Posts in news

Apple Marks Global Accessibility Awareness Day with Features Coming to iOS, iPadOS, and macOS Later This Year

Thursday is Global Accessibility Awareness Day, and as in years past, Apple has previewed several new accessibility features coming later this year. This year, Apple is focusing on a wide range of accessibility features covering cognitive, vision, hearing, mobility, and speech, which were designed with feedback from disability communities. The company hasn’t said when these features will debut in its operating systems, but if past years are any indication, most should be released in the fall as part of the annual OS release cycle.

Assistive Access

Assistive Access. Source: Apple.

Assistive Access. Source: Apple.

Assistive Access is a new customizable iPhone and iPad mode created for users with cognitive disabilities to lighten the cognitive load of using their favorite apps. Apple worked with users as well as their trusted supports to focus on the activities they use most, like communicating with friends and family, taking and viewing photos, and listening to music. The result is a distillation of the experiences of the related apps. For instance, Phone and FaceTime have been combined into a single Calls app that handles both audio and video calls.

Calls, Messages, Camera in Assistive Access mode. Source: Apple.

Calls, Messages, Camera in Assistive Access mode. Source: Apple.

The UI for Assistive Access is highly customizable, allowing users and their trusted supporters to adapt it to their individual needs. For example, an iPhone’s Home Screen can be streamlined to show just a handful of apps with large, high-contrast buttons with big text labels. Alternatively, Assistive Access can be set up with a row-based UI for people who prefer text.

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FitnessView Teams: A Team-Based Fitness Tracker for Coaches and Trainers

Today, Funn Media released FitnessView Teams, a fitness-tracking app that allows coaches or personal trainers to track multiple team members or clients at once. I’m not a coach or a trainer, but I’ve been trying the app with demo data and like what I’ve seen a lot.

FitnessView Teams provides a home base for tracking the performance of multiple athletes.

FitnessView Teams provides a home base for tracking the performance of multiple athletes.

FitnessView Teams, which builds on Funn Media’s FitnessView app for individuals, works on the iPhone and iPad, but it’s best on the iPad where you can see more data at once. From the main view, you can switch among multiple teams, browse data by team member, invite new team members, and invite other coaches to your team. Coaches and team members can both be added via a QR code or an invitation link that allows FitnessView Teams to access the data collected by a team member’s Apple Watch. You can also browse team member data by date using a calendar strip along the top of the iPad’s screen.

Tapping any of the home view's tiles drills deeper into the details of each.

Tapping any of the home view’s tiles drills deeper into the details of each.

Most of the app’s main view is dedicated to health metric tiles that are fully customizable in the app’s settings. Tapping on any health metric brings up additional details, including a graph for that data over time, as well as daily averages and monthly progress. Reports for each athlete can be exported as a customizable PDF-formatted report too.

The app includes calendar and metric-based views of team data too.

The app includes calendar and metric-based views of team data too.

Other data visualizations include a tab dedicated to a full month overview per athlete. There’s also a tab that breaks down a team’s progress by fitness metric, which allows coaches to easily compare the stats of one athlete compared to another on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. All of the same data is available on the iPhone, too, but the limited screen space requires more navigating between views and scrolling of data.

I’ve always been a fan of FitnessView for individuals. The app’s simple, clean design provides an excellent overview of core health metrics, with the ability to dive into each for more detail. FitnessView Teams takes the same approach and succeeds in organizing an even bigger set of health data for multiple people at once, which is an impressive accomplishment. If you’re a coach or trainer, FitnessView Teams is worth checking out.

FitnessView Teams is available to download for free. However, a subscription is required to add multiple team members or clients to the app, which starts at $59.99/month to track ten users.

Last Week, on Club MacStories: Things Shortcuts Tips, App Pricing Complexity, and New and Updated Apps

Because Club MacStories now encompasses more than just newsletters, we’ve created a guide to the past week’s happenings:

MacStories Weekly: Issue 368

MacStories Unwind: First Impressions: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

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In this special episode of Unwind, Federico, who received The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom one day earlier than most people, shares his first impressions of the game, which has received rave reviews from critics.

First Impressions: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

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AppStories, Episode 328 – Our iPadOS 17 Wishes

This week on AppStories, we continue our wish list series with our wishes for iPadOS 17.

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On AppStories+, stand-up lawn mowers and my struggles with social media.

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Raycast Introduces a Pro Subscription with New AI, Sync, Theming, and Clipboard Functionality

Raycast, the keyboard-driven launcher for the Mac, introduced a new subscription service today called Raycast Pro that adds AI, syncing, templating, and extended clipboard functionality to the app.

Raycast Pro, which is $8 per month when billed annually and is also included in Team plans, includes three artificial intelligence features:

  • Quick AI, which is meant to provide one-off answers that can be copied and pasted into whatever you’re working on
  • AI Chat, a chatbot window that floats onscreen, allowing for back-and-forth interaction
  • AI Commands, which include built-in commands for things like spelling and grammar checking, along with customizable commands

According to Raycast’s FAQs, the app uses OpenAI’s GPT 3 and GPT 3.5-Turbo large language models “as well as some other models” for their AI features and does not offer an option to use your own OpenAI API key.

If you use Raycast on multiple Macs, a Pro subscription will allow you to flip a toggle to sync items like Extensions, Quicklinks, Snippets, and Hotkeys. Subscribers can customize Raycast with themes and build their own sharable themes in the app’s Theme Studio too. Finally, a subscription adds an unlimited clipboard history that is stored locally on your Mac and not synced as part of the app’s new sync features for security reasons. Free users are limited to a maximum of three months of clipboard history.

For anyone who relies heavily on AI for their work or has complex Raycast setups that they find hard to maintain across multiple Macs, a Raycast Pro subscription should be attractive. For everyone else, you can still take advantage of the free features, which haven’t changed. I’ve relied on Raycast for more than a year now and don’t need the Pro features myself, but I’m glad to see Raycast expanding its offerings and ways users can support the app’s continued development.

Last Week, on Club MacStories: Using Dropover with Shortcuts, Mona Tips, an Apple Podcasts Experiment, and Giveaway

Because Club MacStories now encompasses more than just newsletters, we’ve created a guide to the past week’s happenings:

MacStories Weekly: Issue 367

Sending images to Shortcuts using Dropover.

Sending images to Shortcuts using Dropover.

Apple Announces Pride Edition Sports Band, Watch Face, and iPhone Wallpaper

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Today, Apple also announced its annual Pride Edition Apple Watch band, along with a similarly-designed watch face and iPhone wallpaper.

The band is a Sports Band model that Apple says is:

Inspired by the strength and beauty of the LGBTQ+ community, the new Sport Band design showcases the original pride flag rainbow colors and five others — black and brown symbolize Black and Latin communities, in addition to those who have passed away from or are living with HIV/AIDS, while light blue, pink, and white represent transgender and nonbinary individuals.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

The watch face compliments the band using the same graphical elements around the edges of an analog clock. The iPhone wallpaper takes a slightly different approach blending the colorful elements of the watch band into a river-like stream of color.

The Pride Edition Sports Band will be available at Apple Stores and online beginning May 23rd for $49 for 41mm and 45mm Apple Watches. The watch face and iPhone wallpaper will be released next week, presumably with an update to watchOS and iOS.

Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro Are Coming to the iPad on May 23rd

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

At long last, Apple has announced Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro for the iPad. Ever since the introduction of the iPad Pro, iPad power users have wondered where the ‘pro’ apps were. Third parties released pro-level creative tools, but Apple’s lineup of apps was conspicuously absent. That looks like it’s changing with today’s announcement that Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro are coming as subscription-based apps on Tuesday, May 23rd.

According to Apple’s press release:

Final Cut Pro for iPad introduces an all-new touch interface and intuitive tools — unlocking new workflows for video creators. A new jog wheel makes the editing process easier than ever and enables users to interact with content in completely new ways. They can navigate the Magnetic Timeline, move clips, and make fast frame-accurate edits with just the tap of a finger, and with the immediacy and intuitiveness of Multi-Touch gestures, push their creativity to new heights.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Apple says users with an M2 iPad Pro will be able to skim and preview footage using the Apple Pencil’s hover functionality. The app will also support keyboard shortcuts when connected to a Magic Keyboard.

According to Apple’s press release, Final Cut Pro will support single-device field recording, with the M2 iPad Pro supporting ProRes video. The app will also support multicam editing, which can be automatically synced together.

Auto-cropping of the subject of a video will be possible thanks to machine learning. The app will also use machine learning to assist users with cropping to common video sizes and isolating recorded voices.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Apple also says the app will come with a “vast library” of professional graphics, effects, audio, and animation that can be automatically adjusted to the length of a video. Finally, Final Cut Pro will be able to import from the Files and Photos app and supports iMovie projects. Plus, it will be able to export to Final Cut Projects that are compatible with the Mac version of the app.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Apple says that Logic Pro will take advantage of Multi-Touch gestures for manipulating a project as well as Plug-in Tiles that will provide convenient access to certain controls. The iPad’s microphones will also be available as an audio source.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

The app will also debut a sound browser:

The sound browser displays all available instrument patches, audio patches, plug‑in presets, samples, and loops in a single location, and users can tap to audition any sound before loading it into a project to save time and stay in their creative flow.

Also included in the app are over 100 instruments and effects, synths, including one called Sample Alchemy for manipulating audio samples, and an extensive set of tools for creating beats. Logic Pro for iPad will work with compatible third-party hardware like microphones, instruments, and MIDI controllers too.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

When it’s time to mix your creation, Apple says:

Multi-Touch enables creators to mix intuitively and move multiple faders at once, and the mixer meter bridge lets them quickly navigate an overview of track levels, all from iPad.

Finally, Logic Pro will support round-tripping to the Mac version of the app, GarageBand for iOS projects, and exporting in a variety of compressed and lossless formats or as individual track stems.

According to Apple:

Final Cut Pro is compatible with M1 chip iPad models or later, and Logic Pro will be available on A12 Bionic chip iPad models or later. Final Cut Pro for iPad and Logic Pro for iPad require iPadOS 16.4.

I’m glad to see Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro finally coming to the iPad. It remains to be seen how each stands up in comparison to their Mac siblings, but from Apple’s press release alone, these will clearly be more powerful and capable apps than either iMovie or GarageBand.

Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro for iPad will be available on the App Store beginning on Tuesday, May 23rd as subscriptions for $4.99/month or $49/year after a one-month free trial.