This Week's Sponsor:

SoundSource

New Year, New Audio Setup: SoundSource 6 from Rogue Amoeba

Posts in Linked

Mac Power Users Joins Relay FM→

Mac Power Users, one of my favorite podcasts hosted by Katie Floyd and David Sparks, is joining the Relay FM family. Stephen Hackett, writing on the Relay FM blog:

I’ve listened to Apple podcasts for a long time, and with over 250 episodes published, Mac Power Users has been a constant listen of mine for years.

Mac Power Users isn’t just a podcast; it’s an institution. The guest list is impressive, with greats like Rod Roddenberry, Merlin Mann, Aisha Tyler and David Allen making appearances.

That’s why today’s announcement is so exciting: MPU is joining Relay FM.

And from the MPU blog:

Mac Power Users has had a great run on 5by5 and we are grateful to Dan, Haddie and the rest of the 5by5 team for everything they’ve done for our show through the years. But we’ve decided for the show to continue to grow we need to make a few changes.

I have a personal attachment to Mac Power Users. Three years ago, when I was hospitalized for three weeks and couldn’t work (or move), I started catching up on the MPU backlog. Mac Power Users episodes were informative, funny, and always useful. In those three weeks, Katie and David kickstarted my interested in plain text, Markdown, and automation, which eventually led me to use Pythonista, Editorial, and deeply reimagine how I work on a daily basis and the apps I use.

I’m thrilled to see Mac Power Users joining Relay. To make sure you won’t miss new episodes, you can subscribe to an updated feed here.

Permalink

Virtual: Podcasters, Please→

This week Federico and Myke talk about how VR could effect game design, take a look at more upcoming Apple Watch games and workshop an idea for a video game of their own.

Last week’s episode of Virtual featured more discussions on Apple Watch games – and I’m sure we’re not done yet. You can listen here.

Permalink

Apple Watch and Durability→

Luma Labs’ Greg Koenig, writing for iMore:

It’s no surprise that questions are being raised about just how durable each variant of the Apple Watch will be, given that people are now considering putting down real money for them. The best way to answer such questions is to wait and see how the first wave of watches do in the hands of real people. Yet it’s not unreasonable for potential early adopters to want at least some idea before they buy. Lucky for us, Apple is using materials and techniques that have been standard for wristwatches going back a few decades, so we can make some educated, experience-driven assumptions about how the watch variants will fair on our wrists soon.

Fascinating read on the materials and processes used by Apple. See also: Koenig’s analysis of Apple’s promo videos from March.

Permalink

Apple Details How It Rebuilt Siri→

Derrick Harris:

Apple announced during a Wednesday night meetup at its Cupertino, California, headquarters that the company’s popular Siri application is powered by Apache Mesos.

We at Mesosphere are obviously thrilled about Apple’s public validation of the technology on which our Datacenter Operating System is based. If Apple trusts Mesos to underpin Siri — a complex application that handles Apple-only-knows-how-many voice queries per day from hundreds of millions of iPhone and iPad users — that says a lot about how mature Mesos is and how ready it is to make a big impact in companies of all stripes.

According to Apple’s slides, today’s Siri is the third generation of the company’s voice-based assistant.

Permalink

Instapaper on Apple Watch→

The team at betaworks has released Instapaper for Apple Watch today. With the Watch, Instapaper eschews text (you don’t want to read long articles on your wrist) in favor of text-to-speech – introduced back in September.

Today we’re introducing a whole new way to get through your articles with Instapaper for the Apple Watch. The Watch app allows you to navigate to any saved article and trigger text-to-speech playback from your iPhone […]

Once an article is selected, the Watch app provides you with a text-to-speech controller that includes options to play, pause, fast forward, rewind, change the rate, and view the article’s current progress […]

As Marco Arment writes, Instapaper is now also an audio app, which makes it suitable for the Watch. Nice idea, especially because it still syncs reading/listening position between devices.

Permalink

‘Hours, the Apple Watch, and Turning an App Into a Business’→

Jeremy Olson on making Hours free and shifting their focus on turning a “simple app” into a business:

How do you break into business and the enterprise? We like Slack’s bottom-up approach. Start by making the best solution for individuals, who in turn advocate adoption for their team, who in turn evangelize to other teams…and up the chain it goes. If startups can make this strategy work in the Enterprise, as Slack has, then they can focus on creating a great experience for the end-user instead of a bloated feature list to pass a corporate approval checklist.

Hours is an excellent time tracker. I’m curious to see if this strategy will work out for them, and if other developers are tweaking their plans to follow a similar route.

See also: Dan Counsell’s advice from last year.

Permalink

NightStand for Apple Watch→

Cool-looking upcoming Apple Watch dock by ElevationLab:

NightStand makes daily charging a breeze. Just set your watch on, from out of the corner of your eye, no careful alignment required. Locks to your bedside table so you never have to hunt for the cord. Undocking is one-handed. Solid, soft, seamless construction. Low-profile, minimal design.

It would have been nice if Apple included a charging dock with every Apple Watch. I’m intrigued by the NightStand because of how it can be placed vertically anywhere:

Optionally mounts vertically. NightStand ships with an ultra-strong, optional to use, custom 3M adhesive back (the same adhesive GoPro and our highly-rated Anchor headphone mount uses). Mount NightStand safely to the side of your bed frame, stealthily behind your headboard, on your wall anywhere. If you ever have trouble removing it, just heat it with a hair dryer to soften the adhesive.

$29, ships May 29th.

Permalink