MeasureKit Brings AR Measuring Tools to the iPhone

By Ryan Christoffel

When was the last time you wanted to measure something, and the tool you needed was already within arm’s reach? I can’t think of a single time that’s happened to me. I don’t work in construction, so I don’t carry measuring tape or any similar tools around with me. But you know what I do always have with me? My iPhone. With AR MeasureKit, developer Rinat Khanov has created a toolkit that can be carried around with no extra baggage – all you need is your phone.

In late June when developer ARKit demos began showing up online, one of the first prominent videos featured digital measuring tape. Many people were amazed at ARKit’s ability to measure distance with such accuracy, while others simply wrote the idea off as a silly use of AR. While I think a simple AR ruler as seen in that first demo would have still been useful, MeasureKit offers much more than that. The app contains a comprehensive set of tools that makes your iPhone or iPad into a sort of Swiss Army Knife of measuring.

Slør Enhances the iPhone’s Portrait Mode with Depth Adjustment Tools

By Ryan Christoffel

Apple introduced depth photography to iOS last year with the iPhone 7 Plus’s Portrait Mode. This new camera feature brought professional-like photography to the masses, and spawned several memorable ads that demonstrated just how far smartphone cameras have come.

In iOS 11, Apple upgraded Portrait Mode with several enhancements, such as much-improved low light performance and optical image stabilization. But one of the more exciting updates is that developers can now tinker with Portrait Mode photos via the new Depth API. Thanks to that new API, Slør was born.

Slør contains a very simple, one-screen interface that lets you get straight to work editing your Portrait Mode photos. There are three adjustment tools at your disposal for modifying an existing depth effect: Aperture, Radial, and Tilt. These allow you to adjust how much out-of-focus blur is present, select the image’s focus point, adjust the focal plane, and more. You can also preview depth information by using 3D Touch on an image at any time. All of these tools can even be used from Photos without opening the full app, thanks to Slør’s photo editing extension.

When you’re done editing, you can hit the Save button to save changes to the original image in your library, or hit the share icon to save a copy or select from any other share option.

Slør’s simplicity makes it an intuitive, accessible way for casual photographers to play around and tweak Portrait photos to make them look best. I must warn you though: if you have an iPhone 7 or newer, then like me you may get distracted by the pleasant haptic feedback Slør invokes when adjusting sliders. It’s a delightful touch that I’ve spent way too much time testing.

Slør is available for iPhone on the App Store.

tvOS 11: The MacStories Review

By Ryan Christoffel

 
WWDC was big this year, introducing new iPad and Mac hardware, Apple’s arrival into the smart speaker market with HomePod, and a variety of exciting software releases across iOS, macOS, and watchOS. But one of Apple’s main platforms was almost entirely overlooked: tvOS. During the WWDC keynote we received word that Amazon Prime Video would be coming to the Apple TV, but nothing else. Sessions held later in the conference revealed that a new version of tvOS did exist, and that it would be coming this year, but the details prove that it’s the smallest release in the OS’s young life. You could say that the focus of tvOS 11 is incremental improvements; the updates here are nice, but they hardly merit a major numbered release.

Trello Launches Mac App with Custom Keyboard Shortcuts, Native Notifications, and More →

Linked By Ryan Christoffel

Today Trello introduced a new dedicated Mac app that includes features built for power users, such as customizable keyboard shortcuts, desktop notifications, and more.

Any serious productivity app on the Mac needs to include keyboard shortcuts, and the team at Trello clearly knows that. There are shortcuts for all the expected things like adding a new card, navigating between boards, and more. Where Trello impresses is that you can customize these shortcuts to your liking, making them easier to remember. One unique shortcut allows you to set a specific board to automatically open every time you start the app, saving an extra click.

Since it’s a native app, Trello includes native macOS notifications now, an improvement over the sometimes-janky Safari-powered notifications. It also enables opening boards in separate windows. Lastly, the app supports the Touch Bar for MacBook Pro owners.

Trello is available for download from the Mac App Store.

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September 12 Roundup: All the Little Things

By Ryan Christoffel

Yesterday’s keynote event at the Steve Jobs Theater featured the debut of several major new products, but there were a lot of small details revealed outside the keynote as journalists got their hands on the new devices. Below is a roundup of some of the most interesting extra details from the day.

Tim Cook Discusses Apple’s Convictions of Societal Responsibility in New Interview →

Linked By Ryan Christoffel

Source: Fortune

Fortune today published an interview Adam Lashinsky held with Apple CEO Tim Cook earlier this year. Their conversation centers on Apple’s attempts at societal contribution, covering topics like health, education, the environment, and more.

In the area of health, Cook acknowledged that while many of the company’s health initiatives are not directly profitable in any way, he does understand that from a financial standpoint health care is a key area for Apple to invest in. And they are investing. He says:

There’s much more in the health area. There’s a lot of stuff that I can’t tell you about that we’re working on, some of which it’s clear there’s a commercial business there. And some of it it’s clear there’s not. And some of it it‘s not clear. I do think it’s a big area for Apple’s future.

One other interesting piece from the interview surrounds Apple’s lack of interest in setting up a company foundation, breaking from the pattern of many other large corporations. Cook explained his reasoning:

When a company sets up a foundation, there is a risk, in my judgment, of the foundation becoming this other thing that is not connected to the company. It has a separate board of directors. They make reasonably independent decisions sometimes. It becomes a separate thing. I don’t want that for Apple. I want everybody involved…If we had a foundation, my fear was it becomes something that 10 or 12 or 20 or 50 people do. And all of a sudden for the 120,000, it’s just this separate thing out there. People work here to change the world. So I think that should be integral to what the company does. Not peripheral in a foundation.

It’s possible we’ll see announcements related to Apple’s work in the areas of health and the environment at its September 12 keynote event, with the former tied to Apple Watch announcements and the latter to the creation of Apple Park, where the event will be held.

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App Store Sales for 32-bit Apps Less Than 1% of Total Revenue →

Linked By Ryan Christoffel

Oliver Yeh of Sensor Tower shares a revealing statistic regarding the current state of App Store revenue for 32-bit apps, which will no longer be available for purchase or download in iOS 11:

The potential revenue Apple stands to lose from eliminating 32-bit app support in iOS 11, expected to launch next week, will amount to less than 1 percent of its portion of quarterly App Store revenue, according to Sensor Tower research. Based on an analysis of our Store Intelligence data, we have estimated that these older apps, which will cease to function in the upcoming release, accounted for approximately $37.5 million in worldwide gross revenue last quarter, of which Apple’s cut—about $11.3 million—made up a mere 0.41 percent of its total revenue from in-app purchases and paid apps on iPhone and iPad.

While it should come as no surprise that 32-bit apps make up a small portion of App Store sales, this new data reveals just how inconsequential that portion has now become.

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Making Siri More Human →

Linked By Ryan Christoffel

David Pierce has a feature story on WIRED today that’s all about Siri – especially the new Siri voice coming in iOS 11. It features a variety of interesting details concerning Siri’s history, the way Apple thinks about the digital assistant, and in-depth details on how new Siri languages are added.

One of my favorite bits involves a quote from Apple’s VP of product marketing, Greg Jozwiak, who said Apple focuses on Siri’s ability to get things done:

It drives him crazy that people compare virtual assistants by asking trivia questions, which always makes Siri look bad. “We didn’t engineer this thing to be Trivial Pursuit!” he says.

This explains Siri’s productivity-focused commercial starring The Rock, and also helps make sense of the fact that Siri is often embarrassingly clueless when it comes to current events or other simple queries. Though Apple’s awareness of the problem exacerbates its lack of a suitable response in beefing up Siri’s trivia knowledge.

Other interesting tidbits from the story include the fact that Siri now has a massive 375 million active monthly users, and that Siri’s new, more natural voice was inspired in part by the movie Her.

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Logitech Circle 2 Camera Now Supports HomeKit

By Ryan Christoffel

Earlier this summer Logitech released a new home security camera called the Circle 2. The camera is sleek and can be adapted to work well in different areas of the home thanks to a variety of accessories like a window mount or plug mount. Today, thanks to loosened restrictions for HomeKit devices Apple introduced alongside iOS 11, the Circle 2 is receiving HomeKit support through a software update.

At the time of its release, Logitech announced that HomeKit support would be added in a future update, but there were conflicting reports on exactly how that would work. Today in the press release where Logitech confirmed that HomeKit support has now arrived, they clarify that it is only available on the wired model of the camera. According to a Logitech PR rep who spoke with 9to5Mac, the wired requirement is one imposed by Apple, so it is unlikely to change anytime soon for owners of the wireless model. Instructions for setting up the wired Circle 2 with HomeKit are available in a support document.

The wired Circle 2 camera is available now from many retailers for $179.95, and Logitech notes that Apple stores will begin selling the product in October.

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