Stephen and Myke revisit the Twitter and Health apps, then discuss the current state of iOS 8, the Pebble’s future and Apple’s upcoming press event.
I couldn’t join Stephen and Myke for this episode, but I enjoyed their discussion about the post-launch state of iOS 8 and the future of Pebble watches. Get the episode here.
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Project LayUp is an upcoming iPad brainstorming app developed by Khoi Vinh in collaboration with Adobe that was announced at Adobe MAX earlier this week. Based on the information released so far, LayUp will let you sketch ideas and start your design process on an iPad with a combination of wireframes, graphical assets, and even real fonts loaded from Typekit. Then, LayUp will be able to export a live InDesign, Illustrator, or Photoshop file to continue working on your project in Adobe’s full-featured apps.
From the description:
Tablets are no longer just for browsing and playing games, they’ve become an integral part of the creative process. Project Layup is the brainchild of a customer and partner who used our just announced Creative SDK to reimagine on device prototyping, sketching, and ideation.
And from Vinh’s blog post:
So that’s what I proposed to Scott: a new iPad app that would turbo-charge the brainstorming phase of the design process, and that would play nicely with Adobe’s marquee apps. I called it “LayUp.” To my surprise, he took me up on the idea, and assigned a team at Adobe to start developing it. So for the better part of this year, I’ve been working with that team to bring LayUp to life.
You can watch Vinh’s presentation at Adobe MAX below, which features a preview of the interface and gestures used to assemble ideas and gather assets directly on the iPad.
I’m intrigued by LayUp’s use of gesture shortcuts: drawing lines and other shapes to drop blocks of text or images into the canvas is smart, and the implementation looks natural and intuitive. Alissa Walker, writing for Gizmodo, notes:
What I was most struck by while watching Vinh demo the app is how natural this felt: It was as if the iPad has been waiting all this time to be used to its full potential in this way. The resulting file is not a production-ready document, of course, but this is far better than anything else you could create with the tools that are out there. Adobe is very smart to bring on some of the top designers to play around with new ways to make their software even more relevant across more platforms.
I often need to sketch out ideas I want to send to our designer for MacStories, but I’m not good at sketching. I’m looking forward to trying LayUp.
Hugh Kimura, writing about the new Spotlight search suggestions for App Store apps in iOS 8:
At this point, there doesn’t seem to be a way to optimize for Spotlight Search. Even searches for the most popular app names and keywords return inconsistent results.
It does help some well established apps. But we need to wait for Apple to refine the algorithm, in order for it to benefit more apps.
With ASO now being an important factor for developers to consider to properly market their apps, it’ll be interesting to see if and how search in Spotlight will evolve. I’m finding it to be much faster and intuitive than App Store search, but its results aren’t consistent.
As part of its opening keynote for its developer and creative conference, Adobe will be announcing a more integrated desktop and mobile strategy, which centres around several new iPhone and iPad applications and some rebranded old favourites.
At Adobe Max it will reveal how each app fits into a category where it works with equivalent Adobe desktop software, with some split into groups and others working across most of its creative software. It calls the new line up its “mobile canvas” and what’s more, you don’t even have to wait until after the keynote to download them.
Rik Henderson of Pocket-lint provides a good overview of all of Adobe’s key mobile apps following their announcements yesterday at the Adobe MAX conference. Many of the apps launched earlier this year, but a few, including Premiere Clip, Color and Shape are new.
Above all, it is impressive to see how seriously Adobe is taking mobile, and in particular, how rapidly they are rolling out new apps and updates to their existing ones. As always, these apps are free but require a subscription to Adobe’s Creative Cloud service. If you want to learn more, Adobe’s mobile app page has got details on all of these new and existing apps for the iPhone and iPad.
Released today on the App Store, version 5.1 of 1Password brings, in addition to iPhone 6 support, better compatibility with Touch ID and a redesigned security screen.
When I tested 1Password 5 for my review, I noted that Touch ID had been working well for me, but the public release of the app revealed that iOS 8 was prompting for master passwords for many people due to memory constraints and other bugs.
Version 5.1 comes with redesigned settings that better explain how Touch ID authentication works, unify the master password and PIN options, and that also contain an option (in the Advanced section) to enable custom keyboards inside 1Password (they’re turned off by default as they could transmit keystrokes). According to Agile Bits, the implementation of Touch ID is more reliable now and the app should always honor its security settings. That means less master password prompts, unless you restart your device or Touch ID fails.
I continue to be amazed by the fact that 1Password can now be invoked in any app that supports action extensions. If you’re a developer and you’re making apps that handle web logins or other secure data input, consider supporting the 1Password extension. If you’re a 1Password user, get the 5.1 update from the App Store as it brings some welcome bug fixes.
This week Federico and Myke discuss missing out on online gaming, the Tetris movie, brain training games, an upcoming indie game documentary and Myke’s experience ad the EGX Video Game Expo.
Some great links on last week’s Virtual, plus Myke’s first experience with Oculus at EGX. Get the episode here.
Federico Viticci of MacStories joins us to talk about the state of automation with the new enhancements of iOS 8.
I was invited on Mac Power Users and I had lots of fun discussing iOS 8 apps, extensions, and new automation features with Katie and David. Some of the apps I mentioned have been covered here, others will be released soon.
You can get the episode here.
Yoni Heisler has an in-depth overview of Apple Pay at TUAW today:
Remember that merchants in an Apple Pay transaction never have access to user credit card information and, as a result, users never have to worry about their information being compromised in a security breach. Further, security at the device level is effectively impenetrable as tokens, along with the encrypted keys responsible for the cryptogram, are all securely stored in the Secure Element.
And as an extra security precaution, iPhone owners will have the ability to unlink or temporarily suspend a token connected to a stolen device, thereby rendering Apple Pay inoperable until the device is retrieved.
I may be skeptical about Apple Pay in Europe, but the way it’s been built and will operate is fascinating. (I’m even more curious to know if integration with Safari will happen for web payments eventually).
At its conference in San Francisco today, Evernote announced a slew of updates for its core iOS and OS X experience as well as a redesigned web app (currently available as public beta), a redesign of Penultimate, a new scanner app, and new Market products.
Harry McCracken has an overview of the announcements at Fast Company. He concludes with a legitimate concern:
As a pretty committed Evernote user–I have more of my digital life stored there than any one other single place–all of these announcements leave me both excited and at least a tad concerned. Profoundly useful though the service is, it’s never quite felt like it’s nailed the best, simplest, most intuitive interface for what it does. (The fact that it has a habit of radically redoing its user interface on a regular basis is presumably an acknowledgement of that.) Adding more features will only make it tougher to keep Evernote coherent and approachable.
I’m curious to check out the updates to the iOS apps (I use Evernote for work every day) and the redesign of the Mac app for Yosemite looks nice. I’m a fan of the web app: by default, it lets you write a new note with just a few clicks, but it packs most of the features available in other versions of Evernote. It was a much needed change.
I have my doubts about the contextual and messaging features Evernote announced, but they also have potential and I’d rather wait until I can try them. I’m not sure I’d ever benefit from links pulled in from the WSJ or LinkedIn while I’m doing research, but other sources would be welcome. As for messaging, it is going to be hard for Evernote to beat the workplace integration that’s being built by Slack, but I imagine it could be a nice plus for businesses that rely heavily on Evernote internally.
I liked the tone and message of the keynote. Phil Libin is a good presenter and he genuinely seems to be invested in Evernote as a product. Evernote is often derided for their frequent redesigns, but they have struck a good balance with iOS 7 in the past year (both Evernote and Skitch are now highly polished and functional apps) and the Yosemite update looks like a moderate refresh rather than a ground-up redesign. Evernote has insanely high goals – software for “your life’s work” is the new slogan – and a willingness to adapt to people’s ever-changing needs can be a good thing. The partnership with News Corp. seems a little strange, but, overall, the event was solid.
Check out the Evernote blog for details on Context, the new web app, and Work Chat.
