Linked List: June 8, 2015

Monday, 8 June 2015

Move to iOS 

Another fascinating item that didn’t make it into the keynote: Apple is introducing a new app called “Move to iOS”, for Android switchers:

Just download the Move to iOS app to wirelessly switch from your Android device to your new iOS device. It securely transfers your contacts, message history, camera photos and videos, web bookmarks, mail accounts, calendars, wallpaper, and DRM-free songs and books. And it will help you rebuild your app library, too. Any free apps you used — like Facebook and Twitter — are suggested for download from the App Store. And your paid apps are added to your iTunes Wish List.

It’s both an Android app and an iOS app.

Apple Music 

One thing that wasn’t clear to me in the keynote is just how much of the iTunes Store library is included with Apple Music. The most Apple is saying publicly is that Apple Music has “over 30 million songs”. From what I’ve been able to gather today, that pretty much means “everything”. There might be some exceptions, and there might be some deals that haven’t been finalized yet, but the idea is that for $10/month you get access to everything, from every artist.

A mild surprise (to me at least) is that they’re bringing it to Android. So: Does that mean Apple will be paying Google 30 percent of their revenue from Android users?

Apple WatchOS 2 Preview 

Some of these features, like the time lapse and photo watch faces, were shown at the September event — they must have been dropped in the race to ship 1.0 in April.

It wasn’t mentioned during the keynote, but Activation Lock is coming. (Finally.)