The first alarm app for families.
Federico and John revisit subscription pricing models in the wake of Ulysses’ switch to subscriptions and discuss what Apple’s transition from 32-bit to 64-bit apps means for the App Store and consumers.
Ulysses is a powerful text editor carefully hidden beneath a distraction-free writing environment. It’s a design that allows you to concentrate on your writing with the confidence that when you need them, Ulysses’ pro-level tools are just a click or tap away.
Ulysses, which won an Apple Design Award in 2016, is available on macOS and iOS and its documents sync via iCloud, so the app and your documents are available whenever and wherever you need them. Ulysses helps you keep track of everything too by organizing your writing into groups comprised of sheets. Each group, which can be nested inside other groups, can be assigned a name and icon and the sheets inside it can be sorted manually, by title, by modification date, or by creation date.
But Ulysses goes even further to help you manage your writing. You can set writing goals and attach notes, keywords, and images to sheets. Then, when you’re looking for something you wrote, you can create filters based on keywords, search terms, and dates that are stored in the sidebar with your groups. When you’re finished, you can export to a bunch of different formats including Markdown, plain-text, HTML, ePub, PDF, and DOCX and easily publish to WordPress blogs and Medium.
Ulysses is a free download on the App Store and Mac App Store. Normally you can try the app for 14 days before deciding whether to subscribe for $4.99 per month or $39.99 per year. Students can subscribe for six months at a time for $10.99. However, Ulysses has a special deal for MacStories readers. Use this link for a full 1-month trial on all your devices.
Our thanks to Ulysses for sponsoring MacStories this week.
Album Dancing Hot Dog Meme It’s probably time to put a stake in the dancing hot dog meme, but if you haven’t gotten enough yet, you can add these stickers of the cute dancing dog to your conversations. Pizza Stickers I think I was hungry when I downloaded these pizza stickers of whole pies and...
Creating a PDF From a Webpage in Safari on iOS 11 John: iOS 11 adds a handy action extension to Safari called ‘Create PDF,’ which does exactly what you’d expect. The extension creates a PDF and gives you the option to mark it up with the system PDF markup tools before saving it or sharing it using the share sheet. ‘Create PDF’ is especially nice when...
Q&A Question: After CrashPlan’s recent announcement that it is abandoning its consumer product, I’ve got to find a new backup solution. I was looking at Backblaze, but I couldn’t get the trial installed. After thinking about it I wondered if I could just back up everything with iCloud. What are your recommendations for backup? Could iCloud...
App Debuts Astro The AI-powered email client, Astro, was updated this week with a built-in voice assistant that can read, manage, and reply to emails at your bidding. Dubbed Astrobot Voice, the assistant previously launched as an Alexa skill for use with the Amazon Echo, but this marks its debut inside the iOS app. Astrobot Voice...
Today, Ridiculous Fishing, the classic 8-bit style fishing game from Vlambeer was updated with support for 64-bit chip architectures ensuring that its fans will still be able to play the game when they update to iOS 11. Apps that only support 32-bit chip architectures will be left behind by iOS 11 rendering them unusable on devices running Apple’s latest OS. The switch was first telegraphed by Apple in 2014, so developers have had three years to prepare, but the transition will nonetheless leave some apps behind, many of them games. According to Fast Company, AppFigures estimates that as many as 470,000 apps may no longer work on iOS 11.
At the same time, however, a recent flurry of updates means that some iOS classics will survive, including Ridiculous Fishing. Released in 2010 as a collaboration among Vlambeer, Zach Gage, and Greg Wohlwend, Ridiculous Fishing follows Billy as he fishes with items like guns, chainsaws, and toasters. The game won an Apple Design Award in 2013 and still has a loyal following. In addition to adding 64-bit support, the update adds haptic feedback and two speedrun leaderboards.
Although there will undoubtedly be some apps and games that fall by the wayside in the 64-bit transition, my hope is that early iOS classics like Ridiculous Fishing, Canabalt, and Bumpy Road, which have all received recent 64-bit updates, are discovered by a new generation of iOS users.
On this week’s episode of AppStories, we interview Dermot Daly, founder of Tapadoo, a Dublin-based app development studio, about how he got started in mobile development, the Tapadoo origin story, what it’s like to develop apps in the regulated medical field, the challenges of working for clients and that iOS developers face today, and more.
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In June, I sat in the crowded lobby of the San Jose Marriott hotel just across from the convention center where WWDC was being held. The lobby was crammed full of developers and other people tapping away on Macs and iOS devices connected to the hotel’s WiFi. I sat down with the Astro HQ team for a demonstration of an upcoming hardware product called the Luna Display, a tiny dongle that turns an iPad into a wireless second display for a Mac.
Hotel WiFi is notoriously bad and the Marriott’s, which was ambushed by thousands of WWDC attendees, was holding up, but spotty. The Astro HQ team pulled out a tiny nubbin and connected it to a MacBook Pro’s USB-C port. After starting the Luna Display software on the Mac and an iPad, they were up and running with the iPad acting as a second display. Despite the shaky connection, the iPad performed admirably. It felt like magic.
Federico
Ryan
