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Spotify Announces New ‘Your Daily Podcasts’ Algorithmic Playlist

Spotify aims to do for podcasts what it’s done for music recommendations with today’s announcement of a new algorithmic podcast playlist.

One of the music streaming service’s greatest strengths is the analysis it does of users’ listening habits, which it uses to recommend new tracks through playlists like Discover Weekly and Daily Mix. According to Spotify, its new ‘Your Daily Podcasts’ playlist will analyze recent episodes you’ve streamed and the shows you follow to make recommendations tailored to the type of shows that match your interests. For example, for story-based sequential shows that you haven’t tried before, Spotify will offer the trailer or first episode of a show, while for daily, news-based podcasts, the playlist may include a recent, topical episode.

The addition of ‘Your Daily Podcasts’ is not surprising given remarks by Spotify CEO Daniel Ek when the company acquired Gimlet Media and Anchor. At the time, Ek said Spotify would offer improved ‘curation and customization’ for users and ‘better discovery, data, and monetization to creators.’

Podcast discovery remains an area that a number of companies are working to improve. As Spotify’s share of the podcast listener market increases, its ability to anticipate the podcasts and individual episodes that subscribers will enjoy has the potential to rival what has already made it such an attractive service for many music fans. Given its dominance of podcasting, it will also be interesting to see if Apple counters by enhancing its own discovery tools in the future.

Spotify says that the new playlist is available to subscribers in the US, UK, Germany, Sweden, Mexico, Brazil, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand who have listened to at least four podcasts in the past 90 days.

My Modern iPad Home Screen: Apps, Widgets, Files, Folders, and Shortcuts

My iPadOS Home screen.

My iPadOS Home screen.

For several years after its launch, one of the best and worst things about the iPad was that it was basically just a blown-up iPhone. This meant the device was extremely easy to use and intuitive, but it also meant lots of “computer-like” tasks were difficult to perform on an iPad. When the iPad Pro debuted in late 2015, that began to change. Features like Split View, Slide Over, Picture in Picture, and drag and drop made the iPad a more capable computer than ever. However, despite those advancements, it took until this fall before one of the iPad’s core iPhone inspirations was altered: the Home screen.

Before iPadOS, the iPad’s Home screen was just a larger version of an iPhone Home screen, with no unique advantages to it. That finally changed mere months ago, when iPadOS 13 brought two primary improvements to the Home screen: it could hold 30 icons rather than 20, and it could include pinned widgets.

These two changes alone weren’t radical departures from the Home screen’s iPhone origins, but combined with other discoveries, they unlocked significant new possibilities.

On a recent episode of Adapt, I challenged Federico to try re-creating a Mac-like desktop environment on the iPad’s Home screen, complete with file and folder launchers. What he came up with is exactly what I’d hoped for. This newfound ability, alongside iPadOS 13’s enhancements to how shortcuts work when added to the Home screen, and the debut of MacStories Shortcuts Icons, meant it was time for me to seriously consider a new approach to my Home screen.

What I’ve come up with includes apps, app folders, files, file folders, shortcuts, and of course, widgets. It’s a diverse setup, and it all lives on a single page of icons. Let me explain.

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AppStories, Episode 139 – Interview: How Soulver Reimagined the Calculator with Its Creator, Zac Cohan→

This week, we are joined by developer Zac Cohan, the creator of Soulver, a combination notepad and calculator that reimagines how calculations are made on the Mac and iOS.

Sponsored by:

  • Luna Display – Turn any Mac or iPad into a wireless second display.
  • MacStadium – Get 50% off your first two months of a Mac mini subscription now with code APPSTORIES, or get started with MacStadium’s new Orka private cloud.
  • Linode – High-performance SSD Linux servers for all of your infrastructure needs. Get a $20 credit.

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Apple to Hold Awards Ceremony Celebrating Its Favorite Apps and Games on December 2nd

Apple unexpectedly announced today that it will hold a ceremony in New York City on Monday, December 2nd to honor its favorite apps and games. No other details are currently available, except those in the invitation that was received by some members of the tech press including, as reported by MacRumors, Lance Ulanoff:

Apple’s annual Design Awards at WWDC have served the purpose of recognizing outstanding apps in the past, but an event like this at the end of the year that wraps up the best of 2019 makes a lot of sense and gives the company an opportunity to shine a light on the best offerings from third-party developers in a way that goes beyond the year-end recap lists it has done in the past.

Kolide: User Focused Security For Teams That Slack [Sponsor]

Kolide is a new Slack app that messages employees when their Mac, Windows, or Linux device is not compliant with security best-practices or policy.

With this app, Kolide will notify users or groups when a device is out of compliance along with clear instructions about what is wrong, and step by step instructions to remediate the issue themselves. They can even confirm in real-time that they resolved the problem with an interactive button inside the Slack message!

Unlike most endpoint security solutions, Kolide was designed with user privacy in mind. Your users will know what data is collected about their device, who can see that data, and can even view the full source code of the agent that is run on the device.

Kolide is already used by hundreds of fast growing companies who want to level-up their device security without locking down their devices. Try Kolide’s new product for free for 30 days for your entire fleet by visiting kolide.com.

Our thanks to Kolide for sponsoring MacStories this week.

NoiseBuddy: Control Noise Cancellation and Transparency Modes of AirPods Pro on a Mac

Earlier this week, Guilherme Rambo released a new Mac utility called NoiseBuddy that toggles between the noise cancellation and Transparency modes of AirPods Pro and the Beats Solo Pro headphones when they’re connected to a Mac. The app can place an icon in your Mac’s menu bar or on the Touch Bar and uses the same noise cancellation and Transparency iconography found in Control Center on iOS and iPadOS. The app’s settings allow you to run NoiseBuddy in the menu bar, on the Touch Bar, or in both places. To switch modes, simply click the icon in the menu bar or tap the Touch Bar button.

The Touch Bar in transparency mode.

The Touch Bar in transparency mode.

This isn’t Rambo’s first time working with Bluetooth headphones and the Mac. He also created AirBuddy, which we covered previously. AirBuddy is a Mac utility that displays the charge status of AirPods and Beats headphones that use Apple’s proprietary wireless chips. The app also allows users to connect those headphones to their Macs via Bluetooth with a single click.

NoiseBuddy’s menu bar app in transparency mode.

NoiseBuddy’s menu bar app in transparency mode.

NoiseBuddy is the kind of Mac utility that I love. It takes overly fiddly aspect of interacting with macOS and makes it dead simple. The free app is available from Rambo’s GitHub repo, where it can be downloaded as a ZIP archive and then dragged into your Applications folder.

Triode: Internet Radio from The Iconfactory with AirPlay 2, Apple Music Integration, and CarPlay

Triode is a new Internet radio app from The Iconfactory for iOS and iPadOS, the Mac, and Apple TV that fills a niche all but abandoned by Apple. Internet radio stations used to claim a more prominent place in iTunes, but in Apple’s new Music app, they have been mostly abandoned in favor of Apple’s own radio stations. A handful of third-party broadcast stations are available in Music, the HomePod can play many more stations, and you can open any station’s stream on a Mac if you know the URL, but that’s it. Triode fills the gap with support for iOS, iPadOS, the Mac, and tvOS, plus CarPlay via the app’s iOS app.

As someone who hasn’t listened to the radio in years, I was a little skeptical of the utility of an Internet radio app at first, but Triode immediately won me over. The app is beautifully-designed, as you’d expect from The Iconfactory, and easy to use. Coupled with Apple’s latest technologies and a set of 31 hand-picked stations, the combination makes for a compelling way to discover new music.

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Adapt, Episode 13: Automated Shortcuts→

On this week’s episode of Adapt:

One of the most common Shortcuts feature requests was granted in iPadOS 13: the ability to run shortcuts automatically in the background. Federico walks through this powerful feature in detail, then Ryan surveys the App Store’s best calendar apps.

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 13

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Apple Debuts New Research App, Launches Health Studies for Women’s Health, Hearing, and Heart and Movement

Today Apple announced the next phase of its efforts in medical research studies. Following the Heart Study which debuted in late 2017 and shared its first results earlier this year, Apple now has three new studies it’s launching at once, which users can sign up for through a brand new Apple Research app.

“Today marks an important moment as we embark on research initiatives that may offer incredible learnings in areas long sought after by the medical community,” said Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer. “Participants on the Research app have the opportunity to make a tremendous impact that could lead to new discoveries and help millions lead healthier lives.”

Users can enroll in one or more of the new studies: the Women’s Health Study, Heart and Movement Study, and Hearing Study. Each of these uses an iPhone and Apple Watch to collect certain data for the purpose of aiding medical advancements.

Anything health-related can come with plenty of privacy concerns, so the Research app’s on-boarding flow includes a very clear privacy commitment, stated in four points:

  1. Your data will not be sold.
  2. You decide which studies you join, and you can leave the study at any time.
  3. You control which types of data you share, and you can stop sharing your data at anytime.
  4. Studies must tell you how your data supports their research.

Tim Cook on multiple occasions has sought to emphasize how important the issue of health is to Apple. Far from a mere hobby, he’s said he believes health will end up being Apple’s most significant area of contribution to mankind. Studies like these are one way to help push the needle on that goal.