John is MacStories' Managing Editor, has been writing about Apple and apps since joining the team in 2015, and today, runs the site alongside Federico.
John also co-hosts four MacStories podcasts: AppStories, which covers the world of apps, MacStories Unwind, which explores the fun differences between American and Italian culture and recommends media to listeners, Ruminate, a show about the weird web and unusual snacks, and NPC: Next Portable Console, a show about the games we take with us.
If you’ve ever wondered how long you spend watching YouTube, now you can find out. With an update that hit the App Store today, Google has added ‘Time watched’ statistics to the iOS app’s Account view. Tap your avatar in the upper right-hand corner, then ‘Time watched’ for your total viewing time today, yesterday, and the past week, plus your daily average. The statistics are based on your YouTube Watch History, so they don’t include anything deleted from your Watch History or watched in Incognito mode. Nor does Google include YouTube Music listening statistics.
The new ‘Time watched’ section also includes the ability to set up reminders to take a break periodically, which can be set in 5-minute increments between 5 minutes and 24 hours. There’s also a toggle for batching the notifications YouTube sends. There are 10 categories of notifications available in the YouTube app, so batching them if you have several turned on is a welcome addition. Notification digests can also be accessed from the app’s settings. From ‘Time watched,’ you can turn off Autoplay and disable sounds and vibrations too.
Originally announced at Google I/O earlier this year, it’s nice to see watch time statistics added at the app level, even though similar information will be available from the Screen Time feature coming soon with iOS 12. If you haven’t been running the iOS 12 beta, taking a peek at your YouTube usage statistics now is an excellent way to get a feel for the utility of having an objective measure of how long you spend on the service.
Tomorrow, Donut County by developer Ben Esposito will be published by Annapurna Interactive, which also backed the critically-acclaimed Florence. The game, which was announced in 2014, but has been in development since 2012, tells the story of a raccoon named BK, his friend Mira and an assortment of other characters from Donut County who are trapped 999 feet beneath the surface of the Earth. You play by manipulating a hole that grows as you move it across the landscape swallowing objects. If the premise sounds strange, that’s because it is, but it also works through a combination of a clever game mechanic, funny writing, and engaging sound design and artwork.
Question: As a lawyer, I need a database to store legal documents for future reference (case law, notes, web clippings, PDFs, etc.) that allows me to add notes, annotate, and retrieve PDFs using search. (Moadenildo Freire, @mjuniorr2)
There are all sorts of Mac and iOS apps for capturing audio. Today, I want to focus on two use cases: capturing thoughts and ideas and podcasting, which are the two ways I use audio recording apps most often. Capturing Thoughts and Ideas Besides the shower, the place I probably have the most...
Shared lists in Reminders are a good way to create a family grocery list. Everyone can add to the list and when someone has time to go shopping it’s all right there in one place where you can check off items as you shop. The trouble is, it’s hard to change habits. Fortunately, if...
Spark Spark continues to receive regular updates. Since our last issue of Weekly, Readdle added the ability to allow someone else to send a draft message on your behalf. There’s a new notification setting for team comments too. You can receive all team notifications, grouped notifications that group team notifications together, except messages where...
Every so often, an Apple I comes up for auction. The number still in circulation is small. Even rarer are working Apple Is. Next month, auction house RR Auction will sell a working Apple I that’s been rated 8.5/10. The computer, along with peripherals and the original manual, is expected to fetch around $500,000.
Earlier this summer, I had the good fortune of seeing a working Apple I in person during a trip The Henry Ford Museum with Stephen Hackett who donated his collection of iMac G3s to the museum. In person, it’s hard to grasp that the Apple I’s simple circuit board covered with neatly organized, hand-soldered chips played such a critical early step in the history of personal computing.
More interesting to me than the auction though, is a video that the auction house put together to promote the sale, which dramatically pans around the Apple I’s surface revealing the smallest details. It’s a fantastic close-up of a significant piece of computing history that is far closer than you’ll ever be to one in a museum.
Today, Nerial and Devolver Digital announced that they are working with HBO to create a Reigns: Game of Thrones, which is available for pre-order now. Reigns, and Reigns: Her Majesty are among my favorite iOS games. Both Reigns games require players to swipe cards left and right to make decisions about ruling a medieval country and require a careful balancing of multiple interests to survive as monarch.
Reigns is perfect for mobile…. Swiping left and right to make decisions about your kingdom is quick and easy wherever you are. The combination of the number of cards, consequences that span generations, and need to balance multiple statistics adds an interesting level of strategy. But above all else, what has endeared Reigns to me most is that the artwork and questions are imbued with a sense of humor that gives Reigns a unique personality unlike any iOS game I have played recently.
The same team that created Reigns: Her Majesty is back for the Game of Thrones version, which features characters from HBO’s hit TV series. To get a sneak peek at the game, which will be released in October, Nerial has created a trailer, which is embedded below.
Federico
