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.
Having a good camera won’t make you a better photographer, but having a good camera with you all the time means you have a chance to capture something special when the opportunity presents itself. That’s the power of Apple’s Shot on iPhone series.
Today, Apple released a special 30 second Shot on iPhone television advertisement called ‘Mother’s Day.’ The ad features photographs of mothers and their children, including three short video clips. Each photo also lists the first name and last initial of the photographer who took it.
Since starting the MacStories Lounge Telegram channel, Federico and I have been experimenting with posting short form audio clips several times a week. We both record on iOS, but I also periodically record on my Mac. iOS is the key though, because it gives both of us the flexibility to record just about anywhere,...
We’ve all been there. You make airline or hotel reservations in Safari and need to share the receipt with someone. You could print a PDF to your desktop and then drag the PDF into Mail, Messages or another app, but you can skip that step altogether by creating a shortcut that lets you print...
Knowing When to Get Help One of the pitfalls of being an indie developer is thinking you can, or should, do everything yourself. It’s understandable – after all, one of the advantages of being an indie is self-reliance. It keeps costs down and makes you more nimble and responsive to change. The trouble is, no...
Today Apple announced a new Apple Music API via its Affiliate Program Newsletter. According to Apple, the API:
…allows iOS apps to directly control Apple Music playback and more. We encourage affiliates to use the Apple Music API to provide a superior user experience by integrating music into their apps.
With the Apple Music API you can:
See if a user is currently an Apple Music member
See which country the user’s account is based in
Queue up the next song or songs based on a song ID for playback
Inspect playlists already in My Music or create a new playlist with a title and description (see App Store Review Guidelines for limitations).
The announcement coincides with the introduction of a new Apple Music Best Practices for Apple Developers page that serves as a hub for developer and affiliate program resources related to Apple Music. The page includes:
App Review guidelines applicable to the Apple Music API, some of which are new.
Links to developer documentation for the Apple Music APIs.
A summary of Apple Music identity guidelines regarding the use of the Apple Music name, logos, and related matters, with a link to the more comprehensive Apple Music Identity Guidelines.
Links to more information regarding the iTunes Affiliate Program.
A link to the Apple Music Toolbox page for searching Apple Music in each of the 113 Apple Music countries by artist, song, album, playlist, Connect, curator, radio and music video, from which you can generate affiliate links.
One thing I’d like to see added to these tools is the ability to return search results for items like playlists using the iTunes Search API, which would allow developers to generate affiliate links to them programatically. Right now those links can only be generated from the web-based search tool in the Apple Music Toolbox. Nonetheless, it’s nice to see Apple Music being opened up to developers, and not surprising given the emphasis on services during Tuesday’s investor call.
When I put together an article for MacStories on my Mac, Yoink by Eternal Storms Software is what brings order to the messy process of creating screenshots. You see, I like to use Spaces on my MacBook Pro to separate my writing environment from other apps I’m using to produce screenshots. But between Spaces, apps, and the Finder, things get cluttered fast. By being available wherever I am on my Mac, Yoink gives me an easily accessible spot to park images as I create them, so that when I’m finished, I can incorporate them into an article all at once, which saves me time.
Emoji can be hard to find from the iOS system keyboard. Although they have official names, emoji aren’t accessible by those names from Apple’s keyboard. Instead, if an emoji isn’t in your frequently used, you are left with the task of remembering or guessing which category it falls into to find it. The trouble is, the groupings aren’t that intuitive. Here’s a test: Which category is sunglasses in? Objects or People?1Emojinn is a useful little utility that makes it easier to find the emoji you want without memorizing where they are.
Gifstory makes capturing your own GIFs easy by imposing constraints. One of the difficulties with GIFs is that there are lots of variables that impact how big they are and how good they look. I like GIF Brewery on the Mac, but it is easy to get caught up in tweaking those variables endlessly, trying to get a GIF that looks perfect. Gifstory, which is iPhone-only, eliminates the fiddling by imposing limits that work. Point your camera at something, press and hold the capture button, and you can capture a 320 × 426 or 320 x 320 GIF up to sixty frames long.
Agile Tortoise has teamed up with David Sparks of MacSparky.com to produce a series of screencasts introducing Drafts 4 to new users and highlighting some of its features. The first two screencasts were released today. The first video is an overview of how Drafts works, and some of the things you can accomplish with it. The second video focuses on using Drafts with Dropbox to save text as a separate file in Dropbox or append text to an existing text file.
David Sparks, who has made screencasts for companies like The Omni Group and Smile Software, does a great job of showing how easy it is to get started with Drafts, but also exposing some of the powerful ways Drafts can interact with other apps like Dropbox.
