Federico Viticci

10759 posts on MacStories since April 2009

Federico is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of MacStories, where he writes about Apple with a focus on apps, developers, iPad, and iOS productivity. He founded MacStories in April 2009 and has been writing about Apple since. Federico is also the co-host of AppStories, a weekly podcast exploring the world of apps, Unwind, a fun exploration of media and more, and NPC: Next Portable Console, a show about portable gaming and the handheld revolution.
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@viticci.macstories.net
viticci@macstories.net

Chrome for iOS Getting Voice Search Soon

Following this morning’s rollout of the Voice Search for desktop, Google has also announced through the official Chrome blog that Chrome for iOS will receive the same feature “over the coming days”.

Voice Search, already available through the standalone Google Search app, will be activated in Google Chrome by tapping on a microphone button above the iOS keyboard:

Over the coming days, we’re rolling out an update for iPhone and iPad as well. You can now speak your searches into the omnibox. Touch the microphone, say your search query aloud and see your results (in some cases spoken back to you), all without typing a single letter.

Interestingly, the screenshot shown by Google displays the microphone button in the same additional keyboard row that’s currently occupied by buttons aimed at enabling users to more easily type URLs. Because Chrome for iOS, unlike Safari, uses a unified address bar for URLs and web searches, the extra keyboard buttons were necessary to let users quickly insert URL-related characters. It’s possible that Google will figure out a way to show both keyboard rows – the buttons and the new microphone – by letting users swipe horizontally above the keyboard.

Alongside performance improvements, Google also notes that “iOS apps can now give you the option to open links in Chrome and then return to the app with just one tap”. Assuming that Google is referring to the Chrome URL scheme with support for x-callback-url, that wouldn’t be new as it is already used by a variety of iOS apps (and as I showed today, users can play with it as well). However, Google has been quite vocal about its existing support for URL schemes lately, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see the company advertising the feature as new again.

Chrome for iOS, free on the App Store, was last updated in April.

Twitter for Mac Gets Notification Center Support→

Twitter updated its official Mac app today to include support for Notification Center and fixes for Growl (among other improvements). Notifications can be configured in the Settings, and, in my initial tests, they worked fine for mentions and direct messages.

In my Mountain Lion review, I noted that I didn’t like clicking on Twitter notifications because they were taking me to Twitter’s website instead of an app (they still do). It’s good to see Twitter updating their Mac app again.

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Rdio for iOS Update Brings Label Search, Revamped Sidebar, New “Find People” Feature

Rdio 2.2, released today for the iPhone and iPad, brings a series of important new features such as label search and improved user search, plus a revamped look for the slide-out navigation.

A feature highly requested by Rdio’s userbase, label search allows you to view top albums and artists of a specific label; if you want to see more artists or records, there are links to view a complete list – which, surprisingly, doesn’t support the tap & hold menu for quick actions that was introduced a few updates ago.

In the refreshed sidebar (also available on the iPad) a new Find People functionality allows you to find friends and artists you can follow by simply tapping on their profile pictures. It’s unclear how Rdio is determining user suggestions, but it’s likely that the service is looking into data provided by Twitter and Facebook accounts configured with it.

Today’s new version follows a series of updates that streamlined the app’s interface and enhanced its sharing capabilities. Rdio 2.2 is available on the App Store.

The Omni Group Launches OmniPresence For Automatic Document Syncing

Announced in December 2012, The Omni Group has today started the public rollout of OmniPresence, their new free automatic document syncing solution for OS X and iOS. OmniPresence, based on open web technologies, is available inside OmniGraffle, OmniGraphSketcher, and OmniOutliner for iPad, and it also comes with a companion Mac app that runs in the menubar.

“The way we are doing it is not to hook it up into some backend proprietary service”, The Omni Group CEO Ken Case told us in an interview during Macworld|iWorld earlier this year. As a long-time user of Omni products such as OmniOutliner for the iPad and Mac, I was eager to see whether Case’s promises of a fast, reliable automatic syncing technology would grow into a stable product capable of fitting seamlessly into my daily workflow. After nearly two months of testing, I’m glad to say that, in some ways, The Omni Group has even exceeded my (already high) expectations. Read more

Share To Flipboard Magazines From Drafts

Flipboard

Flipboard

I’m a big fan of Flipboard’s magazine feature, which was introduced earlier this year with version 2.0 of the app. By leveraging Flipboard’s existing presentation style – capable of re-formatting web articles, videos, and photos with a beautiful print-like layout – magazines allow anyone to put together a collection of interesting links that others can subscribe to, read, and share. I am subscribed to dozens of Flipboard magazines and I send links to my Games one on a daily basis.

Most of my automation tips stem from minor annoyances with default solutions, so yesterday I decided to create a simple, yet effective Drafts URL action to easily open Flipboard’s share interface without having to read a webpage in the browser. Read more

Latest Chrome Release Includes Voice Search Support→

Jerry Hildenbrand:

Google Now style voice search has just went live in the latest Chrome stable version for the desktop (Version 27.0.1453.93). As far as we can tell from playing around testing things, the full contextual search isn’t running like we saw in the demo during the Google I/O keynote, but the basic voice search and response is ready to go.

Announced and demoed at I/O last week, Voice Search for the desktop mimics the experience launched on Google’s Search app for iOS last year. Voice Search for the desktop lets you dictate search queries to Google, which will transcribe them in (almost) real-time and take you directly to results, powered by the Knowledge Graph. Like on iOS, certain queries will trigger a voice response by Google itself, whereas others will display cards of information or regular results.

It appears Google is rolling out the feature this morning, as the new voice interface is available in Chrome but leading to frequent “No Internet connection” dialogs; I was able to try Voice Search twice, and it worked as expected.

You can watch a demo of Google’s Voice Search for the desktop from I/O 2013 here; an announcent will likely be posted on the official Google Chrome blog.

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Apple Rolls Out Online Store Design Changes

Apple rolled out a series of design changes to its online Store overnight, bringing a cleaner, more subdued style for graphical elements and larger, image-centric spots for products and accessories.

The most notable change is the front page of the Store, which now eschews a sidebar to present a full-size view of products with varying sizes. The old design featured evenly-spaced thumbnails for Apple products and third-party accessories with two sidebars with additional navigation options and information; the new one employs larger images, retaining navigation for the main “Shop” sections at the top and in the footer. Interestingly, in the refreshed homepage launched today, the only image showing a Mac is the “Shop Mac” link at the top.

Design tweaks have also been rolled out in several other areas of the Store, such as the Accessories page. The old design relied on a main product list with small thumbnails and a sidebar containing clickable links on the left side; the new one takes a more visual approach with a landing page featuring larger tiles of products, a new sidebar on the right, and a larger grid for accessories in each category.

The Apple Store follows a series of recent design tweaks Apple brought to some of its products and services – notably, the company sent new iTunes promotional emails with a cleaner look and more focus on content yesterday.

For comparison purposes, we have captured screenshots of the old online Store design using the Internet Archive. You can view the full-size images by clicking the links below.

  • Online Store homepage: old/new

  • iPad Accessories page: old/new

Infinitesimal Bits of Time→

Adam C. Engst, in his overview of Keyboard Maestro 6:

In fact, many of my macros are utterly simple and obvious — I could type “cheers… -Adam” at the end of every email message I send, or I could press Control-period. Just because I’m saving only a few seconds doesn’t mean that it’s not worthwhile, when added up over tens of thousands of messages. Similarly, much as I love LaunchBar and use it heavily for many things, because I set F1 to open BBEdit via Keyboard Maestro, switching to BBEdit via F1 is a third of the work of LaunchBar’s Command-Space, B, Return. Those infinitesimal bits of time are like the energy drain from glowing lights on otherwise inactive electronics — meaningless in the individual instance, but vast in their overall impact.

According to Keyboard Maestro, I have saved 420 hours since I started using it 635 days ago.

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