A light news day today…
- Apple adds a few formatting and ad changes to Apple News…for publishers
- Design resources for iOS 10 become available along with updated Human Interface Guidelines
- Google’s Pixel phones are hard to get…although they’re selling at about 1/10th the rate of iPhones
The text version of the podcast can be viewed below. To listen to the podcast here, click the play button on the player below. Note to Apple News readers: you’ll need to visit Apple World Today in order to listen to the podcast.
Text Version
Hi, this is Steve Sande for Apple World Today, and this is the AWT News Update for January 19, 2017.
While Apple News will still pretty much look the same for readers, Apple today unveiled a bunch of changes for publishers that extend formatting options and add a new ad size for the iPhone and iPod touch. The Apple News Format now has an HTML list item style that provides bullets, numbers, letters, roman numerals and custom characters in formatted lists. The new ad component was previously limited to the iPad, but now works on iPhone and iPod touch. At this point, Apple World Today is available in Apple News; just do a search for Apple World Today in the News app and then subscribe to the channel for a great way to get your news on your favorite iOS device.
Apple also updated the iOS Human Interface Guidelines with new iOS 10 design resources. Among the resources released are templates for Sketch and Adobe Generator for Photoshop which make it easy for designers to design iOS applications quickly. What’s different about this is that Apple has previously shared Sketch design templates for Dynamic Type Sizes and Apple Watch, but the new templates are “comprehensive and accurately depict the full range of UIKit controls, views and glyphs available to developers using the iOS SDK”. The iOS Human Interface Guidelines also have new videos that help designers get started with Comps, Icons, and Glyphs.
And now something from the world of iPhone competitors. Google’s Pixel phones, especially the 5.5-inch Pixel XL, are in short supply. The phones have received somewhat good reviews, although benchmarks are mediocre compared to the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. The Pixel models are manufactured for Google by HTC, which apparently doesn’t have the capacity to make its own phones and Googles. The 128-gigabyte version of the Pixel XL has been out of stock since November 30 at Google’s online store, and Verizon is quoting shipping times in mid-March for that model. As popular as these phones appear to be, a Best Buy source told AppleInsider that “Demand for the Pixel isn’t a tenth of that for the iPhone 7, and we were close in our guesses.” Still, this bodes well for Google’s self-designed phone, which has received great reviews for Google Assistant and its camera.
That’s all for today; I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon with another edition of the AWT News Update.
