Month: June 2019

We’ve heard quite a bit about Project Catalyst and what it means for developers who want to bring their iPad applications to the Mac with macOS Catalina. Apple is using Catalyst itself to improve existing Mac apps like News and Home, as well as bring new apps like Podcasts to the Mac.

Now, evidence within the macOS Catalina beta suggests Apple has more in store for Project Catalyst.

Developer Steve Troughton-Smith took to Twitter this week to showcase evidence that Apple is working on Catalyst versions of two new applications: Messages and Shortcuts.

As for Messages, Smith explains that a “surprising amount of the UIKit Messages app” works on macOS. This includes things like iMessage effects, which have long been missing from the macOS Messages application.

Interestingly, the Catalyst version of Messages on the Mac looks different than the iPadOS 13 version. It’s designed to look like the current macOS Messages app found in Mojave. This makes it more than just a direct port of the iPad Messages app to the Mac. Smith suggests that because Apple put this amount of work into bringing the UIKit Messages app to the Mac, it’s something the company has considered, or is still working on for a future release.

Just for reference: this isn’t a ‘marzipanified’ version of the Messages app from the iOS Simulator. This is the ‘native’ Catalyst UI coming from the macOS 10.15 system frameworks. Just like Shortcuts, it’s all there, and mostly works if you know how to talk to it.

If you compare this Catalyst version of Messages w/ what’s in iOS 13, you’ll see the UI layout is pretty different. In fact, it’s modeled to look way more like the macOS version. I’m not convinced this work was done purely to present the ‘share in Messages’ sheet in UIKit apps.

What’s also important to note is that Messages on the Mac still lacks features such as the iMessage App Store – which has become popular for things like sticker packs, games, and more. That’s likely a big motivator for Apple to bring a Project Catalyst version of the Messages app to macOS.

Smith’s latest discoveries around Messages on the Mac come following his blog post shortly after WWDC demonstrating how Shortcuts could work on macOS Catalina:

Turns out, Catalyst on macOS Catalina includes all the Shortcuts frameworks, including all the ones necessary to bring up almost its entire UI. So I built a dummy app that does just that, which you can find on GitHub.

What applications currently available on the iPad would you like to see come to macOS? Let us know down in the comments.

Chrome OS has become one of the best operating systems on the market today by its ability to seamlessly combine traditional web browser experiences with progressive web apps, Android apps and Linux apps. Now, Google is looking at shaking up the Chrome OS experience, for better or worse, by sometimes preferring Android apps over web apps.

As it stands today, when you’re browsing a website that can be installed by Chrome OS, you’ll see a handy little icon in your Omnibox. Clicking this Install button puts the PWA (progressive web app) into your Chrome OS launcher, just like any other app.

When a developer creates a PWA, they need to describe the detailsof the app to your browser. As part of this, the developer can also specify “related applications,” such as the iOS or Android version of the app, and whether or not they would prefer you use one of these apps instead of the web app.

A pair of commits in the Chromium Gerrit source code management indicates that Google is looking at making Android apps a higher priority by redirecting to the Play Store for some apps.

This CL allows Chrome OS to query ARC for whether a PWA has a supported related app available and installable. If it does, the installation action redirects to the Play Store.

With this change, under the hood, if a developer marks that their site has a Chrome OS specific app (“chromeos_play” to be precise), Chrome OS will open the Play Store for you to install the Android app, instead of the web app. If your Chromebook isn’t compatible with the app, the web app will install as normal, but there’s currently no way to choose for yourself to stick with the web app.

Some applications have minor (or even major) differences between their normal web site, Android app, and PWA that tend to make one of the options better than the others. Having the freedom to choose whether to install the web app or the Android app is one of Chrome OS’s major strengths, and this change seems to somewhat infringe on that freedom.

As this change is just now appearing in Chromium code, it should arrive with Chrome OS 77. Additionally, since it requires a change from web developers, Google will likely share more information about this change to Chrome OS app installation in the near future.

9to5Google’s Take

I personally hope that Google makes this optional before it launches. There are some apps, like Twitter, which have excellent PWAs that I would prefer to keep using. Thankfully, in that particular case, Twitter does not currently list any related applications.

Messages, one of the quintessential apps on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac, is the home of iMessages, Apple’s exclusive device-to-device messaging protocol indicated by those well-known blue chat bubbles.

If you’re an iPhone user you know how the Messages app works, but in iOS 13, the Messages app is getting some useful new features that are worth highlighting. Read on for a rundown of everything that’s new, and check out our list of how tos for instructions on how to use all of the new features.

User Profiles

Messages in iOS 13 lets you add a photo of yourself (or an Animoji) and a name that’s shared with people when you message them. This lets people know who you are even if you’re not in their contacts list, and for your contacts, it adds a photo and your specified name.

You can set your Messages profile to share with Contacts Only, to always ask before sharing with someone, or to automatically share with anyone you message with.

Revamped Search Capabilities

Messages has had a search feature for a long time, but it’s not particularly useful. That’s changing in iOS 13 with an entirely new search interface and new search capabilities.

The search interface, accessible by swiping down on the main Messages screen and tapping the search bar, brings up a list of recent contacts, links you’ve received in Messages, photos people have sent you, locations shared with you, and attachments you’ve received.

Search itself is more functional, offering up a full list of results organized by date for a given search term, without grouping those results by person. For example, if you search for “cats” and had multiple cats conversations with someone, each incident with the cats search term is listed individually in iOS 13, which is not the case in earlier versions of iOS.

Messages Info Pane

When you tap on the “i” icon at the top of a conversation with someone, there are new sections that let you get a better look back at the kinds of media that’s been shared.

There are separate sections for photos, links, attachments, and locations.

New Memoji Customization Options

iOS 13 adds new customization options for Memoji, which are the animated, emoji-like characters that you can customize to look like yourself and other people.

There are new options for makeup, teeth, piercings, earrings, headwear, and glasses, along with more hair styles and additional colors to add to hair and other accessories.

Memoji are available devices with a front-facing TrueDepth camera and animate based on your own facial expressions. Memoji, like Animoji, can be used for animated videos with your own voice, and in iOS 13, there are also new sticker options.

Animoji and Memoji Stickers

Apple has added a number of different Animoji and Memoji stickers with classic emoji-like poses and faces, such as heart eyes, brain exploding, shushing face, laughing with tears, crying, shrugging, face palm, and more.

With Memoji, these new stickers are similar to something like Bitmoji, letting you express yourself with a character that looks like you through a series of stickers. The Animoji are more detailed than a traditional emoji and feature the same Animoji characters but in emoji form.

Animoji and Memoji stickers are available in the Messages app pane at the bottom of any Messages conversation. Just tap on the App Store icon and then choose the icon that looks like multiple Memoji faces.

Memoji and Animoji are limited to Apple’s newest iPhones, but Animoji and Memoji stickers are more universal and can be used on all Apple devices with an A9 chip or later.

While Memoji and Animoji stickers are accessible in the Messages app, you can also use them in other places like Mail and Notes through the emoji icon on the keyboard.

New Animoji

Animoji are animated, 3D emoji characters that you can control with your face. Like Memoji, Animoji use the TrueDepth front-facing camera on modern devices, with more than 50 muscle movements in different areas of the face monitored to replicate facial expressions and emotion.

There are more than 20 Animoji characters that have been added over the last couple of years, and iOS 13 includes three more: a mouse, an octopus, and a cow.

Dual-SIM Support

iMessages in iOS 13 adds support for two phone numbers when using the dual-SIM functionality available in the iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR. There’s no longer a need to choose a number to use with iMessage – both will work. Users can select which number to choose when starting a new conversation, and c

Microsoft is making its Chromium-powered Edge browser available on both Windows 7 and Windows 8 for testing today. The release comes two months after Chromium Edge first debuted on Windows 10, and a month after it appeared on macOS. Microsoft is releasing the daily Canary builds initially, and plans to support the weekly Dev channel “soon.” You can download the installer over at Microsoft’s Edge Insider site.

“You will find the experience and feature set on previous versions of Windows to be largely the same as on Windows 10, including forthcoming support for Internet Explorer mode for our enterprise customers,” explains a Microsoft Edge team blog post. While most features will be the same, dark mode is missing and Microsoft says there is no support for AAD sign-in.

Microsoft is still testing its Chromium Edge browser across Windows 10, macOS, and now older versions of Windows, and it’s still not clear when the company will start to release it more broadly. Edge will be available for Windows 7, despite the fact Microsoft is planning to end support for the operating system next January.

Edge Chromium will include an IE mode for businesses, and a new Collections feature that’s designed for web users to be able to more easily collect text, images, and information from the internet into a note. We got a closer look at the new Microsoft Edge earlier this year.

As we asked back in February, “We’re ready for foldable phones, but are they ready for us?” The answer, so far, has been an enthusiastic, “not really.” The Galaxy Fold was pushed back after multiple review units crapped the proverbial bed. And just last week, Huawei noted that it was holding off on its own Mate X release, citing Samsung’s issues as a cautionary tale.

Samsung, at least, may finally be ready to unleash its foldable on the world, two months after its planned release. “Most of the display problems have been ironed out,” Samsung Display Vice President Kim Seong-cheol told a crowd at an event in Seoul this week, “and the Galaxy Fold is ready to hit the market.”

The company’s no doubt waiting for a more formal announcement to release specifics on timing. Samsung has been promising release news “in coming weeks” for several weeks now. Understandably, the company hasn’t been rushing to get the handset back out. As bad as the press was the first time around, Samsung doesn’t want a repeat here along the lines of the Note 7’s two recalls.

When announcing the initial delay, Samsung announced two points of failure: a screen protector that looked like the temporary ones other devices ship with and large holes between joints in the hinge that allowed detritus to sneak behind the display, causing issues when users applied pressure to the front.