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Apple Adds More Channels to Apple TV, YouTube Channel Gets a New Design

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The Apple TV yesterday received four more channels, with UFC, The Scene, Fusion and Dailymotion joining the dozens of other channels available on the device. The above image is an update to our original article that visualizes the addition of Apple TV channels since the Apple TV 2 launched (the original black puck version).

The Apple TV also got an update to the long-standing YouTube channel, featuring a new design and new features. The highlights of this update includes predictive search, personalized recommendations and the ability to subscribe to channels. It probably wouldn’t be considered a ‘feature’, but the updated YouTube channel now also supports advertisements before videos. You can watch a brief promotional video from Google that talks about the update below.

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ICONIC: A Photographic Tribute to Apple Innovation [Sponsor]

I’d like to tell you about a very cool coffee table book – it’s a book about Apple.

Back in 2009, a guy named Jonathan Zufi collected and photographed pretty much every single product Apple has ever made since 1976 and produced this stunning coffee table book. It’s called ICONIC: A Photographic Tribute to Apple Innovation.

If there was ever a perfect gift for the Apple fan – or history buff – this is it. 350 beautifully designed pages and hundreds of fantastic photos of basically every product Apple has ever made – every desktop, laptop, iOS device, printer, and even the old gaming devices, it’s all in here and I guarantee you’ll see some products that you didn’t even know Apple made. There’s an amazing chapter about prototypes and there’s also a chapter on packaging – all the boxes that came with all this amazing technology.

I personally own a copy of the original ICONIC book, and it’s indeed stunning. The book feels great, photographs are professional and well laid out – I had no idea some Apple products existed, but ICONIC provided a great visual intro.

ICONIC includes a foreword by Steve Wozniak and hundreds of amazing quotes from other Apple pundits – it’s really something.

The book comes in a few different versions including a version in a book case that looks like an old Apple floppy drive, and a new ‘UItimate Edition’ that ships in a white clamshell with an embedded glowing standby light that pulses just like the old sleep indicators on the MacBook Pros. It’s really worth seeing so visit iconicbook.com and take a look.

You can order the Classic Edition at Amazon, but if you decide you want the Classic Plus, Special, or Ultimate Editions then enter the code macstories when you check out for a 10% discount.

My thanks to ICONIC for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Apple Debuts ‘Change’ Advert for the iPad Air 2

Overnight Apple published a new advert for the iPad Air 2 called ‘Change’. Unlike their previous ‘Your Verse’ iPad adverts, which focused on how one person or small group used the iPad, this latest advert is a fast-paced montage of many different people using the iPad in many different ways.

Those apps featured in the advert include iStopMotion, AutoCAD 360, Molecules, Animation Creator HD, and many more. In fact along with the advert is a new page on Apple’s website that is dedicated to highlighting every single app that was featured in the advert.

You can view the advert on YouTube or on Apple’s website, as well as embedded below.

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Apple Posts “Best of 2014” App Store and iTunes Store Lists

Apple has today published their “Best of 2014” iTunes and App Store lists, which include editorial picks for the best releases in apps, music, movies, TV shows, books and podcasts from 2014.

For the best apps and games, Apple has picked Elevate and Threes for the iPhone, Pixelmator and Monument Valley for the iPad and Notability and Tomb Raider for the Mac. Runners up were Hyperlapse and Leo’s Fortune for iPhone, Storehouse and Hearthstone for iPad and Affinity Designer and Transistor for Mac.

Some of the winners in the other categories include 1989 by Taylor Swift as the best music album, Guardians of the Galaxy as the best blockbuster movie, Fargo as TV show of the year, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr as the best fiction book, and Serial as the best new podcast. Although keep in mind that some of these lists vary from country to country.

Last year, Apple picked Wunderlist and XCOM: Enemy Unknown as winners for the Mac; Disney Animated and BADLAND for the iPad; and Duolingo and Ridiculous Fishing for the iPhone. In 2012, Apple picked Day One and Deus Ex: Human Revolution as winners for the Mac; Paper and The Room for the iPad; and Action Movie FX and Rayman Jungle Run for the iPhone.

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Virtual: Raichu’s Kind of a Bully→

This week Federico and Myke discuss music influenced by video games, revisit the Wii U as a viable platform, celebrate 20 years of PlayStation, give their first impressions of the new Pokemon games and bemoan what EA have done to Peggle.

Make sure to listen to the second Crying album I mentioned, and go check out USgamer’s retrospective on the original PlayStation. You can get the episode here.

Sponsored by:

  • lynda.com: An easy and affordable way to help individuals and organizations learn. Free 10-day trial.
  • Hover: Simplified Domain Management. Use code ‘MASTERBALL’ for 10% off your first purchase.
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Professional App Pricing→

Rob Rhyne, in response to Allen Pike’s post about the lack of a great app to record podcasts, has a few ideas about pricing professional software:

Professionals use your software to make money. If you can find a way for them to do their job faster or better, they will pay nearly any price. Did you purchase the maximum spec for your last computer or did you buy the cheapest you could find? Professionals always trade money for productivity. The real trick is building a product that makes them faster and better. Solve that problem and you can name your price.

I completely agree with Rob. Even on iOS, developers should consider creating professional software that’s aimed at a specific audience willing to pay what is a considered a “premium” on the App Store. There are examples of developers that understand this well, such as Teleprompt+, Numerics, Omni’s apps, and TrialPad.

If you can build a customer base that needs your app to get work done faster, there’s a good chance they’d be willing to pay higher prices and reward you with commitment to the product, constant suggestions and bug reports, and no inclination to be curious about competing products, even if they’re cheaper. I believe that’s true on any platform and digital marketplace.

For more on this topic, check out Michael Jurewitz’s blog posts from last year.

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Connected: Spinning Down This Rolodex→

Stephen, Myke and Federico discuss accents, social networks, web browsers and the Today widget fiasco. Myke has a headache again.

Back from the Twitter discussion of last week, we talk about Apple’s confusing policies for Today widgets and our different setups for Safari and Chrome on iOS and OS X. You can get the episode here.

Sponsored by:

  • lynda.com: An easy and affordable way to help individuals and organizations learn. Free 10-day trial.
  • Hover: Simplified Domain Management. Use code ‘PEBBLEFOREVER’ for 10% off your first purchase.
  • Iconic: A Photographic Tribute to Apple Innovation
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