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LATEST ARTICLES - PAGE 9

Shazam Gets an Updated Design

Apple
Jason Tate

MacStories:

As it turns out, Shazam has continued to be updated and support Spotify since Apple’s acquisition. In fact, there have been at least four updates to Shazam since the acquisition including one today that adds synchronized lyrics and a design refresh of the app’s results screen.

The new UI looks great. The results screen is dominated by a background image of the artist. In the foreground is a big play button, the name of the song the app recognized, and the name of the artist. If you tap on the artwork, you get an image of the artist and album in some cases, plus more details on the artist, album, song, and release date.

It looks pretty good.

Apple Music on Track to Overtake Spotify in U.S. Subscribers

Jason Tate

The Wall Street Journal:

Apple Inc.’s streaming-music service, introduced in June 2015, has been adding subscribers in the U.S. more rapidly than its older Swedish rival—a monthly growth rate of 5% versus 2%—according to people in the music business familiar with figures reported by the two services. Assuming that pace continues, Apple will overtake Spotify in the world’s biggest music market this summer.

Interesting.

Music Videos Coming to iOS 11.3

Jason Tate

iOS 11.3 is bringing music videos to Apple Music:

Apple Music will soon be the home for music videos. Users can stream all the music videos they want without being interrupted by ads. They can also watch the hottest new videos, the classics or ones from their favorite artists back-to-back in new music video playlists.

Analytics Come to Apple Music for Artists

Jason Tate

Melinda Newman, writing for Billboard:

Today Apple launches Apple Music for Artists, a dashboard designed to provide acts with hundreds of data points giving deep analytical insight into their fans’ listening and buying habits. […]

The easily navigable dashboard’s home page provides artists with their current number of plays, spins, song purchases and album purchases. The user can specify the time period ranging from the past 24 hours to the 2015 launch of Apple Music.

An Insights panel showcases key milestones via bullet points that highlight such information as all-time number of plays and purchases for specific songs or cumulatively.

Apple Buys Shazam

Apple
Jason Tate

Buzzfeed:

“We are thrilled that Shazam and its talented team will be joining Apple,” Apple spokesperson Tom Neumayr said in a statement to BuzzFeed News. “Since the launch of the App Store, Shazam has consistently ranked as one of the most popular apps for iOS. Today, it’s used by hundreds of millions of people around the world, across multiple platforms.”

I like this move for Apple as there’s lots of places Shazam’s technology can be used across their platform.

Amazon Prime Video Comes to Apple TV

Apple TV
Jason Tate

Amazon Prime Video is now available on the Apple TV. MacStories writes:

The timing of Prime Video’s release coincides with Apple’s release of tvOS 11.2 earlier this week, which adds a new Sports tab to the TV app. This enables tracking and watching games from various sports, and is a perfect complement to Prime Video’s release due to Amazon being the rights holder for Thursday Night Football games. Starting tomorrow night, users will be able to watch NFL games using the TV app and Prime Video.

I’ll take this moment to plug The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which is fantastic.

Apple Releases High Sierra Root Login Bug Fix

Apple
Jason Tate

Apple:

Security is a top priority for every Apple product, and regrettably we stumbled with this release of macOS.

When our security engineers became aware of the issue Tuesday afternoon, we immediately began working on an update that closes the security hole. This morning, as of 8:00 a.m., the update is available for download, and starting later today it will be automatically installed on all systems running the latest version (10.13.1) of macOS High Sierra.

We greatly regret this error and we apologize to all Mac users, both for releasing with this vulnerability and for the concern it has caused. Our customers deserve better. We are auditing our development processes to help prevent this from happening again.

If you have macOS High Sierra installed on your computer, you should update as soon as you can.

Apple and Steven Spielberg Bringing Back ‘Amazing Stories’

Apple
Jason Tate

Apple and Steven Spielberg have reportedly agreed to a content deal to bring Amazing Stories back to TV:

The new deal pulls in the director’s production company Amblin Television, along with NBCUniversal, with plans to resurrect beloved 1980s fantasy/sci-fi/horror anthology Amazing Stories. The original series only ran for two seasons in the mid-80s, but racked up a fair amount of critical acclaim and fond memories, including a dozen Emmy nominations.

Twitterrific 5.0 for Mac

Twitter
Jason Tate

Twitterrific, the long running Twitter client, has released a new Mac version today:

Twitterrific for macOS features a clean, uncluttered timeline displaying just the content you care about. There are no advertisements, promoted tweets, or “while you were away” updates getting in the way of the stuff you care about most. In addition, tweets are presented in chronological order and other people’s likes aren’t cluttering up your timeline.

It looks like a solid release. I still prefer Tweetbot, but the customization options offered here are really nice. I hope this inspires Tweetbot to keep pushing forward and improving their version.

iOS 11: The MacStories Review

iPhone
Jason Tate

iOS 11 is out today. As always, Federico Viticci over at MacStories has a fantastic review:

But perhaps more importantly, unlike iOS 10, iOS 11 presents a cohesive narrative for both the iPad and iPhone. A story where, for the first time in years, the iPad is informing some of the design principles and features of the iPhone’s software. Even from different angles, and each with its own past struggles, both acts in iOS 11 end up asking the same question:

Where does the modern computer go next?

Apple’s Craig Federighi Answers Some Face ID Questions

Apple
Jason Tate

Matthew Panzarino, writing for TechCrunch:

The simple answer, which is identical to the answer for Touch ID, by the way, is that Apple does not even have a way to give it to law enforcement. Apple never takes possession of the data, anonymized or otherwise. When you train the data it gets immediately stored in the Secure Enclave as a mathematical model that cannot be reverse-engineered back into a “model of a face.” Any re-training also happens there. It’s on your device, in your SE, period.

iTunes Gets a Little Streamlined

Jason Tate

iTunes has seen a slight revamp. MacStories reports:

The update to iTunes also adds the Friends feature first seen in the iOS 11 beta. Apple Music subscribers can set up a profile and follow friends to see the music and playlists they are listening to. I’ve been using the Friends feature all summer and it’s been a great way to find and try new music.

You can follow me if you want.