HoverBar Duo: The MacStories Review

There is no shortage of iPad stands. Search for one on Amazon, for instance, and you’ll be met with page after page of results. Most stands are unremarkable, with little that distinguishes one from another.

Twelve South’s HoverBar Duo is different, though. The black aluminum and plastic stand has two articulating hinges with a clamp for your iPad that connects to the stand’s arm with a ball joint. The stand also rotates side-to-side at its base. The design, which is reminiscent of an attractive, modern desk lamp, provides a broader range of motion than most stands, making it useful in more scenarios. As a result, I’ve found myself using the HoverBar Duo far more than any stand I’ve tried before.

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Spotify Launches New ‘Spotify Mixes’ with Personalized Playlists Based on Artists, Genres, and Decades

Spotify Mixes in the Made for You hub.

Spotify Mixes in the Made for You hub.

Earlier today, Spotify announced their latest feature rollout for both free and premium users: Spotify Mixes. Inspired by the Daily Mix, which the company introduced in 2016, Spotify Mixes are a collection of personalized playlists tailored specifically to each user and available in three main “flavors”: in the updated Made for You hub (which you can find in the Search page), you’ll find Artist Mixes, Genre Mixes, and Decade Mixes.

Here’s how Spotify says these new playlists will work:

Each mix is created with you at the core, based on your listening habits and the artists, genres, and decades you listen to most. They’re rooted in familiarity, meaning that you won’t just hear your favorite artists, but your favorite songs from those artists.

Then, we supplement by adding in songs we think you’ll love, meaning they’ll be filled with the music you have on repeat alongside some fresh picks. So whether you want to jam out to a specific artist or hear more music from another decade, there’s a mix just for you.

According to Spotify, these new mixes will update over time to reflect your listening habits and will present a dynamic collection of playlists from different artists, genres, and decades, including both songs you already know and new ones the service thinks you might like.

I received the new Spotify Mixes this morning and, as you can see in the image above, they provide an eerily accurate representation of my diverse music preferences – from late 90s Placebo and mid 2000s emo punk to modern artists such as Pale Waves and Taylor Swift.

As I’m writing almost on a weekly basis now, I’m impressed with Spotify’s ongoing streak of product launches and understanding of what their users seek in the service. With genre filters, the ability to shuffle liked songs based on mood, and now mixes for decades and artists, Spotify helps me enjoy and rediscover music in any moment of the day; so far, I’m glad I decided to switch from Apple Music for a year.

Apple and Others Invest $50 million into Music Distributor UnitedMasters→

Apple quietly acquires companies with products and teams that complement its own offerings all the time, but it’s not often an investor, which makes the company’s recent investment in UnitedMasters notable. As reported by Matthew Panzarino at TechCrunch, Apple is joined by Alphabet, Google’s parent company, and A16z as leads in UnitedMasters’ $50 million Series B round.

Historically, artists’ relationships with music distribution companies have prevented artists from connecting directly with fans. UnitedMasters’ goal is to change that providing artists with access to data and allowing them to retain control of master recordings and sell merchandise, tickets, and more directly to fans.

As Panzarino notes, the investment comes as the music industry is changing:

We are currently at an inflection point in the way that artists and fans connect with one another. Though there have been seemingly endless ways for artists to get their messages out or speak to fans using social media and other platforms, the actual business of distributing work to a community and making money from that work has been out of their hands completely since the beginning of the recording industry.

UnitedMasters’ mission is to assist artists in making the transition to music’s future. If UnitedMaters’ objective sounds familiar, it’s likely because, as Panzarino explains, it bears a lot of similarity to what Apple Music Connect could have been:

In music, Apple is at the center of this maelstrom along with a few other major players like Spotify. One of the big misses in recent years for Apple Music, in my opinion, was Apple’s failure to turn Apple Music Connect into an industry-standard portal that allowed artists to connect broadly with fans, distribute directly, sell tickets and merchandise but — most importantly — to foster and own their community.

The streaming music industry is moving fast. Over the past several weeks, Spotify has introduced a long list of features to attract new listeners to the service. Apple Music seems to be evolving slowly compared to Spotify, but Apple’s investment in UnitedMasters shows that the company has its eye on the industry’s future too. Which new features stick with music fans remains to be seen, but judging from the first three months of the year, 2021 will be another interesting one for music streaming services.

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Google Announces New Maps Features, Including Indoor Live View, Weather and Air Pollution Layers, and Eco-Friendly Driving Directions

Source: Google.

Source: Google.

In more mapping news, Google announced several new features that are available in its Maps app now or are coming later this year, including improvements indoor navigation, weather and air pollution data, eco-friendly driving directions, and delivery and pickup information.

Google is expanding its Live View feature to indoor locations, providing AR overlays in Maps to help you find locations inside airports, shopping malls, and transit stations. The feature is already available on Android and iOS for shopping malls in Chicago, Long Island, Los Angeles, Newark, San Francisco, San Jose, and Seattle in the US. Airports and transit stations in Tokyo and Zurich will be the first to get the feature, with other cities being added later.

Weather and air pollution layers. Source: Google.

Weather and air pollution layers. Source: Google.

New weather and air quality layers are being added to Google Maps in the coming months too. The rollout will begin in Australia, India, and the US, with other countries to follow.

Using data from the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Lab, Google says Maps will soon offer eco-friendly driving and transit directions, and that the reduced carbon option will be the default when the ETAs of two routes are roughly the same. Google is also adding emission zone data to Maps later this year, which is a feature that Apple’s Maps app added with iOS 14 and a comprehensive listing of all transit methods available for any directions you request.

Finally, search on mobile is adding delivery and pickup details to business profiles in the app, including delivery options, fees, order minimums, and other information. The feature will start with Albertsons grocery stores in the US, with other businesses to follow. This summer, Google is also teaming up with Kroger and Meyers stores for a pilot program in Portland that will integrate Maps notifications and routing information with those companies’ apps when you place a grocery order.

Although most of the features Google announced for Maps are coming later in the year or are limited to selected geographies, it’s good to see the app being pushed forward. The frequency of new features in Apple and Google’s mapping apps goes to show the kind of progress that competition can produce.

AppStories, Episode 211 – Apple at Home→

This week on AppStories, we scrutinize Apple’s home strategy from its discontinued Airport routers and HomePod to the Apple TV, HomePod mini, HomeKit routers, the Home app, and more, plus ongoing browser and calendar experiments, and the hunt for an elusive keyboard continues.

Sponsored by:

  • Pillow – Sleeping better, made simple.
  • Privacy – Smarter payments. Get $5 to spend on your first purchase.
  • Technology Untangled – Join Michael Bird as he untangles innovation through a series of interviews, stories, and analyses with some of the industry’s brightest brains.

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COVID-19 Travel Guidance for Airports Begins Appearing in Apple Maps

With more people being vaccinated all the time, air travel has picked up too. To help iPhone, iPad, and Mac users understand each airport’s health requirements, Apple has begun adding COVID-19 travel guidance to airport place cards in Maps.

The data includes information like requirements for face coverings, health tests or screenings, and quarantine guidelines, along with links to each airport’s travel guidance webpage. The data is sourced from the Airports Council International, which announced the partnership on its website today. Commenting on the feature, Airports Council International’s World Director General Luis Felipe de Oliveira said:

Having this information displayed in Apple Maps will help to make this crucial data much more broadly accessible to passengers. This will help passengers to plan their journeys and be reassured that their health and safety remains a priority for the industry as we all work towards a sustained return to operations and global connectivity. Collaboration remains key to a globally coordinated recovery and we are grateful to our members for the partnership we have forged to deliver this important tool that will contribute to the rebuilding of passenger confidence in air travel.

The new Maps feature is currently rolling out to more than 300 airports worldwide, so if you don’t see it for your local airport yet, check back later.

Maps' new airport travel guidelines are rolling out internationally.

Maps’ new airport travel guidelines are rolling out internationally.

The new travel guidance adds to Maps’ growing database of COVID-related information available to users, such as the recent addition of COVID vaccination sites in the US and details on testing sites. Travel requirements during the pandemic vary from airport-to-airport, so it’s nice to see Apple is giving its users a convenient place to go to understand the guidelines before leaving home.

A First Look at the Apple Developer App’s New Design and Search Functionality

Shortly after announcing WWDC will be held online again this year from June 7 - 11, Apple released a significant update to its Developer app, which serves as a hub for news and watching WWDC sessions.

The sidebar of Developer is now easier to navigate. On the iPhone and iPad, content categories, such as Design, Frameworks, and Graphics and Games, can now be collapsed, greatly reducing the amount of vertical scrolling when browsing news and sessions. The iPhone and iPad versions of the app use a more compact, tile-based layout for the Discover tab, which allows for more items to be featured too. The design works well on the smaller screen of the iPhone, but where it really shines is on the iPad and Mac’s larger screens.

The old Discover tab (left) and the updated version (right).

The old Discover tab (left) and the updated version (right).

The iPad app’s tab bar has also been eliminated, moving what was previously there into the sidebar. Combined with the collapsible sidebar sections, the app is both easier to navigate and has more room for content on the iPad than ever before.

Search results are better organized than before.

Search results are better organized than before.

The update also includes a dedicated Search tab. Instead of a vertical list of results in the sidebar, the results are displayed in the app’s main view organized by videos, articles, and news, showing top results with the ability to ‘See all’ if more results than can fit onscreen are available. I used Developer’s search functionality a lot last year and looking at the results pulled from last year’s WWDC, I can already tell it will be easier to find the videos I want. Also, ‘Favorites’ have been replaced by ‘Bookmarks,’ although the functionality of the two appears to be the same in my limited testing.

The Developer app has always been a useful companion app for WWDC, but with the event being remote last year and again this year, it has taken on greater importance as one of the primary ways developers access sessions and news about Apple’s frameworks. Although I haven’t spent a lot of time with the app yet, it’s clear that a lot of thought went into adapting it to fit in with Apple’s modern iPad and Mac design vision and providing a better experience when sifting through the deep catalog of videos and other content that is available to developers.

Apple Announces That WWDC 2021 Will Be Online-Only Again from June 7 - 11

Apple has decided to make WWDC an online-only event again for 2021, which is no surprise given the on-going global pandemic. Before going online-only last year, WWDC was held at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California, from 2017 - 2019. The event has been scheduled for June 7-11, 2021. Submissions for the Swift Student Challenge are open now through April 18th.

In a press release issued by the company today, Susan Prescott, Apple’s Vice President of Worldwide Developer Relations and Enterprise and Education Marketing said:

We love bringing our developers together each year at WWDC to learn about our latest technologies and to connect them with Apple engineers. We are working to make WWDC21 our biggest and best yet, and are excited to offer Apple developers new tools to support them as they create apps that change the way we live, work, and play.

Although there are benefits to an in-person event that cannot be replicated online, last year’s WWDC was widely considered to be a success. Apple released dozens of excellent videos about its latest APIs and conducted online lab sessions for developers that received high marks from participants. Although Apple hasn’t released details about this year’s format yet, it’s a safe bet that it will be similar to 2020.

I miss in-person WWDC a lot. Last year’s online version was excellent, but it’s impossible to replace the chance to get together with friends who I often only see at WWDC and meet with the developers whose apps we write about all year long. I expect there’s a chance that even after the pandemic recedes, WWDC will remain online-only, but I sure hope not.

Of course, MacStories readers can expect the same kind of comprehensive WWDC coverage we do every year. In 2020, we tried a few new things that worked well, and we’ll continue to experiment again this year, so stay tuned.

Darkroom 5.2 Improves Photo Management with New Flag and Reject Functionality

One of the greatest advantages of the iPhone’s camera hardware is that it’s easy to take photos wherever you are. That’s also a bit of a curse because there’s probably no greater friction in managing a photo library than sifting through a large stack of images looking for the ones you want to keep. The convenience quality of the iPhone’s camera means that I take more photos than ever, many of which aren’t shots I want to keep long-term. With today’s release of Darkroom 5.2, the photo editor that we’ve covered on MacStories before takes a significant step forward in making the process of culling the best images from an extensive photo collection easier.

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