Posts in news

Twitter Adds Filtering of Direct Messages From People You Don’t Know

If you have opened your Twitter direct messages to receive messages from anyone, Twitter now separates them into two buckets: an Inbox and Requests. Your Inbox collects DMs from people you follow, while Requests are DMs from people you don’t follow. You can review Requests without the sender knowing you’ve reviewed their message until you accept it. If you accept a request, that person’s direct messages will be delivered to your Inbox in the future.

https://twitter.com/Twitter/status/869608493548011520

Based on some preliminary testing by The Verge, it appears that the new direct message handling functionality is slowly rolling out to users across Twitter’s apps and website.

WWDC App Updated with New Design and Features

Apple has updated the WWDC app ahead of its annual developer conference that begins June 5, 2017 in San Jose, California. The app has an all-new design this year. In 2016, the UI was dominated by dark tones causing speculation that it was a precursor to a system-wide dark mode that didn’t materialize. This year’s update shares some of the same design language as the Apple Music and News apps.

In addition to the refreshed design, Apple has added curated video playlists focused on themes like Developing for iPad, interactive maps of the WWDC venue and surrounding area, for the first time, the ability to use of all of the app’s features without signing into a developer account, and a new ‘Venue’ tab. Apple is also making a podcast studio available as part of WWDC for attendees who need a space to record shows.

Though not mentioned in the release notes, the WWDC app has a little surprise in store in the form of iMessage stickers. The set includes 17 colorful cartoon-style images with an assortment of classic Apple iconography, logos for Metal and Swift, and more.

The WWDC app is a free download on the App Store.

You can also follow all of our WWDC coverage through our WWDC 2017 hub, or subscribe to the dedicated WWDC 2017 RSS feed.

Trails is Your GPS Tracker and Logbook for iPhone & Apple Watch [Sponsor]

When you start your next outdoor adventure, make sure you bring along Trails. Trails is a GPS tracker and logbook that gathers statistics like altitude, ascent and descent, speed, pace, and duration. It also includes topographic maps available for offline use when you have no data connection. Soon, Trails will add a dashboard display with summary statistics and graphs of your activities using a customizable date range and with optional filtering by tags.

Trails takes advantage of the latest Apple hardware and features like 3D Touch, Spotlight search for tracks and waypoints, Siri to start and end a trip, a Today Widget, and AirDrop sharing. In addition, with a Series 2 Apple Watch, you can start recordings, use it as a second screen to display live statistics, and gather heart rate and calorie data.

Trails features a wide array of ways to export and share the data you collect like integration with Apple’s Health app, GPX export, the ability to upload to Trails.io to share your trips, like the hike through San Francisco embedded above, local WiFi sharing, and full database backups. You’re in full control of your data. You don’t have to signup for anything to get started, your data isn’t uploaded anywhere without your permission, and there are no ads to get in the way.

Trails has a special promotion for MacStories readers. Trail is giving away 10 one-year subscriptions to Trails Pro. Just enter your email address here by 9:00 pm US Eastern time on June 4, 2017. Winners will be selected randomly and be given a code that they can redeem for the one-year subscription by contacting the Trails team.

Our thanks to Trails for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Twitter for Apple TV Updated with Periscope Global Map

Twitter has updated its Apple TV app with an interesting new way to view Periscope videos from around the world. The feature is called Global Discovery, and it was announced in a tweet earlier today.

Once you open Global Discovery in the Twitter app, you’ll be presented with a zoomed out view of Earth. The face of the planet is scattered with various pins representing different Periscope streams that are currently live. It’s a clever way to discover live videos from radically distant parts of the world. I enjoyed being able to easily hop between Periscopes from areas in the U.S. and others in Asia, on the other side of the world.

Navigation in Global Discovery is limited to four options: you can scroll around the face of the globe, move from pin to pin (and thus video to video) on the planet’s surface, and zoom in or zoom out. Switching between these options can be done at any time using the Siri Remote’s Play/Pause button.

Global Discovery is a nice evolution of the Map view found in Periscope’s iOS app, and one that takes advantage of the big screen to great effect.

Dash Returns to the iOS App Store

Last fall, Dash, a popular iOS and macOS developer documentation app by Kapeli, was pulled from Apple’s Mac and iOS App Stores amid allegations of fraudulent reviews and Kapeli’s Apple developer account was terminated. Since then, Kapeli has continued to sell Dash for macOS outside the Mac App Store. With no way to sell the iOS version of the app outside the iOS App Store, Kapelli open-sourced the code for the app.

According to Kapeli, open sourcing Dash for iOS has led to numerous people submitting it to the App Store in violation of its GNU GPL license. In an attempt to slow down the rate of copycat apps appearing to the App Store, Dash’s developer, Bogdan Popescu, announced in a blog post today that he created a personal developer account with Apple and submitted Dash for iOS to the App Store. The app was approved and is now available as a free download in the App Store.

IFTTT Launches Powerful Applet Tools in New Maker Tier

Last November IFTTT, the popular web automation platform, introduced powerful applet tools to its Partner tier of users. The Partner tier was not designed for the average user though, and was therefore cost prohibitive to most. But today, IFTTT announced that some Partner benefits are becoming accessible to a broader base of users with a new Maker tier. This tier is free, but it must be signed up for to gain the new applet tools.

One of the most significant privileges granted to users on the Maker tier is the ability to create applets with more than two actions. Previously applets could only have one ‘If’ and one ‘Then’ action each, but Makers can now create applets that have multiple ‘Then’ steps. So you can set up an applet that triggers based on one thing, then takes several different actions because of that initial trigger. Applet building in this way more closely resembles the power of a service like Zapier. Makers can also modify applets using JavaScript filter code, unlocking a range of new possibilities such as the ability to cause an applet, or particular applet actions, to run only at certain times of day.

Another benefit of being a Maker is that you can build applets for any service on IFTTT, whether you have an account with that service or not. Previously, actions could only be used in an applet if you had a connected account tied to that service or device, but that’s no longer the case. This ties in well with another Maker benefit: public profile pages. Each Maker will have a public profile for sharing all of their applet creations.

Creating applets using the Maker tools must be done on the web; the IFTTT iOS app does not currently provide access to any Maker tools, and it is unclear if that will change in the future.

Apple Introduces Swift Curriculum for High School and Community College Students

Apple introduced a new year-long app development curriculum today for community college and high school students that is available as a special collection on the iBooks Store. The free-to-download course, which is an extension of Apple’s existing Everyone Can Code curriculum for kids in grades K-12, teaches students how to build fully-functional apps using the Swift programming language. In the fall, six community college systems that serve over 500,000 students will offer the new course.

Tim Cook explained why Apple has created the development course:

“We’ve seen firsthand the impact that coding has on individuals and the US economy as a whole. The app economy and software development are among the fastest-growing job sectors in America and we’re thrilled to be providing educators and students with the tools to learn coding,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Community colleges play a critical role in helping students achieve their dreams, and we hope these courses will open doors for people of all ages and backgrounds to pursue what they love.”

Swift Playgrounds has proven to be a powerful teaching tool with over 1 million downloads since it was introduced. In addition, over 1,000 schools in the US plan to teach using Apple’s Everyone Can Code materials in the fall. The extension of Everyone Can Code to older students should make the entire program even more attractive to educators than before.

IKEA’s Low-Cost Smart Lights Will Support HomeKit

Earlier this year IKEA announced a collection of low-cost smart lights under the Trådfri name. At the time, it was unknown whether the lineup would be compatible with existing smart home platforms, such as Apple’s HomeKit. Today MacRumors shared new details announced in a Swedish press release:

IKEA said in its press release that HomeKit support is in the works… IKEA plans to retrofit the new functions via a software update to the Trådfri Gateway and Trådfri app. In addition to HomeKit, the update will also make IKEA’s smart products controllable through Amazon Echo and Google Home.

Perhaps the most significant barrier to wider smart home adoption thus far has been cost. While IKEA’s Trådfri offerings will certainly not be able to compete with the prices of traditional lighting, their cost will be easier to swallow than that of competing products.

Additionally, news that the lights will support not only HomeKit, but Alexa and Google Home as well, set IKEA’s products up to be strong contenders in the smart home market when they launch later this year.