David Sparks has put together a 2.5 hour screencast dissecting and explaining Apple’s new Photos app. I’ve been skimming it this morning and already have learned some things. It’s a well-spent $9.99 for you or a Mac user in your life.
Mac App Store a ghost town ⇢
Sam Soffes, the developer behind the new Redacted for Mac shares the number of downloads that the app had, while being the 8th top paid app in the US and top paid in app in Graphics category:
It’s pretty nuts that 59 sales is top paid on the Mac App Store in the US.
Ouch.
The Mac App Store has seen a lot of top-tier developers leave over the years, but this number is just pathetic. Clearly consumers aren’t using the Store in any meaningful way either.
The whole thing is a damn shame. Redacted is a great little Mac app, and Soffes clearly can’t make it into a business on its own. I think it may be time for Apple to take a long, hard look at the Mac App Store and either invest in it and woo back developers (and customers) or just shutter the thing.
Connected 38: June is the New Christmas ⇢
On this week’s podcast, we were joined by Christina Warren to talk about BUILD. We then discussed Apple’s Watch band program and what the company could do with Beats Audio.
My thanks to these sponsor:
Federico’s iOS 9 wishes ⇢
Federico Viticci:
For some Apple observers, it’d be easy – and justifiable – to argue that Apple is “done” with improving iOS given the software’s maturity and sprawling app ecosystem. With long-awaited technologies such as action extensions, widgets, custom keyboards, folders for iCloud, and external document providers finding their way to iPhones and iPads, iOS has seemingly reached a zenith of functionality, an ideal state with no low-hanging fruit left to lust for.
Except that iOS 8 wasn’t a culmination aimed at ending on a high note. As I wrote last September, the changes introduced with iOS 8 laid the foundation for a more flexible, customizable, and ultimately more powerful mobile OS that would pave the road for the next several years of iOS updates.
There’s always going to be new low-hanging fruit in iOS. And 2015 is no exception.
No one is better qualified to write this article. Every single point is right on the money.
On Applebot ⇢
Well, this is interesting:
Applebot is the web crawler for Apple, used by products including Siri and Spotlight Suggestions. It respects customary robots.txt rules and robots meta tags. It originates in the 17.0.0.0 net block.
User-agent strings will contain “Applebot” together with additional agent information. For example:
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10101) AppleWebKit/600.2.5 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/8.0.2 Safari/600.2.5 (Applebot/0.1)
If robots instructions don’t mention Applebot but do mention Googlebot, the Apple robot will follow Googlebot instructions.
“Will Apple get into search?” has been a question asked by company watchers for years. Now, it seems, the answer is yes, at least in some capacity. While the company is calling Applebot a “Web crawler” for Siri and Spotlight, it’s not hard to see this being part of a much bigger project.
(In fact, this has been going on for some time, which shouldn’t be suprising.)
My assumption is that Applebot will start as a new options — probably the default — for Siri and Spotlights results maybe as early as iOS 9 and Mac OS X 10.11.[1]
I don’t see Apple banishing Bing from these system-level utilities on the first go-round, though. If the fallout from Maps was bad, I can’t imagine how poorly bad or incomplete search results would be received.
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Safari, of course, allows users to select from Google, Bing, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo. My guess is that Applebot will show up here as well, but maybe not as quickly as in Spotlight and Siri. ↩
On discoveryd ⇢
Craig Hockenberry writes about the dumpster fire that is Apple’s new networking subsystem. If you’ve been having network issues, discoveryd is probably the root of the problem.
The best Couch to 5k running app ⇢
Bradley Chambers:
Couch to 5k apps are a dime a dozen. If you search the App Store, you’ll find tons of options. Some of the apps are well-maintained, and others are not. But, the goal remains the same: to get you off the couch and working towards a 3.1 mile run.
This may not sound like a lot, but for non-runners, 3.1 miles (in my opinion) is the magic distance where running goes from the worst thing ever to this is actually fun. These apps aren’t asked to do near as much as a general purpose running app, so they should be focused and easy to use. Run 5k is our favorite app due to its simple design, ease of use, and integration with Health.app. It’s free for a few workouts, and costs $4.99 to unlock the entire plan.
Two fun Apple Watch links
There have been two interesting Watch-releated links to make the rounds the last day or so:
Every major release of OS X and iOS has brought a revision to Apple’s HIG, and with Apple Watch, the company has spun off a new version of it just for the wearable.
Band Design Guidelines for Apple Watch »
Turns out, Apple is going to allow other companies to make Watch bands. This document is an interesting read, and be sure to check out the dimensional drawings for the two sizes of Watch.
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Apple launches App Analytics Service ⇢
Sarah Perez at TechCrunch:
There aren’t a lot details being offered about the analytics service’s feature set at this time, but Apple says the service will offer developers the ability to track how often customers visit an app’s page on the App Store, find out how many users open the app over time, check on app and in-app purchase sales, create custom campaign links and follow the success of marketing campaigns, and understand which websites refer the most users.
First promised at WWDC nearly a year ago, this is welcome news. There is, however, this issue:
Look, Apple, we seriously need to talk about your icon game. This is just… can you not at least center the dial? pic.twitter.com/SO8NNphzcK
— Neven Mrgan (@mrgan) April 30, 2015
It cannot be unseen.
App Camp Quiz Compendium ⇢
A fun app for a great cause. This one should be on your iPhone, folks.
Connected 37: Artisanal Emoji ⇢
This week’s show involves a lot of nose tapping:
This week, they boys break down Apple’s Q2 results and walk with Myke as he spends a day with Apple Watch.
Thanks to these three sponsors:
- Casper: Because everyone deserves a great night sleep. Get $50 off with the code ‘CONNECTED’
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