Linked List: September 24, 2020

Thursday, 24 September 2020

Luna, Amazon’s Upcoming Cloud Gaming Service, Will Run on iOS Via the Web ★

Michael McWhertor, writing for Polygon:

Amazon is throwing its hat into the cloud gaming ring with Luna, a new game streaming technology that’s coming to PCs, mobile devices, and Amazon’s own Fire TV hardware. Starting today, customers in the U.S. can request an invitation for early access to Luna, Amazon announced at its devices event on Thursday.

Luna will be playable on Fire TV, Mac, and Windows PC, and on Android and iOS mobile devices. Amazon specifies that iOS platforms will access Luna “through web apps,” seemingly the company’s solution to Apple’s prohibitive rules for cloud-based game streaming via the App Store.

It’ll be interesting to see how well that works. Maybe that’s Microsoft’s plan for Xbox Game Pass, too? If it works well it really solves a bunch of problems for everyone. But it sort of sounds too good to be true?

The Verge Lists the 13 Biggest Announcements From Amazon’s Fall Hardware Event ★

Great rundown of a lot of new products.

New Ring Security Camera Drone, Announced for Next Year, Will Fly Around Inside Your Home ★

Dan Seifert, writing for The Verge:

Ring’s latest home security camera is taking flight — literally. The new Always Home Cam is an autonomous drone that can fly around inside your home to give you a perspective of any room you want when you’re not home. Once it’s done flying, the Always Home Cam returns to its dock to charge its battery. It is expected to cost $249.99 when it starts shipping next year. […]

The charging dock blocks the camera’s view, and the camera only records when it is in flight. Ring says the drone makes an audible noise when flying so it is obvious when footage is being recorded.

I can’t remember the last time when a product announcement filled me with such simultaneous “I need that” glee (flying robots for $250!) and “no way is that going in my home” dread. It’s fascinating to me that it was designed in such a way that the camera is physically covered when docked, and that’s promoted as a feature. I’m not surprised — I see that as a feature too.

Needless to say, there are a lot of questions about this still unanswered. It’s a big-time pre-announcement.

Apple Now Allowing Band-Only Returns for Ill-Fitting Solo Loops ★

Juli Clover, reporting for MacRumors:

Following customer complaints and the attention the issue received, MacRumors can confirm that Apple has changed its policy and is now allowing bands to be swapped out online without the need to return the entire watch.

Apple clearly just got caught flatfooted on this. Good on them for changing the policy quickly. (From what I hear, the Solo Loop bands are incredibly popular too — which is making it more difficult to keep replacement bands in stock.)

California Moves to End Sales of New Gas-Powered Vehicles by 2035 ★

Adam Beam, reporting for the AP:

California will outlaw sales of new gasoline-powered passenger cars and trucks by 2035, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday, a move he says will cut greenhouse gas emissions by 35% in the nation’s most populous state.

His plan would not ban people from owning gas-powered cars or selling them on the used car market. But it would end the sales of all new gasoline-powered passenger cars and trucks in the state of nearly 40 million people.

“Pull away from the gas pumps,” Newsom said in announcing his executive order to state regulators to draw up guidelines. “Let us no longer be victims of geopolitical dictators that manipulate global supply chains and global markets.”

White House spokesman Judd Deere said Newsom’s order will hurt the economy and is “yet another example of how extreme the left has become. They want the government to dictate every aspect of every American’s life.”

One of the above takes is really, really dumb.

WatchOS 7 Lets You Change Your Exercise and Stand Hour Goals ★

Kirk McElhearn:

Since the earliest Apple Watch, you have been able to change your move goal (the red ring), but there was no way to change the exercise goal (the green ring) or the stand goal (the blue ring). Now, in watchOS 7, this is possible. […]

It’s about time that Apple allows people to make these changes. There are many people who simply can’t do 30 minutes of exercise a day, and others who are frustrated that the watch only counts 30 minutes. So set your own goals, and close your rings more easily.

I wonder if part of Apple’s motivation for adding this customization this year is sleep tracking — if you wear your Apple Watch to sleep, you’ve got to find a good two hours or so per day to charge it while you’re awake. For me, that charging time is typically right after I get up, when I’m drinking coffee and catching up on news and messages. It doesn’t affect my ability to hit my move and exercise goals, but I get robbed of at least one stand hour every single day, and sometimes two or three.

And there are some jobs — say professional drivers — where you can’t take hourly breaks to stand. It never seemed right to assume that 12 stand hours was reasonable for everyone, even though it’s a very fair default.

Untitled Geese Game ★

Speaking of Panic, they publish the indie sensation Untitled Goose Game, which got a nifty update this week:

Hello, I’m Nico Disseldorp. I’m part of House House, the videogame company who made that Untitled Goose Game. If you haven’t heard of it before, it’s a game where you play as a horrible goose who causes a big commotion in a small village.

Tomorrow, the game is getting a free update so that two players can play through the game together as a pair of horrible geese.

When it came to adding a new goose to the game, there were a few big things we had to do, and lots and lots of small things.

This post is on Sony’s PlayStation blog, but the new two-player mode for Untitled Goose Game is available everywhere — Mac + PC, Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox. The post is a great bit of insight into the thinking and work behind turning a solo game into a two-player game.

I don’t play a lot of video games but man, I just love Untitled Goose Game. It’s weird and fun and a very clever game. In a way I can’t really explain, it makes me think of Ted Lasso. Something about being fun and unexpected and original in a way that isn’t cynical or ironic.

Nova ★

Speaking of powerful professional Mac-assed Mac apps, Panic’s Nova text editor shipped, and it is glorious:

If we’re being honest, Mac apps are a bit of a lost art. There are great reasons to make cross-platform apps — to start, they’re cross-platform — but it’s just not who we are. Founded as a Mac software company in 1997, our joy at Panic comes from building things that feel truly, well, Mac-like.

Long ago, we created Coda, an all-in-one Mac web editor that broke new ground. But when we started work on Nova, we looked at where the web was today, and where we needed to be. It was time for a fresh start.

Customizable both visually and functionally, fast, gorgeous, and fun. Nova exemplifies everything great about making Mac apps. And like any great professional tool, Panic put as much work into the documentation as they did the software itself. They even made this delightful intro video.

Fascinating and very clever pricing model too. Nova costs $99 (or $79 to upgrade from Coda, Nova’s predecessor). If you want, that can be a one-time purchase that includes up to a year of updates, and after that, the version of Nova you have is yours to keep. Or, you can subscribe for $49/year after your initial post-purchase year is up, and you’ll keep getting updates in perpetuity. If you elect not to pay the annual fee, you can get back on the upgrade train subsequently just by paying the $49 fee when you’re ready. It’s very similar in spirit to Sketch’s pricing. The big difference between Nova and Sketch’s ongoing renewal pricing and pure subscriptions is that if you choose to stop paying, the version of the app you already have will keep working until it becomes technically obsolete. (Also noteworthy: this user-friendly, developer-sustaining pricing is not possible on the Mac App Store, and thus neither Nova nor Sketch are on the Mac App Store.)

Pixelmator Pro Gets AppleScript Support ★

From the Pixelmator blog:

AppleScript is the Apple-created scripting language that lets you directly control apps using instructions written in intuitive, English-like terms. And almost every part of Pixelmator Pro is now scriptable, so for pretty much anything you can do with the app, you can now script those same tasks. Say you have tens or even hundreds of images. You might need to export and optimize them, or change the color of certain objects in them, or maybe even add annotations, taking the text from a Numbers spreadsheet and automatically placing it in Pixelmator Pro. Thanks to AppleScript support, you can now do all that, plus a whole lot more.

In our quest to make AppleScript support as great and full-featured as possible, we collaborated with Sal Soghoian, the legendary user automation guru, who served at Apple for 20 years as the Product Manager of Automation Technologies, including AppleScript, Services, the Terminal, Apple Configurator and Automator, among others.

Fabulous news for Mac power users. When’s the last time a major pro app added serious AppleScript support? Pixelmator even commissioned Soghoian to create a great tutorial that serves as both an introduction to AppleScript generally and scripting Pixelmator Pro specifically.

You can say “But AppleScript is so old and it’s such a weird frustrating language” — and you’d be right. AppleScript is really old. It’s palpably the product of a bygone era. It’s one of the last classic Mac OS era technologies that’s still kicking and relevant. But it’s what we’ve got. Clearly, Apple doesn’t care enough about professional tool automation to create an altogether new scripting system, but they care enough to keep AppleScript going. AppleScript’s continuing survival is quite unusual when you think about it.