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Apple’s ResearchKit: Our Complete Overview

One of the unexpected announcements from Apple’s Spring Forward keynote this morning was ResearchKit. ResearchKit is a new initiative by Apple which will enable medical researchers to tap into the vast amount of iPhones in use around the world in order to gather new types of data on an unprecedented scale.

During the keynote, Jeff Williams, Apple’s senior vice president of Operations, took the stage to talk about the problems of medical research. Last year Apple announced a similar initiative, HealthKit, which was more focused on personal health. According to Williams, while talking to medical experts regarding HealthKit, the conversations often led to research and the problems that the field faced. Some of the biggest challenges to medical research, as Williams stated them, are limited participation (small sample sizes), subjective data, infrequent data, and one-way communication. He went on to say that there are hundreds of millions of iPhone users in the world, and many of them would gladly participate in these studies if it were only simpler and easier to do so.

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Apple Refreshes MacBook Air and MacBook Pro Lines

Alongside today’s new line of MacBooks, Apple also announced updates to its MacBook Air and MacBook Pro lines.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display has received Apple’s new Force Touch trackpad, as well as being updated to the latest fifth-generation Intel Core processors and Intel Iris Graphics 6100. Its flash storage has been updated to be two times faster, and its battery life has been increased as well (now advertised as 10 hours of battery life for web browsing and 12 hours for iTunes movie playback). Strangely, the 15-inch retina MacBook Pro has been left out of these updates.

The 11- and 13-inch MacBook Airs have both been updated to fifth generation Intel Core processors, Intel HD Graphics 6000, and Thunderbolt 2 connectors. The 13-inch MacBook Air received the bump to two times faster flash, but the 11-inch model did not.

The new 13-inch retina MacBook Pro and 11- and 13-inch MacBook Airs are all available for purchase today (MacBook Airs can be purchased online here, and MacBook Pros here). You can see Apple’s full press release here.

Apple’s All-New MacBook: Our Complete Overview

At this morning’s Spring Forward keynote event, Apple unveiled a brand new line of 12-inch retina MacBooks. Apple is calling this a “reinvention” of the notebook computer, a claim that is evident in every aspect of the new Mac’s composition.

Size and Display

The all-new notebooks are a mere 13.1 mm thin, and weigh in at just 2 pounds. Their 12-inch retina display has a resolution of 2304 x 1440 pixels, and at 0.88 mm thin, it’s the thinnest display ever included on a Mac. It also has a 16:10 aspect ratio and a 178 degree viewing angle. According to Apple, they have increased the size the aperture on every pixel on the display, boosting the new Mac’s energy efficiency by 30% while still maintaining the same level of brightness.

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Apple Watch at the ‘Spring Forward’ Keynote: Our Complete Overview

At Apple’s ‘Spring Forward’ keynote held earlier today at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, Apple provided more details about the Apple Watch, which will open for pre-orders on April 10 and launching on April 24. Today’s keynote was mostly a recap of last September’s announcement of the Apple Watch, with a handful of new details sprinkled throughout, read on to get all the key details. Read on to get an overview of the important announcements from today, but if you’re looking for more information, look no further than the Apple Watch website or the keynote video.

“Apple Watch begins a new chapter in the way we relate to technology and we think our customers are going to love it,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We can’t wait for people to start wearing Apple Watch to easily access information that matters, to interact with the world, and to live a better day by being more aware of their daily activity than ever before.”

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‘Spring Forward’ Keynote Video Now Available for Streaming

Apple has now posted the video of its ‘Spring Forward’ keynote held earlier today in San Francisco. The video can be streamed here, and a higher quality version should be made available in a few hours through iTunes (on the Apple Keynotes podcast). To avoid streaming errors, Safari is recommended for the best viewing experience.

For more coverage, check out our ‘Spring Forward’ keynote news hub and follow @macstoriesnet on Twitter.

Apple Announces HBO Now and Lowers Price on AppleTV

The good news is that the rumors about HBO Now[1] were true:

Apple and HBO today announced HBO NOW is premiering next month [April 2015], making an HBO subscription available directly to Apple customers for the first time ever. iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and Apple TV users can purchase HBO NOW directly in-app as a standalone service to watch every episode of every season of the best of HBO’s original programming, as well as the biggest and latest Hollywood hit movies, groundbreaking documentaries, sports and exclusive comedy specials—for just $14.99 a month.

This is good news, especially for those of you anticipating the upcoming premier of Game of Thrones season five. Hopefully some of this money will go towards solving HBO’s previous problems keeping up with video demand for Game of Thrones. However, there was some very small print at the bottom of the screen (and which isn’t mentioned in the press release): “HBO NOW is only accessible in the US and certain US territories. Some restrictions may apply.”

Assuming that Apple handles this the same way it handles other subscriptions, one big convenience of HBO Now will be the ability to cancel your HBO subscription without having to call your cable/satellite TV provider and sit through a “Retention Specialist” trying to convince you to keep it. So if you only want to keep it while Game of Thrones is on, that will be easier.

In related news, Apple had news about the AppleTV! But if that made you excited because you hoped they were going to update the AppleTV, or at least the user-interface, well, sorry. It’s not getting better, but it is going to be cheaper. It will now sell for $70 instead of $100. Which is a good price, but the AppleTV really looks outdated and clunky compared to the Roku and Amazon Fire TV.

Apple press release about HBO Now

  1. Apple and HBO want you to capitalize it “NOW” but there’s no need to be that shouty. ↩︎

Apple Events Channel Now Available on Apple TV to Stream Today’s ‘Spring Forward’ Keynote

Those with an Apple TV can now access the Apple Events channel, ahead of today’s ‘Spring Forward’ keynote. The channel will allow users to stream the keynote live, from 10am San Francisco time, as Apple previously announced. The channel also allows users to stream past Apple events, just in case you have some time to kill whilst you wait for today’s event to start.

For those without an Apple TV, you will also be able to stream today’s keynote from Apple’s website if you use Safari on Mac or iOS. You can also follow our March 9 Event hub for updates, or subscribe through RSS to our dedicated March 9 event feed.

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A Week in the Life of Indie Developers

We’re always trying to think of new and interesting stories to publish on MacStories, and often times they’re articles that are a complete experiment that we honestly don’t know how they’ll turn out – this is one of those articles.

Earlier this year I published an article that was essentially just a list of indie iOS/Mac developers and we got a great reaction to it (and we promise an update is coming). Inspired by the developers featured in that article, I asked a handful of them to write a journal of what they do in a week of development, and for some crazy reason, they agreed to contribute. Those generous developers are (in no particular order) Oisin and Padraig from Supertop, David Smith, Philip Simpson from Shifty Jelly, Greg Pierce from Agile Tortoise, and Junjie from Clean Shaven Apps.

I asked each of the developers to keep track of the work they did in the week of Sunday 22 February to Saturday 28 February. But I wasn’t specific in the format, other than to say I wanted something along the lines of a journal crossed with a time sheet. That was partly because I really didn’t know what would work well, but also because I wanted to be flexible and let the developers just write what they thought was appropriate. I had no idea what to expect, and was a bit nervous that the whole thing might fall apart because I hadn’t been specific enough about what I was looking for.

Fortunately, the result is fascinating, I found myself not only entertained but educated as I read through each of their journals. You’ll find that each journal is quite vastly different, not just in their writing style but also how they work as an indie developer. I know it’s a long read (certainly longer than I had anticipated), but stick with it – there are some great surprises throughout.

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Apple Found Its Newest Billboards on the Internet→

Brendan Klinkenberg, writing for BuzzFeed on Apple’s new ad campaign for iPhone 6 photography:

Last December, when the Bay Area had one of its rare rainy days, Cielo de la Paz took her kids out to play. She’s an avid photographer, “willing to wake up at five in the morning and hike 10 miles to get that shot of the sunrise,” and when she saw the reflection of her red umbrella on the wet concrete, she knew she had a good one.

“It took a few shots,” she said, “this was the last one I took, I was finally happy with how the wind arranged the leaves for me.”

She edited the shot with Filterstorm Neue, uploaded the picture to Flickr (she was taking part in the photo365 challenge), where Apple found it.

Very nice of Apple to use these real photos in billboards around the world, too.

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