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Twitter Teases New Twitter for Mac Coming Soon→

At its Flight developer conference earlier today, Twitter showed a brand new version of Twitter for Mac – the company’s neglected desktop client – coming soon with a refreshed design and modern Twitter features. In addition to a revamped look (see screenshot above), the new app will include inprovements to Direct Messages in line with the mobile versions, such as group DMs and the ability to share photos and large emoji in private conversations. Also, the next Twitter for Mac seems to offer a dark mode.

Twitter for Mac has been ignored for a long time. Even if I’m not using my Mac as my primary computer anymore, I’m curious to see what Twitter – now under Jack Dorsey’s guidance (who was in an apologetic mood today) – does with it.

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OS X 10.11.1, watchOS 2.0.1 Also Released→

In addition to iOS 9.1, Apple has also released OS X 10.11.1 and watchOS 2.0.1 today. On both updates, there are a bunch of performance improvements and new emoji characters are supported. On watchOS, there are some welcome fixes: Apple has revolved a problem that prevented software updates from completing successfully, and it has fixed various issues that were impacting battery life.

Both software updates are available now for over-the-air installations.

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Apple Releases iOS 9.1 with Over 150 New Emoji, Smarter Live Photos

Apple released iOS 9.1 today, the first major update to iOS 9, first released in mid-September.

In addition to various bug fixes and performance improvements, iOS 9.1 brings over 150 new emoji with full support for Unicode 7.0 and Unicode 8.0 emoji, and a smarter Live Photos implementation. On the iPhone 6s, Live Photos will now sense when you raise or lower your device, so it’ll stop recording the video associated to the Live Photo.

iOS 9.1 is available now through Apple’s Software Update.

3D Touch: Beyond Peek & Pop→

Speaking of 3D Touch, Victor Baro has put together some examples of how the technology can be used to build custom controls on iOS 9:

Since I discovered 3D Touch, I have been thinking about new ways of interacting with the content. Peek & pop is a great interaction; but what I really want is to create my own controls.

We need to take into account that, because 3D touch is only available in iPhone 6S and 6S Plus, no action should be completed just by using this feature. The user should be able to achieve any action without using 3D touch (just like peek & pop does), and 3D touch should only provide an extra level of interaction.

It’s a technical read, but make sure to check out the demo videos. As 3D Touch trickles down to Apple’s entire lineup over the coming years, it seems obvious that these new types of interactions will become the new default.

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3D Touch Canvas Demo→

Nice demo by Lim Chee Aun, showing how you can use 3D Touch on the web in a simple drawing app:

This is a demo for 3D Touch on Mobile Safari on iPhone 6S and 6S Plus. It’s a simple line drawing app which you can use the force of the finger to control the width of the drawn line.

Mobile Safari on iOS 9 for iPhone 6S and 6S Plus introduces 3D Touch for web developers. The line drawing code is heavily inspired by (or copied from) @kangax’s 2013 article: Exploring canvas drawing techniques.

Make sure to apply different levels of pressure to get thicker lines. You can play around with the demo here.

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How Emoji Find Their Way to Phones→

Good explanation of how new emoji are approved and made available to modern devices by Jonah Bromwich at The New York Times:

In deciding which emojis to add, the Unicode Consortium considers factors including compatibility (if a pictorial symbol in broad use has not been translated into Unicode), and frequency of use (whether people will be interested in using a certain picture often enough to justify its existence).

Another factor is “completeness.” For instance, at one point, the group added a mosque, a synagogue and a generic place of worship to complement the Christian church symbol that was already included.

Side note: The New York Times pluralizes emoji as “emojis”, but I use “emoji” for both singular and plural variations. That seems to be Apple’s preference, too.

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Christina Warren Interviews Jony Ive→

Mashable’s Christina Warren sat down with Jony Ive, Vogue’s Anna Wintour, and Costume Institute Curator Andrew Bolton earlier this week to discuss fashion in the age of technology, Apple Watch, and more. From the interview:

Ive made an interesting observation about form and function. “What I’ve noticed is if something works but emotionally you don’t feel a connection — it’s ugly — you’ll use it, but you’ll use it begrudgingly and you’ll change at the first opportunity and you’ll build no relationship with the brand or the people behind it. And so you really have to be successful in both.”

Last week, Apple announced they will sponsor the 2016 ‘Fashion in an Age of Technology’ Met Gala.

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Connected: Siri Like the Butler→

This week, Stephen and Federico talk about iWork, Notes and HomeKit before being greeted by Federico’s plumber.

On this week’s Connected, Myke is away so Stephen and I replaced him with Bla Bla Car’s mascot and took our time to discuss HomeKit and our experience with HomeKit accessories so far. I like how it turned out and I think it makes for a good HomeKit primer. You can listen here.

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Tweeting Multiple Pictures from iOS’ Photos App with Linky

Ever since Twitter rolled out the ability to include multiple pictures in a tweet, I’ve been annoyed by the lack of such option in iOS’ tweet sheet. There are times when I’d rather not open my Twitter client to tweet some pictures or screenshots – maybe I don’t want to get distracted by news happening on Twitter, or maybe I just want to share from the Photos app without seeing mentions that I want to reply to.

Twitter’s (or Apple’s?) decision not to support the feature with the native iOS extension is baffling, but, thankfully, the latest update to Linky for iPhone and iPad offers an elegant (and obvious) solution to the problem.

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