Apple Debuts New Research App, Launches Health Studies for Women’s Health, Hearing, and Heart and Movement

By Ryan Christoffel

Today Apple announced the next phase of its efforts in medical research studies. Following the Heart Study which debuted in late 2017 and shared its first results earlier this year, Apple now has three new studies it’s launching at once, which users can sign up for through a brand new Apple Research app.

“Today marks an important moment as we embark on research initiatives that may offer incredible learnings in areas long sought after by the medical community,” said Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer. “Participants on the Research app have the opportunity to make a tremendous impact that could lead to new discoveries and help millions lead healthier lives.”

Users can enroll in one or more of the new studies: the Women’s Health Study, Heart and Movement Study, and Hearing Study. Each of these uses an iPhone and Apple Watch to collect certain data for the purpose of aiding medical advancements.

Anything health-related can come with plenty of privacy concerns, so the Research app’s on-boarding flow includes a very clear privacy commitment, stated in four points:

Your data will not be sold.
You decide which studies you join, and you can leave the study at any time.
You control which types of data you share, and you can stop sharing your data at anytime.
Studies must tell you how your data supports their research.

Tim Cook on multiple occasions has sought to emphasize how important the issue of health is to Apple. Far from a mere hobby, he’s said he believes health will end up being Apple’s most significant area of contribution to mankind. Studies like these are one way to help push the needle on that goal.

HomeRun Adds Thousands of Icons for Customizing Your Watch HomeKit Triggers

By Ryan Christoffel

Browsing custom icons in HomeRun’s iPhone companion.

Customization options have never hurt an app, and in many cases they make apps far more functional and endearing. Today HomeRun, the Apple Watch app for running HomeKit scenes, has expanded its customization options immensely by adding over 4,400 new icons that can be used for configuring the app’s grid of HomeKit scenes, and also for adorning your watch face via HomeRun’s complications.

HomeRun debuted last November as the best option for running HomeKit scenes from your Apple Watch. Unlike Apple’s own Home app, which only displays two scene triggers on-screen at once, with HomeRun you can fit up to 12 on-screen with a 44mm Watch, plus create complications for those scenes that run on a user-set schedule, so the right scene complication is always present at the right time.

HomeRun’s scene grid (left) and custom complication (right).

Previous releases enabled customizing HomeRun’s scene grid, which makes up the app’s main UI, by choosing from different colors and glyphs for each of your HomeKit scenes. The number of options was fine before, but now it’s much more than fine. Developer Aaron Pearce has added thousands of new icons by including the full set of Apple’s SF Symbols, the full set of Simpaticons, plus emoji options. The over 4,400 icons can be browsed inside HomeRun’s companion iPhone app, where a search option has thankfully been included.

I love that these new options work not only inside HomeRun’s grid, but also for configured complications. The sole exception is emoji, since they don’t fit watchOS’ design standards for complications. That slight drawback aside, this is a fantastic release for HomeRun that ensures I have no reason to ever look elsewhere for HomeKit scene control on the Apple Watch.

HomeRun 1.3 is available now on the App Store.

Disney+ Available Now, Integrated with Apple’s TV App But Not as a Channel

By Ryan Christoffel

Today Disney has launched what’s almost certain to become one of the most successful streaming services over time: Disney+. Apple users can enjoy the new streaming service through the Disney+ app for iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV. You can subscribe directly inside the app to start a 7-day free trial, after which it costs $6.99/month or $69.99/year. Disney is also offering a bundled option, where Disney+, Hulu (with ads), and ESPN+ are available for a single $12.99 monthly fee; to sign up for that bundle, you need to visit disneyplus.com.

Disney+ features an enormous back catalog of Disney favorites, from classic animated films to the worlds of Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, and National Geographic. Not only that, but Disney has prepared a healthy slate of originals to accompany the launch, the clear standout of which is the Star Wars-based The Mandalorian. Combining originals and catalog fare, Disney+ is unquestionably the strongest content debut ever for a streaming service.

The app experience of Disney+ seems at least as good as other streaming services, and in some cases even better. As seen in the image above, Disney+ on the Apple TV offers an easy way to log in if you’ve already set up your account on an iPhone or iPad. Unlike most other streaming apps, which require entering a code on your TV, the Disney+ app can automatically log you in on your Apple TV when you have the mobile app open on the same Wi-Fi network.

Disney+ content inside Apple’s TV app.

You can also connect the Disney+ app to Apple’s own TV app, enabling you to track everything you’re watching from Disney inside the TV app’s Up Next queue. You’ll see Disney+ shows and movies advertised inside TV’s Watch Now tab, where they can be added to your queue. This way, content from Disney+, Apple TV+, HBO, and other sources can all reside in one universal hub.

Unfortunately, Disney+ isn’t available as a channel inside the TV app, it only offers an app integration. What this means is that you’ll have to download the Disney+ app on all your devices to play the service’s content, whereas with channels content you can watch without needing a separate app. Also, whenever you initiate playback in TV you’ll be bumped out to the Disney+ app, making for a clunkier playback experience than you would have if the service was available as a channel.

The streaming wars are only just now starting to heat up, and the launch of Disney+ is a significant moment in those wars. While for some, the new service represents yet another video subscription they’re asked to pay for, it truly is remarkable that the dream of unbundling content from expensive cable or satellite packages is finally coming true.

Twitter Launching Topics Feature Soon →

Linked By Ryan Christoffel

Source: The Verge

Casey Newton reports for The Verge on a new Twitter feature coming soon:

Recently, a friend told me he wanted to spend more time using Twitter, but he didn’t quite know how. His primary interest is comedy, he told me, and he hoped to find a way to see comedians’ best jokes on Twitter as they were posted. But when he followed comedians, he mostly saw a lot of self-promotion — tour dates, late-night appearances, and that sort of thing. No matter your personal interests, there are countless good and relevant tweets on Twitter. But where are they?

Topics, a new feature from Twitter that is starting to roll out this week, represents a significant effort to answer that question. You will be able to follow more than 300 “topics” across sports, entertainment, and gaming, just as you are currently able to follow individual accounts. In return, you’ll see tweets from accounts that you don’t follow that have credibility on these subjects.

Topics represent a major new addition to the Twitter timeline, easily one of the most significant changes the service has ever introduced. Though topics have the potential to improve a person’s timeline, they could also have the opposite effect if not done well. Based on this report, it sounds like Twitter’s team has all the right checks in place to ensure tweets from topics are things you’ll actually care about. Here’s Newton on how the process works:

First, Twitter scans incoming tweets for keywords like “WWE,” “pro wrestling,” and so on. (It can’t search for those terms in images and videos, at least not yet.) Second, Twitter searches to see if the tweet is from someone who normally tweets about that topic as a measure of credibility. Finally, Twitter looks at engagement: how many other people who care about this topic liked, retweeted, or replied to a tweet? The more people are interacting with the tweet, the more likely it is to make the cut.

I’m eager to try following a few topics to see whether they have a positive or negative impact on my timeline. I think the feature will be a clear win for users who are new to Twitter, and don’t already have a well-curated collection of follows; for those who have used the service for years, though, it may not be as appealing. And there’s no word on whether topics you follow will appear in your timeline in third-party clients like Tweetbot and Twitterrific.

We won’t have to wait long to find out: topics are starting to roll out this week with a full global launch next Wednesday, November 13th.

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Arcade Highlights: Sayonara Wild Hearts

By Ryan Christoffel

How can I best describe Sayonara Wild Hearts? It’s an on-rails music-driven game, but that feels like an inadequate description. Yes it’s a game, but combining the gameplay with Sayonara Wild Hearts’ blend of immersive levels, gorgeous visuals, and incredible soundtrack, it feels more fitting to call it an experience.

Sayonara Wild Hearts was an Apple Arcade launch title, one of the few demoed on-stage at Apple’s September event. And as one of Arcade’s premiere titles, it’s a brilliant representation of what Apple’s new service represents: off-the-walls originality. Arcade aims to fund and promote a variety of creative titles, freeing developers from the restraints commonly associated with the App Store’s In-App Purchase-dominated gaming fare. Sayonara Wild Hearts offers an experience that’s so unique and, dare I say, trippy, that it clearly represents its makers’ unfiltered vision.

Microsoft Previews New Office Mobile App, Unifying Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and More in a Single App

By Ryan Christoffel

Today Microsoft previewed a fascinating new experiment in mobile: a brand new iOS app, simply dubbed Office, that houses versions of Word, PowerPoint, and Excel in one place, integrated with OneDrive, while also including Sticky Notes, Microsoft’s OCR-powered Office Lens camera, and a variety of mobile-friendly actions. Until test slots are full, you can sign up to access the beta version of the app through TestFlight.

For now, the beta version of Office is iPhone-only, but Microsoft states it “will bring this experience to tablets as well.” It will be interesting to see how that pans out, since currently Microsoft requires Office 365 subscriptions to edit in its Office apps on iPads over a certain size, while devices under that size can edit documents for free. It’s likely the new Office app will follow the same restrictions, but we’ll have to wait to find out.

I’ve spent a little time working with the beta version of Office, and I think Microsoft may be on to something here.

Adobe Creative Cloud App Brings Thousands of New Fonts to iPhone and iPad

By Ryan Christoffel

Today Adobe released an update to its Creative Cloud app on iPhone and iPad which introduced a set of thousands of fonts that can now be installed on those devices via the new font provider system Apple added in iOS and iPadOS 13. Once installed, fonts from Creative Cloud can be used within any other app that supports custom fonts. The Creative Cloud app is a free download, and all users can download 1,300 fonts in the app for free; users with a Creative Cloud subscription, however, have access to a whopping 17,000 fonts.

Apple TV+ Now Available: Here’s Its Full Launch Lineup

By Ryan Christoffel

Apple TV+ is now available, a video subscription service that Apple has been working on for over two years now. The new streaming service debuts in over 100 countries, and can be accessed now inside the TV app on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, Roku and Amazon Fire TV devices, and select smart TV manufacturers, as well as from tv.apple.com.

Apple TV+ costs $4.99 per month, but all users are offered a 7-day free trial; also, anyone who has purchased a new iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, or iPod touch since September 10 will receive a free year of service. Finally, even if you don’t subscribe at all, Apple has made the first two episodes of all of its series available for free viewing in the TV app.

While the cost of entry is low for Apple TV+, what you get for the price is also fairly limited at the moment. Apple has branded TV+ “the first all-original video subscription service,” which means there’s no back catalog of legacy content, only brand new shows and movies that have never been released before. This angle could be spun as a positive thing in some respects, because many streaming consumers these days care most about new content, but it also means you can quickly watch everything TV+ has to offer and be stuck waiting for more content.

Here’s the full lineup of everything Apple TV+ offers today:

Twitter iPad Apps Upgraded with Multiwindow Support, Keyboard Navigation

By Ryan Christoffel

Twitterrific (left) and Twitter (right).

This fall has been a significant season for the iPad. While new hardware has been limited to an updated entry-level iPad, the software changes have more than made up for the dearth of hardware updates. September brought iPadOS, the new branch of iOS that packs advancements like multiwindowing, an upgraded Home screen, and more. Mere weeks after iPadOS launched, macOS Catalina enabled a host of iPad apps to be brought to the Mac, which in some cases meant those iPad apps became more Mac-like as a result.

Thanks to these recent software changes, a couple of key Twitter apps for iPad have been updated to offer key new functionality. Twitterrific has become the first Twitter client to add multiwindow support, enabling creating separate windows for different accounts or different views within the same account. The first-party Twitter app, meanwhile, has recently added extensive support for external keyboards, likely as a side benefit of the app making its way to the Mac. In both cases, the Twitter experience on iPad has been meaningfully improved in ways that power users will appreciate.

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