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Preorders Begin for Eve Cam the HomeKit Secure Video-Enabled Indoor Camera

Source: Eve Systems.

Source: Eve Systems.

The devices I previewed in January during CES continue to trickle out with the HomeKit-enabled Eve Cam becoming a little more concrete today. The $150 indoor camera isn’t out just yet, but it is available for preorder with shipments to begin June 23rd.

In a press release issued today the camera’s maker, Eve Systems, is touting the privacy of the HomeKit Secure Video-only device:

Eve Cam offers a state-of-the art feature set and user experience, ranging from seamless installation and rich notifications to fully automatic, presence-based operation that allows the camera to deactivate when everyone is home. Eve Cam is made exclusively for Apple HomeKit Secure Video, delivering data security and privacy by design. Live images are never streamed through a server, and recordings are stored securely and fully encrypted in the user’s iCloud.

Because the camera only works with Apple’s HomeKit Secure Video solution, it requires a 200GB or greater iCloud storage plan. A 200GB plan, which costs $2.99 per month, can be connected to one camera at no additional charge, while a $9.99 per month 2TB plan is required for up to five cameras.

The Eve Cam shoots video in 1080p at 24fps, has a night vision range of 5 meters, a 150-degree field of vision, two-way communication, a motion sensor, and can be wall-mounted using a magnetic plate that can be attached to a wall with adhesive. The device connects to iCloud using WiFi, requires a wired electrical connection, and is compatible with wall outlets in the US, UK, EU, and Australia.

I haven’t had an opportunity to try the Eve Cam, but I have owned electrical plugs and motion sensors from Eve Systems and have been impressed with their quality and reliability. The camera’s relatively slim profile and feature set make it look like it could be a good indoor alternative to the Logitech Circle 2 camera, though for outdoor use, you’ll still need something that can withstand the elements. Preorders can be placed on Eve System’s website.

Apple Music Honors Black Out Tuesday with Awareness Efforts, Alternate Programming

Today Apple Music has joined a unified effort in the music industry to raise awareness about the injustice of racism and show support for Black communities around the world. Black Out Tuesday is being observed in different ways by different organizations, but Apple Music’s approach involves a full-page takeover of the For You and Browse sections in the app, which currently feature a message of solidarity and a single option: Listen Together. Selecting this will begin playing a special radio stream celebrating Black artists.

Apple Music users will still be able to access their full Library today, as well as use the search option to discover new music. But for the remainder of the day, the standard recommendations from Apple’s staff, algorithmic playlists, and any other radio content including normal Beats 1 programming will all be unavailable.

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Our thanks to Backblaze for sponsoring MacStories this week.

MacStories Unwind: MacStories Perspective Icons, a Big Spend Stack Update, and a New Read-It-Later App

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This week on MacStories Unwind:

MacStories

Club MacStories

  • MacStories Weekly
  • MacStories Unplugged

AppStories

Unwind Picks

Tot’s New Share Extension→

Craig Hockenberry, writing on The Iconfactory blog:

We’re happy to announce a new version of Tot with some features frequently requested by the app’s legion of fans.

The main focus of today’s release are system extensions that allow Tot to co-exist with other apps. To this end, we’ve added a Sharing extension for both iOS and macOS. Additionally, there’s also a widget for iOS that lets you quickly access any of Tot’s dots. Like everything else in Tot, attention was paid to minimizing friction, allowing information to be collected as quickly as possible.

Tot’s new share extension is, quite possibly, the best one I’ve ever tried for a plain text note-taking app. In an intuitive, compact UI, the extension offers everything I need: I can pick one of Tot’s seven dots; I can choose to append or prepend text to a dot; the extension even lets me pick the number of line breaks I want to put between a dot’s existing content and the new text I’m inserting into a note. And here’s the best part: the upper section of the share extension’s popup has a full, scrollable preview of the selected dot, so I can see what the entire note will look like before appending or prepending text. Tot is the first note-taking app I’ve used that gets this aspect of sharing text/links to an extension right.

Tot's new share extension

Tot’s new share extension

It may be considered a small enhancement to the app, but Tot’s new extension shows how much consideration went into designing an experience that is both powerful and willing to get out of the way as quickly as possible. I wish more note-taking apps offered a share extension similar to The Iconfactory’s app, which, months after its original release, I still use as my go-to scratchpad every day.

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Introducing MacStories Perspective Icons: 20,000 Custom Perspective Icons for OmniFocus Pro

Today, I’m thrilled to announce MacStories Perspective Icons, a set of 20,000 icons for custom perspectives in OmniFocus Pro.

Here’s the short version of this story: our brand new Perspective Icons offer 400 unique glyphs with two distinct icon shapes available in 25 different colors, for a total of 20,000 icons included in the set. Yes, you read that number right. The icons can be easily installed in OmniFocus Pro for Mac, iPad, and iPhone using Finder or the Files app; all the icons and colors have been optimized for OmniFocus and designed to look like native additions to the app.

For a limited time, you can get the set at $17.99, down from the regular price of $24.99.


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Keep Review: The Read-Later App I’ve Been Looking For

After years of happily using Safari’s Reading List and Apple News’ Saved Stories for all my read-later needs, recently I found myself facing a conundrum: there were too many articles saved in each place, and thus I needed a categorization system that neither Safari nor News provide. This problem is of course partly my fault, since I’m clearly not adequately working through my reading queue.1 But I’m not at all willing to nuke these interesting stories and start fresh with zero saved links. Thus, I’ve been on the hunt for a read-later app that better meets my new needs.

If there’s one lesson this journey has taught me, it’s that read-later apps are just like task managers and email clients: there’s no perfect one-size-fits-all approach. Developers and users all have their own ideas about how such an app should best function, so there’s no perfect option out there. After a long search, however, I’ve found the app that comes as close to ideal for me as possible: Keep by developer Michael Zsigmond, which is available for iPhone, iPad, and also offers a web client.

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