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First AI Research Paper Published by Apple→

Earlier this month word spread about a change in Apple’s policy regarding artificial intelligence research. In line with its reputation for secrecy, Apple historically has not allowed employees to publish their research, which many have speculated could make the company a less attractive workplace for AI researchers. But Quartz reported that Russ Salakhutdinov, a director of AI research at Apple, claimed research would soon begin to be published, and a greater effort made to work with the broader research community. The first fruits of that claim were uncovered this week, as Mitchel Broussard of MacRumors reported on the first research paper being published:

Titled “Learning from Simulated and Unsupervised Images through Adversarial Training,” the paper describes a program that can intelligently decipher and understand digital images in a setting similar to the “Siri Intelligence” and facial recognition features introduced in Photos in iOS 10, but more advanced.

The biggest news here is not in the research paper itself, but in what it represents for Apple going forward: newfound openness in a subject that will likely become increasingly more important in the years to come.

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CardioBot: Heart Rate and Activity Tracker for Apple Watch [Sponsor]

Your Apple Watch measures your heart rate every 4 minutes during the day. With CardioBot, you can easily understand the data captured by the Apple Watch so you can improve your lifestyle and discover notable patterns.

CardioBot is an iPhone app that reads heart rate data stored by the Apple Watch in HealthKit. The app separates readings in low, resting, high resting, and elevated heart rate through different colors and charts, allowing you to see averages at a glance.

CardioBot also supports viewing data captured during workouts, and it can also provide sleep analysis information for a complete dashboard of your heart rate. All of this is done with a minimal and elegant interface that makes it easy to view statistics for individual days, browse detailed timelines, and compare day-to-day changes.

CardioBot is available for $2.99 on the App Store.

Our thanks to CardioBot for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Game Day: Our Favorite Games of 2016

2016 was a good year for iOS games. The trouble is, great games can be hard to find because there are so many released every day. That’s why we started the weekly Game Day column, which is dedicated to combing the App Store for fun and interesting games.

We have covered 28 games since Game Day began in May. Looking back over that collection, there are certain ones that stand out more than others. Here are our six favorite games from the past year.

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Super Mario Run Is a Defense of Craftsmanship→

Excellent point by Sam Rosenthal on Super Mario Run:

Borrowing a staple from modern console Mario games, each level in Super Mario Run has multiple tiers of coins to collect. The coins fundamentally change the way you navigate the space, and sometimes the space itself changes to accommodate them. A just out of reach coin reminds you about the spin jump’s utility. Former obstacles are recontextualized as potential platforms.

If the game’s initial tutorial feels like a concession to a broader audience, the coins remind us why Nintendo’s game design deserves to be treasured. Even on another company’s platform, in a genre they didn’t invent, they unearth an astonishing amount of surprise and delight.

Collecting all the coins shows how Super Mario Run isn’t just “a runner game for iOS” – it’s a classic Nintendo game. There’s an ingenuity to each level that can only be appreciated by playing to get the harder coins. Seriously – if you think you’ve completed Super Mario Run by clearing all the stages, go back and try to collect all the coins. The game changes quite deeply.

Unfortunately, most people won’t even see the fourth stage. And that’s a shame, because I think Nintendo delivered a lesson in iOS game design that everyone should experience.

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Canvas, Episode 26: Advanced Workflow Programming→

This week Fraser and Federico take a look at some of the advanced programming structures in Workflow.

On this week’s episode of Canvas, we cover some of the advanced features of the app, including conditional blocks and regular expressions. On the final episode of the Workflow series, due to be released in January, we’ll cover even more advanced Workflow use cases.

You can listen here.

If you haven’t listened to the previous episodes of the Workflow series yet, you’ll want to go back and start from there.

Sponsored by:

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My Favorite iMessage Apps and Sticker Packs of 2016

You may have noticed that we’re big fans of iMessage apps and stickers. Since their introduction with iOS 10 in September, we have covered more than 250 sticker packs and apps between MacStories and the weekly roundup of stickers Federico and I do in MacStories Weekly for Club members. That’s a lot of apps and stickers, and there are so many excellent ones we covered this year that it was difficult to narrow them down to shorter list.

When it comes to iMessage apps, my favorites are games and apps that make it easy for me to share bits of useful information with friends and family. Sticker packs become favorites for a wider variety of reasons; some are useful, allowing me to get my point across better than words alone, others are funny, and some just look great, but all liven up conversations. Here are my favorites of 2016.

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Pokémon Go Apple Watch App Released→

Niantic, maker of Pokémon Go, released an Apple Watch companion app for its popular iOS game today. According to Niantic the Apple Watch app lets players:

• Log each play session as a workout, with gameplay counting toward personal Activity rings
• Receive notifications about nearby Pokémon
• Count distance toward hatching Pokémon Eggs and receiving Candy with your Buddy Pokémon
• Receive notifications about PokéStops nearby and collect items from them
• Receive notifications when Eggs hatch and medals are awarded

The Pokémon Go watchOS app, which is available as part of a free update to the game, was first announced at Apple’s September iPhone event by Niantic CEO, John Hanke.

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My Must-Have iOS Apps & Web Services, 2016 Edition

Feature of the Year

Spotify Discover Weekly

No software feature has brought as much joy into my life as Discover Weekly did this year. With its weekly assortment of songs I never heard before, Discover Weekly rekindled my love for mixtapes and the thrill of falling in love with a new band. I’ve learned to appreciate dozens of new artists thanks to Discover Weekly. I look forward to it every Monday.

Runners-Up

Workflow Web API Actions

With the ability to interact with any web API, Workflow has extended the power of its automation features beyond iOS apps. Workflow’s 1.5.3 release has been an important milestone for the app and the entire iOS automation landscape.

Ulysses Automation

Thanks to one of the richest implementations of x-callback-URL, Ulysses’ automation features have redefined how deeply an iOS text editor can be integrated with other apps. Over the past several months, I’ve integrated Ulysses with Todoist, Trello, and Workflow. Ulysses’ Markdown automation has raised the bar for other text editors on iOS.

1.0 Release of the Year

Scrivener

I wasn’t particularly excited about Scrivener when I first heard it was coming to iOS. After taking the app for a spin, though, I realized that its combination of desktop-class research tools and native iOS features were exactly what I needed for my iOS 10 review. Scrivener is the best 1.0 version I tried this year, and I trusted the app with my most important project for three months.

Runner-Up

PlayMira

I had my jaw-dropping moment on the iPad Pro this year when I was on vacation and successfully connected to my PlayStation 4 at home, woke it up from sleep, and started playing No Man’s Sky 400 miles away. PlayMira feels like sorcery. If you have a PS4, a fast Internet connection, and an MFi controller, you should spend some time setting up PlayMira over the holidays.

Web Service of the Year

Todoist

Todoist has fundamentally altered my idea of what a task manager should be. By embracing the web and integrations with other apps and services I use, Todoist is more than my todo app – it’s an interconnected and automated task management system that works everywhere.

Todoist’s extensible approach helped me accomplish more, collaborate more efficiently with my team, and overcome my productivity anxiety. Todoist perfectly encapsulates the advantages of flexible web services over app sandboxes.

Runner-Up

Zapier

Zapier’s hundreds of integrations and power-user functionalities made me realize that there’s a world of possibilities for web automation and connecting multiple services together. The most important aspects of our workflow at MacStories have been sped up by Zapier this year.

App of the Year

Airmail

The unique blend of modern email features, integrations with iOS apps and web services, and power-user options makes Airmail the most powerful email client for iOS, which deserves to be my App of the Year.

Airmail allowed me to reimagine the way I process and act on email messages. Despite some minor bugs, it’s a deeply customizable email client that adapts to my needs and works with the apps I already use to get work done. Airmail is a power-user email app with no equal.

I have tried several email clients over the past year, but I always go back to Airmail for a simple reason: it’s my favorite way to process email and get back to work.

Runners-Up

Ulysses

The Soulmen managed to distill the power and elegance of Ulysses for Mac into an uncompromising iOS text editor that offers a fantastic writing and editing environment. Behind its minimalistic appearance, Ulysses hides a set of advanced Markdown tools that make it my go-to text editor for MacStories articles and Club MacStories content. It’s rare to find a balanced combination of simplicity and power-user features, but Ulysses hits all the right notes while simultaneously abstracting much of the cruft of traditional Markdown text editors.

Timepage

Through a spectacular mix of attractive UI design and engaging user interactions, Timepage succeeds where other apps fall short – making the calendar fun to use and informative at the same time. Timepage exudes care and a willingness to subvert the classic metaphors of calendar client design for iOS, providing a standout calendar experience unlike anything else.

2016

Looking back at how I used my iPhone and iPad in 2016, I realize now that the tenets of my iOS workflow haven’t significantly changed. Some apps may be different – the App of the Year and Runners-Up are all new this year – but the fundamentals of how I work on iOS are consistent with 2015. The past year was mostly about optimization: I tried to find better apps for tasks I was already handling on iOS.

I wouldn’t say that iOS is a mature platform for productivity yet – there’s still a long list of aspects to improve, especially on the iPad. But I also feel like iOS 10 didn’t open groundbreaking possibilities for the apps I use every day – it was, as I wrote in September, a lifestyle update focused on consumers and our relationship with the iPhone. From this standpoint, it doesn’t surprise me that my favorite apps don’t appear drastically different from last year – it’s almost as if both users and developers are waiting for what’s coming next to iOS productivity and iPad multitasking.

Deeper automation with Workflow and the shift to web services are two trends I expect to continue in 2017. I see automation as an essential trait of how I like to work on iOS, but it’ll be interesting to measure the impact of iPad updates on my usage of Workflow and app automations. I suspect that web services and API integrations will keep gaining an important role for assistants by Google and Amazon, but I’m also waiting for Apple’s second wave of SiriKit extensions and a stronger integration with the iOS apps I use.

I think it’s going to be a fascinating 2017 for iOS productivity, and I’m excited for what’s next in iPad software.

As always, let’s check back in a year.