Posts in Linked

Pages, Going The Distance With Word→

Michael D. Shear compares Apple’s Pages to Microsoft Word at The New York Times. Before you begin yawning and close the tab, let me say that I liked the angle Shear used – instead of pointing out the advanced features that Apple removed (what I have also done), he considers Pages for normal people who don’t care about AppleScript and are typically fine with the basic formatting tools.

This bit about iCloud struck me as relevant:

The new version of Pages introduces an all-new sharing option, powered by the company’s iCloud service, that works remarkably well. Type in a person’s email address, click send, and that person receives a link to your document. When the link is clicked, the document opens in a web browser that looks like a fully functioning Pages application. (My mom didn’t even notice the difference.) The recipient doesn’t have to have Pages installed or have an iCloud account. It even makes Mac-PC sharing easy. The new version runs just fine in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome or Safari on a Windows PC.

This is a solid point (emphasis mine). People like Shear’s mom and my folks don’t know the differences between “native” and “web” apps. Pages is Pages. Will they notice it’s Pages in the browser with a URL? Probably, but I guess a good percentage of people will just call it “Pages” or “the shared Pages”.

Here’s to hoping Apple will iterate on the web product quickly – the ease of sharing a document is indisputable, but it needs to be reliable and better integrated with every version of “Pages”.

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GTA: San Andreas Coming To iOS with Game Controller Support→

Today, Rockstar Games announced that GTA: San Andreas, first released for PlayStation 2 in 2004, will be released for mobile devices next month. The mobile version will include iOS and Android platforms, and, on iOS, the game will include support for iOS 7 game controllers – which have just started to become available.

From Rockstar’s PR:

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas also features brand new touch controls including contextual control options to display buttons only when you need them and three different control schemes for driving and maneuvering, as well as a reworked checkpoint system for easier progression. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas for mobile also comes equipped with full controller support, including Made for iOS controller capability on iOS7. It will be available for select iOS, Android, Amazon Kindle and Windows Mobile devices. Stay tuned for more details in the weeks ahead.

In the mobile version, graphics will also be remastered and upgraded to include higher detail for characters, models, color palettes, and draw distance. The game comes a year after Rockstar launched an iOS remake of Vice City, also first released on PlayStation 2.

San Andreas was the biggest GTA game of the PS2 era, and Rockstar recently used the same setting for GTA V, released for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Last year’s iOS release of Vice City was praised for the improvements that went into the conversion but criticized for touch controls, and it’ll be interesting to see how Rockstar will tweak San Andreas for new touch controls and game controllers.

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Shared iCloud Photo Streams for Backup→

On the same day, we got two good posts highlighting how Photo Stream works and why Shared Photo Streams can be used without the sharing part for photo backup purposes.

Ben David Walker:

Shared Photo Streams, however, can be used as both storage and backup for your photos. Yesterday, my friend Tom Klaver opened my eyes to this possibility by highlighting that, in spite of the name, Shared Photo Streams don’t actually have to be shared with anyone. And unlike the standard Photo Stream, photos in Shared Photo Streams are never removed from iCloud. They are eternal. Apple offers a great cloud photo service with many benefits over other services, and it’s hidden in plain sight.

And David Chartier:

You must manually create Shared Photo Streams and manually add photos and videos to them whether they are already in My Photo Stream, your Camera Roll, or, if you’re on a Mac using iPhoto or Aperture, from other sources like apps or the web. Like My Photo Stream, photos added to Shared Photo Streams do not count against your total iCloud storage (however, it sounds like videos do; Apple needs to clear this up too). However, the great thing about Shared Photo Streams is they do not disappear and never automatically dump older photos to make room for new ones.

I am going to try a shared photo stream, but the truth is that Apple needs to simplify a lot of things here. Photo Stream was bolted onto iPhoto on the Mac, there is no web app, and albums can be local on an iOS device and they don’t sync but there are streams and, actually, you have two kinds of photo streams but only one is automatic and has limitations.

It’s seriously confusing, and people don’t have time for this. Cue Everpix.

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Pixelmator 3.0 FX [Sponsor]→

Our thanks to Pixelmator for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Pixelmator is a full-featured, award-winning image editing app for OS X that is fully ready for Mavericks and faster thanks to support for Apple’s latest technologies. Pixelmator has long been one of the premier image editing apps for the Mac, and version 3.0 adds powerful new features such as Liquify Tools and Layer Styles.

Pixelmator 3.0 integrates with Mavericks features like App Nap and Compressed Memory to make the app faster, more responsive, and better optimized for high performance. The image editing engine has been rewritten, and the app is ready for Apple’s Retina displays in modern MacBook Pros.

Pixelmator 3.0 FX is a free update, and it’s available at $29.99 on the Mac App Store. A free 30-day trial is available here.

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Mark Jardine Interview→

Sam Rosenthal interviews Tapbots’ Mark Jardine. The interview isn’t too long and it’s a good read.

Allow me to quote a single answer by Jardine, in which he talks about the reaction of some people to iOS 7:

I think a fair analogy is when photography started to go digital. There were the early adopters that embraced DSLR’s and the use of Photoshop for post. And then there were the film guys who refused to move on. In many ways, film was still better than digital, but we knew where the future of the industry was headed. And a lot of die hard film guys got left behind. iOS 7 is a reboot and it will get better over time. I’m learning and embracing the design language now so our future apps can be better because of it.

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Dayli→

Nice app by Adam Swinden: Dayli lets you take a picture every day and create a timelapse video to see how things have changed over time. The app produces best results with selfies and it’s reminiscent of Everyday, although Daily is fully ready for iOS 7 (which is also required).

There are some details worth mentioning. The app can create multiple “daylis” (albums) that can contain separate collections of pictures. You can set reminders for each dayli and a frequency (you will get a local notification on your iPhone); once you have a collection of pictures you want to put together, you can create a video at 2, 4, or 8 FPS. In the camera view, you can create and turn on guides to better align your face with the iPhone, and there’s a button to overlay a previous pic on the screen so you’ll always capture pictures with the same angle/distance.

The app is relatively new, so I can’t comment on its reliability over several months with a library of hundreds of photos (which, by the way, can be saved to the Camera Roll or kept in the app). I’ve been taking a picture every day for the past two weeks; Daily has worked fine for me and I like its design and feature set.

Dayli is $1.99 on the App Store.

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Fantastical for Mac Gets Due Times For Reminders→

With the release of Fantastical 2 for iPhone, using the Mac app revealed an annoying bug that I either hadn’t noticed or just forgotten about: you couldn’t assign due times to reminders created inside the app.

The bug has been fixed with version 1.3.11, available on the Mac App Store. You can now write “todo Buy Zelda at 5 PM” and Fantastical will parse every piece of your command correctly. In the process, Flexibits also fixed some iCloud-related errors, which I’ve been noticing in the past few weeks.

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The Prompt: Radioactive Chocolate Cake→

This week, Jason Snell puts on his best Italian accent and joins Stephen and Myke to talk about online collaboration, keyboards and the third rail of 5by5 podcasting — comic books.

Bad news: as you may know by now, I couldn’t record on Wednesday due to issues with my ISP.

Good news: Myke and Stephen had a great discussion with Jason about iPads, comics, and more. And: my Internet should be back next week. Get the episode here.

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