Apple Card Now Available for All US Customers, Adds New 3% Daily Cash Partners

By Ryan Christoffel

Following a limited preview earlier this month, Apple has today opened up applications for Apple Card to all US customers. Users can apply through the Wallet app on an iPhone running iOS 12.4 or later, and in most cases receive instant access to Apple Card if approved. Opening the Wallet app then tapping the plus button in the top-right leads to the option to add Apple Card.

Alongside Apple Card’s wide release, Apple is announcing that its Daily Cash program is getting better thanks to a new partner that supports the highest 3% Daily Cash rate which was previously exclusive to Apple purchases.

Apple Card is extending 3 percent Daily Cash to more merchants and apps. Starting today, customers will receive 3 percent Daily Cash when they use Apple Card with Apple Pay for Uber and Uber Eats. Customers can request a ride through Uber in more than 700 cities across the globe and order a meal through Uber Eats in more than 500 cities around the world. Apple Card will continue to add more popular merchants and apps in the coming months.

Apple has never before mentioned that it would be seeking additional partners to support the 3% Daily Cash rate. Initially that rate was limited to purchases from the Apple Store, Apple.com, the App Store, and other Apple services; 2% is the standard Daily Cash rate available for Apple Pay transactions, and 1% for everything else. Adding Uber and Uber Eats to the 3% pool, with “more popular merchants and apps” in the pipeline for future partnerships, makes Apple Card’s Daily Cash program more attractive than before – a welcome surprise for the card’s wide release.

Disney+ Will Launch with iOS and tvOS Apps and Integration with TV App →

Linked By Ryan Christoffel

Disney announced today which platforms its Disney+ streaming service would be available on at launch, and unsurprisingly iOS and tvOS are on the list. One tidbit that’s particularly noteworthy, however, comes from Chris Welch’s report for The Verge:

Disney also plans to integrate its content with the Apple TV app so that movies, originals, and shows will appear there among other suggested things to watch.

Integration with the TV app means Disney+ subscribers will be able to add the service’s content to their Up Next queue inside TV, in addition to seeing recommendations for movies and shows like Welch mentions. This is a significant piece of news for people like myself who rely on the TV app for much of their TV viewing. Also noteworthy is that Disney+ will support Apple’s In-App Purchase system for subscriptions, so you can subscribe directly through Apple rather than needing to set up a separate Disney account.

This is a big win for Apple’s TV ambitions, as Disney+ is expected to quickly grow into one of the most popular streaming services on the market. Netflix, the current streaming king, doesn’t integrate at all with Apple’s TV app, and recently it even abandoned Apple’s In-App Purchase system for subscriptions. If Disney had followed in Netflix’s footsteps, Apple’s hopes of the TV app gaining widespread adoption would have been slim to none.

The only outstanding question concerns whether Disney+ will become a full-on channel inside the TV app, or if it will rely on the legacy integration that apps like Hulu and Amazon Prime Video currently utilize. Welch writes:

A Disney spokesperson told The Verge that Disney has nothing to announce regarding “channel” marketplaces like Apple TV Channels or Amazon Prime Channels. I wouldn’t bet on Disney giving Apple (or anyone) extra control over its hugely important service; allowing Disney+ to be streamed entirely within the Apple TV app would be a nice convenience for the customers who want it, but I don’t see it happening.

My take is that Disney+ becoming a channel actually makes a lot of sense for the company. Since it’s already going to integrate with TV, and use In-App Purchases, there’s little to no “extra control” Disney would be handing Apple if Disney+ became a channel. All the control is already conceded. The only advantage of forcing people to jump from the TV app into the Disney+ app would be that, when a movie or show finishes playing, users would find themselves in Disney’s app rather than Apple’s. But that’s a small bit of ground to give up considering all the control Disney’s already forfeited.

If Disney+ becomes a channel, it will make for a better user experience for everyone, including parents who can download content offline for their kids via the TV app. Plus, if Disney only supports TV’s legacy integration, that will mean it’s only available in Apple’s TV app on Apple devices; third-party streaming sticks and TV sets that include the TV app wouldn’t offer Disney+ content at all, which again would make for a worse experience.

I expect that Disney’s hesitation to announce channels support is only temporary. Either the company is still negotiating its exact deal with Apple, or an announcement is being held back for Apple’s iPhone event in September. The latter scenario seems likely: Disney+ garnering stage time at the biggest marketing event of the year for one of the world’s biggest companies is a win for both Apple and Disney.

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Apple Brings App Store Editorials to the Web →

Linked By Ryan Christoffel

Benjamin Mayo, reporting for 9to5Mac:

Apple has recently updated its App Store Preview pages for stories to allow users to view the full content of stories from inside their desktop web browser. App Store stories have always been shareable as links, but the web version was just a title and a navigation link to ‘open this story in the App Store’.

Between August 9th and August 11th, Apple has upgraded the experience and now includes full imagery, app lists and paragraphs copy in the web version. This means you can access the same content online as you would be ale to find in the native App Store experience.

Historically, App Store editorials could only be viewed inside the App Store itself, whether on an iPhone, iPad, or Mac. Anyone not using an Apple device would thus be unable to view such stories, even if they had the appropriate link for them. Now, however, every App Store editorial can be read in full on the web. iOS devices still default to opening stories in the App Store, but you can now open a story’s link in Safari on the Mac, or in browsers on non-Apple devices.

Apple still doesn’t let you initiate app downloads from the web, so while you will be able to see preview pages for apps from a browser, to start a download you’ll need to visit the App Store or Mac App Store.

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Watch Dependence →

Linked By Ryan Christoffel

Joe Cieplinski, writing on his blog:

I have reached the unfortunate conclusion that RECaf’s watch app will not be able to go fully independent this fall with the release of watchOS 6. While you have always been able to log from your wrist using the app or Siri shortcuts, I was hoping folks who didn’t want to keep RECaf installed on their phones would be able to continue using RECaf on their wrist.

There are simply too many things that can’t be done on watchOS alone at this point, however. So for now, you’ll have to keep that phone app installed.

Cieplinski outlines three main areas that independent Watch apps are currently lacking in their capabilities, two of which involve HealthKit limitations, while the third is that you can’t perform any kind of In-App Purchase on an independent Watch app, so unlocking pro features or a subscription plan is impossible without an iPhone companion.

These are significant drawbacks, not the type of edge cases that would be more understandable and expected for watchOS’ first take on stand-alone apps. App independence was the primary story Apple told for watchOS 6 at WWDC, but I suspect not many apps will be able to go independent until greater feature parity is achieved between independent apps and those still tethered to the iPhone.

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Apple Debuts New USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter for iPad Pro and Modern Macs →

Linked By Ryan Christoffel

Chance Miller of 9to5Mac details a fresh update to an Apple USB-C adapter:

Apple this week has quietly released a new version of its USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter. This $69 adapter includes a USB-C port, HDMI port, and USB-A port, with the new version making several notable improvements.

The new USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter adds support for HDMI 2.0, an upgrade from the original model’s HDMI 1.4b. This means you can now drive 4K 3840 x 2160 video at 60Hz

4K 60Hz throughput is supported on the iPad Pro, iMac Pro, and 2017 or later versions of the 15-inch MacBook Pro and Retina iMac. Miller also notes that the updated dongle now includes “support for HDR video in HDR10, as well as Dolby Vision.”

I’ve been interested in purchasing the prior version of this adapter for contexts where I’d like to watch a video but don’t have an Internet connection. Since the Apple TV doesn’t support offline downloads, but many apps on the iPad do, connecting my iPad Pro to a TV set via HDMI seems like the best solution. The added flexibility of including a USB-A port, and even a USB-C port to enable power charging, makes this an especially appealing dongle for me.

You can order the new USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter from Apple’s website for $69.

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Creating Home Screen Icons with Launch Center Pro 3.1 and the Shortcuts App

By Ryan Christoffel

This fall when iPadOS 13 launches, it will bring an updated Home screen that incorporates pinned widgets and a denser arrangement of apps. The changes aren’t as revolutionary as iPad power users may have hoped when they heard whispers of a redesigned Home screen, but they’re a start. While the addition of widgets is valuable in its own right, in my beta testing of iPadOS I’ve also discovered a lot of potential for the larger set of icons the Home screen can now hold – particularly when combined with a new feature just added to Launch Center Pro.

Debuting today, Launch Center Pro 3.1 centers around a major upgrade to the app’s icon composer that provides countless options for creating custom icons. While the use cases for this icon creation tool are vast, I was intrigued by one specific possibility: designing icons that could be exported as image files and used by Apple’s Shortcuts app when adding shortcuts to the Home screen, since Shortcuts allows choosing custom images for Home screen shortcuts. Combined with several key OS changes, and the icon creation tool in Launch Center Pro, it’s a better time than ever to add shortcuts to your iPad or iPhone Home screen.

Apple Card Available Today in Phased Rollout, Full Launch Coming Later in August

By Ryan Christoffel

Today Apple is officially launching its latest service, Apple Card, but only to a subset of users ahead of a broader rollout later this month. The new credit card is limited to US users running at least iOS 12.4, and today it will only be available to certain people who signed up on Apple’s website to be notified about Apple Card. If you’re part of that chosen group, applying for Apple Card can be done right inside the Wallet app, where the card will be added for immediate use upon credit approval; a physical credit card is also mailed out if you choose to receive one, built from titanium. For those who don’t get invited for early access, the full Apple Card launch will arrive before the end of August.

How I Edit Podcasts on the iPad Using Ferrite

By Ryan Christoffel

This has been a year of new creative projects for me. In addition to some personal endeavors that have yet to see the light of day, I joined Federico as the co-host of Adapt, a new iPad-focused podcast on Relay FM. Learning the art of expressing my Apple takes in speech rather than text has been an adventure in itself, but I’ve also grown to cultivate a very different skill: audio editing.

When I was charged with editing this iPad-focused podcast, I naturally turned to an iPad-based editing tool: every episode of Adapt has been edited in Ferrite Recording Studio, and I’ve never even tried using another app. Most podcasters I’m familiar with edit in Logic, but my Mac mini is purposely utilized as little as possible, so I knew when I dove into podcasting that I wanted an iPad-based solution if at all possible. On multiple occasions I’ve heard and read Jason Snell extol the virtues of Ferrite, so that was the app I turned to.

Getting started with podcast editing, even with an app like Ferrite that’s built for it, can be extremely intimidating. There are lots of settings, and unless you have previous experience working with audio, you likely have no idea what any of them do. I learned a lot from Ferrite’s user guide in the early days, and the aforementioned Jason Snell articles on Six Colors. And before long, I found an editing setup that worked well for me. Now, I want to share it with you.

Apple Maps in iOS 13: Sights Set on Google

By Ryan Christoffel

Apple’s path to a home-brewed mapping solution has been long and perilous, but it’s almost arrived.

12 years ago the iPhone launched with Google powering its pre-installed navigation software; five years later, the botched debut of Apple’s own Maps app led to the firing of a key Apple executive; Apple Maps has steadily improved over the years, but seemingly its biggest weakness is that it has never truly contained Apple’s own maps. The app is Apple’s, but the maps have always come from other sources.

Last year, Apple announced a coming change that had been years in the works: Maps would soon contain the company’s own maps, and they would be transformative. The new maps started rolling out in the US last fall with iOS 12, and Apple claims they’ll cover the entire US by the end of 2019.

Timed with the spread of its first-party mapping data, Apple is giving the Maps app a big upgrade in iOS 13 that represents the company’s biggest push yet to overtake Google Maps as the world’s most trusted, go-to mapping service. Apple Maps in iOS 13 represents – if you’re in the US at least – Apple’s purest vision to date for a modern mapping service. Here’s everything that it brings.

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