iOS 9.3 and Education

The off-cycle release of major new features in iOS 9.3 is quite a departure for Apple. The usual cycle until now has been for major releases to debut at WWDC in the summer and ship in September/October. For the education market, however, this schedule has been extremely difficult to deal with. School usually starts in August or September - in the northern hemisphere at least - and having a major platform upgrade happen right after school starts is hard to cope with.

That has all been turned on its head. On January 11th, Apple announced the developer beta release of iOS 9.3. Unusually for a developer beta, Apple also produced the kind of iOS preview webpages that are normally seen in the time between the WWDC announcement of a new major iOS version and its eventual release.

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Facebook’s WhatsApp Is Now Free→

WhatsApp announced earlier today that it would be removing its annual subscription fee (US$0.99 per year, after the first year). From Re/code’s report of the announcement:

“It really doesn’t work that well,” Koum [WhatsApp founder] said Monday, speaking at the DLD conference in Munich. He noted that while a buck a year might not sound like much, access to credit cards is not ubiquitous. “We just don’t want people to think at some point their communication to the world will be cut off.”

Until now, WhatsApp has been free for the first year and 99 cents for additional years. It will stop charging subscription fees immediately but it will likely be a few weeks before the payments infrastructure is completely out of all versions of the app. And, in case you were wondering, you won’t be able to get back your buck if you have already paid for this year.

WhatsApp will stay ad-free, and instead the company will begin testing new tools that will enable WhatsApp users to communicate with businesses and organizations. The WhatsApp blog post about this announcement gives the example of being able to communicate with your bank about whether a recent transaction was fraudulent. Which, as Re/code’s report points out, is a familiar strategy:

It’s the same idea behind Facebook Messenger, the company’s other standalone messaging service. With Messenger, Facebook already offers users the chance to chat with businesses, and it’s building out other features, like payments or the ability to hail a ride through Uber.

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Focus: Productivity Through Tasks and Time

When examining apps such as Wunderlist or even 2Do, you’ll see software that takes in tasks and inserts them into collections – ones that can span projects, weeks, and interests. Undoubtedly, entering in your todos is an important part of getting things done; however, working through these tasks in a productive way can prove difficult.

Enter Focus, a task manager fused with a work timer. By setting a timer for you to take on certain tasks, developer Laser Focused aims to make you just that – laser focused. And, in an interesting way, it succeeds.

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Apple Discontinuing iAd App Network→

Apple:

The iAd App Network will be discontinued as of June 30, 2016. Although we are no longer accepting new apps into the network, advertising campaigns may continue to run and you can still earn advertising revenue until June 30. If you’d like to continue promoting your apps through iAd until then, you can create a campaign using iAd Workbench.

This, however, doesn’t mean that Apple is discontinuing iAd completely. Benjamin Mayo explains:

The announcement is confusingly worded, but it does not mean that all of iAd is being discontinued. Developers will still be able to show iAd banners in their application; it’s just that the inventory for App Store apps to advertise will no longer exist. This is a blessing and a curse — it won’t help iAd improve its fill-rates but the CPM on these type of ads was significantly lower as the buy-in from the publisher side was also lower.

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iTunes Radio Becoming Part of Apple Music Membership→

BuzzFeed’s Brendan Klinkenberg, reporting a statement from Apple on iTunes Radio ceasing to exist as standalone ad-supported service:

“We are making Beats 1 the premier free broadcast from Apple and phasing out the ad-supported stations at the end of January,” an Apple spokesperson told BuzzFeed News. “Additionally, with an Apple Music membership, listeners can access dozens of radio stations curated by our team of music experts, covering a range of genres, commercial-free with unlimited skips. The free three-month trial of Apple Music includes radio.”

BuzzFeed argues that the exit from ad-supported stations is related to Apple phasing out its iAd network. From a customer’s perspective, iTunes Radio was limited to the US and Australia; folding stations – both those curated by Apple and created by users – into Apple Music will reach a wider audience and offer unlimited skips and no ads between songs.

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PipTube Brings Picture in Picture for Any YouTube Video on iOS 9

When iOS 9 launched in September, it was easy to understand the potential of Picture in Picture: for the first time, iPad users could continue watching a video in the background through a floating media player capable of coexisting with other apps – it could even stay on screen during Split View.

As I cautioned in my review, however, it was also obvious to see how big media companies wouldn’t like Picture in Picture: by stripping them of control over player customization, Picture in Picture would provide a universal way to watch videos across iOS with the system video player, which comes with specific restrictions and media limitations. This is the reason why the likes of YouTube and Netflix haven’t implemented Picture in Picture yet: relying on Apple’s Picture in Picture player would force them to relinquish control of custom player buttons, ads, or other content overlaid on top of videos that can’t be shown in the Picture in Picture box.

Four months later, the lack of iPad Pro and Picture in Picture support in the official YouTube app is a daily annoyance that has only been partly remedied by third-party YouTube clients like YouPlayer or ProTube. Today, those wishing for a simpler way to watch YouTube videos in Picture in Picture without having to use a separate client will find a solid solution in PipTube, released on the App Store at $1.99.

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Remaster: Passion in a Can→

For their first episode, the guys discuss Shahid’s return to video game development, whilst taking a look at how team sizes, abundance of choice, and attitudes to shipping have changed over the last 20 years.

Episode 1 of Remaster, my new videogame podcast with Shahid Ahmad and Myke Hurley, came out last week. We decided to tackle a big topic: returning to indie game development and how that has changed over the past two decades. If you still haven’t listened, you can do so here.

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New Apps for 2016

Every year around this time, after compiling a list of my must-have apps and thinking about the goals I want to achieve in the next 12 months, I like to get started on the upcoming season of writing by reassessing some of the ways I get work done. Change never stops: rather than getting stuck in my own ways and refusing to embrace it, I feed my curiosity by entertaining the possibility of better tools for my trade.

Plus, it’s always fun to spend a couple of weeks trying a bunch of apps and new services, seeing what works and should be explored further.

While this has become a new-year tradition, I’ve only written about it once – four years ago, when I was just getting started on the “iPad as a computer” idea. With 2016 and the transition to primary computer finally complete, I thought it’d be appropriate to publish a similar article again – if anything, for future reference.1

The apps below aren’t my new must-haves. They are alternatives or additions to my current must-haves that I’m considering out of intellectual curiosity for now. I’m not ready to fully endorse them, but I like some aspects of them. Most of them aren’t new, but they’ve received redesigns or feature updates that piqued my interest again.

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