I’ve long considered HomeRun by Aaron Pearce a must-have app if you’re into HomeKit automation. With version 2, which is available for the iPhone and iPad and is out today, HomeRun adds all-new ways to access HomeKit scenes with in-app grids and Home Screen widgets, along with an updated Apple Watch complication editor. Although the initial setup process can be a bit laborious, investing some time in a setup on multiple devices pays off, allowing you to trigger scenes in many more ways than is possible with the Home app.
HomeRun 2 Launches as a New App with Home Screen Widgets, an In-App Grid System, and an Updated Watch Complication Editor
Apple Design Award Finalists Announced
For the first time, Apple has announced the finalists in the running for its annual Apple Design Awards. The awards ceremony revealing the winners will be held during WWDC at 2:00 pm Pacific on June 10th.
The finalists have been divided into six categories that include six finalists each:
Inclusivity
Delight and Fun
Interaction
Social Impact
Visuals and Graphics
Innovation
The selections include a lot of games and entertainment apps, including several Apple Arcade titles, and a mix of apps from smaller developers like CARROT Weather, Craft, Nova, and Pok Pok Playroom as well as bigger publishers. Panic’s Nova also stands out from the rest of the finalists as the sole app that is not available in one of Apple’s stores.
I like that Apple has announced the finalists in advance. Winning an ADA is a big achievement for any developer, but it’s also nice to know who the finalists are because it, too, is quite an honor among the many apps that could be chosen.
Apple Announces the Winners of the WWDC Swift Student Challenge
Apple has announced the winners of its annual WWDC Swift Student Challenge. This year, the group includes 350 students from 35 countries and regions.
Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations and Enterprise and Education Marketing said of this year’s participants:
Every year, we are inspired by the talent and ingenuity that we see from our Swift Student Challenge applicants. This year, we are incredibly proud that more young women applied and won than ever before, and we are committed to doing everything we can to nurture this progress and reach true gender parity.
Of the many winners this year, Apple chose three sets of winners to spotlight in its press release:
- Sisters Gianna and Shannon Yan, whose app Feed Fleet matches volunteers with at-risk people for free grocery during the pandemic
- 15-year-old Abinaya Dinesh, whose app Gastro at Home helps people with gastrointestinal disorders, access information and resources about their conditions
- Damilola Awofisayo, who created TecHacks, a non-profit with the mission of “creating a supportive environment for girls everywhere to create, problem-solve, and showcase their talents alongside like-minded females to compete and work with.” Awofisayo is also working on an American Sign Language app
Apple’s WWDC Student Challenge has changed over the years, most recently focusing on the Swift programming language, but it’s been a mainstay of the conference for years now. The competition is one of my favorite parts of the conference, too, having had one of my own kids participate in it in 2013 and seeing how it inspired him to pursue a career as a developer. Since then, I’ve had the chance to meet many past winners and cover their apps on MacStories, which has made it clear to me just how big an impact the program has had in many students’ lives.
Genius Scan: A Scanner in Your Pocket [Sponsor]
Genius Scan makes scanning and managing documents with an iPhone or iPad simple, fast, and efficient, by working the way you do, with a flexible set of powerful, modern tools that are always with you. The app’s scanning engine is fast and accurate, delivering crisp, clear scans on the go using your device’s camera or by picking images from the app’s system file picker, your photo library, or as part of a custom shortcut.
The app works with a wide range of documents. From receipts to pages in books, Genius Scan has advanced edge detection that quickly recognizes a page from its background, automatically cropping it and gathering multiple scans into a single PDF for sharing or archiving. Rescanning is easy too. There’s no need to rescan an entire document from scratch because Genius Scan lets you delete or replace individual pages with a few taps. It’s a workflow that’s as intuitive as it is efficient.
Genius Scan features highly accurate optical character recognition, enabling full-text searching of your scans and the ability to copy the text for use elsewhere. The app also supports machine learning-based file naming, Shortcuts, extensive sharing options, Split View and Slide Over on the iPad, and much more.
Used by everyone from students to doctors and pilots, Genius Scan offers pricing to fit all needs. Genius Scan Basic is free and fully functional with no watermarks, scanning limits, third-party ads, or tracking. Genius Scan+ unlocks background uploading support to cloud services like Dropbox and Google Drive, OCR, locking the app with Touch ID, PDF encryption, and smart document naming for just $7.99. Also, a Genius Cloud subscription adds document sync and backup for peace of mind for $2.99/month or $29.99/year.
So download Genius Scan today, to support these independent, honest, privacy-conscious developers and put the App Store’s best scanner in your pocket.
Our thanks to Genius Scan for sponsoring MacStories this week.
MacStories Unwind: A Palazzo Reborn, WWDC News, iOS Updates, an Apple TV 4K Review, and the iMac’s Evolution
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Sponsored by: HabitMinder – Change Your Habits, Change Your Life
This week, Federico and John look back at Federico’s exclusive tour of the Via del Corso Apple store in Rome, iOS and iPadOS 14.6, WWDC news, an Apple TV 4K review, and the evolution of the iMac, plus movie and TV show Unwind picks.
MacStories
- A Palazzo Reborn: Inside Apple’s Stunning New Store in Via del Corso, Rome
- Apple Announces WWDC 2021 Schedule
- Apple’s Developer Forums Gain Tagging Tools, RSS Feeds, and More Ahead of WWDC
- iOS and iPadOS 14.6 Released with Apple Card Family, Podcasts Subscriptions, Updates to AirTags and Find My, and More
- Joe Rosensteel Reviews the New Apple TV 4K
- Stephen Hackett Compares the Orange M1 iMac to Its Tangerine G3 Predecessor
Club MacStories
- MacStories Weekly
- Federico’s lossless music streaming experiments continue with a new DAC
- John considers the impact of Apple’s unclear home entertainment message on his AV setup
- A tip on scanning to your Mac from an iPhone or iPad
- A preview of next week’s MacStories Unplugged episode
AppStories
Unwind
- Federico’s Pick:
- John’s Pick:
A Palazzo Reborn: Inside Apple’s Stunning New Store in Via del Corso, Rome
Earlier today, Apple officially opened their new flagship retail store in Rome, Italy. Located on the popular Via del Corso street in the city’s historical center, the new store – which we previously covered here – is located in the historic Palazzo Marignoli, a 19th century building that has been renovated by Apple and painstakingly restored to its former glory.
I, along with our designer and photographer Silvia Gatta, was able to visit the Via del Corso store yesterday ahead of its grand opening to the public. Coincidentally, the occasion also marked the first time Silvia and I were able to visit the center of Rome free of red-zone restrictions since October 2019, when we took an amazing tour of Rome to demonstrate the iPhone 11’s camera capabilities before the pandemic hit our country in early 2020.
Besides the underlying sense of euphoria for seeing the Spanish Steps again and being around tourists for the first time in nearly 18 months, we came away impressed with what Apple has accomplished with its new Rome retail store. The Via del Corso store is an outstanding exercise in blending Rome’s rich architectural history with the modern reality of Apple’s computers and wearable devices – a challenge that the company didn’t take upon lightly, and which has, in fact, shaped the overall identity of the Via del Corso store.
Let’s take a look.
Apple’s Developer Forums Gain Tagging Tools, RSS Feeds, and More Ahead of WWDC
Apple has updated its developer forums in the lead-up to WWDC with several new features. Last year, the developer forums got a complete overhaul just before the annual conference, improving developers’ ability to ask questions, interact with other developers and Apple engineers, and follow topics that interest them. This year, the company is adding the ability to:
- Post comments on questions or answers to provide context or ask for clarification.
- Search for content across multiple tags.
- Add and manage favorite tags.
- Upload images to your question or answer to provide supporting visual details.
- See tag descriptions when choosing tags for your question so you can quickly select the most appropriate ones.
- Subscribe to RSS feeds for tags you’re interested in.
- See your authored and watched content, favorite tags, and trending tags on the newly designed home page.
I expect I’ll use the new tagging tools a lot this summer as I work on my macOS review. The developer forums have always been an excellent resource but haven’t always been the easiest to navigate. Armed with a collection of tags and RSS feeds delivering updates automatically, I’ll be using the forums a lot more than I did in the past. There’s still room for improvement, though. For example, as nice as the addition of RSS feeds is, they only apply to individual tags, not search results.
AppStories, Episode 220 – Our iPadOS 15 Wishes→
This week on AppStories, we jump back into their pre-WWDC wishlist series with a look at iPadOS and the sorts of OS improvements that are needed for apps to take advantage of the iPad Pro’s new M1 chip.
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- Appfigures – Analytics, Intelligence, and App Store Optimization Tools. Use the code ‘AppStories3030’ at checkout for a 30% discount for the next 3 months.
- Inoreader – Take Back Control of Your News Feed. Use the code ‘MACSTRY2’ for 20% off your first year of Inoreader Pro.
- Pingdom – Start monitoring your website performance and availability today, and get instant alerts when an outage occurs or a site transaction fails. Use offer code ‘APPSTORIES’ to get 30% off. Offer expires on January 31, 2022, and can be used only once.
Joe Rosensteel Reviews the New Apple TV 4K→
Joe Rosensteel has an in-depth look at the new Apple TV 4K on his website, Unauthoritative Pronouncements. Joe covers every step of the setup process, the new Siri Remote, and the new Apple TV 4K hardware. He concludes that although there have been substantial improvements in some areas, notably with the Siri Remote, there is a lot of room for improvement, especially for a device that is considerably more expensive than its competition.
One of my favorite critiques is of the setup process, which does a good job transferring your Apple TV apps to a new device, but leaves users to log into them one by one. It’s a frustrating experience that’s all too common on more than just the Apple TV. As Joe explains:
There is still this logical disconnect in this process where I have authorized the Apple TV to log into my Apple ID and access my iCloud data, including data from my existing devices, and iCloud KeyChain, but it can’t set up an Apple TV with all my apps and services logged in. I know someone might insist that this is for security, but it absolutely isn’t because all this data exists, in iCloud, accessible to anyone who has my unlocked iPhone and Apple TV - which is what is required to just populate empty apps on the screen.
My login state for these other services should really be stored in iCloud across all Apple devices I own, or with a token authorization system that uses the iPhone in my hand. At the very least, aggregate all of the services I need to log into in one spot for me to do it with Face ID, or Touch ID, opening up the saved password data for each of the entries I need to make.
The new jog wheel ring around the Siri Remote’s clickpad can be confusing to interact with too, especially because it doesn’t work with all third-party apps:
What about using it as a jog wheel? Well … it doesn’t work in all circumstances you will expect it to work in. You need to be in an app that supports the feature. YouTube, Hulu, and Disney+ don’t support it, for example. In some apps, the wheel moves the position on the timeline forward … and then backward, even though you’ve completed “a rotation” around the wheel because this isn’t really a wheel. It’s four directions mapped to a ring that doesn’t actually turn. It really breaks the rotation metaphor.
There’s a lot more to Joe’s review of the latest Apple TV, so be sure to check it out. As someone who consumes video exclusively through an Apple TV, many of these criticisms rang true. I haven’t tried the new Apple TV 4K myself, but I did replace my old Siri Remote with the new model, and despite taking a bit to get used to, that one change has been a substantial upgrade.