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Wearing Apple→

First, let’s look at the market for quality timepieces; ones that you’d be proud to wear on your wrist. It’s dominated by companies with centuries of experience. It’s also a high-end market: spending a few thousand dollars on a nice watch is chump change. You’re buying a work of art.

Apple certainly has great designers, but they’re going to be competing against craftsmen who’ve been refining their craft since the 15th century.

Craig Hockenberry makes an interesting case for a wearable device by Apple that isn’t a watch.

We discussed the importance of the fashion aspect for wearables on The Prompt, and I believe that it’s often overlooked by the tech press. I don’t know if Apple’s focus will be on health and fitness tracking or using the wearable’s sensors for notifications and inter-device communication (maybe all of them?), but I think it’s obvious that it has to look good – and be “incredible”, as Cook said – to be considered by young customers.

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Plex Introduces Camera Upload for iOS App

Personal media service Plex today rolled out enhancements to the web and iOS apps, allowing Plex Pass subscribers to use a new photo-related feature called Camera Upload to automatically upload and store photos from a device’s Camera Roll on a Plex media library.

Previously limited to Plex Pass members, Chromecast integration for Plex is now available to all users, for free. Chromecast support lets Plex locally beam media content (music, videos, and photos) to a television connected to a Chromecast device. For both the web and iOS apps, Plex now supports shuffling of all items in a section, which can be combined with filtering to, for instance, shuffle all songs available under Pop Rock.

Today’s big addition for Plex Pass members is Camera Upload: using iOS 7’s background functionality, Plex can automatically upload pictures taken with an iOS device to a Library on a Plex media server and into a specific album. There are settings to control upload with cellular data, and, overall, Camera Upload seems to be aimed at providing an effortless photo archival and streaming solution with sharing options rather than a dedicated photo management system such as the ones offered by Picturelife or Loom.

Camera Upload joins other Plex Pass features that allow Plex users to get more out of the service, namely Plex Sync (to keep media available offline on mobile devices), Cloud Sync (review), Multi-User Control, and early access to new features. Plex Pass is available at $3.99/month, and an update to the iOS app with support for Camera Upload is propagating now on the App Store.

How Apple is Quelling Motion Sickness and Making iOS More Accessible with iOS 7.1→

For The Guardian, Craig Grannell writes about many of Apple’s new animations for iOS 7.1, and what that means for people who previously got motion sick. While iOS 7 had lots of nice visual touches, bouncy animations and parallax effects made some customers feel physically ill when using their iPhone. In addition to numerous visual changes that aim to reduce physical illness in iOS 7.1, Apple has also been hard at work making iOS even more accessible by reintroducing button hints.

Josh de Lioncourt at Macworld also runs through some new additions in accessibility that should help those with low-vision or motor impairments. For example, the camera button can be turned into a switch that turns on head tracking, reducing the need for a separate device.

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Paper 1.6.1 Refreshed for iOS 7, Adds Dot Sizing

Paper is one of our must have apps, and it’s recently been updated with iOS 7 in mind. While the app’s design and personality free it from many of iOS 7’s visual styles, popovers and menus have been refreshed with a flatter, cleaner look.

Two additional small but important changes to Paper’s drawing tools should make drawing detailed characters, things, and environments much easier than before. When using the loupe to zoom in, the drawing tools you use will adjust their size as well, giving you finer control over all of the smaller details. And lastly, drawing dots has become much easier, with long presses generating bigger dots.

Paper is free to download in the App Store, with tools available for sale in the app individually or as a bundle.

Keyboard Shortcuts For iOS 7 Apps→

In early January, after collecting keyboard shortcuts for Apple apps and system features in iOS 7, I created a dedicated page for keyboard shortcuts in third-party iOS 7 apps.

I’ve been tweaking and updating the page for the past three months, and it now includes 20 apps that have implemented keyboard shortcuts. The page has a custom sub-domain at ios-shortcuts.macstories.net, and it comes with an index of apps at the top to easily see supported apps and click to instantly jump to a specific one. Each app has links to iTunes, website, and additional documentation if available.

If you’ve developed an iOS app with external keyboard integration, let me know on Twitter or over email and I’ll add it to the list. Check out the page here.

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Pushpin 3.1 Adds Advanced Searches, Keyboard Shortcuts

Pushpin, a powerful Pinboard client that was recently updated to version 3.0, got its first major update to 3.1 today, which introduces more advanced functionalities to get the most out of Pinboard navigation, feeds, and saved searches.

For keyboard users, a big change is the addition of keyboard shortcuts to the app. As documented on Lionheart Software’s website, it’s now possible to scroll through bookmarks, open the editing view, toggle statuses, and select fields using an external keyboard. This makes Pushpin one of the most versatile iOS 7 apps with keyboard integration.

In my previous coverage of Pushpin, I noted the lack of customization for feeds and sections in the app’s sidebar, which forced me to keep certain items I wasn’t interested in – such as Pinboard’s Wikipedia and Fandom sections – always visible. In Pushpin 3.1, feeds on the main screen can be hidden and reordered; in combination with custom feeds for tags and users, Pushpin now has the most flexible main screen for users who want to tailor the Pinboard navigation experience to their needs – a solid enhancement if you use Pinboard as a news source more than a simple bookmark aggregator. In this version, Pinboard Notes make a comeback (although they’re still read-only due to a limitation of the Pinboard API) and there’s a new Recent feed to view all recent bookmarks from all Pinboard users.

For power users, an advanced search feature has been added, which can look for bookmarks that match specific criteria in a Pinboard account. Based off the SQLite FTS technology, advanced searches can be created with filters for URLs, titles, tags, and a combination (or exclusion) or multiple ones at once, opening up several options for searches that filter down specific results. The special syntax for advanced searches is limited to bookmarks for a configured account, which caused some confusion when I first tried the feature (it doesn’t work with Pinboard’s web search for public bookmarks).

With today’s update, Pushpin has become the fastest, most customizable, and most powerful Pinboard client on my devices. With feed reordering and keyboard shortcuts, I can now navigate Pinboard with ease on my iPad, removing feeds that I don’t need; overall, Pushpin has evolved into a fantastic, feature-packed Pinboard client with a clean interface and tons of options.

Pushpin 3.1 is available on the App Store.

Edge On Apple’s iOS Gaming Revolution→

Much has changed in the two years since we called Apple “the hottest property in handheld gaming” and said that the company had “changed the videogame industry irrevocably”. Between E236 and today, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs has passed away, iPhone 5 has launched and bifurcated, Game Center’s poker-table felt has been torn off in favour of a spartan interface, and a wave of licensed iOS controllers has reached the market, drawing iPhones and iPads closer to the traditional world of videogame hardware. In other respects, though, nothing is different – Apple seems no closer to infiltrating the home console business through its set-top box, for example.

But crucially – at least for the people who have seen iOS platforms become integral parts of their gaming lives – it feels like the potential we saw in Apple’s devices to become a disruptive force has dissipated. Where we once saw a promising new marketplace of fresh ideas, unrestricted creativity, and daring new ways to play, the App Store of 2014 is swamped with cash-guzzling junk, shameless knockoffs and predictable sequels. Games worth discovering still exist, but they mostly dwell on the fringes and in the shadows, while endless horror stories suggest that paid-for games are simply no longer profitable and are dying out. What happened to the iOS gaming revolution?

Great story by Edge on the state of iOS gaming, free-to-play, App Store charts, and indie development in the age of freemium and Clash of Clans.

Time will tell whether the App Store can still accommodate developers who arguably make better games than the stuff that’s in the top charts or that Apple features. There’s hope, and I want to believe that somebody at Apple is reading Edge’s piece and wondering how they can make the App Store a better place for game creators who are not King or Supercell. Reducing the visibility of the Top Grossing chart and allowing games that cover political/religious/controversial themes would be a good start and an encouraging signal.

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Luggage Tracking With iBeacon→

Travel Radar is a new iPhone app that lets you track your luggage using iBeacons. By measuring approximate distance from the beacon to your iPhone, Travel Radar can fire off a notification when your luggage is nearby, allowing you to easily identify it and pick it up. The app can track up to two pieces of luggage within 20 meters, and it’s $1.99 on the App Store.

iBeacons seem perfect for this kind of short-range smart tracking, which has gotten better with iOS 7.1. The developers of Travel Radar have detailed a few options for consumer beacons in a blog post – they recommend the Estimote Beacons, which I’ve also been considering to tinker at home with a few ideas I have (see this).

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