Sofa is a new app that launched just last Friday. Sofa does two things: it helps you discover new movies to watch, and it lets you keep a list of movies you want to watch. Despite its rather sparse feature list, Sofa is well worth your time. One of the reasons why is because Sofa’s discover section is populated by hand-curated collections of movies. But Sofa also looks great and, because it isn’t burdened with dozens of features, the app is simple and delightful to use.
Sofa: Discover New Movies from Curated Collections
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Apple Asks Developers to Start Submitting iOS 9, El Capitan, watchOS 2 Apps
Ahead of the upcoming release of iOS 9 and watchOS 2 on September 16, Apple has now begun notifying registered developers that App Store submissions are open for iOS 9 apps.
In an email shared today with the developer community, Apple has confirmed submissions are also open for OS X El Capitan apps built using the OS’ Golden Master seed.
From Apple’s email:
The next release of watchOS, iOS, and OS X will soon be in the hands of hundreds of millions of customers around the world. Make sure your apps are optimized for the exciting new features now available for these platforms.
To prepare, build your apps using Xcode 7 GM seed, and test with the GM seeds of iOS 9, OS X El Capitan, and watchOS 2. Read the App Review Guidelines and use TestFlight to get feedback before submitting to the App Store.
Starting today, developers will also be able to set up iOS 9 apps with external testers via TestFlight, Apple’s beta testing service.
iOS 9 adds hundreds of new features that developers can leverage to improve their apps, including multitasking on iPad, new gaming APIs, expanded search capabilities and deeper support for CloudKit, HomeKit, HealthKit, and MapKit. iOS 9 will be released next week on Wednesday, September 16.
Interesting Apple TV Tidbits: App Size Limits, Parallax Icons & More
If you haven’t already read our overview of the new Apple TV, I’d recommend reading that first. But since then we’ve also learnt a few more details about the Apple TV that were interesting enough to share. They include details about Apple TV app size limits, parallax icons (and how you can test them today), the Remote Loop and the Nimbus Steelseries (third-party) controller.
Apple TV Apps Limited to 200MB
As noted by 9to5Mac, Apple is restricting the size of Apple TV apps to 200MB. Apps can of course download additional content at any time, but this additional data will only be kept temporarily. This might not be too much of a problem for apps, but this may prove to be a big hurdle for some of the more ambitious Apple TV games.
Along with the lack of local storage, the maximum size of an Apple TV app is limited to 200MB. Anything beyond this size needs to be packaged and loaded using on-demand resources. Knowing how and when to load new assets while keeping your users engaged is critical to creating a successful app. For information on on-demand resources, see On-Demand Resources Guide.
Read more about this in Apple’s tvOS Developer Library.
iPhone 6S and 6S Plus: Our Complete Overview
This morning Apple announced the iPhone 6S and the iPhone 6S Plus at their September Special Event Keynote. Despite it being just an “S” year, the new iPhone lineup was packed with interesting new features and improvements.
Apple Watch Announcements from the September 9 Apple Keynote
The Apple Watch didn’t receive a hardware update, but it was the subject of a number of other big announcements at today’s Special Event keynote from Apple. On the software front, it was revealed that watchOS 2 would be released to the public next Wednesday, September 16. Apple also took the time to unveil a number of new watch bands, new variations in each of the Apple Watch collections, and a partnership with Hermès to deliver a fourth Apple Watch collection.
The New Apple TV: Our Complete Overview
As was widely expected, Apple today unveiled the new Apple TV at its Special Event keynote at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. The new Apple TV (fourth generation) features a familiar but overhauled user interface, a redesigned remote which features a touch surface for navigation and Siri for interaction, plus there’s now an App Store for apps and games.
Tim Cook: This is the new Apple TV and we believe it is the future of television.
iPad Pro: Our Complete Overview
Today during Apple’s September 9th Special Event Keynote, Apple officially unveiled the widely rumored iPad Pro. Apple’s new iPad features a huge 12.9-inch Retina display, their new A9X chip, a four-speaker architecture, an 8 MP iSight Camera, support for the also-announced Apple Pencil and Smart Keyboard, and much more. To quote Tim Cook, it’s “the biggest news in iPad since iPad.”
Apple Seeds First iOS 9.1 Beta, Includes New Emoji→
Following its event in San Francisco today, Apple released Golden Master seeds of iOS 9 and watchOS 2 (both launching next week), as well as the first developer beta of iOS 9.1, likely coming with the new iPad Pro in November.
As spotted by Owen Williams at The Next Web, the beta release includes new emoji from the latest Unicode specification:
Once you get the update to iOS 9.1 when it’s released at some point in the future — its only available to those with a paid Apple developer account right now — you’ll see a ton of new emoji on the keyboard including taco, unicorn, a stop hand, turkey, burrito and block of cheese.
Almost every category has had new emoji added — we saw a racecar, satellite, prayer beads, award medals, new square images showing camping and a ton more.
Adding new emoji may be the best way to convince millions of people to upgrade to the latest version of iOS.