four” – worsened by one of the banks delaying their support by a couple of weeks at the last minute. Then in late October this year Apple announced a partnership with American Express to bring Apple Pay to Australia and Canada, which it did in mid-November. Apple was unable, or perhaps unwilling, to make a deal with local banks – with numerous reports which say there was a deadlock between Apple and the banks over how much Apple should be paid from each transaction made using Apple Pay. The same limited, American Express only, Apple Pay support will roll out to Spain, Canada and Hong Kong starting in 2016.

Web Tools: A Web Inspector for iPad

Web Tools is a new app from developer James Finley of Ergo which aims to create a Safari-style web inspector for iPad. I’ve tried other solutions for getting the source of web pages via iOS, but, at least on iPad, I haven’t seen any come close to being as well designed and implemented for the iPad’s bigger screen.

Web Tools is an extremely simple app, with no interface elements except an address bar and a browser window. The address bar contains back and forward buttons, a reload button, and an inspect button. Load up a webpage in the address bar and tap the inspect button to see the web inspector slide up from the bottom.

Web Tools has a very similar design to that of Safari’s web inspector for Mac. When you enable the inspector, it slides up to cover the bottom half of the web page (though you can easily drag to make it obscure more or less, depending on your preference). The inspector contains two panes, the first of which displays the HTML DOM tree for the web page. You can expand and collapse whichever elements you want to navigate through the DOM.

Read more

Evernote Ending Support for Skitch on iOS→

With a blog post published today, Evernote has announced they’ll end support for various versions of Skitch (including iOS), Clearly, and Evernote for Pebble. Skitch for Mac will continue to receive support.

Specifically this means that as of today, we will no longer be making updates to these apps and as of January 22, they’ll no longer be available for download.

If you currently use any of these apps, you’ll find that they may continue to work for some time beyond January. We are not turning these apps “off,” but external changes like updates to your operating system or browser may break features or functionality at any point in the future.

The discontinuation of Skitch for iOS doesn’t come as a surprise: Evernote has been discontinuing other apps to put more focus on the main product; many of the dedicated Skitch functionalities are also available in the Evernote app; and, Evernote had left Skitch for iOS languishing anyway. Evernote acquired Skitch in August 2011.

Fortunately, there are plenty of options for quick image annotations on iOS these days. Personally, I recommend Pinpoint and PointOut.

Permalink

Apple Names Jeff Williams Chief Operating Officer, Phil Schiller Adds App Store Responsibilities→

This morning, Apple announced some major changes to its executive team:

Apple today announced that Jeff Williams has been named chief operating officer and Johny Srouji is joining Apple’s executive team as senior vice president for Hardware Technologies. Phil Schiller, senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, will expand his role to include leadership of the revolutionary App Store across all Apple platforms. Apple also announced that Tor Myhren will join Apple in the first calendar quarter of 2016 as vice president of Marketing Communications, reporting to CEO Tim Cook.

Jeff Williams has been with the company since 1998 and has overseen the entire supply chain since 2010. Johny Srouji joined Apple in 2008 to lead the development of the A4, the company’s first system on a chip.

Also of note, Phil Schiller is now taking additional responsibilities for the App Store:

Cook continued, “In addition, Phil is taking on new responsibilities for advancing our ecosystem, led by the App Store, which has grown from a single, groundbreaking iOS store into four powerful platforms and an increasingly important part of our business. And I’m incredibly happy to welcome Tor Myhren, who will bring his creative talents to our advertising and marcom functions.”

And:

With added responsibility for the App Store, Phil Schiller will focus on strategies to extend the ecosystem Apple customers have come to love when using their iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV. Phil now leads nearly all developer-related functions at Apple, in addition to his other marketing responsibilities including Worldwide Product Marketing, international marketing, education and business marketing. More than 11 million developers around the world create apps for Apple’s four software platforms — iOS, OS X, watchOS and tvOS — as well as compatible hardware and other accessories, and customers have downloaded more than 100 billion apps across those platforms.

The App Store has long been criticized by the developer community for lacking proper accountability and a public figure in charge of the platform. It’ll be interesting to see how the App Store platforms will evolve and adapt following Schiller’s extended role.

Permalink