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Emoji++ Is an Emoji Keyboard That Makes Sense

I wouldn’t consider myself a professional emoji user as Casey Liss, but, like many others, I do use emoji to enrich communications with friends and colleagues on a daily basis. Apple’s Emoji keyboard never made much sense to me: it’s hard to find the right emoji in the keyboard’s questionable category choices and characters are organized in pages that you need to swipe multiple times. I often want to use new emoji I haven’t sent before, and it always feels like I’m playing a guessing game against iOS to remember where the koala or the monkeys are.

Thankfully, Underscore David Smith has accepted the challenge of improving the emoji keyboard and released Emoji++ today, an iOS 8 custom keyboard that makes it easier to find and use emoji.

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Firmware Update Brings CarPlay to Selected Pioneer Products

Pioneer has today issued firmware updates for several of their aftermarket in-dash receivers that brings direct support for Apple’s CarPlay software. The firmware update is available for users of Pioneer’s AVIC-F60DAB, AVIC-F960DAB, AVIC-F960BT, AVIC-F860BT and the AVH-X8600BT dashboard systems, as well as the new SPH-DA120 model.

“CarPlay enriches the iPhone experience in the vehicle by providing a safer way to access the iPhone features they want to use most while driving,” said Philippe Weyers, marketing communication manager at Pioneer Europe. “With Pioneer’s implementation, CarPlay can now be integrated into millions of vehicles already on the road.”

Spotify has also updated its app today, bringing support for CarPlay. It joins other apps such as Podcasts, Beats Music, iHeartRadio, MLB At Bat, Stitcher and CBS News in supporting CarPlay.

Apple has partnered with dozens of car manufacturers, as well as Pioneer and Alpine, to bring an improved experience for iPhone users in cars. By leveraging the power of Siri, CarPlay focuses on making it easier and safer to accomplish basic tasks while driving. You can learn more about CarPlay here. 

Paste+, a Clipboard Action Widget

When iOS 8 launched three weeks ago, I came across a company called Avanio Labs that had launched a set of three apps on the App Store: Paste+, Agenda+, and Forecast+. The apps were presented as Notification Center widgets, and I found that interesting as I assumed that Apple would reject apps that only offered widgets with no primary functionality. Of Avanio’s three apps, I’ve been using Paste+ on a daily basis. I think it’s a nice little utility to save taps and launch specific iOS features faster with Notification Center.

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Implementing iOS 8 Document Pickers

The new document picker and provider functionality in iOS 8 is exciting technology because it expands on the possibilities of what we are capable of doing with our devices. We are already seeing a flood of great apps integrating document pickers and extensions from developers like Dropbox, Panic, and Readdle. I recently had the need for the new UIDocumentPicker functionality so I decided to dive in and see what it takes to implement the feature. As it turns out, getting a basic implementation is extremely easy and only requires a few lines of code. Of course, this is well documented by Apple and seasoned developers will have no problems implementing a picker but for us noobs it helps to see the process laid out – so here is a brief walkthrough.

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The Future of Apple and Google→

A thoughtful article by Steve Cheney. This point was particularly interesting:

New frameworks for devices to interact with the physical world have arrived and will further Apple’s lead. These are important to the growth of the platforms. These include BLE, iBeacon, NFC and other areas adjacent to discovery and the purchase funnel. These short range technologies (when made developer-friendly through APIs) allow phones to connect with the nearby world (the ‘edge’ or last 50 feet), much like GPS allowed phones to connect with the outdoor sky 10 years ago. This short range RF stack is maturing rapidly, but it’s still a little bit like GPS was 5-10 years ago. Back then the apps sucked—remember the first Garmin device you had to plug in to your cigarette lighter, which had no real apps or expansion capability? Or the first time you used maps on a Nokia series 40 phone? The applications were bad, the devices sucked, and the developer tools were non-existent. Now every single app you download uses location and you can get a car delivered to your house in 5 minutes, all enabled by GPS.

It took years for GPS to become widespread, but it has changed how we live. Seems clear that near-field discovery and communication will do the same.

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The Man Behind the Apple Watch→

Vogue has published an in-depth profile of Jony Ive today, revealing details of Ive’s friendship with Marc Newson, his passion for handcrafted objects, and the design process of the Apple Watch.

From the article:

Five years later, a disenchanted Ive was about to leave when Jobs returned to reboot the then-floundering Apple, which happened, by most analyses, when Jobs enabled Ive. By Ive’s account, the two hit it off immediately. “It was literally the meeting showing him what we’d worked on,” Ive says, “and we just clicked.” Ive talks about feeling a little apart, like Jobs. “When you feel that the way you interpret the world is fairly idiosyncratic, you can feel somewhat ostracized and lonely”—big laugh here—“and I think that we both perceived the world in the same way.”

And U2’s Bono on Ive and Newson:

“They’re a bit like non-identical twins separated at birth,” jokes Bono. They finish each other’s sentences. “They finish each other’s food,” adds Bono. “The kind of emotional and physical attraction people develop with Apple products shouldn’t really be possible, but take a look around you.” Friends marvel as Ive shifts from the guy cracking jokes to the solemn Sir Jonathan Ive. “Jony is deadly serious,” says Bono, who first met Ive when Jobs dispatched him to an Irish pub to salvage a U2–Apple iPod promotion. “He is also serious fun to be around. When you go out for a pint with Jony, it’s kind of like going for a pint with the future, which is cool except you know he’s not telling you what they’ve really got planned.”

According to the article, Vogue was given a private demo of the Apple Watch weeks ahead of the product’s announcement. Yesterday, Apple organized a special event at the Colette boutique in Paris that marked the public debut of the Apple Watch.

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Apple Asks Developers to Start Submitting OS X Yosemite Apps

Apple today notified registered developers that Mac App Store submissions are now open for OS X Yosemite apps. Apple repeated its previous statement that Yosemite will be made available to customers “later this fall”, but it may arrive as early as next week. By comparison, Apple notified developers to submit their OS X Mavericks apps last year on October 15, with Mavericks becoming available to customers a week later on October 22.

Add powerful new functionality throughout OS X Yosemite with app extensions, explore the innovative new Swift programming language, and take advantage of advances in game technologies, Safari, iCloud, and more. To prepare your apps for the Mac App Store, download and build with the OS X Yosemite GM candidate and Xcode 6.1 GM seed from the Mac Dev Center. With these latest releases, Swift is now final and you can submit your Mac apps written with Swift to the Mac App Store.