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Halide 1.8→

Lovely update to Halide, my favorite third-party iPhone camera app, released today on the App Store. Among other improvements (such as an Apple Watch app and self-timer), I’m a fan of the new grid-based photo reviewer (try swiping down slowly on the grid to dismiss the view) as well as the advanced setting to prevent attaching location metadata when sharing a photo to social networks. I wish more apps offered an explicit preference like Halide does.

The focus on Accessibility in this release is also commendable:

We care deeply about Accessibility and have improved Halide with every update to make it easier to use for all users, but this update is our biggest push yet. With support for Dynamic and Bold Type throughout, VoiceOver support and many more enhancements. Even our 30 second timer option was included with Accessibility in mind, offering users with limited mobility more freedom to take photos.

That being said, we’re not done: this year we’ve worked with noted accessibility specialist Sommer Panage. She advised us on this release, and and helped set goals for accessibility in the year ahead.

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CardioBot: Heart Rate and Activity Tracker for Apple Watch [Sponsor]

Make sense of the heart rate data the Apple Watch collects with CardioBot. The Apple Watch measures your heart rate throughout the day. In fact, the Watch captures your heart rate every four minutes. That adds up to a lot of data very quickly. With CardioBot’s beautifully-designed charts and graphs, understanding what it all means is easy.

Collecting data is simple. The hard part is recognizing patterns in the data that help you make healthy lifestyle choices. CardioBot, which has been featured in the App Store in over 85 countries, combines heart rate data collected throughout the day, workout data, and sleep analysis to provide you with a comprehensive dashboard that includes data for individual days, detailed timelines, and day-over-day comparisons. The app also categorizes your heart rate data into low, resting, high-resting, and elevated levels assigning a separate color to each making it simple to spot trends.

Just this past week, CardioBot was updated to support Heart Rate Variability (HRV) analysis. HRV is the the variation in intervals between heartbeats. It’s believed that high HRV readings are good and that an increasing HRV trend indicates improved fitness, whereas declining HRV can indicate overtraining and accumulated fatigue. With its all-new HRV tracking, CardioBot has even more tools to track your fitness and health, which makes it a must-have addition to your iPhone and Apple Watch.

CardioBot is available on the App Store for just $2.99.

Our thanks to CardioBot for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Apple Discontinues AirPort Routers→

With a statement provided to iMore earlier today, Apple confirmed what Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman first reported in late 2016 (not a typo): the company is officially exiting the WiFi router business by discontinuing the AirPort line of products.

From Rene Ritchie’s story:

Routers are different. They’re infrastructure. They’re behind televisions, underneath desks, and in closets. For some people, especially people who appreciate Apple’s design and manufacturing, and its unequivocal stance on security and privacy, the loss of the AirPort line will still be a blow.

I’m one of those people.

But I’m also reminded of a comment Steve Jobs once said to one of his direct reports: Sure, Apple could do that and make some money at it, but was it really a business Apple had to be in?

As much as I’ve tried to understand the argument that Apple needs to focus on fewer products, I just can’t buy into the idea that they had to stop making WiFi routers.

My stance is pretty straightforward: everybody needs a WiFi router and the vast majority of routers suck. They are unsightly pieces of plastic that feature an assortment of meaningless blinking lights which you have to manage through terrifyingly confusing web apps intentionally designed to resemble accounting software from the late 90s. Sure, you could buy one of the fancy modern mesh systems, but they’re expensive, and some of them are not available in all regions, and people who live in small homes don’t need them. Doesn’t an elegant, integrated, affordable, and modern router sound like something that Apple should continue to offer as an option for its users?

I guess that WiFi routers don’t generate as much good PR as recommitting to Pro displays. But if there’s an aspect of modern technology that could use great hardware and software design, a focus on privacy and security, and user-friendly controls for families, that would be WiFi routers. I’m disappointed to learn that Apple has chosen to give up instead.

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Connected, Episode 190: The Robot Should Keep Its Mouth Shut→

Federico is gone, but the show had to to go on, so Stephen and Myke talk about the death of Liam, whatever is happening with Flickr and Amazon’s future robotic army.

I wasn’t on Connected this week, but I really enjoyed the discussion on robots – both those that passed away and the ones who may become our home assistants in the future. You can listen here.

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1Blocker X for iOS Review

The first thing you will notice when you set up 1Blocker X on an iOS device is its 7 toggles in Safari’s Content Blocker section of the Settings app. It’s a bit of a head-scratcher at first until you realize that this is what allows 1Blocker X to expand beyond the confines of its predecessor.

You see, iOS limits the number of blocking rules that can be implemented by an app to 50,000. That’s a lot of rules, but sadly not enough given the amount of junk on the Internet these days. As a result, it’s a limit that 1Blocker began to run into not long after it launched in 2015.

Finding a way around that hard limit required a rewrite of 1Blocker from the ground up. The result is 1Blocker X, an app with around three times as many blocking rules, room to grow, and enhanced flexibility for applying those rules.

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Pretext: Files-Rooted Simple Markdown for iOS

Last month I was delighted to discover a new plain text editor for iOS, Textor, that focused simply on the basics of text editing. Though I valued Textor’s minimalism, one feature I did miss was support for Markdown styling. This hasn’t been added to the app since then, but fortunately, I no longer have to wait for it; a new app just launched that’s essentially Textor with Markdown, and its name is Pretext.

Pretext integrates directly with iOS 11’s Files app, making it easy to create or edit Markdown and plain text files stored across any of your file providers. Open the app and you’ll see a document browser for choosing a file to edit; alternately, you can create a new file by hitting the plus button in the top-right. If you’re creating a new file, Pretext asks you to set a file name, with the option of automatically prepending the date to it, and you can choose to make it either a .md or .txt file.

While the simplicity of Pretext’s “just you and the text” environment is its greatest strength, the app does offer a few specific features that are of benefit to Markdown writers especially. First is the great keyboard shortcut support: all the basics of Markdown syntax can be done with a quick shortcut, including tasks like link insertion; because of this, Pretext offers one of the most efficient means of adding links to an article. The remaining few features of the app are found by hitting the share icon during editing, which offers access to the share sheet, the app’s settings screen, and previewing your Markdown file as HTML – the latter is especially useful for anyone who publishes their work online. Options in settings include tweaking the text size, switching themes from light to dark, and a couple alternate app icons.

I’ve been using Pretext in beta for the last few weeks to edit Markdown files shared by other MacStories collaborators in Working Copy, and the app has been exactly what I need. I can open Pretext, make my edits aided by visual Markdown styling and keyboard shortcuts, and preview the finished product as HTML. All changes are then saved directly in the file’s source.

Pretext is a simple utility, and isn’t going to replace Ulysses for me as a daily driver, but for some people it legitimately could. Too often writing apps are overly complicated, and Pretext focuses on offering just what a writer needs: space, and a few key tools to aid the writing process.

Pretext is available as a free download, with a $0.99 In-App Purchase unlocking the app’s dark theme and alternate icons.

Google Launches New ‘Tasks’ App for iPhone

Google Tasks is a service many Google users may be unfamiliar with. Historically it’s been a somewhat hidden feature of Gmail and Google Calendar, but today alongside a redesign of Gmail, Google is helping Tasks break out and receive slightly better treatment with the launch of a new iPhone app.

I have to say up front: if this app wasn’t a Google property, tied to an existing Google service, it likely wouldn’t merit much attention. Essentially it’s a barebones home for task lists, with a couple small task manager-like functions. Each task you create can include additional details in a note area, be assigned a due date, and can include embedded subtasks. And that’s basically it. You can create multiple lists to store your tasks, but there’s not even a smart list that consolidates all your tasks containing due dates.

Ultimately, this is an extremely lightweight task manager that makes Apple’s Reminders, its closest analog, seem like a heavy duty task powerhouse by comparison. Rita El Khoury of Android Police sums it up well in her take on the Android app:

I struggle to see who Tasks is for with this first version, and hope it’s quickly iterated upon. If you’re deeply invested in the Google ecosystem, and have very minimal task needs, but want something integrated with Google’s other products, I guess Tasks could be for you. But only on the iPhone; there’s no iPad version at this time.

Google Tasks is available as a free download on the App Store.