Ministry of Supply: Inventing Apparel [Sponsor]

Dress shirts should be smarter by now. They should be designed to work with your body, not against it, and keep you comfortable throughout the entire day. From the crowded train, to the cold office, to your favorite nightspot, we should expect more from the clothes that we wear everyday.

This is the vision that drives Ministry of Supply, a performance menswear company that launched out of MIT three years ago. The company uses the latest in apparel technology to make clothes that fit better and provide technical benefits, like body temperature regulation to keep you from overheating, moisture management to keep you dry, and wrinkle resistance to keep you away from an iron. Each product begins with a problem statement and comes to life through a human-centric design process that involves studying the human body, prototyping, testing, and iterating based on ongoing feedback. Once a product launches, they start the process all over again, continuously refining and evolving the products to perform better.

That process led to the Apollo and Gemini Casual dress shirts. The Apollo is their most tech-forward dress shirt, optimized for temperature management and mobility. It’s made with moisture-wicking polyester fibers that are infused with NASA-engineered phase-change material for temperature regulation. A light knit construction with four-way stretch enhances the Apollo’s breathability and mobility. The Gemini Casual is a tailored button-down designed to be worn untucked. It’s made with a more traditional cotton/spandex blend for a full range of motion that is also infused with phase-change material. The laser-cut chest pocket, button holes, and shirt panels round out the shirt’s clean, sleek aesthetic.

You can shop Ministry of Supply online – and risk-free, with free shipping on all US orders and any international orders over $250, free returns, and a 100-day return policy. Alternatively, you can visit one of their retail locations in Boston, San Francisco, and New York City.

Our thanks to Ministry of Supply for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Giphy 2.0 Makes It Easy to Find and Share GIFs

I was familiar with Giphy’s iPhone app, but today’s 2.0 update makes it something worth keeping on my device for the sheer utility of finding any GIF I want quickly.

Giphy is, quite possibly, the leading destination for GIFs on the Internet. The service is integrated with a variety of third-party apps and it’s become a staple of our Slack conversations thanks to the often perplexing, sometimes amazing /giphy slash command. In many ways, Giphy is the GIF backend sating our daily appetite for stupid Internet memes and reactions. Especially when I’m on Slack, I expect Giphy to be my worthy GIF assistant in times of need.

The Giphy app for iPhone now has a revamped interface that simplifies the process of finding GIFs. In the main screen, you can view the newest and most trending GIFs on the Internet for the current day. Auto-play can be turned off on slow connections, and I’d like to point out the delightful animation of the back button (top left corner) when navigating back and forth between the initial screen and individual GIFs.

At the bottom of the screen, a list button next to the omnipresent search box lets you view categories of GIFs so you can continue browsing specific subsets of GIFs. These include smiles, LOLs, crying, cats, Taylor Swift, One Direction, and a whole range of other pets and human emotions. The Giphy database doesn’t disappoint here, with some of the most absurd, creepy, and hilarious collections of GIFs I’ve seen around.

Finally, GIFs can now be shared with built-in shortcuts for Messages, Mail, Messenger, and Twitter, as well as the iOS share sheet. If you’ve ever dreamed of automating doge GIFs with Workflow, now you can. Or, you can use the excellent Linky for iOS to share animated GIFs on Twitter with a tweet sheet that is vastly superior to Twitter’s one.

As a huge fan of stupid GIFs (with a hard G), Giphy 2.0 for iPhone is easily my favorite surprise this week. The share sheet integration is a good addition to share GIFs with any app on iOS, and, for me, it removes the need for a dedicated GIF keyboard (which are typically slow to load and don’t return as many results as Giphy). You can download the app for free on the App Store.

Turning the iPhone 6s Into a Digital Scale→

Ryan McLeod, Chase McBride, and Brice Tuttle created Gravity, an iPhone app which ingeniously used the 3D Touch display of the iPhone 6s to turn the device in a digital scale and weigh objects with an accuracy of ~1-3 grams. Alas, the app has been rejected from the App Store:

With the force values linearly correlated to weight, turning any force into a weight was going to be as simple as recording the force of known weights and creating a linear regression. It’d even be possible to use some statistics to predict how well the calibration went (there are many factors that can throw off a calibration). We opted to use coins for calibration, with a framework that made it easy to internationalize in the future.
[…]
To make a long story short the final answer over the phone was that the concept of a scale app was not appropriate for the App Store.

We were—and still are—bummed to say the least, but we understand some of the reasons Apple might not be allowing scale apps at this time.

I understand why Apple may not be sure about an app that requires placing a spoon on screen. Still, I hope that, eventually, novel uses of 3D Touch like Gravity will be accepted on the App Store. Make sure to read the technical details behind Gravity (and watch the video as well).

See also: weighing plums with 3D Touch.

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Apple TV’s Siri Search to Include Apple Music Early Next Year→

Another of the criticisms mentioned in early reviews for the new Apple TV is lack of Siri search for Apple Music. In a statement sent to BuzzFeed, Apple has confirmed a software update will enable the feature early next year:

One of the most useful features of Apple’s new Apple TV is its Siri-enabled universal search. It’s something Apple TV owners have been asking about for years — the ability to quickly and effectively search across multiple video platforms simultaneously. And now that Apple’s enabled it for video, the company is working to extend it to music as well. In a few months, Apple TV owners will be able to tell the device to find a song or album the same way they’d tell it to find a movie.

Apple confirmed to BuzzFeed News that Siri is coming to Apple Music on Apple TV at the beginning of next year.

Hopefully Siri search on Apple TV will also be extended to the App Store.

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Nilay Patel’s Apple TV Review→

Speaking of Apple TV reviews and criticism to the setup experience, Nilay Patel explains in his review for The Verge:

Take setup again: yes, the tap-to-get-settings-from-an-iPhone feature is cool, but you can’t restore anything from a previous Apple TV, so when you first get started you have to head into the App Store and search for and download every streaming app you use. Then, once you’ve got them all, you have to authenticate all of them individually — even apps like HBO Go and Watch ESPN that require the same cable provider TV Everywhere username and password. And the iPhone Remote app doesn’t work with the new Apple TV yet, so you’re stuck either swiping around the onscreen keyboard or digging up a laptop to enter an activation code. It’s frustrating — I found myself reluctant to download new apps because I didn’t really want to log in yet again. If the future of TV is really apps, adding new apps has to be virtually frictionless.

That’s a fair criticism, and I’m surprised that Apple hasn’t figured out a universal “Download & Login” setup flow for TV apps yet. It also sounds like a typical American problem – the issue with cable bundles and provider logins applies to the States, but I’m not sure how it’d reflect, for instance, on European countries.

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Christina Warren’s Apple TV Review→

The Apple TV embargo lifted last night, and the first reviews have been published with a general consensus that the device is a worthy upgrade with some annoyances for search and logging into apps.

I recommend starting with Christina Warren’s review, which gives a great overview of the platform and the brand new Siri remote:

Swiping faster on the touchpad moves faster across the interface, slower goes slower. Movements are extremely precise and never felt out of control. The remote is Bluetooth — not IR — so you don’t need direct line of sight to navigate — which is nice. On some Bluetooth-based remotes, I’ve noticed lag between a selection and what happens on screen but the Siri remote always keeps up.

Tapping the Menu button will take you back one level or give you a menu of an app you’re in. Tapping the home button will bring you to the core home screen. Double tapping the home button opens up an app switcher, so you can easily navigate between screens. If you want to close out an app, swiping up on the trackpad will dismiss it.

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