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Monthly Log — September 30, 2020

Transitioning to a New Task Management System

Transitioning to a New Task Management System

Throughout my working life there have been two main situations when I’ve decided to make a task manager change: the arrival of something new and shiny, and a change actually motivated by my work. The former, I’m guessing, is a temptation many Club members succumb to. We may have task managers that work fine for us already, but then we hear about an alternative that just released a big new update with XYZ features, and it’s enough to get us tinkering with our setup.

I’ve settled down a bit with my task management tinkering in recent years. Apple’s Reminders app has been my go-to option for a while, even before it received a big redesign last fall. I appreciate Reminders’ strong Siri integration and the fact that it’s able to adopt new OS features sooner than any third-party options. Recently, however, despite a nice update in iOS and iPadOS 14, Reminders has started to feel underpowered for what I need. I’ve taken on new responsibilities in life, and as a result the app’s limitations have become bigger hang-ups than before. These limitations include task entry requiring more than just keyboard input, a lack of structure inside lists, and being untethered from the web.

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241 — September 25, 2020

Apple One’s Future

THE EXTENSION

Exploring topics beyond our day-to-day coverage.

Apple One’s Future

Normally after an Apple event there’s time for stepping back to think about and process everything that’s been announced. This year, Apple’s September event ended with the bombshell that major OS updates like iOS 14 and watchOS 7 would launch the very next day. Needless to say, it’s been a busy couple of weeks, and aside from an iPad Air discussion on Adapt, there’s been little time for reflecting on the new products announced.

One of my favorite Apple topics to cover is services, so the expected debut of Apple One was among my most anticipated announcements going into the event. Even though Apple didn’t spend much time on it, there’s still a lot worth digesting about this new services bundle. One of the most fascinating questions to me doesn’t so much involve what was announced, but rather how Apple One may grow more compelling over time.

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241 — September 25, 2020

Quickly Enter Jiggle Mode in iOS and iPadOS 14

TIPS

Tips and tricks to master your apps and be more productive.

Quickly Enter Jiggle Mode in iOS and iPadOS 14

Once you establish a habit for interacting with your device, you’ll likely never know if a better, quicker way to do that same thing is introduced in a future software update. Until recently, that was my experience with entering jiggle mode on my iPhone and iPad.

I’ve been trying a lot of widgets lately, which has meant entering jiggle mode on my devices many times every day. For most of the summer, as I’ve used the iOS and iPadOS 14 betas, I’ve done this in the way I already knew: either tapping and holding an app icon on my Home Screen until jiggle mode was eventually triggered, or more often, long-pressing that app icon just until the context menu appeared, after which I’d hit Edit Home Screen.

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241 — September 25, 2020

App Debuts

APP DEBUTS

Noteworthy new app releases and updates, handpicked by the MacStories team.

Ermine

Ermine is a brand new calendar app with a beautiful, minimal aesthetic that nonetheless adds personality through illustrations and tasteful pops of color. The app is available for both iPhone and iPad, and I really enjoy the UI on iPad where you can see a month view next to an agenda listing out only a single day’s events, then there’s a separate pane you can bring in as an overlay on the left for viewing future months. It’s all very thoughtfully laid out. Modern system features are supported at launch, like dark mode, iPad multitasking, and even iOS 14’s widgets. The widget options are solid, and I especially love the illustrated widget which displays a month view next to a beautiful illustration featuring a furry friend. Now I want all apps’ widgets to have illustrated versions added.

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240 — September 18, 2020

Apps with iOS 14 Widgets, Vol. 1

MACSTORIES COLLECTIONS

Apps with iOS 14 Widgets, Vol. 1

If you’ve been following our work at MacStories closely over the last few days, you’ve probably seen the word “widgets” more times than you can count. Since iOS and iPadOS 14 released on Wednesday, we’ve seen a flood of third-party apps add support for the new widgets those OS updates bring. We’ve covered a bunch on the site, and will continue to do so in the weeks ahead, but there are simply too many great updates featuring widgets (and other new OS features) to write in detail about. So for this first issue of MacStories Weekly following OS launch day, I want to highlight some of the great apps featuring widgets that we haven’t had the chance to cover yet.

Dark Noise

The excellent ambient noise app I’ve previously  reviewed  has some great widget options for quickly kicking off playback of a specific noise. Once you tap a noise in the widget, the app opens and playback starts immediately, requiring no additional taps. And the selection of noises in your widget is, of course, entirely customizable.

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239 — September 11, 2020

App Debuts

APP DEBUTS

Noteworthy new app releases and updates, handpicked by the MacStories team.

Suburban

There’s no shortage of dictionary apps on the App Store, but if you’re looking for an Urban Dictionary client the story’s quite different. Suburban is a new app for browsing Urban Dictionary in a nicer design than the site provides and with a native app experience. If the design and ease of use isn’t enough of a draw, there’s also a share extension you can run when a word’s selected in any app systemwide, and if you’d like to learn a new word every day, Suburban’s widget is tailored for just that use.

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239 — September 11, 2020

Quick Launching of Files and Folders on iOS and iPadOS 14

TIPS

Tips and tricks to master your apps and be more productive.

Quick Launching of Files and Folders on iOS and iPadOS 14

One of the changes I’ve long hoped to see on iPhone and iPad, especially since beginning grad school last year and working with a lot of different documents as a result, is an easier and faster way to open specific files or folders from the Files app. Last year Federico very kindly created a shortcut for just this task, which I didn’t think possible at the time. By combining Scriptable and file bookmarks, his FS Bookmarks shortcut enabled creating custom launchers for files and folders. It took a few steps to set each launcher up, but it worked flawlessly, and I’ve gotten good use out of the shortcut over the past year.

This week, however, I discovered that in iOS and iPadOS 14 there’s now an even easier way to launch content from the Files app, still using Shortcuts. For the first time, you can now go to Apps ⇾ Files from the Shortcuts action menu and find suggestions of files and folders from the Files app that you’ve recently accessed. A shortcut you create using one of these suggested actions will serve as a launcher that quickly opens that file or folder inside Files.

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239 — September 11, 2020

My Widget and Home Screen Setup on iOS 14

THE EXTENSION

Exploring topics beyond our day-to-day coverage.

My Widget and Home Screen Setup on iOS 14

Despite WWDC being a few weeks late this year, all signs point to Apple’s fall OS updates still launching to the public at about their normal time. And if my TestFlight catalog is any indication, that means a flood of third-party widgets for iOS and iPadOS 14 will soon become available. Developers are taking all kinds of different and creative approaches to their widgets, and combined with the ability to add widgets to the Home screen, this will unlock a wide variety of widget setups among users.

On the cusp of the OS and third-party widget releases, and following Federico and John discussing widgets on this week’s AppStories, I wanted to share about how I’m approaching widgets – especially on iPhone – and why.

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Monthly Log — August 31, 2020

Fall Hardware Wishes

Fall Hardware Wishes

Pumpkin Spice Everything season is in full swing, and with the past six months having felt like a black hole, it all seems too soon to me. Regardless, fall is my favorite time of year so I welcome its swift approach! Especially the new batch of Apple products it will hopefully bring. So on the cusp of September, and the flood of hardware debuts it may lead to, I thought it would be fun to consider what I’m hoping for from Apple hardware for the remainder of the year. These aren’t predictions, simply wishes that are at least somewhat grounded in the realm of possibility. For example, while a new iPad Pro would be great, or a Pro-inspired iPad mini, I don’t think either of those rumored products is likely to ship until spring, so the iPad is entirely absent from my list.

iPhone. It only seemed appropriate to start with the iPhone, since it’s the main attraction of Apple’s fall lineup every year. I’m curious to see how the rumored new size configurations of the iPhone 12 and 12 Pro pan out. I’m currently an iPhone 11 Pro user, and will likely be in the market for the 6.1-inch 12 Pro model, since I don’t want anything that’s too much bigger than my current size. The main feature improvement I’m hoping to see relates to the camera. Apple took a big leap forward with camera features last year, and I hope it can offer another year of meaningful upgrades. I don’t expect better battery life, since last year set a high bar for battery, so honestly my biggest curiosity about the new iPhone is what currently unknown feature(s) will drive sales. Since I can’t think of anything significant that I want besides better cameras, my optimistic side is excited to see what surprises in other areas Apple hopefully has up its sleeves.

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238 — August 21, 2020

iPad Apps Wanted on the Mac 

MACSTORIES COLLECTIONS

iPad Apps Wanted on the Mac 

Following this week’s potentially controversial episode of Adapt, I’ve been spending more time thinking about and even using the Mac. As part of that process I’ve been evaluating where the platform stands now relative to where it was half a decade ago when I last used a Mac as my primary computer. One main drawback that became immediately obvious is that there are quite a few iPad apps I rely on that aren’t available on the Mac. Hopefully this app deficit will start shrinking as developers take advantage of Mac Catalyst or SwiftUI, or perhaps many of the apps I love on iPad will become instantly available on the Mac App Store when Apple Silicon Macs ship (a question I consider in this week’s Extension column). In any case though, if I start using a Mac more often in the future, I’m going to sorely miss the following apps.

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