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Apple Releases macOS 11.3 Beta with New Safari Features, Reminders Sorting, Music Updates, and Improvements to iOS and iPadOS Apps Running on M1 Macs

Start page items can be reordered.

Start page items can be reordered.

Apple has released the first beta for macOS 11.3 Big Sur, which includes new Safari features, changes that parallel yesterday’s updates to iOS and iPadOS, and more.

Some of the most interesting features of the latest Big Sur beta are in Safari. As I wrote in my Big Sur review, I like most of the changes made to Safari’s start page but wished I could reorder the default sections. That’s now possible, which is terrific, but there’s also a new third-party extension point for developers to build start page integrations, which is very interesting. We’ll have to see what developers do with the new feature, but I expect it will allow RSS clients to list recent articles on the start page that could be opened directly in Safari, for example. There’s a new Web Speech API that allows speech recognition functionality to be built into a webpage too.

Music's new Made for You tab

Music’s new Made for You tab

Similar to iOS and iPadOS, Reminders is gaining the option to print lists. Music adds a dedicated ‘Made For You’ section in the sidebar that includes your annual Replay playlists and Apple’s personalized algorithmic playlists. The Listen Now tab will also suggest upcoming live events tuned to your music tastes. There’s an enhanced News+ tab in Apple News designed to make it easier to access magazines and newspapers and manage downloaded issues. Sony PS5 DualSense and Xbox Series X/S controllers are supported too.

The News+ tab has been redesigned.

The News+ tab has been redesigned.

Finally, the experience of using iOS and iPadOS apps on the Mac got a boost too. There’s a brand new Preference pane in iPhone and iPads running on an M1 Mac that provides more keyboard control over touch commands. Apps can also be opened in larger windows.

The new iOS and iPadOS app Preferences window.

The new iOS and iPadOS app Preferences window.

GoodTask 6.4 Brings Kanban-Style Board View for Reminders Lists and Smart Lists

GoodTask's new board view.

GoodTask’s new board view.

In our Workflows Revisited: Task Management episode of AppStories from December, I explained my decision to keep using GoodTask – the powerful third-party Reminders client – as my primary task manager. We’ve mentioned GoodTask several times on both MacStories and AppStories before; for those not familiar with it, GoodTask uses Reminders as its “database” for tasks, but it enhances the experience with power-user features such as smart lists, customizable quick actions for task templates, and a variety of view options that can be personalized and applied on a per-list basis. Essentially, if you like the convenience and system integrations of Reminders but find yourself wanting more flexibility from Apple’s Reminders app, you need to give GoodTask a try.

In that episode of AppStories, I mentioned how, in my experiments with other task managers, I came across a feature I would have liked to see in GoodTask: Todoist’s board view. Introduced last year, board view lets you visualize tasks in a Todoist project with a Kanban board reminiscent of Trello, and it comes with support for sections and multiple sorting options. You can read more about it here. I used Todoist for a couple months to keep track of tasks related to my iOS and iPadOS 14 review last year, and I found its board view a terrific way to visualize different groups of tasks within a project; Trello is also one of the services we use to manage Club MacStories, so the Kanban methodology resonates with me and I like the idea of dragging and dropping tasks across columns. For those reasons, as I detailed on AppStories, I believe that a board view is the kind of functionality that more task managers should implement in addition to standard list views.

Fortunately, GoodTask developer Hanbum Kim listened to my request (which was also followed by other helpful comments by AppStories listeners on Twitter) and brought board views to GoodTask 6.4, released today for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. GoodTask’s new board view is exactly what I was hoping Kim would be able to ship in their powerful Reminders client, and it’s giving me the additional flexibility for visualizing tasks and due dates I’ve long sought in GoodTask.

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Apple Releases Betas with Face ID Plus Apple Watch iPhone Unlocking, App Tracking Transparency, and Other New Features

Betas of iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, and watchOS are out today with some interesting features. Last week on World Privacy Day, Apple announced that App Tracking Transparency is coming in the spring, so it’s no surprise that iOS and iPadOS 14.5 include the feature. However, there are several other features coming in the next round of OS releases, as summarized by Rene Ritchie in this tweet:

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Text Case Adds Customizable Flows: User-Created, Multi-Step Text Transformation

Text Case is a text transformation app that includes 37 text transformations. The app can capitalize titles according to multiple style manuals, trim whitespace, URL encode and decode text, change text to all uppercase or lowercase lettering, generate Markdown, and more.

You can type or paste text into Text Case to transform it, but with the introduction of Shortcuts support in 2018, Text Case became an app that could be used exclusively as a series of Shortcuts actions too. The hasn’t changed, but now, you can also create multi-step text transformations for use in the app itself or from Shortcuts or the share sheet, adding a new level of convenience. The update marks an interesting shift of focus from a tool that applied individual transformations to text one at a time to a text workflow creation tool that uses a UI that is reminiscent of Shortcuts.

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Organize Your Inbox (and Never Waste Time on Email Again) With SaneBox [Sponsor]

SaneBox is your personal email assistant that automatically organizes your inbox, saving you valuable time. SaneBox works on top of your existing email service, making sure that only the most important messages reach your inbox. The rest of your messages are carefully tucked away in designated folders like SaneLater and SaneNews for reviewing later. You can snooze emails, too, setting them aside to deal with later.

Better yet, if there’s something you never want to see again, drag in into the SaneBlackHole folder. It’s far easier than the hit or miss process of unsubscribing from email lists.

SaneBox has a built-in reminders system too. SaneReminders are a great way to keep on top of tasks. Send yourself a reminder to do something later or get a reminder that someone hasn’t responded to a message. For example, bcc: [email protected] and the message will show up back in your inbox only if the recipient doesn’t reply within three days. With SaneReminders, nothing falls through the cracks.

Also, because SaneBox works on top of your existing email setup, there’s no app to download or a new email account to set up. You can use any email client you want.

Sign up today for a free 14-day SaneBox trial to take back control of your email. You’ll see substantial benefits immediately as the message count in your inbox drops, and you’ll be able to maintain control going forward with SaneBox’s help. MacStories readers can receive a special $25 credit automatically by using this link to sign up.

Our thanks to SaneBox for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Inc. Interviews David Smith About Widgetsmith’s Astonishing Success→

Most MacStories readers are undoubtedly familiar with the story of David Smith’s app Widgetsmith, which took off last fall after going viral on TikTok. Yesterday, Jason Aten of Inc. published an interview with Smith about his career as an independent developer and how his 12 years of experience building 59 different apps prepared him for the unexpected success of Widgetsmith, which has been downloaded more than 50 million times.

As Aten aptly points out:

Often, the simplest form of success is what happens when a stroke of good fortune meets years of hard work and preparation. Plenty of people work hard their whole lives but never come across the kind of luck associated with having your app go viral on TikTok. At the same time, plenty of viral social media stories flame out immediately. They never put in the work or preparation that would allow them to capitalize on the moment.

As MacStories readers know, Widgetsmith isn’t Smith’s first App Store success. We’ve covered many of his other apps over the years, but Widgetsmith is in an entirely different universe than anything that came before it. For example, Aten reveals that:

Smith told me that Widgetsmith had more downloads in a single day than Pedometer++ has had in the entire time since it launched in 2013.

That’s remarkable given that Pedometer++ was probably the first pedometer app on the App Store and has remained popular in the seven years since it was released.

There are many valuable lessons in the Inc. story that are broadly applicable beyond app development. Some lessons are as simple as the value of practice and becoming an expert in your field. As Smith explains:

All of those other apps that I built in the past helped. I need to, for example, get the user’s current calendar events so that I can put it in a widget. I know how to get calendar events and pull them into a widget. I’ve done this in another app before.

Smith’s story also shows how easy it is to misjudge demand for a product in advance too. Along with Smith and others who have followed his work, I didn’t expect Widgetsmith to be popular beyond iOS power-users. Widgetsmith is a terrific app, but I never imaged its audience would be bigger than Pedometer++, but as Smith says in his interview:

And it turned out that everybody is that power user who was very fiddly about what they want their Home Screen to look like. I just completely misjudged the size of the market that I was addressing. I thought I was targeting a very specific group of people. And it turned out that that very specific group of people was like everyone.

If there are MacStories readers who still haven’t tried Widgetsmith, do so because it’s fantastic. But, also, don’t miss Inc.’s interview with Smith, which is an excellent look at the combination of hard work and luck that lead to ‘overnight success.’

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MacStories Unwind: Data Privacy Day, Black History Month, Executive Changes, Tweetbot 6, and Record-Breaking Financial Results

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This week on MacStories Unwind:

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CARROT Weather 5 Introduces New Design Elements, Custom Interface Builder, and More

CARROT Weather has been a MacStories favorite for years now. Just last month we named it the Best Watch App of 2020 in our annual MacStories Selects awards. One of the impressive features in CARROT’s Apple Watch app is the ability to customize the interface to display exactly the weather data that you’re interested in. With today’s release of CARROT Weather 5, developer Brian Mueller has brought that same concept to the iOS and iPadOS versions of the app. The major update also includes a host of new icon designs, snarky weather responses, achievements, and fun Easter eggs.

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Apple Publishes ‘A Day in the Life of Your Data’ Case Study and Reveals That App Tracking Transparency is Coming in the Spring

Today is Data Privacy Day, and to mark the occasion, Apple has published a case study titled ‘A Day in the Life of Your Data.’ In the accompanying press release, Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering explains the company’s approach to privacy:

Privacy means peace of mind, it means security, and it means you are in the driver’s seat when it comes to your own data. Our goal is to create technology that keeps people’s information safe and protected. We believe privacy is a fundamental human right, and our teams work every day to embed it in everything we make.

Apple’s efforts to put its customers in control of their data are not new, but as they evolve and expand, so have tensions with other tech industry titans like Facebook. Part of the lastest tensions stems from the fact that as part of the next iOS and iPadOS beta, Apple will begin testing a system that alerts users when an app wants to share data it collects with other apps, websites, and companies. The most common way apps do this is with the Identifier for Advertisers or IDFA, a unique code that identifies your device.

Users can already go into the Privacy section of the Settings app to turn off IDFA-based tracking under ‘Tracking,’ but that requires people to know about the setting and find it. Apple’s new system is similar to other privacy flows throughout iOS in that it displays an alert when an app that wants to use tracking is launched, asking the user to grant it permission.

Facebook and others, whose advertising relies on aggregating data about users from multiple apps and websites and then tying it back to a specific individual, see this as a threat to their business models. Attempting to reframe the issue as one of economics, Facebook argues that the change will hurt small businesses who purchase targeted ads because those ads will no longer be as effective.

The new privacy feature, which Apple calls App Tracking Transparency, comes on the heels of the standardized privacy disclosures the company began requiring from developers with its Fall 2020 OS updates. For apps like Facebook, the disclosures are extensive, but to its credit, Facebook published its disclosures late last year, while Google still hasn’t.

Apple's App Store privacy labels make it clear to users that third-party Twitter clients collect far less data than the official app, for example.

Apple’s App Store privacy labels make it clear to users that third-party Twitter clients collect far less data than the official app, for example.

Apple’s case study is a day-in-the-life hypothetical that follows a father and daughter throughout their day together. The document is peppered with facts about tracking and data brokers, including a citation to a study that says the average app includes six trackers. Most useful, though, is the case study’s plain-English, practical examples of the kind of tracking that can occur as you go about a typical day’s activities using apps.

It’s impossible to create a case study that users who aren’t security experts will understand without glossing over details and nuances inherent to privacy and tracking. However, the study is extensively footnoted with citations to back up the statements it makes for those who want to learn more, which I think strikes the right balance. I’ve had tracking turned off on my devices since it was possible, and personally, I’m glad to see the feature is going to be surfaced for others who may not be aware of its existence.