A redesign of Apple.com that went live today removed the standalone ‘Store’ tab, and the ‘store.apple.com’ domain entirely. This is an enormous change for one of the biggest online retail stores in the world.
Knowing what I know about the old online store, this was a massive behind-the-scenes undertaking, but the result looks and works like what most people would have expected all along.
Ustwo, the design studio behind the hit iPhone game Monument Valley, has teamed up with a pair of tech savvy psychologists to make a new app called Moodnotes that they think could usher in a new, more approachable model of delivering psychological therapy.
On the surface, it looks like a simple journaling app. But it actually offers much more.
You tell Moodnotes how you’re feeling, and it charts your emotions over time. It gives you feedback on what you’re feeling and challenges you to think more positively about situations.
There are two health issues many Mid-Atlantic residents fret about each summer: sunburn and Lyme disease. It turns out that smartphones, which most people have at hand even while on the beach or in the woods, can be helpful in amplifying or allaying those concerns.
Microsoft announced today that large parts of Project Islandwood are being open sourced. The first code release is available on GitHub right now, published under the liberal MIT license. With it, Objective-C programmers can write Universal Windows Apps that'll run on Windows and, soon, Windows Mobile, Xbox, and even the HoloLens augmented reality headset.
“Eddy [Cue, Apple senior VP] woke up on Sunday morning,” says Iovine. “He called me and said, ‘This is a drag’. I was like, ‘Yeah, maybe there’s some stuff she doesn’t understand’. He said, ‘Why don’t you give Scott [Borchetta, Swift’s label boss] a call? I called Scott, I called Eddy back, Eddy and Tim [Cook, Apple CEO] called me back and we said, ‘Hey, you know what, we want this system to be right and we want artists to be comfortable, let’s do it’.”
So just like that, it was done. Apple would go back on its initial plan and pay artists per stream during the three month-free trial of Apple Music. A flurry of morning phone calls and this axis of power had agreed to a policy change estimated to be worth millions of pounds in customer acquisition. How long did it take? He says he’s not sure but he remembers “getting a pair of espadrilles for Fathers’ Day”. Financial clout and beach-appropriate footwear; it seems fitting for a man who suddenly finds himself a major player among Silicon Valley’s hoodied kajillionaires.
Starting today, people who live in Hong Kong and the UK will be able to access the MyHeart Counts app, which collects data on physical activity and cardiac risk factors for a heart disease study run by Stanford University.
— Marco Arment (@marcoarment) August 6, 2015
Thanks for reading.