In this first episode of a mini-series on long-form writing on iOS, Fraser and Federico go deep on one of their favourite applications: Ulysses.
On this week’s Canvas, we talk about Ulysses for iOS and explain its unique take on Markdown, library organization, writing tools, and more. You can listen here.
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Member Requests Question: I have an existing workflow where I POST using the Get Contents of URL action in order to create a new entity in a NoSQL database. I know that the POST fails under some circumstances, such as when a new entity is POSTed and the name attribute is not unique. What should my next...
A Todoist Template for This Week’s Tasks Every week on Monday, we (John, Ryan, and I) start planning the next issue of MacStories Weekly to be released on Friday. And because this newsletter is comprised of regular, but rotating sections assigned to different authors each time, my responsibilities shift on a weekly basis depending on the sections I’m in charge of....
Gladys When iOS 11 was announced at WWDC in June, I received several emails from developers who, disappointed by the lack of a shelf feature for iPad (as I imagined it in my concept), told me they were going to make their own based on the new drag and drop APIs. For the past few...
At the Money 20/20 conference earlier this week, Jennifer Bailey, Apple’s VP of Apple Pay, revealed some new stats about the service and announced an expansion to four new major markets. Ingrid Lunden has the full story at TechCrunch, but this part about Apple Pay Cash (the peer-to-peer payment feature announced at WWDC that hasn’t launched yet) stood out to me:
When Apple Pay Cash is turned on, for example, it will operate like Venmo, allowing users to transfer money quickly to each other via iMessage, Siri and other channels — a service that “thousands” of Apple employees are now already using in a closed beta before the service is turned on more widely later this year in an iOS 11 update.
But in addition to that, users will also be able to take that money and spend it directly at retailers and others that accept Apple Pay.
So you’ll not only be able to send money to other people over iMessage, but Apple Pay Cash will effectively be its own card that can be used at any physical store or website that supports Apple Pay (like our own Club). I’m intrigued.
Jannis Hermanns:
In the summer of 2017, I wanted to know what it would be like to use an iPad Pro as my main computer. I found out that it can actually work, thanks to an iOS app called Blink, an SSH replacement called Mosh, iOS 11 and running stuff on a server.
As is tradition, I will first explain myself and tell you about the why.
This is a technical, fascinating look at turning the iPad Pro into the primary computer for a web backend engineer. It’s always interesting to read how other people with different needs are taking advantage of iOS and the iPad’s app ecosystem.
Back in their respective countries, the boys gather around Skype to discuss an Italian mystery, another failing keyboard, the Pixel 2 XL and iPhone X pre-orders.
Some fun surprises on this week’s episode of Connected, including a few questions for next week. You can listen here.
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Stardew Valley review, Mario Odyssey preperations, and details on the new Nintedo Switch console update.
On this week’s episode of Remaster, we go over the changes in the latest Switch software update and Myke explains why he’s been enjoying Stardew Valley so much. You can listen here.
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As we’ve seen with the release of iOS 11, the emerging market of shelf apps for iPad has proven to be a fun playground for developers to figure out how to enhance the system’s drag and drop experience. We’ve published two stories on our favorite shelf apps released so far (here and here), and I’m keeping an eye on new developments every week. One of the most recent updates is Workshelf 1.1, which has gained a new icon and refreshed interface (thankfully, the original blue background is gone) as well as welcome tweaks to in-app previews and shelf management.
Workshelf, developed by Ross Kimes, is one of the more power user-oriented shelf apps thanks to its support for multiple shelves and raw file representations. In version 1.1, Workshelf can import documents from the Files app, it comes with new sorting options, and it lets you open URLs from an item’s detail page. This feature remains one of my favorite touches of Workshelf: in addition to viewing all the “flavors” of an item dropped in the app (such as a link and an image for a JPEG dragged from Safari), you can also tap & hold a specific file representation to drag it out of Workshelf.
I’ve been using Gladys on my iPad for the past few weeks (another shelf app that offers a variety of advanced features, plus a Files provider extension), but I’m going to give Workshelf another try.
