This Week's Sponsor:

TRMNL

The E-ink Companion For Your Favorite Tools

Concepts: Sketch, Note, Draw [Sponsor]

Concepts is a powerful creative tool to help you think, explore, and sketch your ideas. Stretch your mind past the limits on an infinite canvas using liquid pens and brushes in designer COPIC colors. Used by creative professionals for visual thinking, note-taking, drawing, storyboarding, graphic design, product iteration, and architectural planning, Concepts lets you sketch, communicate and present your ideas with a flexible, customizable toolset.

Built from the ground up for iPad’s touch sensitivity, Concepts combines vectors with natural finger gestures to enhance your creative workflow. Everything you draw can be edited, moved, and reorganized, allowing you to interact with your ideas at a deeper level. Drag+drop images and objects for fast ideating, use layers and grid layouts to organize your work, and apply real-world scale for professional design work.

Concepts comes with a built-in Presentation Mode that lets you connect to a large display for graphic discussion and live sharing during events. It works with apps like Zoom for instant virtual whiteboarding. Once your work is final, export and share standard, high resolution, and vector file types for flexible work between teams and apps.

The app comes free as a basic sketching tool, with the ability to unlock 200+ libraries of brushes, objects, and services via subscription or one-time purchase. Sketch, explore, and share your ideas infinitely with Concepts.

Download Concepts today for free and give it a try. To learn more about how Concepts can help you explore your ideas, visit concepts.app.

Our thanks to Concepts for sponsoring MacStories this week.

MacStories Unwind: Dark Noise, Soor, and Game Reviews, Plus a Developer Debrief

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Sponsored by Overdrop Weather – Weather Simplified

This week on MacStories Unwind:

MacStories

Club MacStories

  • MacStories Weekly
    • iOS 14 tips from Federico
    • A Collection of John’s favorite first-gen Catalyst apps
    • Ryan on why the iPadOS update is a bigger deal than it appears
    • An interview with Spend Stack developer Jordan Morgan
  • Join Club MacStories

AppStories

Unwind Picks

Podcasting on iPad Pro and Mac: A Streamlined Approach with the Sound Devices MixPre-3 II

Anyone new to a job has probably thought or even asked:

“Why do you do it that way?”

and gotten the age-old answer:

“Because that’s how we’ve always done it.”

It’s human nature to stick with a solution that works and is familiar. When a workflow is so ingrained that it’s a habit, that’s good because it allows the task to become less about the tools and more about what you’re creating.

Paradoxically, though, familiarity can also lead to inflexibility, a resistance to change that undermines the very productivity that the solution enabled in the first place. It’s an inertial force that’s hard to resist, but I think it’s important to push back against it. Not solely for the sake of efficiency, but also to improve the results of your efforts.

The trick is knowing when experimentation with new workflows is unproductive fiddling and when it’s meaningful exploration. I’ve seen too many people fall into the trap where improving the process becomes the goal itself.

Early last year, I decided I was finished with letting tasks dictate how I work. I work across the Mac, an iPad Pro, and an iPhone all day long. Some jobs are more suited to one device than another, and some I just prefer to do on a particular device. The point is, though, that it’s something I want to be my choice, instead of something foisted on me by the nature of the work itself.

I’m fortunate that most of what I do migrates effortlessly from one device to another. Still, I’ve historically had two weekly responsibilities where I’ve felt tied to a Mac.

The first was producing the Club MacStories newsletters using Mailchimp’s web app. As I wrote last January, Safari’s updates in iOS and iPadOS 13, which made web apps work roughly the same on my iPad Pro as on my Mac, solved that problem for me.

The second Mac-bound task was podcast recording and production. I recognize that there have been ways to accomplish podcasting on an iPad for a while. However, when it comes to recording in particular, I didn’t want to change the way I record episodes to work around the iPad’s limitations for the same reasons Federico articulated in Beyond the Tablet.

What made these two tasks frustrating is that they’re both tied to schedules that have limited flexibility. When I was traveling more, that left me with little choice but to take a Mac. I prefer to travel with my iPad Pro, but regardless, I’d rather pick how I work myself, even when I’m at home.

I’m not doing as much traveling now, but a recent road trip to Michigan led me to start thinking about my podcasting setup again. As with many trips in the past, I wound up taking my MacBook Pro along, in this case so I could record interviews for an episode of AppStories. The setup was perfectly fine, but it felt like too much equipment for recording a few short interviews. Plus, I took my iPad Pro because I prefer it for writing and wanted to stay connected to mobile data as I wrote a story in the car.

Ever since Jason Snell wrote about his iPad Pro podcasting setup on Six Colors early last year, and Federico adapted it for his setup when he can’t use his Mac mini, I’ve wanted to try something similar. What held me back, though, was a combination of the complexity, cost, and infrequency with which I assumed I’d use the setup.

I also held out hope that iPadOS 13 or 14 would include improved audio routing that would make it possible to talk on Skype and record a local audio track. That hasn’t happened. Although I expect Apple will add that functionality eventually, it’s been 18 months since Safari solved my Mailchimp problem. With only podcasting standing in the way of my goal of device independence, and no software solution from Apple in the early iPadOS 14 betas, I figured it was time to revisit my hardware options.

I wanted a solution that worked equally well when I’m sitting at my Mac or iPad, allowing me to talk over Skype and record myself locally. What I discovered was an incredibly versatile solution that accomplishes in a single device what Snell and Federico cleverly constructed from a field recorder and USB audio interface: the Sound Devices MixPre-3 II.

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Game Day: Good Sudoku

Zach Gage has a knack for giving classic games an interesting twist. Sometimes that means turning the rules upside down and inside out like Flipflop Solitaire or Really Bad Chess. Other times, it means removing the tedious and boring parts of games to breathe new life into them, which is precisely what he and Jack Schlesinger have accomplished with Good Sudoku.

I started with Good Sudoku as a novice. I’ve played sudoku before and knew the rules, but it’s not a game that has ever grabbed me and stuck. As a result, as much as I’ve enjoyed Gage’s other games, I approached Good Sudoku with a healthy dose of skepticism. However, after several days of playing the game, I’ve found that stripped of its tedious aspects, sudoku is engaging to the point of being addicting and a whole lot of fun.

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Soor 2 Review: Magic Mixes and Release Alerts Elevate the Beautiful Apple Music Client

Following the debut of Apple’s MusicKit API, which enables third parties to build apps and web experiences that directly integrate with Apple Music, 2019 was a big year for third-party Apple Music clients on the App Store. We’ve written about several of these apps, but the earliest and highest profile debut of the year was Soor, a meticulously designed client that distinguishes itself with a fully customizable Home view for displaying only the content sections you care about – choosing from things like Recently Added, Playlists, Recently Played, New Releases, For You, and more. Federico reviewed the launch version of Soor and found a lot to like about its unique approach, but he ultimately was disappointed by the absence of certain functionality that’s readily available in Apple’s first-party Music app.

In the nearly 18 months since launch, Soor has improved in significant ways. I adore the throwback Cover Flow-inspired playback screen, where you can smoothly swipe through a horizontal row of artwork, and time-synced lyrics are now available via a tight Musixmatch integration. There are still certain functions you’ll need to pop into Apple’s Music app for, sometimes due to Apple Music API limitations that Soor’s developer can do nothing about, and other times because the app simply doesn’t offer certain features yet – AirPlay 2, for example, is still unsupported. Overall though, for my uses at least, Soor covers enough core Apple Music functionality that there’s very little I need the first-party client for. The biggest absent feature on my wishlist is an iPad app, which I’m glad to see is on the roadmap, especially since iPadOS 14 will soon offer a much-improved first-party Music app.

Soor’s improvements have made it a truly compelling alternative to the first-party Music app, and today’s 2.0 update continues that trend by offering two big new features: magic mixes and release alerts. The latter is a nice addition, but the real pillar of this update is magic mixes.

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Apple Commits to 2030 Carbon Neutrality Across Full Business→

Every year Apple releases a new environmental report showing the company’s progress in environmental efforts, and alongside the release of this year’s report, the company has announced a new commitment for the decade ahead:

Apple today unveiled its plan to become carbon neutral across its entire business, manufacturing supply chain, and product life cycle by 2030. The company is already carbon neutral today for its global corporate operations, and this new commitment means that by 2030, every Apple device sold will have net zero climate impact.

“Businesses have a profound opportunity to help build a more sustainable future, one born of our common concern for the planet we share,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “The innovations powering our environmental journey are not only good for the planet — they’ve helped us make our products more energy efficient and bring new sources of clean energy online around the world. Climate action can be the foundation for a new era of innovative potential, job creation, and durable economic growth. With our commitment to carbon neutrality, we hope to be a ripple in the pond that creates a much larger change.”

Achieving carbon neutrality for its corporate operations was a nice milestone for the company, but this new commitment appears far more challenging. Apple works with third-party suppliers and manufacturers all around the world to build its devices, and fulfilling this new goal depends a lot on those third parties. It will be interesting to see over the next decade all of the different actions that will be taken to find success in carbon neutrality, but the report of Apple including fewer accessories in the box with new iPhone purchases certainly seems like it would help.

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The Developer Debrief on WWDC 2020

Weeks removed from Apple wrapping up its first all-virtual WWDC, many of us are still digesting what the conference’s announcements mean for the future of our favorite products.

Federico, John, and I have all shared various takeaways from the conference, and I’m sure we’ll have a lot more to report as we continue using the betas this summer and review Apple’s OS updates this fall. But our perspective is limited to our profession as journalists, so we also wanted to hear from the people this conference was really built for: developers.

WWDC has grown into an exciting conference for Apple users all around the globe, but its core identity is still ultimately an event for app developers. As a result, I wanted to speak with a variety of developers to get their reactions to the conference. These included:

My sincere thanks to these developers for taking the time to share their thoughts, and for their years of valuable contributions toward making Apple’s app ecosystem as strong and robust as it is today.

Interview questions for each developer ranged from the things that most excited them at the conference to surprises and disappointments, their read on how in-touch Apple is with the developer community, the current evolution of software development, and each developer was also generous enough to share a sneak peek at new technologies they’re working to implement in their apps.

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Dark Noise 2 Review: Sound Mixing, New Noises, iPad Cursor Support, and More

Last summer developer Charlie Chapman launched Dark Noise, an ambient noise app for iPhone and iPad that’s packed with delightful design details and key system integrations. My initial review praised how Chapman was able to take an otherwise standard utility app and build a standout experience which, from day one, raised itself above a crowded market of competitors.

The main reasons I loved Dark Noise from the start had little to do with the app’s basic utility: playing ambient noise. The app has always had a good selection of noise options, but nothing in the sound department made it truly special to me. It was the other areas of the app experience, everything surrounding that basic utility of ambient noise playing, that was so great. Icon animations, buttery smooth panel transitions, haptic feedback, strong iPad support, alternate app icons, Shortcuts support, a customizable widget, and more all made for a compelling product.

One of my only disappointments with Dark Noise was the inability to mix different noises together. Each noise could only be played in isolation, never more than one at a time, which proved a disadvantage compared to other ambient noise apps I’d used that enabled mixing different noises to create a custom soundscape. I’m happy to say that Dark Noise 2, released today, adds this functionality at last.

In Dark Noise 2 not only can you mix different sounds to create custom noises, but there are also eight new sound options to choose from, iCloud sync has been added for syncing your favorite sounds and custom mixes, and there’s optimized support for the iPadOS cursor. It’s a big release that retains the design elegance Dark Noise has had from day one, but expands the app’s usefulness in key ways.

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