Charlotte Henry's photo

Charlotte Henry

Charlotte is a media junkie, covering how Apple is not just a revolutionary tech firm, but a revolutionary media firm for TMO. She is based in London, and writes and broadcasts for various outlets.

Get In Touch:

Articles by Charlotte Henry

Link

Users Find Inconsistent Behavior From New Siri Remote for Apple TV

Charlotte Henry ·

There was much excitement when Apple announced a new Siri Remote with the updated Apple TV 4K. However, AppleInsider confirmed reports of issues with various gestures.

The update to the Apple TV introduced a new design of Siri Remote that uses a circular trackpad, as well as a new gesture that turns the trackpad into a large scroll wheel. By using a circular motion around the edge of the trackpad, users can scrub forward and back through content. However, posts to Twitter and Reddit show users trying out the gesture but getting unexpected results. Even using the tap and hold method, waiting for the proper user interface affirmation of the gesture, one complete circuit of the trackpad scrubs through a video timeline in one direction, then returns it back to where it was previously.

Link

Snap Launching Standalone iOS Video Editing App

Charlotte Henry ·

Snap, the firm behind Snapchat, announced a new iOS app called Story Studio that will launch later this year. It will provide editing tools, including AR Lenses that are designed specifically for mobile editing and vertical videos.

The app will pull data from Snapchat and its new Spotlight feature, more familiarly recognized as its TikTok competitor, to help people figure out how and what to make. They can look through Snapchat insights, like what’s trending on the app across sounds, hashtags, and lenses. Lenses will be built directly into Story Studio, as well as Snapchat Sounds and stickers, so editors can add those. Of course, like most other video editing apps, users can trim their videos and edit frame by frame. They can then share directly to Snapchat through a built-in button, or download their work to publish in other apps. Notably, content made in Story Studio won’t include a watermark, meaning if it’s published on other platforms, like Instagram’s Reels, it won’t be demoted by the algorithm.

Link

Google Chrome Brings Back RSS… Sort of

Charlotte Henry ·

Google Chrome is to get a new ‘Follow’ feature. As TechCrunch noted, it’s not quite an RSS reader… but it’s pretty close.

In Chrome, users will soon see a ‘Follow’ feature for sites that support RSS and the browser’s New Tab page will get what is essentially a (very) basic RSS reader — I guess you could almost call it a “Google Reader.” Now we’re not talking about a full-blown RSS reader here. The New Tab page will show you updates from the sites you follow in chronological order, but it doesn’t look like you can easily switch between feeds, for example. It’s a start, though.

Link

How Music and Sound Influence the Endel App

Charlotte Henry ·

Endel is an app that is meant to help users focus, sleep, and relax. Apple published an interview with one of its co-founders, CEO Oleg Stavitsky, in which he described the importance of music and art to the company and its products.

The unexpected makeup of Endel’s founding team — which Stavitsky emphasizes is more of an artist collective than a traditional app development team — provided a certain synergy around the power of sound. The collective’s first foray into app development was BUBL, a suite of digital art apps for kids blending abstract design, sound, and a carefully crafted user interface, launched on the App Store in 2013. “They almost looked like Wassily Kandinsky’s paintings that sort of came to life,” he says. “I was always fascinated with the correlation of color, form, and sound,” Stavitsky says. “That has everything to do with Kandinsky, who is one of my favorite painters, and then at the same time, with the minimalist composers of the ’70s, like Brian Eno, Philip Glass, and Steve Reich. And so even for our BUBL apps, we built a lot of technology that would generate musical composition in real time, depending on what someone was doing in the app.”