Posts in news

Hubstaff: The All-In-One Work Time Tracker For Managing Field or Remote Teams [Sponsor]

Hubstaff is the all-in-one time tracking solution for managing field and remote teams that you’ve always wanted. Focusing on the right priorities is critical to managing your employees, and with Hubstaff, you’ve got the tools you need to track productivity and power through projects.

Hubstaff lets you do things like automate clocking in and out with geofenced time tracking for teams on the go. With Hubstaff, preparing and tracking timesheets is simplified, and invoicing is automated too. Hubstaff Time provides simple time tracking and reporting. HubStaff Desk allows you to manage your team, proof their work, keep on top of time tracking and boost productivity. And if you’re on the go, Hubstaff Field for GPS helps you manage your field team too.

All plans are free for solo teams and start at $7 per user/month for each new team member added. Enterprise plans are just $20 per user/month. All plans also include a free, full-featured 14-day trial, so sign up today to give Hubstaff a try.

While you’re it, be sure to try Hubstaff Tasks, too, for all your agile project management needs. It’s a great complement to Hubstaff and is based on the Agile Methodology, which has been proven to enhance team collaboration and communication. Keep up to date with a smarter Stand-up tool and take your daily Scrum meetings online with automated software. The online Roadmap tool helps you visualize your strategy and unite your team too.

Hubstaff Tasks allows you to break huge projects into manageable work cycles, so your team gets more done. It also lets you see how much time is spent on each task and track time as you work.

All plans are free for solo teams and start at $5 per user/month for each new team member added. There’s also a free, full-featured 14-day trial, so sign up today to give Hubstaff Tasks a try.

Our thanks to Hubstaff for sponsoring MacStories this week.

MacStories Unwind: An AppStories+ Pre-Announcement, Mela, and a New Tetris Game

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This week on MacStories Unwind:

MacStories

Club MacStories

  • MacStories Weekly
    • An Monday teaser
    • OtterBox Mobile Gaming Clip for MagSafe
    • John on the lead up to a big launch

AppStories

Unwind

Introducing AppStories+: An Extended, Ad-Free Edition Delivered Early

Federico and I are excited to introduce AppStories+, an extended, ad-free version of the podcast we’ve been hosting together since 2017, which will be releasing a day earlier than usual with higher bitrate audio. AppStories+ is just one part of a series of announcements that we’ll fully reveal on Monday, August 23, but we wanted to give everyone a first look at one of the tent pole features we’ve been building.

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AppStories, Episode 236 – Sideloading Apps and Games on the iPhone and iPad→

This week on AppStories, we explore the world of sideloaded apps and games on the iPhone and iPad, including AltStore and the kinds of apps and game emulators it makes possible.

Sponsored by:

  • Memberful – Monetize your passion with membership.
  • Technology Untangled – Join Michael Bird as he untangles innovation through a series of interviews, stories, and analyses with some of the industry’s brightest brains.

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MacStories Unwind: Apple Maps, Obsidian, and Markdown Editors in Task Managers

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Sponsored by: UpNote – The Best Cross-Platform Note-Taking App

This week on MacStories Unwind:

MacStories

Club MacStories

  • MacStories Weekly
    • Federico recommends Delta
    • Tips on how to set up Sofa
    • John’s iPad Air Home Screen

AppStories

Unwind

Joanna Stern of The Wall Street Journal Interviews Craig Federighi About Apple’s Upcoming Child Safety Features→

Last week, Apple announced two new child safety features coming this fall that stirred up controversy in the security and privacy world. The first is a technology that scans photos that are uploaded to customers’ iCloud Photo Libraries for digital fingerprints that match a database of known Child Sexual Abuse Material or ‘CSAM’ that is maintained by the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a quasi-governmental entity in the US. The other is a machine learning-based technology used by Messages on an opt-in basis to alert children, and if they are under 13, their parents, of images flagged by the system as potentially pornographic.

The two technologies are different, but by announcing them at the same time in a way that wasn’t always clear, Apple found itself embroiled in controversy. The company has since tried to clarify the situation by publishing a set of FAQs that go into more detail about the upcoming features than the initial announcement did.

Then today, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, sat down with Joanna Stern of The Wall Street Journal for a video interview to explain the two features and how they work. Stern’s interview is well worth watching because it does more in just under 12 minutes to clarify what Apple is doing, and just as importantly not doing, than anything else I’ve watched or read.

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Billie Eilish and Apple Music Promote Spatial Audio with Short Film

Apple and Billie Eilish have collaborated on a video visualizing Spatial Audio, the Dolby Atmos-powered audio technology designed to create an immersive listening experience for music fans. Eilish recently released her album Happier Than Ever, which is available on Apple Music in Spatial Audio and Lossless.

The video begins with Eilish singing Getting Older a cappella in front of a vanity mirror, transitions into a performance of GOLDWING. As Eilish sings, mirrors multiply her reflection, creating a visual metaphor for Spatial Audio.

An audio feature like Spatial Audio isn’t an easy thing to illustrate with video. However, Eilish’s short film hits the nail on the head by capturing the feel of the feature in a beautifully cinematic way that isn’t technical. As a fan of Eilish’s work, I also love her short but captivating performance.

Apple Maps for iOS and iPadOS 15 and macOS Monterey: The MacStories Overview

Maps is unique among Apple system apps. Most system apps, like Notes or Reminders, are only updated at the same time that major revisions of the company’s underlying operating systems are released. Tweaks are sometimes made with OS point releases but never separate from the OS updates themselves.

Maps is different because so much of the experience is tied to the data that the app delivers. That allows Apple to add mid-cycle updates that aren’t tied to an OS release. There are many recent examples, like the addition of COVID-19 travel guidance for airports, vaccination site locations, and places offering volunteer opportunities. At the same time, the company continues to expand and enhance the accuracy and detail offered by Maps at a deeper level with its ongoing initiative to rebuild the app’s underlying maps worldwide.

Apple has been at it, improving Maps since iOS 6, and it’s a task that by definition will never truly be finished. However, the introduction of new features in recent years and broader expansion of its effort to deliver rebuilt maps to more of the world has allowed Apple to refine the app across the board. Using the latest map data the company has collected has enabled it to redesign the Maps experience, providing more relevant information to users, and expanding its view of the world around us.

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AppStories, Episode 235 – An Interview with Malin Sundberg→

This week on AppStories, we continue the Summer OS Preview Series with special guest Malin Sundberg, the creator of time tracking and invoicing app Orbit, for a chat about the development of Orbit, SwiftUI, Shortcuts for Mac, SharePlay, and more.

Sponsored by:

  • Concepts – Sketch, Note, Draw
  • Instabug – Ship Quality Apps with Real-Time Contextual Insights
  • Technology Untangled – Join Michael Bird as he untangles innovation through a series of interviews, stories, and analyses with some of the industry’s brightest brains

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