Dr. Drang’s Scripts For Photo Management via the Finder→

Dr. Drang, following our photo management discussion on The Prompt #15:

As the podcast proceded, I soon learned that I wasn’t the only one with a photo mess on his hands. Myke Hurley has apparently never organized his photos. He has gigabytes and gigabytes of photos just sitting on his phone. Backed up to iCloud, yes, if you consider that a backup, but with no structure. Bradley began an intervention.

I agreed with much of what was suggested: bringing the photos onto Myke’s Mac through Image Capture and setting up the year/month folders. But Bradley then suggested Myke move his photos into the folder structure by hand, doing maybe fifty a day for the thousands of photos Myke has. This is madness. It’s using a human to serve the computer rather than the other way around. Like me, Myke needs an automated solution.

So I decided to use Myke’s plight as the kick in the pants to get me to finish the scripts I’d been planning to write. As I suspected, it didn’t take very long. Imagining poor little Myke dragging files for weeks on end was just the motivation I needed to sit down and do it.

Personally, I use Hazel for this, but if you don’t want to buy the app, check out Drang’s scripts.

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By The End, He Was Drunk→

There was less they could do to make sure the phone calls Jobs planned to make from the stage went through. Grignon and his team could only ensure a good signal, and then pray. They had AT&T, the iPhone’s wireless carrier, bring in a portable cell tower, so they knew reception would be strong. Then, with Jobs’s approval, they preprogrammed the phone’s display to always show five bars of signal strength regardless of its true strength. The chances of the radio’s crashing during the few minutes that Jobs would use it to make a call were small, but the chances of its crashing at some point during the 90-minute presentation were high. “If the radio crashed and restarted, as we suspected it might, we didn’t want people in the audience to see that,” Grignon says. “So we just hard-coded it to always show five bars.”

There are many good stories about the creation of the iPhone, but Fred Vogelstein’s article for The New York Times is something else. Vogelstein, who is working on a book to be released in November, talked to various former Apple engineers such as Andy Grignon and Tony Fadell and assembled a fantastic collection of anecdotes, memories, and details of Steve Jobs’ legendary iPhone keynote at Macworld 2007.

If you read one thing today, make it this one. Personally, I found it more entertaining (and possibly accurate) than several sections of Walter Isaacson’s book. Make sure to read what happened to Forstall’s chief of staff.

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The Original Voice of Siri→

Great story by CNN’s Jessica Ravitz, who found, almost by accident, the woman who says she’s “100% sure” she’s the voice of the original Siri (the one that debuted with iOS 5 exactly two years ago).

Behind this groundbreaking technology there is a real woman. While the ever-secretive Apple has never identified her, all signs indicate that the original voice of Siri in the United States is a voiceover actor who laid down recordings for a client eight years ago. She had no idea she’d someday be speaking to more than 100 million people through a not-yet-invented phone.

Her name is Susan Bennett and she lives in suburban Atlanta.

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Pocket’s Refresh for the Web→

If I had any previous complaint about Pocket, it’s that their website felt too much like a tablet app and wasn’t easy to use on the desktop. Following Pocket’s iOS 7 update, they’ve redesigned their website making it significantly easier to use. Everything has been unified into a single cohesive toolbar, it’s faster, and it’s visually more appealing. If you’re at the office or on the go, Pocket on the web is now just as great as its native iOS and Mac apps.

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MacStories Sponsorships→

Sponsorships allow me to run this site and provide our readers with in-depth reviews of iOS and OS X apps, editorials, and tutorials to enhance their workflows and get the most out of their devices.

We’ve updated our sponsorship page with new available dates, information on prices, and an email address to get in touch with me and book a sponsorship. If you want to directly promote your product or service to MacStories readers, there is no better way than the weekly sponsorship.

There’s only one open slot left in October, and four until the end of the year. If you want to book them or get information about 2014 slots because you’re planning ahead, let me know.

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Rdio Makes “Stations” Feature Free For All Users→

In a move that doesn’t come as a surprise following Apple’s entrance in the online radio space with iTunes Radio, music streaming Rdio is announcing today that the “Stations” feature will be free for all non-subscribers. Until today, people could try out Rdio’s full feature set for 14 days, then sign up at $9.99 per month; after today, Stations will remain always available – without the 14-day limitation – in Rdio’s mobile apps.

We’re inviting everyone to listen to all of Rdio’s stations, drawing from over 20 million songs, through our mobile apps for iOS and Android without ever pulling out the plastic. Even if your subscription or trial has ended, you’ll be able to choose from 10 different station types — including stations based on artist, song, and over 400 genres plus You FM, a personalized station based on your listening habits — so you can keep the music playing for as long as you want at no cost to you.

Casey Newton has an interview with Rdio’s Chris Becherer at The Verge:

To get the complete Rdio service, which includes on-demand listening of tracks and offline song storage, the user still has to pay $9.99 a month. But executives hope that if the people who complete the free trial continue listening to Stations, they’ll be more likely to subscribe in the long run. “We don’t need you to subscribe right away,” says Chris Becherer, vice president for product, in an interview with The Verge. “You can live inside Stations for a long time. We think that over time, you’ll start building up your collection, building up your favorites. And whenever you do subscribe, all that stuff is ready to go.

The new free radio feature is available for users in the US, Canada, and Australia. More details on how it works from Rdio:

By combining The Echo Nest’s Taste Profiling technology with Rdio’s beautifully dynamic design and rich data on listening history, we’ve unlocked an unprecedented personal radio experience for all mobile users to enjoy for free.

I have been listening to Rdio Stations for the past few months, and the quality of their recommendations is impressive. The “Your FM” personalized station has been particularly accurate in the songs and artists it recommends, and I believe that if Rdio can scale well enough to accomodate free users on Stations without sacrificing quality, the feature could help in selling more subscriptions. It’ll be interesting to see the repercussions of Apple’s iTunes Radio and Rdio’s new free option in a few months.

Rdio for iOS can be found here.

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