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Starbucks Launches New iMessage App with a Giveaway→

Starbucks launched a new iMessage app recently, and yesterday they announced a nice incentive for users to give it a try:

Now you can send Starbucks Gifts with iMessage with Apple Pay. Be one of the first to send a $5 or more Starbucks Gift via iMessage and receive a $5 Starbucks Gift for yourself - while supplies last.

The promotion ends on April 23rd, or after 45,000 people have taken advantage of it – whichever comes first.

The process of sending a gift card through iMessage is extremely simple. Assuming you already have Apple Pay setup on your device, you just select the style of gift card – options include things like ‘Congrats,’ ‘Thanks So Much,’ and ‘Happy Birthday’ – select a quantity of $5, $10, or $25, then hit ‘Buy’ and authorize Apple Pay. The whole process takes mere seconds.

While the idea of sending gifts through iMessage had never occurred to me before, Starbucks has convinced me that it can be a great experience.

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MailButler - Your Personal Assistant for Apple Mail [Sponsor]

No one has ever said ‘I want to spend more time on my email.’ Staying on top of important messages is critical, but managing your inbox can quickly become an unproductive time sink. MailButler is a series of Apple Mail add-ons that supercharge it so you can get through your email messages quickly and efficiently.

Just because you are catching up on email messages at 1:00 AM doesn’t mean you want your message to hit someone’s inbox at that hour. With MailButler, you can schedule your emails to be sent during normal working hours and then track whether the recipient opened your message. MailButler also helps you put your best foot forward with beautifully-designed, professional message templates and signature management.

MailButler is just as effective at managing messages you receive. When you need to focus on your work, you can pause your inbox until you are ready to deal with it. MailButler also makes unsubscribing from unwanted email much faster than hunting for that tiny ‘unsubscribe’ link buried at the bottom of a message. As you process messages, MailButler can even turn them into tasks or Evernote or OneNote notes, which is a more effective way to handle actionable and reference items than letting them sit in your inbox.

Everyone could use help with email. MailButler is the assistant you need to take back control of your inbox. Try MailButler for free today.

‘The Most Important Computer in History’→

Kurt Schlosser, writing for GeekWire:

The Living Computers: Museum + Labs in Seattle is home to some of the most noteworthy machines ever created. But a new exhibit opening this week will showcase what one official at the Paul Allen-founded institution called “the most important computer in history.”

Lāth Carlson, executive director of Living Computers, added to that designation by saying the metal box with a keyboard is “also the most boring to look at.” But for fans of computing and Apple in particular, the Apple I that once sat in founder Steve Jobs’ office is exciting for a whole host of reasons.

The piece states that only about seven Apple I computers remain operable today, and Living Computers’ model is one of those seven. Carlson shares, “We’re going to be running Steve Wozniak’s version of BASIC that he wrote on it.”

If you’re in the Seattle area, it sounds like a great exhibit to check out.

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Game Day: Pocus

Pocus is the latest mind-bending puzzle game from Ankara-based developer Gamebra.in, a husband and wife duo that is known for their challenging puzzles. The game shares a common visual style with Gamebra.in’s earlier titles but has the most in common with the hit game Hocus as the names of the two games suggest.

Whereas Hocus is about navigating a cube around a variety of Escher-like geometric structures, Pocus is always played on three sides of one or more 3D cubes. Each side of a cube is composed of a 6x6 grid. Most of the squares in the grid are gray, but others are black or other colors. You play as a red with a black dot on it. The goal is to move your red square across the three sides of the cubes to collect green squares.

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Tomates Time Management: Elegant Pomodoro Timer for Mac

If you’re a fan of the Pomodoro Technique, you’ll be interested in Tomates Time Manager. Version 4 is a great-looking menu bar app with detailed reporting, Touch Bar support, and a handy Today Extension.

If you’re not familiar with it, the Pomodoro Technique is a timer-based way of getting work done in 25-minute sprints with short breaks between, and then a nice long break after a set of four. I first tried the Pomodoro Technique many years ago and it worked well for me, but I didn’t stick with it. Over the years I went back to it a few times, but it still didn’t stick. It was only last year when issues with my ADHD caused me to desperately need a system exactly like this.

There are a plethora of good timers available for Mac and iOS, including the elegant Zen Timer on Mac (which I’ve mentioned here before) and Focus Time on iOS. What sets Tomates apart is the combination of elegant design and powerful utility. It allows customizable work and break times, Work Series counts, alarm sounds, and handles task names and reporting.

Version 4 introduces a Today Extension, providing an overview of your progress right in the Today View of Notification Center, tracking your tasks and sessions along with trophies for reaching your goals.

Reporting is also enhanced, with both task and time-based reports. The time-based reports can show today, this week (or this workweek), this month, or a custom time period. The reports can also now be printed or saved as beautiful PDFs. I’ll admit those reports aren’t something I really need hard copies of, but they are nice looking.

Lastly, version 4 adds Touch Bar support so you can work with the timer from the Touch Bar on your MacBook Pro. Manage and reset timers, and reset the session and goal counters with a tap.

Head to the Mac App Store to check out Tomates Time Management. $2.99 US isn’t a bad price to pay for something that could change the way you work.

Remaster, Episode 32: First-Party→

Microsoft unveil specs of their upcoming Project Scorpio, and Shahid explains what makes a developer ‘First Party’.

On this week’s Remaster, Shahid helps us understand the differences between first-party and second-party game studios. You can listen here.

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Why Pro Matters→

Great take by Sebastiaan de With on why Apple needs to cater to the pro community and care about the Mac Pro again:

The same kind of huge leaps are happening in gaming and game development; a powerful modern GPU is a requirement for working on and using VR and AR, one area Apple is said to be working on. Demand and interest in 3D work, for design, game and software development, and video is bigger than ever and growing exponentially.

Without a truly top-tier workstation, Apple will miss out on a huge segment of digital creatives that can craft the future of human-machine interaction — something way beyond tapping a piece of glass. It would lack a Mac workstation with the raw computing power to prototype VR and AR interactions, build game worlds, simulate complex models and render the effects of tomorrow’s great feature films all the while offering those same creatives a platform to create for its own mobile devices.

The Mac Pro user base may be a single-digit percentage of all Macs sold, but it’s a group of users with an important indirect effect on the Apple ecosystem. Very often, they are the same users who make the movies, videogames, TV shows, music, and apps we put on our devices every day. They are few people who create highly influential content millions of others use, enjoy, and rely upon. And Apple has realized they don’t want to let that community go.

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Microsoft Releases Social Scheduling iMessage App, ‘Who’s In’

Microsoft has introduced a new app called ‘Who’s In’ to the iMessage App Store. The app is designed to help friends plan social events together without ever leaving the iOS Messages app.

When you want to coordinate an event with friends, opening ‘Who’s In’ will present several types of activities to choose from:

  • Eat and drink
  • Watch a movie
  • Visit an attraction
  • Create your own

After making your selection, a Bing-powered list of relevant options will be presented such as restaurant names, movie titles, etc. These are sorted based on your location, and once you’ve picked one, you’ll be asked to specify a date and time for the event to take place. These details are all compacted into an iMessage card that gets saved into your message body so you can send it to friends. When they receive your message, they can vote on whether they’ll be attending or not.

In many ways ‘Who’s In’ resembles the scheduling app Doodle, but with a more narrow focus on the specific activities featured in the app.

‘Who’s In’ is available for download from the iMessage App Store.

Apple Launches Clips Video App for iPhone and iPad

Apple has released a new app for iPhone and iPad, the previously announced video tool Clips.

Apple describes Clips as an app “for making and sharing fun videos with text, effects, graphics, and more.” Essentially it’s a stripped-down version of a video editor like iMovie, optimized to make edits fast and user-friendly on mobile. Its key focus is allowing you to shoot seconds-long clips and string them together into a video worth sharing.

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