Yesterday saw the release of thousands of apps optimized, enhanced, or, in some cases, completely redesigned for iOS 7. At MacStories, we highlighted several apps that were ready for the OS’ rollout such as Pocket, OmniFocus 2, or Instacast 4, and then we fired up iTunes – or simply waited for automatic updates to do their magic on iOS 7 – and checked out all the other apps that were also released yesterday. In this post, I thought I could offer a quick overview of iOS 7 updates from four big-name companies: Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo, and Google. Read more
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iOS 7 Updates: Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo Weather, and Google Chrome
Chrome For iOS Update Brings New Icon, Improved Voice Search and Navigation
Released earlier today on the App Store, Chrome for iOS version 29.0.1547.11 (according to Google’s release notes) brings various search and navigation improvements, as well as a new white-themed icon that seems to be aimed at making Chrome fit more with the upcoming aesthetic of iOS 7.
The first improvement is better handling of single sign on with other Google apps for iOS, something that the company has been focusing on lately to provide an even tighter integration between its apps for iPhones and iPads.
Alongside bug fixes and stability improvements, Google has added a way to more easily swipe back from a webpage to search results: when you search on Google and choose a result, when you go back to your search query you’ll see a new animation and, more importantly, your previous results instantly appear on screen. Switching back and forth between results was cumbersome in the old Chrome, as it wasn’t fast and often led to problems with the Google Search page reloading again.
Last, Google says that Voice Search has been enhanced with pronoun support for chaining queries like “Who is Barack Obama?” followed by “Who is his wife?”. in my tests, the feature worked as advertised with US English Voice Search, correctly displaying results for the aforementioned person/wife combination, as well as “What is the capital of Italy?” and “What is its population?”. However, improved pronoun support doesn’t seem to be working with Italian yet, which wouldn’t be surprising considering that Google rolled out international versions of Voice Search months after the US launch.
You can get the latest Chrome for iOS update on the App Store.
Shared Accounts In Google’s iOS Apps
Alex Chitu, reporting on a feature that I also noticed after YouTube’s 2.0 update:
If you enter the credentials of a Google account in the YouTube app and then open the AdSense app, you’ll find the new account and you can sign in without entering the password. If you remove an account, it will be removed from the other Google apps that support this feature. I assume that most Google apps for iOS will be updated to use this brilliant feature.
Once I logged into YouTube with my account (on an iOS 7 device), I then fired up the AdSense app (that I had just downloaded from the App Store) and my account was already listed in the screen with available accounts. It does seem like the YouTube and AdSense apps are capable of sharing accounts so users won’t have to log into their account every time in each Google app. AdSense didn’t bring up an authorization screen in YouTube – it just recognized the account that I had set up in YouTube.
Google’s documentation for YouTube confirms this, but doesn’t specify which iOS apps support shared accounts:
If you’ve signed in with another Google app on your iOS device, you may see this account listed.
Google’s explanation isn’t clear; the shared account option isn’t mentioned in the documentation for Gmail and Chrome. Upon signing out from the YouTube app, an alert dialog reads:
To sign in again, just select one of your Google accounts saved on this device. You will not be required to enter your password. To remove a saved account, tap “Sign In” > “Manage” > “Remove”.
It’ll be interesting to see if and when shared accounts will be integrated with Google’s other iOS apps. In the past few months, Google enhanced the inter-app communication capabilities of Gmail, Maps, Drive, and Chrome with the ability to open links in other apps, completely foregoing the need to launch Apple apps like Safari, Maps, or Mail.
Furthermore, Google is also providing an SDK for developers to add this functionality to their apps (for web links), showcasing examples of third-party apps that support Chrome. While Google apps won’t have the same kind of system integration that they have on Android, the combination of URL callbacks and shared accounts could help the creation of a “Google app ecosystem” on iOS.
YouTube 2.0 For iOS Released With Picture-in-Picture, Updated Design
Today, Google has officially launched version 2.0 of its YouTube app on the App Store, bringing a tweaked user interface, new icon, and picture-in-picture to the mobile client.
The big new feature of this version is picture-in-picture for videos, which allows you to keep watching a video while browsing or searching. This has been a popular option of third-party clients such as FoxTube for quite a while, and, in Google’s implementation, the player can be dismissed with a tap on an arrow button or a swipe down directly on the video player. Both on the iPhone and iPad, dismissing the player reveals a delightful animation and transition that quickly sends the video down to the bottom of the screen, where you can tap again to enlarge it, or swipe it away to close it.
Overall, the improved animations of the app are much snappier and responsive than version 1.4, and there are dozens of new transitions, translucency effects, and subtle interface hints that contribute to making navigation faster and fluid.
More importantly, YouTube 2.0 packs a tweaked design – starting from the icon – that suggests Google has been getting its iOS apps ready for the major 7.0 update coming to iOS this Fall. The app gets rid of several textures and graphical elements for a more subdued design with a focus on colors (red for selections, gray for the sidebar, whitespace for navigation and search results), transparency, gestures, and animations. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine Google going one step further with this new design and enhancing with iOS 7-only APIs such as blurs and physics effects once iOS 7 is available. The new app doesn’t mimic the look of Apple’s iOS 7 apps, but it does look like Google’s way of easing users into iOS 7’s (fast-approaching) future.
Based on my initial tests, YouTube 2.0 seems to be a powerful and welcome improvement over the old version. The picture-in-picture player is a great addition, and the app has a cleaner, more responsive interface.
YouTube 2.0 is available on the App Store.
Resolve Short URLs with Pythonista on iOS
I don’t like it when third-party apps or services force me to share links to articles or webpages using their own custom shortened links. I understand the appeal of personalized short domains – after all, we tweet mcstr.net links with the @macstoriesnet account – as they can provide analytics to track clicks, can save characters, and, at least in theory, they “look cool”. However, I’ve been long considering the idea of dropping our mcstr.net links, but I think the issue is worse (and more annoying) for apps and services that don’t tweet links to their own content (like we do) but that override others’ links with different domains. An example is Pocket, which gives you the clean, original URL when you choose the “Copy Link” action from the sharing menu, but that instead returns pocket.co links when sending text to Drafts (which I do often). I’ve grown tired of this practice (in Pocket and other services), and I’ve put together a workflow based on a Python script that allows me to easily resolve short links without having to open the browser and tap on multiple menus. Read more
Google’s Document On Data Compression In Chrome For iOS→
Last week, I wondered whether Google’s new data compression feature for Chrome for iOS was partially motivated by the inability to use the Nitro engine to speed up page load times. Today, I have stumbled upon the technical document that details how the data-saving process actually works – in short, it uses Google’s proxy to optimize web traffic sent by Chrome.
The proxy server receives the request initiated on the mobile device, initiates a request for the required resource on your behalf, and then optimizes each asset before delivering it back to the client. The content optimization is performed by our open-source PageSpeed libraries, which are specifically tuned for the Chrome Mobile browser. The rendering of the page, and all JavaScript execution, is performed by the client’s browser.
Of note, the transcoding of images from JPEG and PNG to WebP:
Over 60% of the transferred bytes, for an average page, are images. Hence, the proxy takes great care to optimize and transcode all images to the WebP format, which requires fewer bytes than other popular formats, such as JPEG and PNG. The proxy supports the new WebP lossless format for certain images, and also optimizes the perceptual quality of each image based on device screen resolution and pixel density of your device.
I’ve never been a fan of speed optimization through proxies personally, but I’m curious to try out Google’s implementation. The feature is still rolling out for Chrome users on iOS.
Google Maps for iPad Now Available
With a 2.0 update released today on the App Store, Google has brought Google Maps to the iPad, adding the enhancements and new features that the company announced last week.
Google Maps, first released in December 2012 following Apple’s apology for issues with their own iOS 6 Maps service, can now take advantage of improved navigation with accident information and live traffic reports whenever available; using Zagat and Offers, Google Maps can now recommend the best places around you with reviews and exclusive deals; for selected areas, Google Maps features indoor mapping for malls, train stations, and airports.
Results for businesses are displayed on a grid that shows inline photo previews, distance from your current location, and total amount of available reviews; tapping on a result brings up a dedicated page with buttons to save, share (via Message, Mail, or Clipboard), get directions, see Street View, and view photos.
The app now puts more focus on discovering places to “eat, drink, sleep, and shop” with a new card-based layout that aims at simplifying the process of finding nearby businesses. As we expected, Maps for iPad follows Google’s relaunched web app and client for Android tablets in the way it displays large, full-screen map views with search boxes and “cards” on the left side of the screen to find places, see suggestions, and preview directions. A list button in the top left corner of the app allows you to view Traffic and Public Transit information (if available for your area); directions are displayed in a floating card with alternate routes stacked directly below it. Overall, the iPad app is consistent with the design language and animations of the iPhone app and redesigned web experience.
It’s also possible to cache a portion of a map for offline usage (what Google calls “pre-loading”). Simply zoom into an area, and search for “OK Maps” to activate the command that will tell the app to save a cache of the currently displayed area. In my tests, this indeed enabled me to load cached areas with no Internet connection available – without, however, being able to use search or anything else. Also, if you try to save larger areas with the “OK Maps” command, Google will warn you that the map is too large for pre-loading.
Google Maps 2.0 is available on the App Store.
Gmail for iOS Gets New Inbox, Improved Notification Settings
Announced last week, Google has today released an update to its official Gmail app for iOS that adds support to the new inbox and brings finer controls for push notifications.
The new inbox, configurable from Gmail’s desktop website, allows you to enable different categories for “primary” emails and other messages such as promotions, social updates, or notifications from online forums. As we described the feature last week, “categories and tabs are basically pre-defined filters and labels with training wheels”. Messages can be moved from a tab to another to train Gmail’s algorithm in better automatic organization; currently, Gmail will try its best to automatically sort an incoming message into the appropriate category, but there isn’t an option to create new custom categories from scratch.
The Gmail app now shows Inbox categories in the account sidebar, where they’re listed with custom icons and colored badges for unread emails in each category. Like the desktop website, you can move messages across categories, but you can’t configure the Inbox directly on iOS (the app will remind you to open Gmail “on a computer” to do that).
Gmail’s notifications have been updated to reflect the change. With today’s update, you can set notifications for all new mail, none, or only messages that are marked as “primary”. Notification settings are available inside each account, where you can also activate your mobile signature and vacation responder.
Gmail for iOS is available on the App Store. For a refresher on the new Inbox, here’s Google’s blog post from last week.
Gmail Introduces Categories With a Tabbed Interface, Gradually Rolling Out Over the Coming Weeks→
Today, Google announced new features for Gmail that sorts your inbox into various categories for social network notifications, receipts and shipping updates, and promotions from your favorite shopping sites. While Priority Inbox made an attempt to surface only the stuff that really mattered, categories breaks the inbox down to a series of tabs that should help cut down on some of the clutter. Categories and tabs are basically pre-defined filters and labels with training wheels.
On the desktop, the new inbox groups your mail into categories which appear as different tabs. You simply choose which categories you want and voilà! Your inbox is organized in a way that lets you see what’s new at a glance and decide which emails you want to read when.
Categories for Android, iOS, and the desktop will be gradually rolling out to Gmail users and their respective app stores over the coming weeks. In the meantime, be sure to check out The Verge, who have an initials hands-on with the latest features.