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Apple Pay Now Available In Canada For American Express Customers, UK Banks Tesco and TSB Also Add Support

As reported by iPhone in Canada and 9to5Mac, Apple Pay is now available in Canada. Unlike the US and UK, Apple Pay support in Canada is limited and only available for American Express customers, as announced by Apple in its Q4 2015 earnings call.

Meanwhile in the UK, Engadget is today reporting that TSB and Tesco Bank now support Apple Pay and customers can add their cards to the Wallet app today. Barclays remains the last of the big four UK banks yet to add support for Apple Pay, but Barclays CEO has said previously it will add support for Apple Pay “very early in the New Year”.

Apple Pay is also expected to launch in Australia later this week on Thursday, November 19th. As with Canada, Apple Pay will be limited to certain American Express cardholders only. You can see if your American Express card is eligible with Apple Pay here.

Working with an iPad from the Camino De Santiago→

In late August, web developer Thaddeus Hunt and his wife decided to hike the Camino De Santiago in the Fall. Early on, Thaddeus chose to only bring an iPad Air 2 running iOS 9 to get his freelance work done while on the Camino. Back in August, he concluded Part 1 of his series with:

My hardware needs have been met, I will be traveling super light, and connectivity is no longer a concern… but quality web development is only as good as the tools you have at your disposal.

I mentioned above, that in my pre-prep there was very little that I could not accomplish with my current iPad and keyboard setup. But hardware has only been half of the equation. In truth, the software is where all the magic has been happening. Luckily, the iOS dev community has created some beautiful, highly capable tools that will help me accomplish my day-to-day.

Three months later, he has returned from the Camino with the results. Thaddeus assembled a solid setup of hardware and software, and I find his final thought to be a refrain among users who try to replicate their OS X setups on iOS:

As a freelance web developer with paying clients, I obviously found this setup to be a more than capable replacement for my 13 inch MacBook Pro while traveling. Depending on what you do for a living, your mileage will vary. I definitely recommend giving it a shot though. For the portability of the hardware and the singular focus of the software alone, it’s worth your time I think. You may be surprised at just how much you can get done.

You can read all the entries in the series here.

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Shooting and Directing Live Music Exclusively with iOS→

Fascinating work by Brian King, who shot, directed, and live streamed a Jukebox the Ghost show using iOS devices:

Leading up to the show, I made a lot of disclaimers to the band and their label. This was my first time really using Switcher Studio Pro, and the odds of everything falling apart seemed high. To my surprise, all of the iPads, phones, battery and wifi connection managed to get through the whole night without melting, crashing, or otherwise falling apart. The only adjustment I had to make during the set was re-seating the Olloclip on Jesse’s drum-cam. At the end of the night, getting access to full quality video recordings from each of the stage-cameras was no problem. Overall, the stability of the software and iOS was better than I could have expected.

And his takeaway:

As a professional in broadcasting, this development really excites me. Big gigs are not going to throw away Steadicams & Zoom lenses for iOS devices and iPhone broadcasts are not going to cannibalize the market for large-scale professional shows. Instead, smaller live acts broadcasting more shows with Switcher Studio is going to create a demand for more live content, foster more widespread exposure to the acts and build audiences that see the value in seeing high quality live streams more often. Just look at what happened to prerecorded video shooting and editing in the past decade—accessible software and hardware is a huge deal.

As a live music fan and iOS user, what Brian has accomplished with iPhones and iPads seems amazing. Make sure to check out his post for photos and details on the setup.

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Just Press Record Adds 3D Touch Actions→

I first covered Just Press Record in September. Primarily positioned as the missing voice recorder for Apple Watch with fast performance thanks to watchOS 2, the app is also a capable voice recording utility for iPhone that makes it easy to save files to iCloud Drive.

The latest 1.2 update to Just Press Record has added 3D Touch support with a shortcut to start a new recording from the Home screen (also available in Apple’s app), plus peek and pop actions to preview the contents of each folder. The latter is useful because Just Press Record organizes recordings in subfolders in your iCloud account, which means you can view the contents of each folder (presumably containing renamed files) with a stronger press in the app.

I’ve been using Just Press Record regularly on my iPhone for the past two months, and I’ve recommended it to friends who also find it superior to the default Voice Memos app. Version 1.2 is available on the App Store.

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WhatsApp Adds Rich Previews for Web Links

A link preview in the new WhatsApp for iPhone.

A link preview in the new WhatsApp for iPhone.

With an update released today on the App Store, WhatsApp has brought a functionality I’ve long wished was also available in Apple’s Messages app: rich previews for links shared in conversations.

Similar to existing implementations in Facebook’s iOS apps and other services such as Slack, the new option lets you include a rich snippet for each link pasted in a chat. Instead of sharing a simple tappable URL that opens Safari, these previews can show a webpage’s title and lead image alongside the link in a conversation, adding context that can be useful to see what a link is about before tapping it. Link previews aren’t sent by default: after pasting a URL, a preview is automatically generated and displayed above WhatsApp’s text field, so you can choose to add it or dismiss it by tapping a close button.

As I argued in the Notes section of my iOS 9 review, I’d like to see Apple make Notes’ link previews (which are very similar to WhatsApp’s) a system-feature of iOS, bringing them to Messages, Mail, Reminders, and other apps with a consistent design, perhaps even offering a developer API to enable link previews in third-party apps.

WhatsApp’s latest update – which also includes a redesigned Settings screen and more 3D Touch quick actions to preview chats – is available on the App Store.

Virtual: Sounds Like a Threat→

This week Federico shares his thoughts on a live-action Metroid short film,
and joins Myke in discussing the final Nintendo Direct of 2015.

This week on Virtual, we discuss Nintendo’s latest announcements from their Direct presentation. You can listen here.

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App Store Gets a Smarter Search Engine→

As reported by TechCrunch, Apple appears to have tweaked the search algorithm of the App Store over the past few weeks, leading to more consistent results:

According to multiple sources, including developers who tracked their own rankings, as well as app store analytics firms, the change that began November 3 included several adjustments. Apps are now ranking in search results on a mix of contextual keywords for the app, including partial keyword matches, along with competitor brand names and other matches.

I’m curious to see how this latest change will affect independent developers over the next couple of months. For better or worse, search – not the Store’s curated Explore section – is still the easiest way to find any kind of app. A major change to the search algorithm can potentially affect the livelihood of thousands of indie developers.

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Spotify Adds Concert Recommendations→

Earlier this week, Spotify announced a feature I’ve long argued would make sense in Apple Music: concert recommendations powered by Songkick.

From the Songkick blog:

As of today, you can now view a personalised list of recommended shows from right inside your Spotify app on iPhone and Android, and in just a few taps purchase tickets seamlessly through Songkick.

Based on the artists you’ve been listening to, the Concerts feature will surface upcoming Songkick events for your favorite bands, as well as undiscovered acts that you’re destined to fall in love with.

Songkick is an excellent service I’ve been using for years to stay on top of concert announcements by my favorite artists. The service works by scanning your music library and external accounts to look for music you listen to. It makes perfect sense to combine this with a streaming service on a smartphone. I still believe concert recommendations would make for a solid addition to Apple Music’s Connect in the future.

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No One Minding the Mac App Store→

Michael Tsai, writing on the latest issue that hit the Mac App Store, preventing users to launch apps they previously downloaded:

I woke up to an inbox full of e-mails from customers reporting that my apps wouldn’t launch. This included new customers who had just purchased from the Mac App Store as well as people who had purchased long ago, hadn’t made any changes, and expected that things would just keep working.

And:

The Mac App Store is supposed to make things easier, but it’s also a single point of failure. Not only is it neglected, but sometimes even the existing functionality stops working. Mac OS X 10.9 introduced a code signing bug that prevented me from submitting updates for several months. In June 2015, there was a month-long iTunes Connect bug that prevented my uploaded build from entering the review queue. And I currently have a bug fix update that Apple has been reviewing for 33 days (with 8 days of waiting before that). When I inquired about the status, Apple told me that everything was normal and that I should just keep waiting. In short, the system is broken on multiple levels, and there is no evidence to suggest that things will get better.

This problem hit me as well – I had to check something on Tweetbot for Mac last night, but it wouldn’t launch. Same with other apps. There is a workaround, but it’s not working for everyone. And, despite the widespread nature of the problem, Apple has said nothing about it.

The Mac App Store lives in a sad state of abandon when compared to its iOS counterpart. For years now, Mac developers haven’t gotten access to the same tools made available to iOS developers. And that’s not to mention the myriad of issues and uncertainty they had to go through when Apple started rolling out sandboxing.

But preventing people from using apps they bought without a proper explanation, affecting third-party developers in the process? Just inexcusable.

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