Linked List: November 19, 2014

Wednesday, 19 November 2014

‘Get’ Is the New ‘Free’ 

Juli Clover, reporting for MacRumors:

Apple has changed the wording for free games in its App Store, and the app purchase buttons that once read “Free” for apps with no cost now read “Get” instead. The change has been implemented on both the iOS App Store and the desktop App Store. […]

It is not entirely clear why Apple has decided to replace Free with Get, but it may have to do with the growing sentiment that apps with in-app purchases are not free. Earlier this year, the European Commission asked Apple and Google to implement changes to the way they sell apps, to avoid misleading customers about “free” games that are not actually free.

Red: A Kubrick Supercut 

90-second supercut of Kubrick’s use of the color red, by Rishi Kaneria.

(Via Coudal, of course.)

David Smith on WatchKit 

David Smith:

Today Apple unveiled WatchKit. I am very pleasantly surprised by how capable it is. In my Expectations for WatchKit article I outlined that I thought we’d see a two phase roll-out of the platform. Starting with pretty limited capabilities that would then be expanded at next year’s WWDC. It turns out that I was only half correct. It is two phase but the first phase is much more capable than I was expecting.

In the first phase we will be able to build Glances, Actionable Notifications and iPhone powered apps. The last of which has me most excited.

iMore’s WatchKit Overview 

Good summary of WatchKit from Serenity Caldwell. Or rather, a good summary of this initial release of WatchKit. As she points out, Apple even stated in its press release yesterday, “Starting later next year, developers will be able to create fully native apps for Apple Watch.” The long and short of this initial WatchKit SDK is that the Watch acts as a remote display, with limited interactivity, for code that runs in an extension on your iPhone. Apple Watch’s system apps are not limited like that — they run natively on the watch itself. Eventually, third-party apps will too.

In a sense, this is like 2007 all over again. The native APIs almost certainly aren’t finished, and battery life is a huge concern. But with the Watch, Apple is ahead of where they were with the iPhone. This initial SDK is limited, but it’s way better than the shit sandwich we got for the original iPhone at WWDC in 2007.

‘Trusted Places’ Feature Allows Location-Based Unlocking for Android Devices 

Ryan Whitwam, writing for Android Police:

Smart Lock in Lollipop encompasses both trusted face and trusted devices, but a new option is joining the party — trusted places. The latest Google Play Services for Lollipop devices is adding this option to the menu automagically. Just choose a trusted place, and your phone will remain unlocked when it’s in that geographic area.

Cool feature. I can’t find it, but I recall suggesting something like this as an iOS feature a year or two ago. Touch ID mitigates the need to some extent, but I still think it’d be nice to have my iPad remain unlocked while it’s in my home. (And it’s going to be a few years until most iOS devices in use have Touch ID.)

Update: Here’s a post from June where I wrote about it, vis-à-vis an Apple patent filing for location-based security.