Algorithm-Free Listening for Music Lovers
In this very special live episode, Stephen is joined by Jason Snell and Serenity Caldwell to talk about macOS Mojave and Screen Time before going over the Happy-o-meter results and talking about Shortcuts with Myke and Federico.
Recording this episode of Connected last week was one of my highlights from WWDC. If you still don’t know the results of our Happy-o-meter, now’s a great time to catch up. You can listen here.
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In an update rolled out last week, Apple fixed two of my longstanding annoyances with Apple Music: there is a new screen that lists popular albums coming soon, and every upcoming album now features an actual release date.
Here’s Mitchel Broussard, writing for MacRumors:
Apple appears to be rolling out a series of updates for Apple Music today, including a small but useful new section called “Coming Soon,” which allows subscribers to check out new albums about to be released over the next few weeks.
[…]
In another addition, Apple is now making it possible to easily see album launch dates on their respective pages on iOS and macOS. In the Editors’ Notes section, following the traditional encouragement to add the pre-release album to your library, there’s a new line that begins “Album expected…” followed by the album’s specific release date. Some albums not listed in Coming Soon still have a release date specified on their pages, so this update appears to be a bit more wide-ranging.
As someone who likes to keep up with new music, I’m glad to see Apple pushing these small but needed improvements to the service.
Furthermore, as noted by AppleInsider, the iOS 12 version of Apple Music features the ability to search for songs by lyrics. I’ve been using the beta on my iPhone and iPad for the past week, and lyrics search has already saved me a few minutes I would have otherwise spent looking for songs on Google. Built-in lyrics differentiate Apple Music from Spotify, so it’s good to see Apple expanding support throughout the app.
Speaking of smaller features I wouldn’t have expected to see at last week’s WWDC, Bryan Gaz, writing for Digital Photography Review, has noticed some welcome improvements to camera import and RAW files in iOS 12:
Now, when you plug in Apple’s SD card to Lightning adapter (or camera connection kit), the Photos app will show up as an overlay on whatever app you’re using. This comes as a much less invasive method than previously used in iOS 11, wherein whatever app you were in would be switched over to the full-screen Photos app for importing. It also means you can multitask more efficiently, importing photos while getting other stuff done.
[…]
Now, when photos are detected on a card, iOS 12 will automatically sort through the content and determine if any of the photos have already been imported. If they have, they will be put in a separate area so you don’t accidentally import duplicates. Another new feature is a counter on the top of the screen that lasts you know how many photos are being displayed and how much space they take up on the memory card. This should help alleviate the guesswork involved when trying to determine whether or not you have enough storage on your iOS device.
I’ve never imported photos on my iPad using the Lightning to SD Card Camera Reader because I don’t have a camera, but I know that the import process is one of the pain points for photographers who want to use an iPad in their workflows. The idea of having Photos show up automatically in Slide Over upon connecting an external device is interesting; it perfectly ties into the iPad’s focus on drag and drop for multitasking and file transfers. It seems like this approach would work nicely for importing files from external USB devices if only Apple decided to add support for those too.
Update: After looking into this more closely, it appears that Photos only appears automatically upon connecting an SD card if it’s already in Slide Over mode. This isn’t as convenient as DP Review’s original report, but at least all the other improvements mentioned in the story are indeed part of iOS 12.
When you’ve followed Apple for several years, there are certain kinds of announcements you come to expect from the company: iterative refinements that make existing products better, and even those exciting surprise features you never would have thought of yourself, or new hardware that seems like something straight out of the future. There are other kinds of announcements, however, that you’re confident will never come to fruition. Perhaps because they simply seem like something Apple wouldn’t do, or that the company doesn’t seem to really care about.
Every now and then, to our surprise and delight, those unexpected things come about after all. Looking back on last week’s news from WWDC, there are several big and small announcements Apple made that hit me as totally unexpected.
Football fans know that the World Cup kicks off later this week, and ahead of that event Apple today shared a press release highlighting how it plans to cover the event using a host of its services and apps. World Cup support will include the following:
While I’m not a football fan (unless we’re talking American football), Apple’s World Cup coverage is exciting to me simply because it shows the potential for future integrated efforts around topics I do care about.
As Apple moves deeper into focusing not just on tech, but on media as well, it will have an increasing number of opportunities to use its apps and services to supplement a user’s experience of big events, such as other major sporting events, election seasons, and more. Applying the Apple ecosystem’s unified media and editorial services to the area of pop culture may seem like a small move, but it could become a product differentiator that users grow to love.
One of the marquee features that Apple showed off for macOS Mojave at WWDC is Dark Mode. As the company demonstrated during the WWDC keynote, Dark Mode is a far more ambitious feature than the dark theme added to macOS Yosemite in 2014. The new look extends much deeper into the system affecting everything from app chrome to window shadows and Desktop Tinting.
There is a lot more to Dark Mode than you might assume. To help developers navigate when and how to implement Dark Mode, Apple has provided developers with guidelines, which Stephen Hackett covers on 512 Pixels:
The biggest is that not all apps should always follow the Appearance that has been set by the user. As before, Apple believes that media-focused tools should be dark at all times. I don’t foresee something like Final Cut Pro X gaining a light theme anytime soon.
Apple has also given developers the ability to use the Light Appearance in sections of their applications. One example is Mail, which can use the Light Appearance for messages, but the Dark Appearance for its window chrome, matching the system[.] This lets text and attachments be viewed more easily for some users. I think it’s a nice nod to accessibility for text-heavy apps, and I hope third-party developers take advantage of this ability.
Hackett also covers Accents, an adaptation and expansion of what is currently called Appearances that affect the look of things like drop-down menus, and how Accessibility features affect Dark Mode.
I like the look of Dark Mode a lot and hope third-party developers adopt it quickly. I expect the pressure to add Dark Mode to existing apps will rapidly increase as more and more third parties begin to use it and hold-out apps become bright, glaring reminders among a sea of muted windows.
On this week’s episode of AppStories, we discuss the apps on their current iPhone X Home screens.
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LumaFusion is the most powerful multi-track video editor ever created for iOS devices. Used by journalists, filmmakers, music video artists, and professional video producers to tell compelling visual stories, LumaFusion delivers affordable power and flexibility in an intuitive mobile interface.
The functionality packed into LumaFusion is remarkable. The app is full of features that match or exceed expensive desktop apps like Final Cut Pro X and Adobe Premier. LumaFusion delivers because it’s built by professionals who understand video editing. Terri Morgan and Chris Demiris, who met at Avid and founded Luma Touch in 2013, have had long careers in the video industry, which made them the perfect pair to bring sophisticated video editing to iOS.
Since its introduction in 2016, LumaFusion has attracted a loyal following among video artists. The app allows users to create complex multi-track stories with up to three video/audio tracks in resolutions up to 4K, up to three additional audio tracks, and dozens of transitions. Titler functionality allows you to create unlimited layers of text, shapes, and imported graphics too.
Users have quick, direct access to color correction, multiple key-framed effects on every clip, and professional features like Insert and Overwrite mode, Clip Linking for sync management, and much more. There’s support for audio channel mapping too, which allows users to shoot with separate background and voice microphones and then separate the stereo file into two mono tracks for independent control of each track.
This past spring, LumaFusion introduced a custom integration with GNARBOX, which allows users with large amounts of media to wirelessly preview and edit media from GNARBOX right inside LumaFusion while importing media that’s added to a timeline in the background. Later this summer, LumaFusion will introduce a Pro I/O Pack with professional features like external monitor support, batch export, and .xml project export.
For more details about LumaFusion, visit the Luma Touch website and watch their video tutorials. For a limited time, you can get started with LumaFusion for just $19.99 (regularly $39.99), which is a small fraction of the cost of comparable desktop apps.
Our thanks to LumaFusion for sponsoring MacStories this week.
Now that people have had a chance to dig deeper into macOS Mojave, a number of smaller features have been discovered that didn’t get mentioned during the keynote on Monday and weren’t included in our initial overview of the updated OS that will be released in the fall. Here are a few of our favorite discoveries:
macOS Updates in System Preferences. What Apple didn’t explain when it updated the Mac App Store is that macOS updates have been moved from the Mac App Store to System Preferences.
Software Update is now in Settings instead of the Mac App Store! pic.twitter.com/4qWoeTUbxC
— Ian McDowell @ WWDC (@ian_mcdowell) June 5, 2018
HomeKit Support for Siri. Among the iOS apps ported to macOS as part of the upcoming release of Mojave is Home. The app does not currently support AirPlay 2, but control of HomeKit devices is not limited to the Home app itself; Siri can also be used to control devices.
System-Wide Twitter and Facebook Support Removed. In High Sierra, users could log into Twitter and Facebook from the Internet Accounts section of System Preferences and share content using the share button in apps like Safari. Like iOS did in iOS 11, the Mojave beta has removed system-level support for sharing content via Twitter and Facebook.
The Final Version to Support 32-Bit Apps. During the State of the Union presentation, Apple confirmed that Mojave will be the last version of macOS to support 32-bit apps. When a user tries to open a 32-bit app, Mojave currently displays a one-time warning that the app will not work in future versions of macOS.
Favicon Support in Safari Tabs. Unlike Google’s Chrome browser, macOS doesn’t currently support favicons in Safari tabs. According to an article by John Gruber last summer, that led a significant number of people to use Chrome and third-party solutions like Faviconographer, which overlaid favicons on Safari’s tabs. When Mojave ships, Safari will add support for tab favicons, which are coming to iOS too.
Apple Mail Stationary Removed. According to the release notes for the macOS Mojave beta, Stationary, the HTML email feature that allowed users to choose from pre-built email templates, has been removed from the app.
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