It’s been a busy morning for Apple’s content teams.
Up first, we have the top shows from Apple Podcasts. All I want is to see Ungeniused will crack these lists one day!1
Over in Apple Books, there’s a new Year in Review feature that I think is really pretty neat:
Today, Apple Books unveiled the top books and audiobooks of 2023 and launched Year in Review, a new in-app experience that helps readers to celebrate the titles, authors, and genres that defined their year. With Year in Review, users can view personalized reading highlights about the books and audiobooks they enjoyed in 2023, including their total time spent reading, the longest book or audiobook they read, the series they completed, their most-read author and genre, and their highest-rated book — all presented in a simple and engaging experience with visuals that are easy to share.
Year in Review can also show you how many minutes you spent reading in the app, and how many books you made it through, all in a shareable graphic to flex on your Instagram followers. I dig it.
Lastly, as noted by Hartley Charlton at MacRumors, Apple Music Replay 2023 is now live as well. Unlike Podcasts and Books, the Music app doesn’t have this feature built-in, and this experience lives on the web at replay.music.apple.com. Here’s Charlton with more:
Users can watch a custom Highlight Reel at the top of the Replay webpage before diving into more detailed information and expanded listening insights. The highlight reel presents a series of social media-style animated cards that show musical highlights from the past year based on your listening history. Relevant music plays in the background for each card. The highlight reel is viewable on desktop browsers, but it appears to be primarily designed for mobile devices.
After the highlight reel, users can scroll down to see featured sections with more informative breakdowns of their top albums and playlists from the past year. Users can add their Apple Music Replay 2023 playlist to the Music app at the bottom of the page.
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This story is one of Apple’s new “QUICK READ” posts on Apple Newsroom. They do have a URL, but you have to click the little paperclip icon on the pop-up to grab it, assuming your content blocker didn’t hide it. The link the webpage puts on your clipboard is a short URL made for sharing on social media. At least it expands into a more usable (and more stable?) URL in the browser.
I really wish everything on Apple’s press site acted like a normal webpage. ↩
