FirstSeed Calendar: Best Calendar, Best Widgets [Sponsor]

By MacStories Team

FirstSeed Calendar is the highly customizable calendar app that works on every Apple platform, providing a seamless experience that anyone with a busy schedule will love. Available on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch, FirstSeed Calendar offers four different monthly calendars and seven types of weekly calendars, ensuring that you’ll be able to find one that suits your needs.

The app takes advantage of the unique features of each Apple platform, providing an unparalleled experience that anyone with a busy schedule will appreciate. For example, FirstSeed Calendar offers elegant one-handed operation of the app’s most frequently used features, like viewing, adding, editing, deleting, moving, and duplicating events, which is perfect for today’s big-screen iPhones.

FirstSeed Calendar never wastes your time either. Unlike most other calendar apps, event names are suggested after typing just a few characters, allowing you to auto-complete events quickly and efficiently. The app also features over 20 Home Screen widgets, so you can get precisely the calendar you want on your Home Screen.

FirstSeed Calendar is continuously updated with the latest technologies too. Most recently, the iPad version of the app added XL widgets. The app also supports time sensitive notifications, allowing you to set alerts that break through Focus modes.

FirstSeed Calendar has all the other advanced features you expect in a pro calendar app too:

Calendar sets
Shortcuts integration
Event templates
An excellent Apple Watch app
Support for conferencing services like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Webex
Pointer support on the iPad
Bulk event editing
Multiple default event alarms
Dark mode, themes, custom date colors

Managing your calendar doesn’t have to be complicated. Take control of your schedule today with FirstSeed Calendar.

Learn more here, or go straight to the App Stores and download FirstSeed Calendar for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac today.

Our thanks to FirstSeed Calendar for sponsoring MacStories this week.

MacStories Unwind: Safari Extensions, a CARROT Weather Update, and iWork App Changes

By John Voorhees

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27:09

Sponsored by: Daylite – The CRM with Apple Fans in Mind

This week on MacStories Unwind:

MacStories

Club MacStories

Monthly Log
- Federico on Marvis Pro
- John on setting up devices from scratch
John published the latest Macintosh Desktop Experience column all about his Loupedeck Live workflows
MacStories Weekly
- Craft
- Federico shares a Working Copy Shortcut for managing hidden folders on iOS and iPadOS
- John has an iPhone drag and drop tip
- Club Member JC shares their work setup

AppStories

AppStories, Episode 242 – iPad mini: Small Wonder

Unwind

Federico’s Picks:
- Lucifer, Season 6
- Lifeforms by Angles & Airwaves

AppStories, Episode 242 – The iPad mini: Small Wonder →

Linked By John Voorhees

This week on AppStories, we go beyond the specs to figure out what it is about the new iPad mini that makes it so special.

Subscribe here.

On AppStories+, Federico explains how he has begun experimenting with his email setup again and shares a new feature of Working Copy that he’s testing. Also, John reports on the latest happenings in Epic’s litigation against Apple and what it means.

We deliver AppStories+ to subscribers with bonus content, ad-free, and at a high bitrate early every week.

To learn more about the benefits included with an AppStories+ subscription, visit our Plans page, or read the AppStories+ FAQ.

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Apple Updates Pages with Screen View, Numbers with Pivot Tables, Keynote with Live Video, and More

By John Voorhees

Source: Apple.

Apple has updated its iWork suite of productivity apps consisting of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote with versions for iOS and iPadOS 15 and macOS Monterey.

Pages

Quick View (center) focuses on the text of a document to make it easier to edit than the preview, which includes images (right).

On the iPhone, Pages supports a new Screen View that makes editing on the smaller screen easier. As you can see from the screenshot of one of Apple’s built-in templates, Screen View dispenses with the images allowing the user to focus on the text. The iPhone also has a Quick Format bar that lets you change things like paragraph styles, text formatting, alignment, and list styles. The iPhone version of Pages supports dragging and dropping images and text from other apps into Pages, too, which is a new feature in iOS 15. Graph values can be played as audio tones for visually impaired iOS and iPadOS users too.

On all platforms, Pages has gained improved publishing with two-page spreads, optimized images, and versioning, which should fill some of the gaps left by the fact that iBooks Author has been discontinued. Selected text can be translated into 11 languages, participants in a shared Pages document can add new collaborators for the first time, and radar charts comparing multiple variables have all been added to Pages on all platforms too.

Exclusive to the Mac, Pages documents can now be created from the app’s Dock icon.

Numbers

Time to pivot. Source: Apple.

One of the things I’ve heard many Excel users complain about over the years is that Numbers didn’t include pivot tables. Now it does on all platforms, which is great if you need that sort of thing. Numbers’ format is compatible with Excel so you can import and export your pivot tables between the two apps too.

Like Pages, Numbers has added support for radar charts for visualizing multiple variables. Quick Filters have been redesigned to simplify showing and hiding rows that match certain values. There’s also a filter for finding duplicate entries and unique values in your data. Like Pages, participants in a shared Numbers spreadsheet can add new collaborators, and selected text can be translated into 11 languages.

On the iPhone, Numbers has added audio graphs for the visually impaired. Also, on the Mac, a new Numbers document can be created from the app’s Dock icon.

Keynote

Keynote presentations can be combined with live video. Source: Apple

Keynote presentations can include live video across all of Apple’s platforms, using the camera in your Mac to display video of you alongside your slides. On the Mac, there’s also support for multiple cameras for different viewing angles and adding live feeds of iPhone and iPad screens. If you’re doing a presentation with someone else, the Keynote update lets each participant take turns controlling the presentation. There are also new slide controls for navigating slides, controlling video sources, and working with other presenters. Like the other iWork apps, Keynote also supports radar charts, translation of selected text into 11 languages, and the ability of participants of shared presentations to invite new collaborators.

On the iPhone, Keynote supports iOS 15’s ability to drag and drop text and images between apps as well as audio graphs for the visually impaired. On the Mac, you can create a new presentation from the app’s Dock icon too.

These are bigger updates to the iWork apps than we’ve seen in a while, and especially nice to see that most of the new features are available across all of Apple’s platforms. The live video and screen sharing features of Keynote are the sort of thing that I expect a lot of people will find useful, especially if presenting remotely. Pivot tables aren’t something I expect to use, but they add a new level of sophisticated data analysis that wasn’t possible with Numbers before. Also, with improved publishing tools and a better iPhone user experience, Pages is far more useful for creating eBooks.

CARROT Weather 5.4: XL Widgets, Time Sensitive Notifications, Complication Customization, Themes, Icons, and More

By John Voorhees

Last week, Brian Mueller released CARROT Weather 5.4 alongside the iOS and iPadOS update. The update takes advantage of new iOS and iPadOS 15 features and continues to put more control in the hands of users with new customization options, themes, and icons.

CARROT Weather’s new XL widgets.

CARROT Weather 5.4 takes advantage of the new XL widgets in iPadOS 15 and the time sensitive notifications on both platforms. On the iPad, CARROT Weather now offers XL Maps and Forecast widgets. The added space allows the XL Maps widget to show weather maps for a wide geographic area. For me here in the Chicago area, that means I can see weather conditions for a big chunk of Illinois as well as parts of Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan, an area covering about 500 miles from east to west and 200 miles north and south.

The XL Forecast widget is big enough to include the:

Current conditions
High and low temperatures for the day
Wind speed and direction
Chance of precipitation
Sunrise or sunset times
Moon phase
An hourly forecast for the next 10 hours
A 7-day forecast

With just one widget, you’ve got all the information that most people want in one place without even opening CARROT Weather.

Safari Extensions for iOS and iPadOS 15: A Roundup of Our Favorites

By John Voorhees

With the introduction of iOS and iPadOS 15, Apple has created an entirely new class of utility app on the App Store: Safari web extensions. Mac users have enjoyed extensions for years. However, for iPhone and iPad users, they’re brand new and promise to make Safari more useful than ever by opening up new power-user functionality that extends Safari in ways that Apple hasn’t. Judging from the initial crop of extensions available, I think Safari users are going to be very happy.

Managing extensions from Settings (left) and Safari (right).

There are a couple of ways to install Safari extensions for iOS and iPadOS 15. First, you can go to the Settings app, select Safari, and inside the Extensions section, turn on any extensions you’ve installed and give them permission to interact with webpages. Second, you can enable or disable extensions by tapping on the puzzle piece icon in the address bar and then choosing ‘Manage Extensions.’ The same popover that appears when you tap the puzzle piece icon also lets you ‘Edit Actions,’ picking favorite extensions that will appear at the top of your extensions list in whatever order you drag them into, similar to the way picking favorite share and action extensions and rearranging them works.

Okay, let’s dig into some of the best extensions already available.

How iPadOS 15 Ruined Chris Welch’s iPad Home Screen →

Linked By Federico Viticci

Chris Welch, writing for The Verge, covers an aspect of iPadOS 15 I also pointed out in my review: iPadOS 15 no longer keeps the same icon grid layout in portrait and landscape orientations, and, if you place widgets on the Home Screen, its density is reduced.

Welch concludes:

Some will see this as a very minor inconvenience and carry on with updating to iPadOS 15 for all of the other benefits. Since the App Library is now there, you can even go in the complete opposite direction and load your homescreens up with widgets everywhere and only a few app icons. If that’s you, don’t let me stop you. On the whole, it’s a very good release.

But I’m really hoping in a future software update, Apple will add a setting to restore the old layout that kept everything more consistent. It’d be even better if the company made the grid more customizable on the whole. If we’re letting people choose between new and old Safari designs, why not offer a choice between having more things on-screen or a less dense grid that’s better optimized for widgets? There’s already a “Home Screen and Dock” section in settings, after all. Letting you adjust the grid to your liking is something that Android phones and tablets already get right. It’s not a huge ask.

I think the point about customization is exactly right, and also why I’m not complaining about the ability to choose a layout in Safari. As iPads are used by a variety of less tech-savvy and more experienced pro users, it’s now increasingly challenging for Apple to cover the platform’s full spectrum of workflows with non-customizable features. Welch makes a great point about the Home Screen grid’s rigidity and lack of control; I hope Apple provides more options for this in the future, along with a denser grid if you have widgets placed on the iPad Home Screen.

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Meet Daylite: The CRM with Apple Fans in Mind [Sponsor]

By MacStories Team

For small businesses trying to stay on top of clients, leads, and projects that are evolving every day, it can be tough, if not impossible, to manage everything. That’s where Daylite comes in clutch. Daylite is an award-winning, native CRM and business productivity app for your Mac, iPhone, and iPad that’s designed to help you and your team manage more clients, close more deals, and finish more projects.

Daylite is fully compatible with M1-powered Macs and works seamlessly with the Apple features you already use and love:

Integration with Apple Mail on Mac
Share your Apple Contacts and iCal
Leverage Siri and Caller ID on your iPhone
FaceID and TouchID support
Create contracts and other documents by pulling Daylite data into Pages, Numbers, and Keynote

What’s more, all of your information is accessible online and off, and it can be segmented, so it’s perfectly tailored to your specific client story. Combined with a sophisticated, elegant design that makes it easy to access and use your data on the go, Daylite is the complete package for your growing business.

Unlike most Web-based CRMs that focus on customer relationships and sales, Daylite’s productivity-focused design helps you and your team get more done throughout the full customer lifecycle. From meeting prospects and winning business to managing the moving pieces on projects, all the way through to following up for referrals and repeat business, it’s all done in Daylite.

Whether you’re in a legal, design, consulting, or other professional services firm, Daylite can help you build stronger client relationships and scale your business. Daylite also offers complimentary onboarding support to help new customers get started.

See what Daylite can do for your business today. Start your free 30-day Daylite trial today!

Our thanks to Daylite for sponsoring MacStories this week.