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TRMNL

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Pushcut: The Powerful Companion for Shortcuts and Home Automation [Sponsor]

Pushcut is a one-of-a-kind utility that extends the power of Apple’s Shortcuts app with a smart notification system that supercharges your shortcuts and home automations.

Pushcut includes an easy-to-use but sophisticated notification editor that lets users set up push notifications based on factors like location and time. The notifications are feature-rich allowing users to pick from multiple choices and perform several actions from a single notification.

The app includes a powerful web API too, which allows you to extend the functionality of Apple’s Home app, for example. Home includes an automation component, but it’s limited. However, with Pushcut, controlling a HomeKit device can trigger a notification on your iOS device that prompts you to run a shortcut that couldn’t be run in Home.

Pushcut is being updated all the time and just added a feature that lets users run a personal Automation Server on an iOS device they keep at home. Trigger your shortcuts from IFTTT, Zapier, Integromat, or HomeKit automations, run Home scenes automatically when leaving from or arriving at a location, and even run shortcuts on a schedule without user interaction. It’s a powerful way to take Shortcuts to an all-new level.

If you’ve ever been frustrated by some of the limitations of Shortcuts, you need to try Pushcut today. Whether you want to extend Home’s automations, enhance how location and iBeacons integrate with Shortcuts, schedule shortcuts, or kick off shortcuts from your Apple Watch, Pushcut is the powerful companion you need.

Download Pushcut from the App Store now and give it a try. You won’t believe how much you can accomplish with the help of Pushcuts.

Our thanks to Pushcut for sponsoring MacStories this week.

New MacBook Air Review Roundup

Today the MacBook Air review embargo lifted, allowing writers and YouTubers to publish their takes on Apple’s 2020 model. Unsurprisingly, considering all that the company improved this year, the reviews are strong across the board.

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HeartWatch 4: A Streamlined Dashboard for Your Health

HeartWatch 4 released today on the App Store as a major redesign of the health dashboard app from David Walsh, creator of the popular AutoSleep app.

HeartWatch takes the existing heart and activity data captured by your Apple Watch and presents it in a different way than Apple’s own Health app. The app has long offered fresh approaches to visualizing your data, but the sheer amount of information, and how it’s organized, can easily feel overwhelming. The main goal of HeartWatch 4 was to simplify everything, making it easier to navigate and thus more approachable. Spend just a couple minutes with this update and it’s clear that it succeeded.

I’m not going to re-hash all of the functionality of HeartWatch, since we’ve covered that in the past. You still have access to important metrics like your heart’s average daily bpm, sedentary bpm, sleep data, movement stats, and more, accompanied by charts, graphs, and comparisons over time. But the way everything’s organized has been drastically improved.

In the last version of HeartWatch, a navigation bar divided the app into four main sections: Vitals, Dashboard, Activity, and More. The difference between each of these screens wasn’t immediately obvious, so until you spent significant time getting situated in the app, it felt like work trying to find what you wanted. All of that’s changed now thanks to a design that puts everything in a single scrolling view.

The new HeartWatch design is broken into Wellness, Activity, and Workout sections that are stacked vertically in the new one-stop dashboard. Inside each section is a collection of tiles for different data points, not unlike what Walsh did with the Today dashboard in AutoSleep last year. The tile design provides a great overview of data, and it’s entirely customizable so you can, from the Settings screen, disable any tiles you don’t want to see.

All of HeartWatch's great graphs and charts are just a swipe or tap behind its tiles.

All of HeartWatch’s great graphs and charts are just a swipe or tap behind its tiles.

At first glance, HeartWatch’s tile design may seem like it’s eliminated much of the valuable data comparisons and visualizations previously found in the app, but all of that is actually just hidden behind each tile. You can swipe on a tile to flip it over and get more info, or tap, or even tap and hold to view more details; personally I think loading different screens depending on whether you tap or tap and hold is overly complicated, but regardless the whole system remains a major improvement. The simple data is kept front and center, and when you want more, you can easily get to it in an intuitive way.

HeartWatch 4 includes other improvements too – like its custom activity metrics as an alternative to Apple’s rings, support for automatic system switching between light and dark modes, and an upgraded Watch app – but the highlight here is definitely the redesigned iPhone app. If you ever found HeartWatch and all of its data overwhelming, version 4 is a compelling reason to give the app another try. It’s strong evidence of the power of iteration and simplicity.

HeartWatch 4 is available on the App Store.

Apple Podcasts Adds Curated Collections to Help Listeners Stay Informed, Calm, and Entertained During the Coronavirus Pandemic

As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads worldwide, there’s a lot of information coming at everyone all day long. It’s a stressful time, and it doesn’t help that people are stuck at home with more time than usual on their hands, and often, kids to entertain.

To help people cope, the Apple Podcasts editorial team has put together curated collections of podcasts. The ‘Coronavirus: Stay Informed’ collection draws on shows from respected, reputable news sources like CNN, NPR, the BBC, and ABC News. The shows spotlighted are excellent resources staying on top of the latest news.

However, because dealing with stressful times extends beyond keeping up-to-date with the developments, Apple Podcasts has three other collections too:

  • ‘Cultivating Calm,’ which is designed to help listens cope with current events and includes shows like Oprah Winfrey’s SuperSoul Conversations and On Being with Krista Tippett
  • ‘Boredom Busters,’ which features absorbing shows like This American Life and Jungle Prince from The New York Times
  • ‘Shows for Kids,’ which has shows to help kids explore and cultivate their natural curiosity and includes NPR’s Wow in the World, Ologies with Alie Ward, and many others

Each collection is available in the Browse tab of the Apple Podcasts app on all of the company’s platforms.

I’ve had most of my whole family at home all week, and it’s been an adjustment for everyone. My work life hasn’t changed much, but it has been a new experience for my wife and two of our kids who are working and going to school alongside me every day now. Despite those obligations, staying at home has meant that everyone has more time on their hands, which is why it’s terrific to see Apple promoting a wide range of podcasts to help people stay informed, calm, and entertained through these difficult times.

Vote for Your Most-Loved Mac in 512 Pixel’s Mac Madness→

I was immediately excited when Stephen Hackett told me a couple of nights ago about an idea he had. With bad news dominating the headlines, events canceled around the world, and people stuck at home with new-found time on their hands, he wanted to create a fun diversion for Mac fans. What he came up with is Mac Madness, a March Madness basketball tournament-inspired face-off among 32 beloved Macs.

Hackett has all the details on 512pixels.net where you’ll also find this video introducing the match-ups:

The initial matchups were chosen randomly, which adds to the fun because there are some very tough choices to make when you vote. Remember, the goal is to find the most-loved Mac, which doesn’t have to be what you’d consider the ‘best Mac.’

Round one voting closes tomorrow, March 20th, and the final winner will be announced on Friday, April 3rd. Along the way, Hackett will be live-streaming each bracket’s winners on the Relay FM Twitch channel and posting the videos later on 512 Pixels where he’s set up a special page to collect all the results. So, join in on the fun and vote now to see if your most-loved Mac takes home top honors.

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Adapt, Episode 21: iPadOS File Management→

On this week’s episode of Adapt:

It’s time for an iPad file management primer. Federico details iCloud Drive, CloudKit, file bookmarks, open in place, file providers, the document browser, and more, then Ryan shares his spreadsheet app findings.

You can listen below (and find the show notes here), and don’t forget to send us questions using #AskAdapt and by tagging our Twitter account.

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Adapt, Episode 21

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Editing FLAC Metadata with Meta for Mac

Meta for Mac.

Meta for Mac.

For the past year, I’ve been using a high-res Sony music player to listen to my personal music collection. I detailed the entire story in the December 2019 episode of our Club-exclusive MacStories Unplugged podcast, but in short: I still use Apple Music to stream music every day and discover new artists; however, for those times when I want to more intentionally listen to music without doing anything else, I like to sit down, put on my good Sony headphones, and try to enjoy all the sonic details of my favorite songs that wouldn’t normally be revealed by AirPods or my iPad Pro’s speakers. But this post isn’t about how I’ve been dipping my toes into the wild world of audiophiles and high-resolution music; rather, I want to highlight an excellent Mac app I’ve been using to organize and edit the metadata of the FLAC music library I’ve been assembling over the past year.

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How the iPad’s Trackpad Support Works→

Dieter Bohn at The Verge:

We can answer some of your questions about how trackpad support will work today and we’ll get a chance to actually use it ourselves in the public beta. In the meantime, here’s what we definitely know about how it will work based on videos Apple has released publicly and on a video presentation given to reporters this morning.

Bohn gives a great bullet-point walkthrough of how iPadOS handles input from a trackpad or mouse, complete with the roster of navigation gestures supported by trackpads.

Best of all, however, the article includes a video Apple created in which Craig Federighi, Apple’s software head, demos the trackpad on the iPad Pro’s new Magic Keyboard. Presumably it’s exactly what Federighi would have done if the company had been able to introduce the iPad Pro at a press event.

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Logitech Introduces Combo Touch Keyboard Case, Bringing a Trackpad to the iPad, iPad Air, and 10.5-inch iPad Pro

Today following Apple’s debut of the new iPad Pro and Magic Keyboard, and cursor support coming to all iPad models that can run iPadOS 13.4, Logitech has announced a brand new accessory coming in May: the Combo Touch, which brings a keyboard case with trackpad to the iPad (7th generation), iPad Air, and 10.5-inch iPad Pro. From the product listing on Apple’s online store:

Logitech’s Combo Touch for iPad combines a precision trackpad with a full-size backlit keyboard…Enjoy comfortable typing on a full-size keyboard with backlit keys that are perfect for working in dark environments like on an airplane or late at night. And the flexible design supports four use modes for extra versatility.

Despite all modern iPads gaining full cursor support, Apple currently only offers a first-party keyboard with built-in trackpad for the iPad Pro, not any other iPad model. Filling that gap, Logitech’s Combo Touch will be available for $149.95 as a great solution for users of other modern iPads. The Combo Touch covers the front and back of the iPad, includes a full keyboard and trackpad, and even offers a dedicated holder for the Apple Pencil. Notably, the device’s trackpad will also support all the same multitouch gestures that Apple’s Magic Keyboard offers.

Between Apple’s Magic Keyboard for the iPad Pro, and Logitech’s Combo Touch covering the iPad, iPad Air, and 10.5-inch iPad Pro, the only modern iPad where a keyboard case with trackpad isn’t being offered is the iPad mini.