Yesterday we witnessed another great keynote from a company we deeply admire and love. What does that mean to Readdle, our products and our users? Apple announced 2 superior devices and a whole new platform. Let's dive into details.
iPhone 6S
Apple returns to its roots by creating a truly emotional experience with the new iPhone 6s. Look at those Live Photos, how cool are they? That alone might be a reason to switch or upgrade. Also, Apple improves our perception experience by blending software and hardware, adding 3D Touch, which creates a whole new dimension of contextual interaction. Thus, Peek , and Quick Actions will enable us to do much more, to interact with iPhone differently and more naturally. So if there's an API for that 3D Touch — we can build entirely new interactions for our apps that might revolutionize the way we do things.
All Readdle Apps will be supporting these features ASAP, and we cannot wait to show you. Peek at your emails in Spark , or your files in Documents , or go to Quick Actions and editing tools in PDF Expert 5 . We wish the new iPads had support for 3D Touch, it would make so much sense. Hopefully, Apple will add that in the next update cycle.
We are super excited about the new 12MP Camera in the new iPhone 6s! Scanner Pro will truly compete with hardware scanners and will create even better scans with super high DPI. Bye-bye desktop scanners, forever!
We at Readdle really appreciate when Apple creates a better user experience. We will work hard to add rich experiences for your guys with Application Shortcuts and 3D Touch. So stay tuned.
iPad Pro
Being one of the main Productivity players on the App Store, we are super excited about yesterday's announcement of iPad Pro. 60–70% of our customers are iPad users, people who create and consume a lot of content and work with documents — what could be better than a bigger screen? Of course, it comes with extra cost, but for certain industries, iPad Pro will be a no-brainer.
Once again, iPad Pro makes a lot of sense for content creation. Apple focussed on video makers, artists, students, doctors and more during their showcase of the iPad Pro. It's targeted at everyone who wants to do work on an iPad.
Is iPad trying to replace paper? Possibly! But people will have to decide whether to buy an iPad Pro or a MacBook Pro, since the size and price are roughly the same.
So why iPad Pro? New, larger dimensions and physical interaction makes all the difference. iPad Pro is better because of its size. Imagine full size note taking or sketching — there is no more need for zoom writing. A bigger screen is always better for content creation — even using Microsoft office — and then you can add the Smart Keyboard case.
Pencil replaces paper for many tasks, and even creates new possibilities that are impossible with a real pen or pencil. For example, when you change the angle it can change the color — no real pencil can do that. New technology enables new dimensions.
Many people argued that Steve Jobs was really against having a stylus? That's also true, but he was against having a stylus on the 3.5" iPhone. Now, everything has changed. And this huge 12.9" tablet can be used for very different reasons — creation, sketching, handwriting, and much more. The technology is much more advanced and opens new dimensions of interactions and creativity.
We will definitely support Pencil in PDF Expert 5 , so you will be able to write, mark up, highlight and draw on your documents and PDFs. One more step forward in making a key productivity app.
Split view was definitely developed for this bigger iPad. It will create an additional layer of context. Now we can have 2 full size iPad apps side by side. However, we're still lacking a Drag and Drop feature. We hope that Apple will address this shortcoming soon.
Our Documents , PDF Expert 5 , Scanner Pro will support Split View on day 1 (September 16th) of iOS 9. So be ready to update that!
Apple TV
So Apple TV gets its first major update in years. At first glance it makes a lot of sense for entertainment, games, videos, YouTube, and other rich content apps.
But there is much more than that.
One category of new apps -> apps that create a personal visual flow for you -> for example make a music channel for you. This makes total sense on TV. Find video content, games, and music and access them immediately on your television.
How about Dashboard apps for your office? This will be the easiest way to do it. I am sure that we will use dashboard apps in the office here at Readdle.
Karaoke apps? If devs have access to the microphone, it's a whole other niche..
Another category of apps are those that might access your media content. Documents app for Apple TV — watch your photos, listen to your music, and watch VIDEOS all without having to leave your seat.
Dropbox, Box, Google Drive will be great not for the documents and files, but for the media content.
One more type of Apple TV apps that might succeed: Streaming gaming or enabling your laptop games on Apple TV. All it has to do is to support controllers. There should be a great way to make that happen — if someone figures it out the right way — they might well succeed.
We are super excited about all the news from yesterday.
All our apps will be updated on September 16: Scanner Pro , PDF Expert 5 , Documents , Printer Pro, PDF Converter, PDF Office, Calendars, and Spark . We will make a separate blog post about the new features and updates nearer the time.
Thank you!
