Ryan Christoffel

684 posts on MacStories since November 2016

Ryan is an editor for MacStories and co-hosts the Adapt podcast on Relay FM. He most commonly works and plays on his iPad Pro and bears no regrets about moving on from the Mac. He and his wife live in New York City.

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Email Service Newton Launches Amazon Alexa Support

Newton, the email client for power users, today launched Amazon Echo integration with an Alexa skill. The skill enables email management with nothing but your voice; in addition to having Alexa read emails to you, you can perform the following list of actions by voice:

  • Snooze
  • Mark as read
  • Delete
  • Archive
  • Mark as spam

Replying to or composing new emails is not possible with Alexa, but personally, I don’t think I would trust a voice assistant to write my emails anyways – at least not until the technology grows more foolproof. The option to perform simple actions by voice, like archiving or snoozing messages, is much more appealing.

Newton’s expansion to Alexa-equipped devices follows the introduction of a Windows version of the client in beta form earlier this week. As a daily Newton user, I wrote about the iOS and macOS versions last Friday for Club MacStories members, and look forward to seeing the service continue to grow and improve.

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Apple Watch Support Removed from Major Apps

Neil Hughes of AppleInsider reports that major apps like Google Maps, Amazon, and eBay have all quietly removed support for the Apple Watch.

Google released a comment on the story stating their intention to reinstate Watch support in the future.

While apps like Amazon and eBay may not be well-suited for the Apple Watch to begin with, the bigger story here is how long it took for anyone to notice that the Watch apps were removed. Hughes writes:

The fact that these high-profile removals have gone largely unnoticed could be a sign that the apps simply were not widely used. In contrast, removing iPad support from an iOS app, for example, would likely be noticed immediately and generate headlines.

The Apple Watch has proven to be a challenging platform for developers to find success on. Initially that could be attributed to slow hardware and limited developer tools, but Apple has made significant improvements with watchOS 3 and its 2nd-generation hardware. Perhaps part of the challenge is that not every app belongs on the Apple Watch, and for the ones that do, the implementation has to be just right.

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Dispelling the Apple Services Myth

Apple is known for its quality hardware and software, but services are another story.

Cloud-based services are the future – there’s no denying that. And Apple historically has struggled with its cloud offerings. From MobileMe, to the early growing pains of iCloud, to the Apple Maps fiasco, the company gained a poor reputation in the area of services.

Only in the last two years has Apple publicly touted services as a core part of its business. Company press releases as recent as May 2015 ended with the following self-definition:

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad.

There’s a lot that feels outdated here, including the fact that both Mac and iPod are highlighted before the iPhone. But one major way this paragraph fails to describe the Apple of today is that the word ‘services’ is nowhere to be found.

Amid a variety of other changes, Apple’s current self-definition includes the following:

Apple’s four software platforms — iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS — provide seamless experiences across all Apple devices and empower people with breakthrough services including the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay and iCloud.

Services are a key component of modern Apple. The way the company defines itself, along with the numerous services shoutouts in quarterly earnings calls, prove that.

Despite Apple’s increased focus on services, the common narrative that the company “can’t do services” still hangs around – in online tech circles at least.

But is that narrative still true, or has it grown outdated?

I want to share how I use Apple services in my everyday life across three important contexts of life:

  • As I work,
  • On the go, and
  • Around the house.

My aim is not to perform an in-depth comparison of Apple’s cloud offerings and competing products. Though competitors and their features will come up occasionally, the focus here is on my experiences in everyday living – my experiences, not yours. I understand that just because something does or doesn’t work for me, the same isn’t necessarily true for you. The point of this piece is not to try proving anything; instead, I simply want to assess and share my current experiences with Apple’s services.

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Latest iWork Updates Bring Back Previously-Removed Numbers Features

Apple released updates to its iWork suite across iOS and macOS today. The changes largely consist of bug fixes and stability improvements, but a couple of notable improvements were made to Numbers.

In the last big update for Numbers, a new cell action menu was added to handle common tasks like copying/pasting, adding formulas, and more. But with the arrival of this cell menu, a couple subtractions were also made: the numeric keyboard on iPad was removed, along with the copy/paste menu that would appear when you selected a cell. Federico covered the details of those changes in his recent iPad Diaries story on Numbers. But with today’s update, both of those items have now been restored to the app.

In the past when Apple has removed features from an app, those features often would never come back, or if they did it took a while. I’m thankful that Numbers users don’t have to wait any longer to work in the app the way they’re used to.


Nike Announces New, Limited Edition Apple Watch Dubbed ‘NikeLab’

Nike has news out today concerning the latest fruits of its partnership with Apple. A new model of Apple Watch called ‘Apple Watch NikeLab’ is coming soon:

The limited edition, neutral-toned Apple Watch NikeLab maintains the beloved features of its predecessor: deep integration with the Nike+ Run Club app, exclusive Siri commands, GPS, a two-times-brighter display and water resistance to 50 meters, all made possible by a powerful dual-core processor and watchOS 3. ​

I don’t understand why Nike felt the need to give this Watch a new name rather than releasing it as an extension of the Nike+ line. Perhaps it’s simply a marketing angle, as they are presenting the NikeLab as a limited edition model.

If you’d like to get your hands on the Apple Watch NikeLab, it goes on sale April 27th on nike.com, at NikeLab stores, and at an Apple Tokyo pop-up in Isetan. Assuming this is a comprehensive list of sellers, it means you won’t be able to get the Watch from the Apple Store. It also appears unlikely that the band will be available for separate purchase, though that remains unclear.


Live Photos Can Now Be Embedded on the Web

Apple’s developer site details a new API that makes it possible to embed Live Photos on the web:

This new JavaScript-based API makes it easy to embed Live Photos on your websites. In addition to enabling Live Photos on iOS and macOS, you can now let users display their Live Photos on the web.

Live Photos were first introduced in September 2015 alongside the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. Since then, their adoption across major social media platforms and other parts of the web has been slow.

Today’s news is welcome, as it will hopefully help expand the reach of Live Photos beyond the sandbox of photo apps on iOS.

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Apple Sets Goal of Making Products Without Mining the Earth

Arielle Duhaime-Ross writes for VICE News about an ambitious new goal for Apple:

Apple has one of the most aggressive sustainability and recycling programs in tech, but it still pulls plenty of metals and toxic rare-earth materials out of the ground to make iPhones, iPads, Macbooks and other products.

That’s about to change. The company is set to announce a new, unprecedented goal for the tech industry, “to stop mining the earth altogether.”

The announcement, part of Apple’s 2017 Environment Responsibility Report released Wednesday, will commit the company to making devices entirely from recycled materials such as aluminum, copper, tin, and tungsten. But there’s one hiccup: Apple doesn’t know exactly how it’s going to make that happen.

Setting ambitious goals seems to be part of Apple’s culture, but speaking about such goals publicly before the team has reached them – or before they even know how to reach them – is very different from the company’s norm.

VICE's photo of AirPods and Apple Watch cases in artificial sweat.

VICE’s photo of AirPods and Apple Watch cases in artificial sweat.

Aside from this announcement, the piece also features interesting details about some of Apple’s other environmental efforts. One of the stranger tidbits is that Apple soaks certain products in synthetic human sweat to test their durability over time – a fact also highlighted in the company’s new environmental videos.

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Apple Shares New Videos Highlighting Environmental Efforts

Four new videos were released by Apple this morning, each focusing on a different aspect of the company’s environmental efforts. The videos feature different Apple employees who have roles focused on the environment, and they all share a similar artistic style and comedic tone.

One video shares how Apple creates artificial sweat to test the durability of its Apple Watch bands, another discusses how Apple Park was designed with a high level of “breathability,” a third covers Apple’s ambitions to produce zero waste company-wide, and the final video is about how solar farms can co-exist with traditional farming.

Video embeds after the break.

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Apple Announces New Activity Challenge for Earth Day

This morning Apple notified Apple Watch users that the company’s third activity challenge was coming up soon. Following challenges for Thanksgiving (U.S. only) and the start of the new year, the latest challenge is in celebration of Earth Day on Saturday, April 22nd.

This new challenge encourages Apple Watch owners to complete a 30-minute or longer walk, run, cycle, wheelchair, or swim workout on Earth Day. Doing so will earn a special Achievement in the Activity app, as well as unlock a few new iMessage stickers.

My wife and I are two-for-two on prior activity challenges, so I’m sure we’ll aim for the trifecta and complete the Earth Day challenge as well. If Apple pushed these challenges more frequently, they might be less motivating, but so far I think the company has struck a healthy level of frequency by centering challenges around special occasions.