iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus: Our Complete Overview

Today’s Apple event at the Flint Center in Cupertino was a whirlwind of powerful announcements surrounding the company’s line of iPhone products. After walking up on stage, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook announced the brand new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.

“iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are the biggest advancements in iPhone history,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “The iPhone is the most loved smartphone in the world with the highest customer satisfaction in the industry and we are making it much better in every way. Only Apple can combine the best hardware, software and services at this unprecedented level and we think customers are going to love it.”

Senior Vice President Phil Schiller then took the stage to run through the iPhone 6 enhancements at a swift pace. For the first time, Apple is simultaneously releasing multiple screen sizes – the iPhone will be available in a 4.7” and a 5.5” version. These phones will be technologically similar, varying only in screen resolution and slight camera model differences. They will sport a more powerful A8 64bit processor, larger Retina HD screen, and NFC technology for using the brand new Apple Pay service.
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Apple Announces iOS 8 Launching on September 17

As widely expected, Apple has today confirmed the official release date of iOS 8 at a media event held at the Flint Center in Cupertino, California. iOS 8 will be released on Wednesday, September 17th, for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

Announced at WWDC in June, iOS 8 builds upon last year’s redesign of iOS adding major new features such as extensions, custom keyboards, iCloud Photo Library, new group messaging options, and a new Health app. In extending iOS through user customization and developer APIs that let apps reach beyond their sandbox, iOS 8 will focus on offering new powerful functionalities that will create an opportunity for developers to build innovative, more flexible apps.

Apple hasn’t announced a Golden Master seed of iOS 8 yet, but it will presumably be released to developers today. Typically the last developer release before a public launch, the GM seed will allow developers to make final preparations to their iOS 8-ready apps and submit them to the App Store.

For more coverage, check out our September 9 news hub and follow @macstoriesnet on Twitter.

Square Enix Announces Game Streaming Service for iOS, Includes Final Fantasy VII and XIII

Square Enix announced their new video game streaming service earlier today, coming next month as an app for iOS and Android. Dive In, slated to launch on October 9th in Japan, will allow iOS users to play Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy XIII by streaming them from the company’s cloud, for a fee.

Kotaku writes about the games that will be added after the initial rollout:

In November, Final Fantasy VIII and The Last Remnant will be added. December will see Final Fantasy XIII-2, while Lightning Returns Final Fantasy XIII is slated for 2015.

Dive In will let gamers try out the titles in a thirty minute demo, free of charge. Streaming blocks of three days, ten days, thirty days, and 365 days, however, will require a fee—a fee which can vary from game to game.

Prices will vary from around $2 dollars for a three days’ worth of streaming to $12 for thirty days. According to the Dive In website, the app will run on both phones and tablets, with a 3Mbps WiFi connection required to stream and play games (6Mbps recommended).

In screenshots posted by Inside Games, Final Fantasy VII and XIII are shown with on-screen controls to make up for the lack of physical input on iOS and Android; at this point, it’s not clear whether Dive In will support iOS game controllers or if the app will eventually expand to OS X.

Last month, Square Enix confirmed that they would continue to port older titles in Dragon Quest series to mobile devices. Dive In appears to be part of the company’s Project Flare, a technology first announced in November 2013 and set to power several of the company’s future initiatives in cloud gaming.

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Our thanks to MailRoute for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Apple Events Channel Now Available on Apple TV to Stream Today’s Special Event Keynote

Apple has just made their ‘Apple Events’ channel accessible again from any Apple TV (2nd or 3rd generation), ahead of today’s Special Event keynote. The channel will allow users to stream the WWDC keynote from 10am, San Francisco time, as Apple previously announced. The channel also allows users to stream past Apple events (including WWDC), just in case you have some time to kill whilst you wait for today’s event.

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

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iOS 8 App Marketing Checklist→

Is your app ready for iOS 8? Have you updated it and added all the great functionality iOS 8 provides? That sounds great, but what should you do next? There are a few helpful (I hope) tips that I’m going to share.

Solid series of tips by Readdle’s Denys Zhadanov.

I’ll add these:

  • Use Tokens for promo codes;
  • Get in touch with the press early to give them (us) time to properly test apps and prepare coverage;
  • Consider Vine videos as a way to create easily shareable and digestible previews of new features in your app (see);
  • If you’re working on iOS 8 extensions, get in touch with other developers and try to figure out possible bugs together.
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The Hidden Structure of the Apple Keynote→

One of Apple’s most successful products—which rarely gets recognized as such—is made not of aluminum and glass, but of words and pictures. The Apple keynote is the tool the company uses a few times a year to unveil its other products to millions of people.

To understand their hidden structure, Quartz reviewed more than a dozen Apple keynotes, logging and analyzing key elements. Here’s what we found.

Dan Frommer collected interesting data about Apple keynotes over at Quartz. Good preparation for tomorrow.

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Mac Menu Bar Apps→

Ask any Mac power user about their menubar and you’ll get a different list of 5-10 must-have applications and utilities that boost productivity. The menubar is the mission control of a user’s computer, giving them an at-a-glance view of stats and apps that are important to them. The menubar can become so crowded, in fact, that’s there’s a menubar app that collects menubar apps. So meta.

Speaking of OS X features that haven’t been ported to iOS, Zach Hamed published an interesting look at the history of Mac menu bar apps last month.

As his images show, the landscape of menu bar apps is a jungle of different sizes, interfaces, keyboard shortcuts, and colors. It’s no surprise that Apple is setting strict and specific guidelines with iOS 8 widgets – admittedly, the closest thing to menu bar utilities we’ll soon get on our iPhones and iPads.

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