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Rdio for iOS Update Brings “Song Stations”

In an update released today, Rdio has added a new radio functionality to the service, called “Song Stations”. Once again, Rdio is using The Echo Nest as a backend for stations.

Song Stations can be created through the sharing menu available by tapping & holding on a song; this will launch a new station based on songs from similar and related artists, with unlimited skips and possibility to look at four upcoming songs. Unlike Apple’s recently announced iTunes Radio, Rdio doesn’t let you “vote” on songs that have been automatically selected by the service, and, right now, there doesn’t seem to be an option to save song stations either.

Alongside various UI improvements and fixes, the latest version of Rdio for iOS also contains a new AutoPlay feature to “hear more like what you’ve recently listened to” after the music you’re playing has ended. AutoPlay is available in Rdio’s Stations menu as well (accessible by tapping on the blue Stations link in the Now Playing screen).

Rdio 2.2.1 is available on the App Store.

HBO GO, WatchESPN, Sky News, Crunchyroll, and Qello Come to Apple TV

Apple is rolling out new programming with its latest software update, version 5.3, for 2nd and 3rd generation Apple TVs. HBO GO and WatchESPN are now directly available on Apple TV, in addition to Sky News (for US, UK, and Ireland), Crunchyroll, and Qello.

HBO GO and WatchESPN require a cable subscription:

HBO GO users get unlimited access to their favorite HBO shows, including HBO original programming, hit movies, sports, documentaries, comedy specials and more. This includes full seasons of the best of HBO, plus bonus features and special behind-the-scenes extras. HBO GO on Apple TV requires a subscription to HBO through participating television providers.

WatchESPN on Apple TV delivers a one-stop video destination for sports fans with live access to ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPN3 and ESPN Buzzer Beater/Goal Line to those who receive ESPN’s networks as part of their video subscription from affiliated providers.

You can learn more about today’s update in Apple’s press release.

Sponsor: Drafts

Our thanks to Agile Tortoise for sponsoring MacStories this week with Drafts.

Drafts is the definitive scratchpad for your iPhone or iPad. It’s the fastest way to get any idea out of your head and onto something physical. You don’t have to come up with a title, choose a folder you’re going to save your text in, or even worry about formatting. Drafts intuitively keeps a blank page open for you, and even knows when previous drafts were written so you can recall your ideas later. It can integrate with services like Dropbox and Evernote so you can take your drafts anywhere.

Drafts supports Markdown, a markup language for generating text optimized for the web. And there’s little big things like action templates that makes everything actionable. Ultimately, Drafts can be your idea napkin, or a pro-tool that integrates seamlessly with most apps.

Drafts is available on the App Store. You can grab the iPhone version for $2.99, and the iPad version for $3.99. Learn more about Drafts and other Agile Tortoise apps here.

Automattic Acquires Poster for iOS

In a post (via 512 Pixels), developer Tom Witkin has announced that his WordPress client for iPhone and iPad, Poster, has been acquired by Automattic – the company that is also behind WordPress.com (among other products). He writes:

I’m elated to share that I, along with Poster, will be joining Automattic. I’ll be working with the mobile team where I’ll be both designing and coding.

Following the acquisition, Poster has been removed from the App Store and is no longer available for sale. According to Witkin, the best features of the app will be incorporated into the official WordPress app over time. Poster isn’t listed in Automattic’s gallery of products.

Poster is one of my most used apps on the iPhone and iPad. I have developed several workflows for it, which leverage the app’s advanced features such as support for URL schemes, custom fields, and integration with browser bookmarklets.

It will be interesting to see which Poster features Automattic will decide to bring over to WordPress, and how. Automattic also acquired popular note-taking tool Simplenote earlier this year, and the service has continued to work albeit with no major additions or changes yet.

For now, I will keep Poster installed on my devices, as I believe it provides a superior posting experience than the official WordPress app. I am sad that we’ll never see a proper iOS 7 version of Poster, though.

The New TweetDeck for OS X

TweetDeck used to be this sort-of all powerful Twitter console before Twitter bought it, dumbed it down in some aspects while improving it in others, and changed the icon from yellow to blue. It’s only a 2-star app on the App Store, but I don’t think it’s given enough credit. The changes rolled out around the same time that Twitter’s own iOS app went through the same kinds of changes, and I was receptive to it since I thought the TweetDeck refresh was generally more accessible to the public. I haven’t used TweetDeck much in the meantime, so I’m looking at today’s refresh as a returning user with some familiarity of the previous version.

TweetDeck 3.0 is still a web app, acts like a web app, and will misbehave like a web app. Expanding and collapsing the new sidebar currently breaks the interface — right clicking and reloading the app fixes the missing sidebar.

Otherwise, it’s fairly solid. TweetDeck is known for its multiple columns, and filters have been reintroduced through drop down menus that are quite nice. Per column, you can adjust what users you see, only view tweets that contain a certain keyword, or exclude a hashtag of your choosing. You can even receive alerts for tweets that match your query. My impression of TweetDeck is that it’s not an app I’d want to use all the time as it’s optimized for following events like a big media campaign or something like the WWDC Keynote.

TweetDeck has live streaming for all of its columns, although direct messages don’t refresh in real time if you’re replying to someone and they reply back. Through the app’s settings you can adjust font sizes and column width, although you’ll likely have to pan across the trackpad with five or more columns on a MacBook. Columns can be used for just about anything from lists, to searches, to mentions. For example, TweetDeck gives me flexibility in watching replies to our MacStories Twitter account (or another blog’s if I’m interested in a response to a post), and that stuff will update in real time. There’s a column where you can customize Interactions as well, for keeping an eye on new follows, retweets, or favorites.

It’s not a native app, there’s a bug or two, but I can’t help but think there is some clear improvement over the last update. It continues to omit Facebook or LinkedIn integration (sorry folks — that’s probably gone for good), but a lot of new features have been added since. Custom filters per column don’t prevent the app from continuing to be relatively easy to use. My current complaint is that you still need a separate TweetDeck account (which is used for syncing columns and filter preferences), and you’ll need to authorize with Twitter on top of that.

You can download TweetDeck for free from the Mac App Store.

A Quick Rundown of Microsoft’s Office Mobile for iPhone

I can’t say I’m terribly excited about what Microsoft is offering in Office Mobile, but it’s a start. Now available on the iPhone, Office Mobile requires an Office 365 subscription, which will give you access to all of Microsoft’s Office apps on up to 5 PCs or Macs, 20 GB of SkyDrive storage, and 60 minutes of Skype calls for $9.99 per month or $99.99 a year for Home Premium.

Why you’d want it

Lots of iPhone apps can view Office files, but few render them properly. Office Mobile, with Microsoft’s layout engine, should at least be able to display your Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and Powerpoint presentations as they were intended. It also gives you a chance to make small edits on the go, but I wouldn’t use it to write a novel.

Some of the cool stuff to be found are features like Resume Reading, which automatically opens Word documents at the place you last left off on your PC. You can also flip through mini PowerPoint slideshows to practice your talking points before a big presentation.

But I wouldn’t bother

It’s basically the equivalent of Google Drive for the iPhone, which is to say it isn’t very good.

Office Mobile will aggregate Office files from your SkyDrive folder, which is nice, but the editing options offered are finicky. Microsoft prefers their own controls before iOS’ own standard actions, making editing a frustrating experience. Doing basic things like select text in Word or tapping on cells in Excel is a chore, and editing itself is complicated.

If you have an Office 365 subscription, it’s something extra that will give you the option to review files, leave comments, and fix typos when you’re away from your Mac or PC, but I don’t see this being a great incentive for jumping into the latest office apps if you’re content with iWork or an older Office suite.

Office Mobile is free to download from the App Store.

So What’s New With Apple’s MacBook Air?

 

Image credit: iFixit

Apple’s new 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Airs now last 9 and 12 hours on battery respectively, a 4 and 5 hour improvement over the previous generation. Lots of sites have started poking and prodding at the new machines, including iFixit, known for their great do-it-yourself gadget repair manuals.

iFixit’s (mid 2013) 13-inch MacBook Air teardown

Last year’s 7.3V, 6700 mAh battery has been supplanted by a new 7.6V 7150 mAh battery. Apple noted that Flash storage was 45% faster in this revision, and that’s due to the move from a SATA based solid state drive to a PCI Express based SSD. The AirPort card has also been updated to support 802.11ac. It’s still a very proprietary machine: RAM is soldered onto the logic board and many components aren’t meant to be user replaceable or upgradeable, despite otherwise easy access to its insides.

 Wired on how Haswell saves so much power

The MacBook Air is packing a big battery, but those substantial energy savings are owned to Intel’s latest round of fourth-generation processors, known as Haswell. The new Haswell chips in today’s MBAs are part of a special low-voltage series of chips designed specifically for Ultrabooks, which Intel claims is twice as energy efficient as the previous generation.

AnandTech quick and dirty benchmarks

Something to keep in mind is that the new Haswell chips in Apple’s MacBook Airs are officially Intel HD 5000 based and not Iris.

Macworld puts the new MacBook Air through read and write paces

Macworld has the most comprehensive benchmarks at the moment, showing that the new MacBook Airs get substantially better read and write speeds with their new PCIe based SSDs. However, Haswell is pretty much in line performance-wise with the last generation of processors.

Game Controller Support In iOS 7 and 10.9

As first noted by TouchArcade (via Macgasm), the iOS 7 and OS X 10.9 beta seeds released to developers on Monday include support for a new Game Controller framework that will allow games to connect to controllers plugged into iOS devices or communicating wirelessly with them. TouchArcade writes:

So here we have what appears to be a style of game controller that allows you to see the screen of your phone, as well as an entirely standalone controller with what seems to be dual analog sticks. Also, we’ve heard that Apple has reinforced that if your game is going to support a game controller it needs to be totally playable without.

There are a couple of interesting tidbits worth noting with Apple’s strategy on game controllers. As shown in a slide at the end of the keynote, game controllers will be built by hardware partners through the MFi program, which Apple has typically used for electronic accessories and AirPlay audio devices. This means that, rather than announcing its own dedicated game controller, Apple has chosen (for now) to provide a technical specification that other companies will have to follow if they want to get approval and sell controllers carrying the “Made for iPhone” badge.

Interestingly, the SDK addition follows a rumor from March 2013, when PocketGamer claimed that Apple had booked a room at the Game Developers Conference under a pseudonym to talk to developers about an upcoming physical “joypad”. For now, Apple has opted for consistency across different controller models to ensure game developers will only have to learn a single framework that lets the OS automatically take care of capturing profiles from game controllers. In addition, Apple is making the controllers optional: if a game will add support for MFi controllers, it’ll also have to provide standard multi-touch controls that don’t require a hardware controller.

iOS gaming has long been criticized for lacking the precise input of PCs, consoles, and dedicated portable gaming machines. Over the years, a number of third-party solutions aimed at enhancing iOS’ game control mechanics surfaced, but each one of them came with its proprietary SDK that required developers to manually add support for new controllers in their games. A few notable names include iCade Mobile, a hardware controller, and Joypad, an app to turn iPhones into game controllers for other devices. On the accessory side, external attachments like Ten One Design’s Fling tried to turn on-screen controls often used by developers into more tactile experiences.

It’ll be interesting to see how Apple’s officially-sanctioned solution for iOS 7 and 10.9 will be met by hardware companies. Apple’s requirement to make game controller optionals won’t allow game developers to build games exclusively targeting the hardware control system, which could pose a new challenge for game makers already considering truly separate touch and controller mechanics.

Apple Releases New MacBook Airs, Previews New Mac Pro Design

Apple’s line of MacBook Airs received nice spec bumps today, which include Intel’s fourth-generation core processors, Haswell. Haswell chips include the new Intel HD 5000 graphics, which is 40% faster than the previous generation Intel HD 4000. Haswell’s main benefit isn’t just that it’s just a new, better processor, but that it’s built especially for mobile. Intel’s latest chips are designed for power savings, and incorporate smarter low-power states. It’s an extremely efficient chip, resulting in a substantial increase in battery life over the previous generation of MacBook Airs.

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