Apple Releases Annual Holiday Video ‘The Surprise’

It’s become a tradition for Apple to release a special holiday season video each year, and this year is no different. Today, the company revealed the 2019 version entitled ‘The Surprise.’

The storyline follows a family as they visit the mother’s father. The video chronicle’s the family’s journey and visit with their two young children. To appease the kids when they fight or get in the way, their parents hand them an iPad to watch movies and play games. However, the children’s use of the iPad evolves over the course of the video, which reveals they’ve used it to create an interactive story about their family and their grandfather’s wife who had passed away.

It’s a touching video packed with emotion that does an excellent job of showing off the kind of creative projects that are possible with an iPad and pulls it off without being overbearing. The video reminds me a lot of the Emmy award-winning video called ‘Misunderstood’ from the 2013 holiday season.

Actions by Moleskine Adds Reminders Import, Shortcuts with Parameters, and Context Menus

Actions' new Reminders import feature.

Actions’ new Reminders import feature.

The new year approaches, and with it arrive dreams of being a more productive you – which of course involves choosing the perfect task management system for your needs.

In a timely move, Moleskine’s elegant task manager, Actions, was updated today with a new Reminders import feature, so you can instantly migrate any or all of your Reminders lists and tasks into Actions. The update also supports two new iOS 13 features: shortcuts featuring parameters and context menus.

Read more

iOS Photo Metadata Utility Metapho Adds Deep Fusion and Night Mode Photo Detection

Metapho has been one of my favorite photo utilities on iOS for years. The marquee feature has always been its ability to strip metadata from images, which is handy when sharing photos online, for instance. Over time though, Metapho has grown to incorporate other functionality for inspecting and editing photo metadata that has made the app a must-have iOS utility. With its latest update, Metapho has added Deep Fusion and Night Mode photo detection, an intriguing addition that I haven’t seen any other app offer.

Read more

Timemator 2: Automatic Time-Tracking Based On Your Rules and Activities [Sponsor]

One of the biggest hurdles to consistently tracking your time is starting and stopping timers. It’s too easy to forget to do, leaving you with gaps in your tracking or timers left running overnight. What if you could free yourself from the burden of timers by automating the process? You can do precisely that with Timemator 2.

By letting Timemator track the apps you use, the files you open, and the web sites you visit on your Mac, you’ll never lose a billable minute because you forgot to start a timer. Nor will you fret about stopping a timer when you’re finished because Timemator shows you exactly when you stopped using an app, allowing you to focus on what’s most important: your work.

Time never slips through the cracks with Timemator because it approaches the problem of tracking three ways. First, Timemator automatically creates an activity timeline as you work on your Mac. Just go over your activities at the end of the day and assign them to projects and tasks. Second, you can set up Timemator rules to automatically record time to a project or task when you open a particular app or file. Third, there’s a manual timer available for those one-off tasks and times that it’s just easier to click start. It’s a three-pronged approach that’s proven useful to a wide variety of professionals, including contractors, freelancers, and small teams.

Timemator is a native Mac app that’s been thoughtfully designed to look as beautiful as it is functional. The app is also continually updated with the latest macOS technologies. Next up on Timemator’s roadmap is iCloud sync, an iOS app, integration with third-party tools like Jira and Asana, and team features.

Timemator is free to try for 30 days, and for a limited time, readers of MacStories can buy the app for 30% off by using the coupon code TM-MACSTORIES at checkout. Don’t wait until the new year to get serious about time tracking. Start today by downloading Timemator 2, so you can stop thinking about timers and focus on your tasks.

Our thanks to Timemator 2 for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Automating HomePod Volume Levels→

Great idea by Matthew Cassinelli: using the new HomePod and AirPlay 2 actions for home automation in iOS 13.2, it is possible to automate a HomePod’s volume level (including its Siri responses) throughout the day.

But one of the nagging problems with HomePod is the way Siri, regardless of the current time of day, will respond loudly at whatever volume you’ve previously set.

Whether it’s the middle of the night or super early in the morning, it’s all too common to ask Siri something and the answer shouted backed at you, only because you listened to music loudly sometime yesterday. Hopefully nobody wakes up, you curse at how dumb your supposedly “smart” speaker can be, and frantically try to turn it down.

Thankfully, iOS 13.2 provides a route to a solution by adding HomePods and AppleTV to scenes and automations – the HomePod didn’t fix this on its own, but, with a Home Automation, you can make it “smart” enough yourself.

As I explained when iOS 13.2 came out, you can put together these automations by using the ‘Adjust Audio Only’ option after selecting a HomePod or compatible AirPlay 2 speaker in the Home app. I just set this up for my three HomePods and Sonos One, and, sure enough, at 11:20 PM, volume was set to 15% on all my speakers (it should be raised back up to 50% tomorrow at noon).

In theory, I would like to turn this automation into a shortcut and add a Pushcut notification to confirm the volume change (and optionally shuffle a playlist by choosing a HomeKit scene from the notification’s actions). There’s a bug that prevents me from doing this in the latest iOS 13.3 beta, but I’ll keep it in mind for the future.

Permalink

Adobe Previews Features Coming to Photoshop for iPad Through mid-2020

The long-anticipated release of Photoshop for iPad was met with disappointment by many users who felt that significant functionality was missing. Although Adobe explained at the time that version 1.0 was a foundation upon which it intended to build rapidly, the length of time it took to create that foundation left many people skeptical. Today, to try to dispel some of the doubts surrounding Photoshop for iPad, the company published a blog post previewing some of the features coming later this year and in the first half of 2020.

Before the end of 2019, Adobe says it will ship the ‘Select Subject’ feature that it showed off at the Adobe MAX Conference earlier this month. The feature takes advantage of the company’s Sensei AI machine learning technology to facilitate complex subject selection. Adobe also says that cloud PSD files will upload and download faster in December after it makes changes to its systems.

Selection tools will get another boost in the first half of 2020 with Refine Edge allowing for soft edge selections. Curves for tonal adjustments and new adjustment layer options will be available too. Adobe also plans to bring features over from apps like Fresco, including brush sensitivity and canvas rotation. Finally, Adobe says it will integrate Photoshop with Lightroom for iPad, so you can process RAW images in Lightroom and use them in compositing projects in Photoshop.

With the reaction at Photoshop for iPad’s launch, I’m glad Adobe chose to showcase these new features in advance. It makes competitive sense too, given that alternative iPad apps that compete with at least some aspects of Photoshop continue to move forward rapidly. It’s that sort of competition that I expect will make pro iPad apps interesting to watch in 2020.

Connected, Episode 270: Best Trees in the Country→

On this week’s episode of Connected:

Federico and Stephen each attempted to use HomeKit Secure Video, and it didn’t go well. Myke is excited about a new folding phone, and the whole crew orders iPhone 11 Pro battery cases before solving many mysteries presented in photos of Apple’s new Mac Pro factory.

You can listen below (and find the show notes here).

0:00
01:42:10

Connected, Episode 270

Sponsored by:

  • Squarespace: Make your next move. Enter offer code CONNECTED at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.
  • PDFpen, from Smile : The ultimate tool for editing PDFs on the Mac.
  • Freshbooks: Online invoicing made easy.
Permalink

Timery for Toggl Updated with Shortcut Parameter Support and a Refreshed Design

Timery for Toggl continues to add new iOS 13 features with the release today of version 1.05, which includes improved Shortcuts support and new design elements.

The most significant addition to Timery is support for shortcut actions with parameters and data output. Now users can start a project with a description, tags, and its billable status. The action outputs Time Entry Details, which makes the project name, task, description, tags, start time, duration, billable status, and entry name available.

Projects and tags can be added to the ‘start timer’ action from your list of saved projects and tags when you set up a shortcut or from another source like a user prompt. Any tags applied by a shortcut action that don’t already exist will be added to your Toggl account, but using an incorrect project name will result in an error. Timery also supports adding multiple tags to an entry, although they must be separated by commas or on their own lines. Time is output in total numbers of seconds, in ‘00:00:00’ format, or written out like ‘1 hour, 45 minutes, and 32 seconds.’ The time entry name that the shortcut action generates is a combination of the project name and description. A separate action for stopping a timer outputs the same data.

The other available actions allow users to check the time logged for:

  • The current time entry
  • The current day
  • A project
  • A project with a description and tags

Each of these actions returns duration data in the three formats described above for time logged on the current day only. One thing I’d like to see added in the future is a parameter to adjust the time period reported, so I could use a shortcut to check the total time logged for a project this week or month, for example.

The new shortcut actions open up a lot of interesting possibilities, including the ability to do things like send time tracking data to apps like Numbers, which could be used to create charts. A simple shortcut that I’ve found to be effective is one that checks the current timer I have running and reports back with its elapsed time and the total time tracked today. It’s the sort of shortcut that’s handy to stick in the Shortcuts widget or on your Home screen for a quick time check that doesn’t require opening Timery itself.

Check Timery

Check your currently-running timer and total time logged for the day. Timery for Toggl is required for this shortcut.

Get the shortcut here.

From a design standpoint, Timery has added context menus, which serve as an alternative to swiping left and right on saved timers and time entries, to play, stop, and delete timers and entries. Although the addition doesn’t extend the functionality of the app, I personally prefer context menus to swiping to reveal options and will be using this feature a lot, especially on my iPhone, where using the context menu provides a nice bit of haptic feedback.

New context menus and refreshed UI for editing saved timers and existing time entries.

New context menus and refreshed UI for editing saved timers and existing time entries.

Timery has also made use of inset grouped table views, the card-like UI seen throughout iOS 13. Editing a saved timer or an existing time entry pulls up the card-like UI from the bottom of the screen with the same editing options I covered in my review of version 1.0. Again, the change doesn’t affect the functionality of Timery, but it serves to align the app with current design trends, which prevents it from looking dated.

As I explained in a MacStories Weekly column for Club MacStories members recently, Timery has had a significant impact on the way I work every day. Whether or not you track time for billing purposes, Timery is a valuable tool for anyone curious about how they spend their time. As a result, I’m glad to see it continue to be refined with the latest frameworks and APIs. I particularly appreciate the addition of shortcuts with parameters, which provide a lot more flexibility than was previously possible.

Timery for Toggl is available on the App Store as a free download with certain features available via a subscription.

Apple Releases Smart Battery Case for iPhone 11 and 11 Pro with Dedicated Camera Button

Today Apple has launched new versions of its Smart Battery Case for the latest iPhone models, the iPhone 11, 11 Pro, and 11 Pro Max, which are available to order now from the company’s website with November 25 delivery, which is the same date the case will be available in local stores.

Like previous editions of the Smart Battery Case, the case’s exterior is made of silicone. There are three color options for the 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max case: Pink Sand, White, and Black. The standard 11 case, however, is only available in Soft White and Black. All different versions of the Smart Battery Case are available at the same price: $129.

Links:

Each version of the Smart Battery Case offers a quoted 50% longer battery life, making the already-excellent battery life of this year’s iPhones even better. They also all come with a new feature not available with any other previous case: a dedicated button for launching the camera, which sits on the lower-right side of the case.

From the product listing:

The case features a dedicated camera button that launches the Camera app whether the iPhone is locked or unlocked. A quick press of the button takes a photo and a longer press captures QuickTake video. It works for selfies, too.

This is a very intriguing development, and one that’s particularly fitting for the iPhone 11 lineup due to its heavy emphasis on cameras. Now with the Smart Battery Case, you can shoot photos and videos for much longer than before without killing your battery, while also gaining more convenient access to the Camera app than is possible without the case.