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Snapchat Adds Universal Search, Shows Off New Design

Snapchat, Snap Inc. introduced two major features in version 10.0.0 today.

Frequent Snapchat users will immediately notice the new universal search menu at the top of each view, which provides quick access to existing contacts as well as a way to find other users. By adding a mix of Bitmoji and ghosts to the contacts section, Snapchat has added a design language that it previously lacked.

For chatting or adding new friends, the search feature is a great convenience. However, if you spend most of your time taking pictures and sending them to the same group of friends, the new search capabilities won’t get much use.

Snapchat has refreshed the design of its other sections with title cards with headlines too. The changes are small, but they clean up the app’s interface and provide a greater sense of where you are in the app. In addition to labelling each of the three sections, the title bars include shortcuts to search and your snapcode. Snapchat also has new animations that makes the app feel more unified.

In total, I think that the update is a win for Snapchat’s navigation, which has been a point of criticism in its previous iterations. Although there’s much more work to be done, it’s good to see Snap putting in work to make the app easier to use.

Version 10.0.0 is a free update for Snapchat in the App Store.

Slopes Skiing and Snowboarding App Adds Search

Slopes, by developer Curtis Herbert, is a skiing and snowboarding app that tracks your activity on the mountain. Like apps that track running and cycling activity, Slopes uses GPS to create maps of your runs, display real-time data while you ski or snowboard, track lifts, and compile detailed summary data that you can study after you finish a day’s activities. The app is full of nice touches like lift detection that automatically pauses data recording, and glanceable real-time statistics on the iPhone and Apple Watch.

Today, Slopes received an update that anyone who skis or snowboards a lot should appreciate. Version 2.5 of the app adds activity search. If you’ve logged hundreds of runs, you no longer have to scroll back through a long chronological history to find a particular trip. Now, you can search by several criteria including, resort name, city, state or province, and country. The update also improves integration with Apple’s Health app, enhances the design of resort maps, and includes several other smaller improvements and bug fixes.

I’m not a skier or snowboarder, so I haven’t tried Slopes on a mountainside myself. However, I did try the app with demo data to get a feel for it in action. As a stats-obsessed runner, I can see the appeal of Slopes to skiers and snowboarders. It makes tracking and logging data a breeze by minimizing the interaction needed to get started, which lets you enjoy yourself without fiddling with your iPhone or Apple Watch frequently. Then at the end of the day, you can sit back and study the breakdown of your activity to your heart’s content.

The core features of Slopes are free on the App Store, which makes trying Slopes on your next ski trip a no-brainer. You can unlock the ability to track additional detail about your skiing and snowboarding runs, daily timeline data, premium maps, and 3D interactive run replays by purchasing an in-app subscription for $19.99/year, $8.99/month, $4.99/week, or $1.99/day.

Apple Updates iOS App Design Resources

Apple has updated its iOS design resources with a comprehensive set of colors, guides, templates, and UI elements:

Creating iOS apps is even easier with the updated Apple UI Design Resources. Use the latest Sketch and Photoshop templates and guides, color palettes, and the San Francisco typeface to quickly and accurately design iOS apps that integrate seamlessly into the overall user experience of iOS.

The design assets are available to download in both Photoshop and Sketch formats on Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines website. In addition to the new assets, Apple has four videos covering the materials, an overview with User Experience Evangelist, Mike Stern, as well as videos covering design comps, icons, and glyphs, also narrated by Stern.

Nintendo Announces Fire Emblem Heroes for Mobile Devices

Update: After publication of this story, Nintendo of America tweeted that Fire Emblem Heroes will launch on February 2nd on both iOS and Android.

During a Nintendo Direct event today, Nintendo demonstrated its next iOS title, Fire Emblem Heroes, featuring characters from throughout the classic game series. In a somewhat surprising move, however, Nintendo said the game will launch first on Android, February 2nd. No release date was given for the game’s iOS launch; only that it will be ‘available soon.’

According to a Nintendo press release:

Fire Emblem Heroes is an original strategy RPG about two warring kingdoms in a bitter clash. As a summoner, players build their army by calling upon popular Fire Emblem heroes from worlds that span the breadth of the series. Players will wage tactical battles streamlined for on-the-go play and level up a mix of new combatants and legendary heroes. Some familiar hero characters will become allies, while others will become enemy generals. Players can enjoy the full majesty of tactical role playing on bite-sized maps designed to fit nicely on a smartphone screen, even when playing in short bursts. Players lead their armies with easy touch-and-drag controls, including the ability to attack by simply swiping an ally hero over an enemy.

Fire Emblem Heroes will be available as a free download with In-App Purchases. At the same event, Nintendo announced additional Fire Emblem titles that will be released in the future for its 3DS family of devices and the soon-to-be-released Nintendo Switch.

Threaded Conversations Are Coming to Slack

Slack is rolling out threaded conversations to its popular messaging tool. According to Slack’s official Twitter feed, the much-requested feature is being added to the service’s web and mobile apps in stages over a series of days.

Slack explains how Threads will work as follows:

Say someone posts a message in Slack that you want to follow up on, but the deeper conversation doesn’t apply to everyone. Now, you can kick off a detailed discussion on that particular topic by hovering over the message and clicking Start a thread. The right sidebar in Slack will open, and you can add your reply.

Messages with Threads are indicated just under the original message with the avatars of each participant. Anyone with access to the channel can click on a Thread to open it in the sidebar. If a message in a Thread is relevant to the channel’s larger audience, it can be sent back to the main conversation. Messages sent back appear alongside the original message. To help users keep track of Threads, Slack has also added a new view called ‘All Threads’ that lets you see every Thread you are part of in one place.

Logic Pro X and GarageBand for iOS Get Significant Updates

Today Apple launched the latest versions of two of its apps aimed at music creators: Logic Pro X 10.3 for macOS and GarageBand 2.2 for iOS. Each update brings a number of improvements that offer additional tools to users and increased integration between the two apps.

Logic Pro X 10.3 adds Touch Bar support to the app for the first time, implementing it in a number of ways. The Touch Bar can serve as an instrument, allowing users to tap out a drum beat or play a piano keyboard. Power users will appreciate the ability to keep some of their favorite controls on the Touch Bar, as it can be configured with different keyboard shortcuts to suit each person’s needs. There is also the option to navigate audio waveforms using the Touch Bar.

For those who may not have a Touch Bar-equipped device, the latest update to Logic still has several things to offer. In addition to minor design changes, new features include Track Alternatives, which allows creating and sorting through different edits of any individual track. Increased ties with iOS is another major addition, as you can now upload a project to iCloud in a version compatible with GarageBand on iOS. This allows changes to be made to the file while on the go, straight from an iPhone or iPad. Other features include Selection-Based Processing, which makes it possible to apply a combination of effects to any selection of audio, and beefed up internals driving the app including a 64-bit summing engine.

GarageBand 2.2 for iOS brings the compatibility features necessary to edit an exported Logic file, as mentioned above. Though there seems to be no sign of Logic making its way to iOS, this addition helps mitigate the issue slightly for occasions when your Mac isn’t nearby but an iPhone or iPad is.

The latest update also comes with a new synthesizer called Alchemy, which includes a collection of over 150 patches designed by Apple and covering a wide range of genres. Anyone who regularly records in GarageBand should also appreciate the new Multi-Take Recording feature. New tools for adding one-tap vocal effects to a recording such as distortion or pitch correction were added too.

Logic Pro X 10.3 and GarageBand 2.2 are both available as free updates to existing customers. Logic Pro X is available on the Mac App Store for $199.99, and GarageBand is available on the iOS App Store for $4.99.

Fabric Acquired by Google

Fabric, a suite of developer tools owned by Twitter, is being acquired by Google and will become part of Google’s Developer Product Group, working with Google’s Firebase team. According to Francis Ma, Firebase Product Manager:

As a popular, trusted tool over many years, we expect that Crashlytics will become the main crash reporting offering for Firebase and will augment the work that we have already done in this area. While Fabric was built on the foundation of Crashlytics, the Fabric team leveraged its success to launch a broad set of important tools, including Answers and Fastlane. We’ll share further details in the coming weeks after we close the deal, as we work closely together with the Fabric team to determine the most efficient ways to further combine our strengths.

It appears that Google is clearly interested in Crashlytics, Fabric’s crash reporting tool, but has left open the extent to which the other components of Fabric will be incorporated into the Firebase toolset.

Evernote 8.0 Released

Evernote unveiled a major update to its namesake app today. The company says it redesigned the app from the ground up with a focus on three functionalities:

  • Faster ways to find notes
  • New notes, now just one tap away
  • Add color and style to your notes

In general, Evernote has taken a cleaner, simpler approach to the app’s design. The tab bar along the bottom of the app features a prominent plus button for adding a new note. Pressing and holding that button gives users the option to record audio, capture images, and create reminders. Evernote has also added new ways to format the text of notes with colors and other choices.

Navigation has been improved too. What was the home screen, has been eliminated. Instead, Evernote launches to wherever you left off the last time you used it. Features like notebooks, tags, and reminders are still available but have been tucked away in the UI so they are less prominent, creating a less distracting experience overall.

Although I have not had an opportunity to thoroughly test the update, I am encouraged by Evernote’s renewed focus on note taking. The redesign is a good start, but the company has a long way to go to win back the trust of many users based on feedback we’ve gotten from MacStories readers. For those interested, David Pierce has a great piece on Wired covering Evernote’s recent missteps, where it hopes to take its product, and the ongoing challenges it faces. How Evernote addresses its past missteps and communicates the changes it’s made to users will be just as critical to its future as the redesign released today.

Daylite – Business Productivity App for Mac & iOS [Sponsor]

This week is sponsored by Marketcircle, makers of Daylite – the business productivity app made for busy entrepreneurs and teams on Mac, iPhone, and iPad. If you’re struggling to juggle business coming in, and managing current projects, then Daylite is a tool you definitely want to check out.

If you need to be able to share client and project information, delegate tasks, share calendars and emails, and track projects – Daylite can help you do this all in one app.

Daylite is used by lawyers, consultants, real estate agents, photographers, designers, and other small businesses all over the world. It helps you organize and share information so you save time and get more done.

The best part about Daylite is it’s not a web app, so you can keep working even when you don’t have an Internet connection. And, new in Daylite 6.1 is support for multitasking on the iPad.

Try Daylite for free for 30 days starting today.

Our thanks to Marketcircle for sponsoring MacStories this week with Daylite.