Announcement: MacStories’ Expanded WWDC Coverage

By John Voorhees

It’s just about time for WWDC to start, and the MacStories team has been busy preparing for a lineup of expanded coverage next week.

As in past years, our coverage will begin with Apple’s keynote presentation. On MacStories, you’ll find in-depth coverage of Apple’s announcements, overviews of OS updates and any new hardware, and roundups of everything happening throughout the week. You’ll also get the kind of details that aren’t widely reported as the team combs through session videos, social media, and other sources.

AppStories is playing an expanded role in our coverage this year, and we’re bringing our new weekly show, MacStories Unwind, along for the ride too. Federico and I will record special episodes of AppStories that we’ll release Tuesday though Friday covering the WWDC keynote, State of the Union presentation, session videos, and more, plus we’ll publish usual Friday episode of Unwind where we’ll wrap up the week’s most important stories and discuss what it all means.

You can follow along with all of the MacStories, AppStories, and Unwind coverage on our WWDC 2020 hub, or subscribe to the dedicated WWDC 2020 RSS feed.

Finally, we’ll send a special issue of MacStories Weekly to Club MacStories members one day later than usual on Saturday, June 27th. The issue will be packed with WWDC-themed features and our thoughts on everything revealed. The same day we’ll also release a special episode of MacStories Unplugged, our Club-only podcast, with an inside look at the week gone by.

If you’re not a member of Club MacStories, you can join here.

To recap, stay tuned to MacStories, our shows, and the Club for a full week of WWDC coverage:

Monday - Friday

Continuous Keynote, State of the Union, and session coverage on MacStories

Tuesday - Friday

Daily episodes of AppStories covering all of Apple’s announcements big and small

Friday

An episode of MacStories Unwind wrapping up the news of the week

Saturday

A WWDC-themed issue of Club MacStories Weekly newsletter
A special members-only episode of MacStories Unplugged

We’re all excited for next week and hope you’ll join us for the festivities.

Adobe Adds Support for Editing Lightroom Images in Photoshop for iPad Alongside Other Updates

By John Voorhees

Adobe’s Lightroom and Photoshop are complementary tools that a lot of creative professionals use together on the desktop, moving images back and forth. Until now, however, that wasn’t possible on the iPad, which has made it a frequently-requested feature ever since Photoshop debuted on the iPad late last year.

With today’s update to Lightroom, there’s a new option in the share menu called ‘Edit in Photoshop.’ When you select that option, Lightroom converts your image for Photoshop and uploads it to Adobe’s cloud service. As soon as that process is complete, Lightroom automatically launches Photoshop and loads the image. When you’re finished making edits, tap the big, blue button at the top of the screen that says ‘Send to Lightroom,’ and a PSD version of the image is returned to Lightroom where you’ll also find the original image you sent to Photoshop. Alternatively, you can save the PSD file as a cloud-based document without sending it back to Lightroom.

Sending a RAW image to Photoshop, which is first converted to a cloud-based PSD file.

Finalizing the import into Photoshop, which now includes a big blue button for sending the image back to Lightroom.

Adobe debuted several other updates to Lightroom on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac too. The company is expanding the learning experiences available in the app with more guided tutorials and interactive edits that demonstrate the steps needed to achieve certain results. Lightroom also includes a new versioning system that permits users to experiment by applying different edits to the same image as different versions and compare them without creating multiple files. All users can also add watermarks to images now, which are synced across devices.

Users who upgrade to Lightroom’s premium service get several other features as well. Hues can be adjusted locally, allowing users to change hues in one area of an image without affecting other parts of it. Premium users can also share edits in the app’s Discover section, a community for sharing images, drawing inspiration, and learning.

With every major update of Adobe’s flagship apps on the iPad, I’m impressed by the progress that has been made. Lightroom is a terrific photo editor that’s made all the more powerful by the additional option of exporting images into Photoshop for iPad, which has been advancing itself quickly. Adobe announced updates to many of its desktop apps today too, but what’s striking about the announcements is just how quickly its mobile apps have begun playing a central role in Adobe’s pro product lineup.

Lightroom and Photoshop are available as free downloads on the App Store, with certain features requiring an In-App Purchase.

Apple Highlights Swift Student Challenge Winners

By Ryan Christoffel

One unique component of Apple’s online WWDC this year is that the company opened a Swift Student Challenge where students could submit a Swift playground creation for special recognition. Today in a press release, Apple is highlighting three of the 350 winners: Sofia Ongele, Palash Taneja, and Devin Green.

For Sofia Ongele, 19, who just finished her sophomore year at New York’s Fordham University, her focus for change lies at the intersection of tech and social justice. ReDawn, her first iOS app, is a powerful example. After one of her college friends was sexually assaulted during her freshman year, Ongele created ReDawn to help survivors access resources in a safe, easy, and sensitive way.
[…]
Palash Taneja…went on to create a web-based tool that uses machine learning to predict how mosquito-borne diseases like dengue fever would spread. And for his Swift Student Challenge submission this year, created against the backdrop of COVID-19, Taneja designed a Swift playground that teaches coding while simulating how a pandemic moves through a population, showing how precautions such as social distancing and masks can help slow infection rates. He created it to help educate young people, after he saw others not taking warnings seriously.
[…]
Devin Green…was having trouble waking up in the mornings, so he designed a program using a pressure mat under his bed. If weight is still on the mat after he’s supposed to be up, an alarm goes off and won’t stop until he uses his phone to scan a QR code.

Apple has also created, naturally, a new post on the App Store where it’s highlighting three more winners and their apps: Lars Augustin, creator of Charcoal, Maria Fernanda Azolin, creator of DressApp, and Ritesh Kanchi, creator of STEMpump. Out of these, Charcoal is an app we’ve covered in our newsletter in the past, it’s an elegant way to perform quick sketches on your iPhone or iPad.

The Swift Student Challenge is a unique way for Apple to highlight some of the best and brightest young coders working on Apple platforms today. I loved reading the details about each of the six winners featured today, and hope we’ll get to learn about more of the 350 winners in the week ahead. With so many winners to recognize, perhaps we’ll see new App Store stories each day leading up to the conference.

Apple Updates Its Developer App and Provides New Information About WWDC

By John Voorhees

Apple has updated its Developer app, which serves as a companion to developers for WWDC and a way to access past years’ session videos and other content year-round.

For the first time, there is now a Mac version of the Developer app, which appears based on Apple’s Mac Catalyst technology. The new app includes a left-hand sidebar that presents the same written and video content found in the iOS and iPadOS versions of the app. The iPhone and iPad versions of the Developer app have also been updated with a redesign of the Discover, Browse, and WWDC tabs and the option to mark Discover articles as favorites.

Apple’s developer website has new information about Labs and the Apple Design Awards too. Next week, one-on-one developer labs can be requested on Monday from 3:30 pm to 6:00 pm Pacific and Tuesday through Thursday from 6:00 am to 6:00 pm. According to Apple, “Requests will be reviewed and you’ll receive an email with your status within several hours.” Lab appointments will range from 10-55 minutes in length via a Webex audio call with an Apple engineer. Apple’s developer portal also says that the Apple Design Awards will be held on June 29th, the Monday after the online conference concludes.

It’s fantastic to have a dedicated Developer app on the Mac for the first time. The change will make it easier than ever to pick up where you left off with videos no matter what platform you’re using. The labs are about what I expected Apple would do. I’m not sure what to make of the ADAs coming the week after the conference. Perhaps Apple simply wasn’t ready in time.

Apple’s Developer app is available as a free download on the App Store.

Apple Card 0% Financing Option Now Available for iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and More

By Ryan Christoffel

If you’re an Apple Card user, starting today purchases directly from Apple will offer a new payment option: 0% financing monthly installments using Apple Card.

Before today, 0% financing with Apple Card has been available for new iPhone purchases, but on a recent quarterly earnings call Tim Cook shared that the company was planning to expand that option to more product categories. One week before WWDC kicks off, Apple has launched that expanded array of financing options for its other products. If you live in the US – the only place Apple Card is currently available – then when using the Apple Store app or browsing the store at apple.com, you’ll see monthly payments as a new option.

Pay for new Apple products over time, interest-free with Apple Card. Just select Apple Card Monthly Installments when you check out.

New purchasing options for the 13-inch MacBook Pro.

The length of the 0% financing offer varies based on the product you purchase. Lower cost products such as AirPods and AirPods Pro offer 6-month payment plans, whereas more expensive products like iPads and Macs offer 12-month plans. Curiously, the Apple Watch is the one major product without financing options available.

Fun fact: thanks to Apple Card monthly installments you can now get a maxed-out rack-mountable Mac Pro for the low price of just $4,491.58 per month.

After the set period for 0% financing expires, the remaining balance of the product will be charged to your Apple Card and be subject to your standard interest rate.

I’ve had an Apple Card since the product first launched, and love it. Adding new, more flexible payment options for Apple purchases seems like a no-brainer new option, and I’m sure I’ll be using it for my next big purchase.

MacStories Unwind: WWDC, OmniFocus Custom Perspectives, and New Read-It-Later and Camera Apps

By John Voorhees

0:00
27:03

AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

This week on MacStories Unwind:

MacStories

Club MacStories

MacStories Weekly
- Federico shares a shortcut for browsing articles by topic and domain in Reeder and GoodLinks
- Ryan highlights apps with great implementations of features announced at WWDC 2019
- John imagines what better external display support for the iPad Pro might look like
- Plus lots of apps, Q&A, Links and more
MacStories Unplugged
- John travels west and Federico reveals his fascination with small town America before they dive into a discussion of optimism in technology writing and explore a new trend they are seeing emerge in the App Store.

AppStories

Episode 167 – Our macOS WWDC Wishes

Unwind Picks

Federico’s Picks:
- 20th Century Boys manga series by Naoki Urasawa
  - The Perfect Edition
    - On Amazon
    - On Viz
John’s Picks:
- Love Life with Anna Kendrick on HBO Max

Apple Shares WWDC Details Including Keynote Time, Developer Forums, 1-on-1 Developer Labs, and More

By Ryan Christoffel

Little more than a week away from Apple’s first all-online WWDC, the company today revealed the full details for how this new virtual conference format will work.

While the full conference will span June 22-26, the two biggest events will be held on kickoff day, as per tradition. The Special Event Keynote will stream directly from Apple Park starting at 10 a.m. PDT on Monday, while the Platforms State of the Union will follow a few hours later at 2 p.m. PDT. The former will offer a wide variety of options for viewing, including apple.com, the Apple Developer app and website, the Apple TV app, and YouTube; the latter will be limited to the Apple Developer app and website.

Apple will also offer over 100 engineering sessions throughout the week. Rather than having these sessions at different times throughout each day, as usual, Apple will instead drop a new batch of videos every day at 10 a.m. PDT, which developers can view via the Apple Developer app or website.

Perhaps the biggest question marks about the conference have been what opportunities for interaction with Apple engineers will be made available. The company is addressing this in two ways: with brand new Apple Developer Forums and by offering reservation-only 1-on-1 Developer Labs. Through forums Apple will enable over 1,000 of its engineers to interact with the developer community in a more public way, while developers can get private help from an engineer through a 1-on-1 lab. More information about how to sign up for a lab slot will be forthcoming.

While this will certainly be a WWDC unlike any before, it sounds like Apple is doing everything it can to ensure developers get as much value out of conference participation as possible. Whether you’re a developer or not, there’s surely a lot of exciting things the week will bring.

Apple Announces iTunes U and iBooks Author Will Be Discontinued

By Ryan Christoffel

iBooks Author will become unavailable soon.

Today through two new support pages that have been posted on Apple’s website, the company announced that iTunes U will be discontinued at the end of 2021 and iBooks Author will become unavailable much sooner: on July 1, 2020.

While both announcements are noteworthy since they concern software with long histories, signs of these moves have been visible for years. iTunes U has received minimal investment of late as Apple has redirected resources to its Classroom and Schoolwork platforms. iBooks Author, similarly, has grown stagnant as many of its features have made their way into recent Pages updates.

Apple is recommending that publishers of public iTunes U content move their content over to Apple Podcasts or Apple Books, as appropriate. Private content, on the other hand, is better suited for moving to Schoolwork.

iBooks Author won’t receive any more updates and will become unavailable for download altogether as of July 1. Anyone who already owns the app will be able to continue using it, but Apple encourages everyone to move book creation to Pages. According to the company:

If you have iBooks Author books you’d like to import into Pages, a book import feature is coming to Pages soon. It will allow you to open and edit iBooks Author files (.iba) in Pages.

Hopefully this forthcoming update will also bring Pages’ book creation tools closer to feature parity with what currently exists in iBooks Author, but it’s possible that may not happen for some time.

With WWDC 2020 drawing ever closer, Apple is clearly trying to get any pre-announcements out of the way so the big show can focus on the future rather than the past. In this context, we may see more app- or developer-related announcements over the next couple of weeks.