Posts in Linked

Infuse 2→

Speaking of the Apple TV, the app I used to stream movies to my television wirelessly was Infuse. Developed by FireCore, Infuse is a good-looking video player with support for multiple formats, Dolby Digital Plus sound, integration with the TheMovieDB and TheTVDB for metadata, and AirPlay.

I wasn’t interested in features like trakt, social sharing, or subtitles – I just wanted an easy way to stream videos from my iPad to the Apple TV without loss in terms of quality and smoothness. I downloaded Infuse, connected the iPad to my Mac (my movies are on an external drive), and used iTunes’ file manager to drop files into Infuse. Seconds after the copy was finished, Infuse would see the video, collect metadata, and display a gorgeous artwork preview with cast information and technical details on the file.

To stream videos with AirPlay, you need to unlock the $4.99 “Infuse Pro” In-App Purchase, which I bought immediately and didn’t regret. I gave Infuse various formats including MKV and AVI at both 720p and 1080p and streaming to my second-gen Apple TV was always smooth and fast.

I’m impressed by Infuse because, once it had my videos, it didn’t require me to fiddle with any setting or file conversion – it just worked with AirPlay and videos looked great. Infuse is free on the App Store and you can read more about supported formats (for video, audio tracks, and subtitles) here.

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Apple TV Tips→

A Reddit thread with a series of great tips for Apple TV settings and AirPlay-compatible apps I didn’t know about. I could have used some of these suggestions (like Beamer and the Menu shortcut) for Christmas, as I watched movies with my family through the Apple TV every day. It takes a while to read through the comments, but it’s worth it.

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The King Of Clash→

To those of us raised in the world before social media, it is a given that the “real” world is the one in which you sit in traffic on your way to pick up the dry cleaning. Our connection to this world is the chief measure of our sanity. But if we’re honest about it, reality is hardly so simple now. When a guy like George Yao can plow through an anesthetizing day of mortgage regulations only to return at night to a digital fraternity where he is loved and celebrated, with friends who share his daily experience, who’s to say which is real and which is illusory? If a game can make you famous, if it can yield genuine friendships and even a new career, then why shouldn’t it become, at least for a time, the epicenter of your life?

From the NYTimes’ profile of Jorge Yao, a former top player of Clash of Clans. See also: the WSJ’s article on Supercell from October.

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My Must-Have Apps, 2013 Edition→

Today, I published the last installment of this year’s “My Must-Have Apps” series. I had a lot of fun compiling these lists for the past two months, cutting them down as much as possible to only include the apps I consider essential for my iPad, Mac, and iPhone.

Because these articles have kept me busy for the better part of December, I decided, inspired by John Siracusa, to offer a quick recap with links and stats.

In each list, I named an App of the Year:

All three articles have been written and edited in Editorial for iPad. HTML output was generated from Markdown files with Marked 2. Using a couple of Editorial workflows, I compiled some stats by scanning the original Markdown version of my articles.

I started with the basics – the number of apps:

  • 33 iPad apps
  • 32 Mac apps
  • 50 iPhone apps

(115 apps listed across three articles)

Then, I counted hyperlinks (formatted as inline links in Markdown):

  • 98 inline links iPhone
  • 63 inline links Mac
  • 98 inline links iPad

(259 hyperlinks across three articles)

For prices, I first counted the total number of apps again, then split free and paid apps, and last I calculated the total and average cost of paid apps. Please note that prices have been fetched from iTunes today, therefore some apps may still be discounted for the holiday sale.

iPad

  • 33 apps. 14 free apps and 19 paid apps.
  • Total cost of paid apps: $116.81
  • Average cost of paid apps: $6.15

Mac (only Mac App Store apps)

  • 13 apps. 2 free apps and 11 paid apps.
  • Total cost of paid apps: $175.89
  • Average cost of paid apps: $15.99

iPhone

  • 50 apps. 18 free apps and 32 paid apps.
  • Total cost of paid apps: $145.68
  • Average cost of paid apps: $4.55

Last, I counted the occurrences of specific words/phrases in my articles. They were all written separately in the month of December 2013, so I wanted to see if I could find curious patterns in my writing style and editing process. Searches were case-sensitive; both links and occurrences were counted using Editorial workflows from my book.

Occurrences for…(by article)

  • “workflow”: 7 (iPhone), 8 (Mac), 7 (iPad)
  • “love”: 3 (iPhone), 2 (Mac), 2 (iPad)
  • “I don’t know”: 1 (iPhone), 2 (Mac), 1 (iPad)
  • “I don’t like”: 2 (iPhone), 0 (Mac), 1 (iPad)

You can find all my three “Must-Have Apps” articles here.

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Fantastical→

My thanks to Flexibits for sponsoring MacStories this week with Fantastical. Both on the Mac and iPhone, Fantastical lets you create and manage events using a beautiful and intuitive interface with an expressive and accurate natural language parser. With Fantastical, you can type something like “Lunch with Michael at 1 PM tomorrow” and the app will create a calendar event for it, filling all the necessary date and time fields for you. Same for reminders, recurring events, and other commands. It’s great.

I’ve been using Fantastical for years now, and I wouldn’t be able to go back to using Apple’s default apps for events and reminders. Fantastical 2, which is my iPhone app of the year, introduced an iOS 7 redesign and new features such as direct Reminders integration, a new week view, a dark theme, and more. For power users, Fantastical 2 has a powerful scheme that lets you chain it to other apps to build handy automated workflows.

For a limited time only, Fantastical 2 for iPhone is $1.99 (60% off) and Fantastical for Mac is $9.99 (50% off). You can find out more about Fantastical 2 for iPhone and Fantastical for Mac here and here.

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My Sweet iPad Setup→

I was interviewed by my friends at The Sweet Setup about the way I use my iPad mini – what apps I use the most, and why.

The iPad is, essentially, my primary work device. In the past year, I was forced for various reasons to use an iPad, and while I came across a lot of limitations for my workflow in the first weeks of extensive usage, I ended up loving the iPad as a work machine. I think that a lot of people have made up their minds about the iPad based on prejudices and won’t give the device a fair chance when it comes to using it for more than reading comics or watching Netflix on it.

Check out the interview here.

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The Prompt: Too Long; Didn’t Listen→

This week, the boys talk about music consumption.

Specifically, we talked about iTunes Match, Rdio, Spotify, and the differences between these services and apps in terms of sound quality, user experience, and royalties paid to artists. I had a lot of fun doing research for this episode and putting together links for the show notes – which I recommend checking out.

We’re not done discussing music but this is a good start. Get the episode here.

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