Ryan Christoffel

984 posts on MacStories since November 2016

Ryan is an editor for MacStories and co-hosts the [Adapt](https://www.relay.fm/adapt) podcast on Relay FM. He most commonly works and plays on his iPad Pro and bears no regrets about moving on from the Mac. He and his wife live in New York City.
ryan@macstories.net

Apple Acquires Texture, a Digital Magazine Subscription Service

Today Apple announced the completion of its latest acquisition: Texture, a digital magazine subscription service.

Texture brings over 200 of the world’s best magazines to life, providing an easy way for users to read high-quality stories and entire issues of their favorite titles. With Texture, users enjoy the magazines they know and love, while discovering new content that fits their passions and interests.

Texture’s iOS app was previously featured by the App Store editorial team as one of the best apps of 2016. Currently, you can still sign up for the service’s $9.99/month subscription. There’s no word in Apple’s press release regarding whether Texture’s existing app will shut down or continue running as-is.

Texture’s Netflix-style model of subscription service feels like a perfect fit for future integration in Apple News. Individual subscriptions to publications like The Washington Post are currently available inside News, but this acquisition creates the potential for an official Apple service, similar to Apple Music, that bundles together the various magazine articles included in Texture. With Texture’s existing catalog as a starting base, Apple could also be in the market for additional acquisition targets that would serve to beef up a future News-related service before its launch. Texture could just be the beginning.

Dropbox Announces Forthcoming Integration with Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides→

Today on its blog, Dropbox announced an exciting piece of news: the company will soon add integrations between its service and Google’s G Suite. The most prominent of those new ties involves Google Docs:

Dropbox users will be able to create, open, edit, save, and share Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides directly from Dropbox. And when you’re working in Dropbox, you’ll be able to save Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides to your Dropbox account.

Considering how much effort Dropbox has poured into building its own Google Docs competitor in Dropbox Paper, it’s surprising to see the company embrace the competition wholeheartedly with a full-fledged integration like this. It’s certainly good news for Dropbox users though, as Google Docs has long been the gold standard of web-based, collaborative document services.

Today’s announcement post is unfortunately short on details of exactly when this integration will launch (besides saying “later this year”), or what it will look like. It’s unknown, for instance, if the change will primarily impact Dropbox on the web, or if Dropbox’s mobile app will be also optimized to do things like preview Google files and open them in their appropriate iOS apps for editing; one would hope mobile will reap the benefits too. The solid implementation of Dropbox’s existing support for Microsoft Office gives hope that the service will play just as nicely with Google when the time comes.

One related piece of news from the post is that Dropbox is also building native integrations for Gmail and Hangouts Chat, so you’ll be able to select files from your Dropbox account while using those services, plus a couple other small things.

Dropbox is pushing forward as a platform-agnostic, service-agnostic file hub for your working life. Whether the strategy will lead to long-term health for the company remains to be seen, but for me personally, it’s one of the points keeping me from giving Dropbox up and going all-in on Apple’s iCloud.

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Twitter Launches Bookmarks Feature in New Share Menu→

Twitter had previously shared that it was working on a new feature, Bookmarks, which would let users privately save tweets for later. Today the company announced that Bookmarks have officially launched and are beginning to roll out to all users across iOS, Android, and Twitter’s mobile site.

As part of this launch, the Direct Message button previously available on every tweet is being replaced by a new Share button – hit Share, and you’ll see the following three options:

  • Send via Direct Message
  • Add Tweet to Bookmarks
  • Share Tweet via…

The latter option will load the system share sheet on iOS.

Tweets added to your Bookmarks are available only for your private viewing, and they can be found by opening the app’s sidebar and hitting the Bookmarks menu option. You can see the whole process of how Bookmarks work in the tweet below.

https://twitter.com/twitter/status/968908970109812736

Everyone will have their own purposes for using Bookmarks, but for my own use, I’m considering saving links shared on Twitter for reading later. Normally I do this by saving to Safari Reading List, but Bookmarks may be a simpler alternative. Also, anytime I come across a tweet I want to share with my wife at the end of the day, Bookmarks should be a perfect fit for that.

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