OnCue 5.0 Brings Powerful Music Queue Features To iOS

These days, most of my music consumption happens on Rdio. The term “consumption” isn’t there because that’s how providers like to present content: I consume albums and artists that I discover online. However, for as much as I’m completely hooked to paying a monthly fee to get access to a (virtually) unlimited amount of music, there are albums that I still have to keep synced locally through iTunes. Either because Rdio applies some curious restrictions on several artists from Europe or because these artists choose not to make their music available for streaming (ask Coldplay), I have resorted to keeping a portion of my music synced on the devices I own (32 GB iPhone 4S and iPad 2, soon to be new iPad). And when I want to play songs from this “mini library” I sync, I stumble upon the same problem I initially wrote about last year: Apple’s Music app doesn’t let me create queues, and I loathe creating playlists for all possible scenarios my music listening habits may fall into. Just like last year, Dan Pouradi’s OnCue comes to the rescue, this time with a completely re-engineered version that works with iOS 5, and sports a new UI. Read more

MacStories Reading List: New iPad Special Edition

What a week for Apple news. Last Wednesday, after much speculation and last-minute predictions, Apple officially took the wraps off its new iPad, simply called, well, the new iPad. Debates on the name aside, the new device sounds like a great achievement for the company: in the same design of the iPad with only minimum weight and thickness added (to allow for a battery with more capacity), the new iPad adds a Retina display, 4G LTE networking, Bluetooth 4.0, a quad-core CPU, A5X processor – all while keeping the same price. Make sure to read all the details in our new iPad overview and keynote roundup.

It has been a crazy week filled with news, hands-on impressions, and editorials, and it deserved a proper Special Edition of our Reading List. Grab your favorite read later app or browser of choice, and follow us along after the break as we collect the best links and articles about the new iPad. Read more

Quick Review: Steps

Nearly a month ago, Cody reviewed Clear. It was a new todo app from Realmac Software and Impending, and we called the app “delightful and clever” thanks to its refreshing take on how a todo app could work. Around that time I was let into the beta of another new todo app for the iPhone, and for the past month I’ve been using it intermittently — between giving Clear a go myself, using Things, and using nothing (as I so frequently revert to). That new todo app, Steps, debuted on the App Store last week and it shares many similarities to Clear - particularly in its minimalistic design and strong colour scheme.

Whilst preparing this review, I found myself in a bit of a dilemma. See, I kept constantly and subconsciously comparing Steps with Clear. As I said, they are quite similar because they both target the segment of the todo app market which aims to be super simple and minimalist. I felt as if I wrote this review as a comparison between the two, I would belittle the accomplishments of Steps, because whilst I think it’s a great little app, I also like the “delightfulness” of Clear a lot. But I think because the two apps are so similar in purpose and goal, it would be remiss of me to just ignore the excellence of Clear. So jump the break to see how Steps compares and how the two apps do diverge in some details.

Read more

Reddit Client Alien Blue for iPad Receives Major 2.0 Update

When I’m not writing, reading, or talking to my team, one of the things I like to do online is casually check on Reddit for the latest meme, links to interesting news, or more serious discussion that can only take place thanks to Reddit’s unique nature and community. And when I’m not using my computer, which is “most of the time” these days, I like to do so using Jason Morrisey’s Alien Blue, a Reddit client for iOS that I recently re-reviewed in its newest iPhone version, and that today received a major 2.0 update on the iPad.

Just like the 2.5 update for iPhone, Alien Blue HD 2.0 includes several interface changes to make the Reddit browsing experience more pleasant, as well as various new features that take advantage of the iPad’s larger screen. For instance, Alien Blue HD is already Retina-enabled for the new iPad, with the exception of launch images, which will be updated soon. But the biggest change in this version, new coat of interface paint aside, is the new panel-based navigation that allows you to seamlessly move through Alien Blue’s main sidebar – which lists Reddit sections and subreddits – and posts, comments, and web views. Inspired by Twitter for iPad’s panel-based UX, but much simpler to use, Alien Blue lets you swipe through panels to move around in the interface, or simple pinch on these panels to dismiss them. In fact, the entire app has been tweaked to allow for more gestures, as listed below:

  • Double-tap header for fullscreen
  • Hold-tap on Posts list to show post options
  • (Alternative) 2-finger swipe to show post options
  • 2-finger tap to upvote items
  • 3-finger tap to downvote items
  • 2-finger left swipe over comments to collapse to root
  • Drag Posts list up to load more

I’ve found myself using the double-tap and 2-finger tap gestures a lot, and I think they contribute to making the app faster and easier to use. A visual guide for gestures is available in the Settings screen as well.

There are several improvements and optimizations that found their way in this 2.0 update. The app now supports larger thumbnails, and you can view videos alongside comments in any thread. The post and comment interfaces have been redesigned, alongside the new pull-to-refresh gesture that works similarly to its iPhone counterpart (the subtle animation is pretty amazing). Image links and YouTube videos are now displayed more elegantly, and a new “Optimal” setting for web views enables webpages to scale intelligently to fit Alien Blue’s window. There’s more: you can now delete posts, and links to subreddits open directly within Alien Blue. The app sports Evernote integration to let you save posts in any of your notebooks, and you can check out a submitter’s details right from a post you’re viewing. There are new tags for NSFW posts, and Facebook and Twitter sharing have been fixed. There are dozens of little improvements and fixes in Alien Blue HD 2.0, so I recommend you check out the release notes for the complete list.

More importantly, I like how Alien Blue’s experience is still intact in spite of the interface changes and new navigation schemes. You can still switch to Canvas view to browse images as large thumbnails, and there are several themes to choose from in the Settings. The new UI doesn’t add weight to the app in terms of performance, as Alien Blue still scrolls smoothly and updates fast on the iPad 2.

Alien Blue HD 2.0 offers a rich and intuitive Reddit experience in a native app that comes with many options to interact with Reddit content and links submitted to the site. Even if you don’t spend hours on Reddit every day, the app still offers an incredibly polished experience that I recommend you consider if you’re planning on browsing Reddit from your iPad.

Alien Blue HD 2.0 is available at $3.99 on the App Store.

New iPad Shipping Times Slip To 2-3 Weeks In Many Apple Online Stores [Update]

Update 3/10: Apple has confirmed in a statement to CNET that initial iPad units available for pre-order are sold out.

Customer response to the new iPad has been off the charts and the quantity available for pre-order has been purchased,” an Apple representative told CNET. “Customers can continue to order online and receive an estimated delivery date. Beginning Friday, March 16, the new iPad will be available for purchase at Apple’s retail stores and select Apple Authorized Resellers on a first come, first-served basis.

As noted by Matthew Panzarino at The Next Web, shipping times for the recently announced new iPad have slipped to 2-3 weeks in several online stores worldwide. The new device, announced at a media event on Wednesday, was made available through online pre-orders immediately after the event; in the hours following the refresh of the Apple online store with new products, the company had to face technical problems with the site not loading correctly due to heavy traffic. That hasn’t stopped customers, however, from sending their orders for the new iPad, whose initial shipments are now sold out in many international versions of the store – shipping times of 2-3 weeks are now reported in the UK, Germany, Japan, France, and Australia. Curiously enough, at the moment of writing this US shipping times had slipped to 2-3 weeks as well, only to go back to March 19 right before publishing.

Other stores of the initial launch countries are now reporting delays as well: in Canada, new iPad orders will be shipped on March 19, in Singapore and Australia on March 22.

On March 16th, the new iPad will go on sale in:

  • US
  • Canada
  • UK
  • France
  • Germany
  • Switzerland
  • Japan
  • Hong Kong
  • Singapore
  • Australia

25 more countries will follow one week later on March 23rd:

  • Austria
  • Belgium
  • Bulgaria
  • Czech Republic
  • Denmark
  • Finland
  • Greece
  • Hungary
  • Iceland
  • Italy
  • Liechtenstein
  • Luxembourg
  • Macau
  • Mexico
  • Netherlands
  • New Zealand
  • Norway
  • Poland
  • Portugal
  • Puerto Rico
  • Romania
  • Slovakia
  • Slovenia
  • Spain
  • Sweden

You can read more about the new iPad, which carries a Retina display, LTE, Bluetooth 4.0 and quad-core GPU, in our overview.

iWork.com Beta To Be Discontinued on July 31

With a support document updated today, Apple has informed users of iWork.com that the public beta of the service will be discontinued on July 31:

After July 31, 2012, you can no longer publish new documents to iWork.com from any iWork application on your Mac or iOS device. Documents already shared on iWork.com will not be available to you or to those you shared documents with.

Moving forward, you can use iCloud to share documents between your computer and your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

Giving instructions to save documents already published on iWork.com, Apple is advising customers to start using iCloud instead. Currently, iCloud offers a functionality to store iWork documents online, and access them from the native iWork apps for iOS. With Mountain Lion, Apple will offer a new iCloud save interface, although it’s not clear yet whether this will translate in a storage UI for iCloud.com as well, or an update to iWork for OS X. Currently, iCloud.com offers no sharing system for documents stored online, either.

Apple never showed too much interest in bringing new features to its iWork.com service, which has always been labelled as “beta” by the company. Some minor additions were brought to iWork.com last year, but the company never specifically mentioned major new functionalities would be introduced. Especially after the launch of iCloud, many had wondered if iWork.com was set to be discontinued, like other MobileMe services, and it now appears those doubts were legitimate, as the company is looking to move every document-related feature to iCloud. Right now, it’s not clear whether native apps will gain new options for publishing and sharing, or if Apple will keep building more powerful web apps for storing and sharing documents online.

Apple has already confirmed that MobileMe will be discontinued later this year, on June 30.

On Reviewing Apps

Over the past three years, some people have told me they don’t like the way I write software reviews. That I should just tell them whether ”they should buy the damn thing or not”. While I understand their point, with MacStories’ third anniversary quickly approaching I thought it would be appropriate to explain why I don’t do that.

An app is never ”just an app”. There are people behind the bits and buttons we use and touch every day. I have written about this before. When I am reviewing an app, I have to be honest to my reader and provide a careful and insightful analysis of the various features while taking into considerations other factors such as price, usability, and appearance. But at the same time, my writer’s instinct tells me that there’s more than just a checklist of features to mention. I want to tell that story.

There are a lot of sites that decide to focus their software reviews on enumerating features. That’s fine. Sometimes I believe, too, that simply telling our readers ”what’s new” in a specific piece of software is the only way we can cover a subject – otherwise we’d have to provide a disservice to our readers, by not covering it. This is especially true with software updates. And flashlight apps like Flashbot.

At MacStories, we carefully pick the things we want to talk about. We have been guilty of stupid rumors and speculation in the past, and we have learned a precious and invaluable lesson from that behavior: trust is important. Guess what, it’s about people again. You can only put so much of your soul on the Internet, and it can easily get lost somewhere along the line of rumors and linkbait. You’ll spread yourself too thin. You won’t tell a story. Some people excel at news reporting – which is an art by itself. Others, unfortunately, do it because they have to do it.

When I review an app, I want to find the story that needs to be told. I don’t want to be different just for the sake of originality – I genuinely believe that we’re witnessing a revolution of our digital era, and I don’t want to live it writing lists and inflammatory blog posts to drive our page views.

I want to tell this revolution. Or at least find a sweet spot where I, and my team, can contribute to providing a perspective that can make people think. Not just click.

Sometimes you’ll find an app that I love, while you think it’s terrible. That is fine, too. There’s no such thing as objectivity when you are reviewing something and expressing your opinions. There’s only honesty. Honesty and personality conflate in a number of ways, and when I write a review, my goal is to make sure the result is a balanced mix of facts, taste, and opinion. I try to tell the why and the how that are the sinew of my appreciation for fine software. Hopefully disagreements and constructive criticism will lead to a richer, variegate archive of software reviews in the future.

I have wondered if it was easier when our audience was in the order of hundreds, not millions. I ended up concluding that good traffic, besides allowing us to run this site, makes it all more exciting. It means we get to pick what we want to talk about, write it the way we want, and enjoy an intelligent discussion with more people because of it. And it’s getting better every day.

Perhaps we should just tell you whether you have to buy the damn thing or not. But that would take all the fun out of it.

That’s why we write what we write: because innovation never ceases to amaze us – and that’s a story worth telling.

iA Writer for iPhone Review

A few months ago, I decided that it was time for me to start a personal blog. I have been writing for MacStories for almost three years now, but I’ve never had “a place” to share my personal thoughts that wouldn’t fit in 140 characters or less. So as I was pondering the decision of trying to manage a separate, personal blog to share links and longer opinion pieces that I didn’t simply want to be short bursts on Twitter, I also decided that I would write such weblog exclusively from my iPad. The experiment has been a success so far, and that’s largely thanks to iA Writer, which starting today is also available on the iPhone.

Released as a universal update a few minutes ago on the App Store, I have been trying iA Writer for iPhone for the past few days, and I’m pleased to say Information Architects managed to squeeze (almost) everything that makes iA Writer great on the iPad and Mac (our coverage) into the iPhone’s smaller screen. Not only does iA Writer look great on the Retina display – it’s also functional and easy to use.

There isn’t much to say about iA Writer if you’re familiar with the iPad and Mac versions. It’s a minimalist take on plain text writing that focuses on letting you write without distractions with great typography, and only the essential features. There’s no cluttering interface with too many options. If most text editors and writing tools want you to feel connected with the web by adding social sharing functionalities, search look-ups, and various integrations with different services, iA Writer wants you to feel disconnected from the Internet’s noise to reconnect exclusively with what’s in front of you: text. Your words.

It’s called iA Writer for a reason – it’s about you, the writer, and the app, the digital writer. Everything else is secondary. That’s how I see this app.

This concept has been ported well to the iPhone. iA Writer can sync documents with iCloud and Dropbox across devices, and both are fairly reliable at keeping changes up to date and ready to be modified. Dropbox, as usual, can be slightly more “manual” in that iCloud is “invisible” in pushing and receiving changes automatically, all the time. Fortunately, iA Writer for iPhone has also a sync button, so if you’re not sure about the latest change fetched from the app, you can always hit Refresh and check that you’re getting the latest version of a document before you start writing. In my tests, iA Writer for iPhone was able to push changes to the same document already open on other devices, and I’m pretty satisfied with how iCloud sync turned out on iOS and OS X.

The core of iA Writer’s experience has been preserved in making the leap to the iPhone, but something’s got to give when you’re porting an app to the smaller screen. Either that, or iA simply didn’t have time to squeeze in more features – I don’t know, but as it stands now iA Writer for iPhone lacks Focus mode, and support for visual Markdown previews, which are both supported on the iPad and Mac. The iPhone app does, though, feature a custom keyboard with often-used keys placed in an extra row that also contains a drag handle to dismiss it (I love this aspect of the app), and arrows to navigate. The typing view of iA Writer 1.5 is now full-screen, which I think is incredibly better on iOS devices than being forced to always see window chrome. I do wish there was a gesture to quickly close a document without having to pull down the keyboard first, and I would like to see character count and reading time become available on the iPhone as well. I’m a big fan of the app’s separate storage for iCloud and Dropbox.

Ultimately, it comes down to the writing experience, and iA Writer excels at this because it is an app that wants you write more by seeing less. This first version of the iPhone app might not be as powerful as its Mac counterpart, but it sure is a pleasure to look at on the Retina display as what really matters, in the end, is that you’re looking at your own words, and nothing else.

iA Writer 1.5 is now available at $0.99 on the App Store.