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FiftyThree Apps Paper and Paste Acquired by WeTransfer Along with Its Other Assets

FiftyThree, the maker of the iOS apps Paper and Paste, has been acquired by WeTransfer, a file transfer company based in Los Angeles and Amsterdam. Paper, FiftyThree’s iPad drawing app, was named iPad App of The Year in 2012. Paste, which is FiftyThree’s iOS presentation app, allows users to create slides collaboratively.

In addition to its apps, FiftyThree is well-known for its creation the Pencil, a BlueTooth stylus that debuted before Apple’s identically-named Pencil. Although the Pencil is not mentioned by name in WeTransfer’s press release, the company is acquiring all of FiftyThree’s assets including intellectual property, which presumably covers hardware too.

WeTransfer provides web and app-based tools for transferring files among its users. In addition to offering a free version of its service, WeTransfer includes a premium paid version of its service and sells ads that appear in its web app. WeTransfer’s CEO Gordon Willoughby stated in the company’s press release that it had acquired FiftyThree to expand its ‘family of obvious creative tools, both on mobile and the web.’

FiftyThree has sought to reassure customers saying that:

For the millions using Paper and Paste, we want to assure you that we are dedicated now more than ever to building and growing both tools. This doesn’t change our path, it only accelerates it — the same great team will continue working on both tools. If you’re a paying Paste or Paper customer, nothing is changing around pricing or functionality in the near term, and we’ll keep you well-informed of any upcoming changes that may impact you. We’ve got a few big ideas cooking that we think you’ll be thrilled about.

I imagine the introduction of Apple’s Pencil took its toll on FiftyThree’s attempt to use hardware to build a sustainable business model. Hopefully, joining forces with WeTranfer will allow Paper and Paste, which are both excellent apps, to continue to be developed long into the future.

Microsoft Announces iPad Edition of Minecraft for Education Coming in September

Today, Microsoft announced that it was expanding Minecraft: Education Edition to include the iPad. According to Microsoft:

Now, students can tap into the power of iPad to build historic monuments, swim through coral reefs with the Update Aquatic, bring creative stories to life, experiment with chemistry, and document their learning with the camera and portfolio features.

The latest expansion of Minecraft: Education Edition adds to the existing 35 million teachers and students in 115 countries that were already using the app on other platforms. The program includes training and curriculum resources for teachers too.

Minecraft is being offered as part of Microsoft’s 365 for Education program and will be available on the iPad beginning in September.

Improve Typing Skills and Learn New Keyboard Layouts with KeyKey Typing Trainer [Sponsor]

KeyKey is a minimalistic touch typing trainer for Mac. It’s suitable for beginners who want to learn basic touch typing skills, as well as for advanced users seeking to master alternative layouts like COLEMAK or DVORAK.

Touch typing is not about key arrangement, as you might believe. It’s about training your muscle memory, making your fingers remember the micro-motions unique to each language. KeyKey knows the most popular letter combinations and words of your native language and utilizes them in lesson generation.

Lessons are presented in several languages, including English, Spanish, German and French, along with the popular layouts for these languages: QWERTY, COLEMAK, DVORAK, AZERTY, QWERTZ (Swiss) and BÉPO. Lessons can be changed both automatically and manually, and you can add punctuation marks, capitalization, and numbers to each of them.

In the near future, KeyKey will add separate lessons for programmers to practice touch typing on real code examples from some popular programming languages.

If you are ready to master the art of typing without typos while never looking at your keyboard, get KeyKey on the App Store, or try it for free in Setapp.

Learn more about all of KeyKey’s features at the KeyKey Typing Trainer website!

P.S. You have a chance to win a free copy of KeyKey ($9.99) in the KeyKey Facebook group. Just like and share this post to enter the giveaway. Five winners will be drawn randomly on Sunday, August 27 at 12 pm CST.

Our thanks to KeyKey for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Google One Launches with New Cloud Storage Tiers

Breaking out from the Google Drive moniker, Google has launched a set of new cloud storage tiers under the branding Google One. The new name makes sense, since Google Drive storage formerly encompassed space allotted to a wide swath of Google products, such as Photos, Docs, and Gmail, as well as files actually stored in Drive. Now Google One fills the role of covering your storage needs across all Google products and services, which I think will be less confusing. It’s a pattern that follows Apple’s own iCloud branding, where iCloud storage covers a variety of Apple services like Photos and Mail, with iCloud Drive just one of those services.

Along with the organizational change, Google One introduces revised pricing and storage options:

  • 15 GB: Free
  • 100 GB: $1.99/month
  • 200 GB: $2.99/month
  • 2 TB: $9.99/month
  • As well as 10 TB, 20 TB, and 30 TB options for prices in the hundreds of dollars per month

Google’s pricing is comparable to Apple’s own iCloud storage, though with more options and a more generous free tier. Apple offers 5 GB for free, 50 GB for $0.99/month, 200 GB for $2.99/month, and for 2 TB for $9.99/month.

Google One’s rollout will be staged worldwide, but as of today it appears to be available in the U.S. at least.

Third-Party Twitter Clients Remove Features as API Changes Loom

The latest chapter in Twitter’s contentious relationship with third-party developers is coming to a close. In April 2017, Twitter announced plans to eventually deprecate certain parts of its API that third-party apps rely on.

Fast forward one year to April 2018, roughly 10 weeks before the scheduled API transition of mid-June. Twitter’s new API still hadn’t been made available to third-party developers. The Iconfactory, Tapbots, and other makers of Twitter clients created a website called Apps of a Feather…Stick Together to explain how the looming changes would affect customers. The ensuing uproar among users caused Twitter to delay the API transition until tomorrow, August 16, 2018. Although Twitter has not flipped the switch on the changes yet, apps like Twitterrific and Tweetbot have already taken steps to deal with the changes.

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‘Unlock 1Password’ Is the Latest Training Course from The Sweet Setup

The Sweet Setup has been on a roll lately with developing video training courses for some of the best iOS and Mac apps the App Store has to offer. Following similar deep dives into Things, Day One, and Ulysses, today they’re launching a new course called ‘Unlock 1Password.’

1Password has long been considered the premier password management solution on Apple platforms, but many users may only scratch the surface of what it can do, or they’re simply hesitant to trust it with their most secure data. ‘Unlock 1Password’ takes users of varying experience levels into account, covering key features of the app, an overview of the product’s security levels, ways it can be used alongside iCloud’s own Keychain feature, and more.

In total, the course includes a whopping 14 videos, all of which can be downloaded for offline viewing if you’d like.

  1. Overview of 1Password for Mac
  2. Overview of 1Password for iOS
  3. Why You Can Trust 1Password
  4. Which Version is Right for You?
  5. Installation and Setup
  6. All the Things You Can Store in 1Password
  7. Working with Vaults
  8. Using the Browser Extension
  9. How to Perform a Security Audit
  10. Using 2-Factor Authentication
  11. 1Password for Families and/or Teams
  12. Using 1Password Alongside iCloud Keychain
  13. How to Sync 1Password Across All Your Devices
  14. Understanding Backups

I’ve relied on 1Password for years, but there were still things I learned from the course, such as how family and team plans work, and the process for setting up 1Password as a two-factor authentication tool. This is one of the things I especially appreciate about The Sweet Setup’s courses: even when they cover apps that already have an important place in my life, I benefit from finding even more ways to put those apps to use.

As with the recent video courses from The Sweet Setup, ‘Unlock 1Password’ is launching at a special introductory price of $23, which will increase to $29 after a week. You can purchase the course here.

RapidWeaver 8 Debuts Redesign, New Responsive Themes, Unsplash Support, and Improved Plug-In Management

RapidWeaver by Realmac Software got a significant update today. Starting from scratch or with one of over 50 Themes, RapidWeaver allows users to create highly-customized websites by offering a wide array of tools and properties that can be tweaked. The app also supports third-party plug-ins and Themes that can be used to extend the app even further.

RapidWeaver may remind you a little of iWeb, but the similarities end with the drag and drop, template-driven approach. The depth of RapidWeaver goes well beyond what iWeb could do before Apple discontinued it.

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Apple Removes iOS 12 Beta 7 Over-the-Air Update

Close on the heels of reports that Apple had pulled Group FaceTime from iOS 12 beta 7, complaints about the beta’s sluggish performance began to surface. One of the first was from Guilherme Rambo who posted a short video on Twitter demonstrating how slowly the App Store app launched under the beta:

Rambo also predicted Apple might remove the beta, which it did a short time later:

The latest iOS 12 beta is no longer available as an over-the-air update via the Software Update section of the iOS Settings app. However, IPSW files for the beta, which can be installed via iTunes on a Mac, are still available from Apple’s developer portal. In light of the issues reported with the beta 7, if you haven’t already installed beta 7, it’s probably best to not download and install the IPSW files, until a more reliable version is released.

Group FaceTime Pulled from Initial iOS 12 Release

Apple has removed Group FaceTime chat from the latest iOS 12 developer beta. The feature, which was debuted at WWDC and described as being able to handle up to 32 simultaneous users will come later this fall according to Apple’s beta release notes:

Group FaceTime has been removed from the initial release of iOS 12 and will ship in a future software update later this fall.

This delay isn’t the first time that a feature announced at WWDC has been moved to a later point release of a major iOS update. Last year, AirPlay 2, Messages in iCloud, and Apple Pay Cash all missed the initial release of iOS 11.

I’m not surprised Group FaceTime needs more time. I haven’t used it extensively, but in a late July test with four participants, it was clear that it had a long way to go before it was ready for release.