How Apple Saved My Life→

It can be easy to lose track of how technology changes lives. Apple takes great care to make products that are accessible, leading by example, and encouraging third-party developers to embrace accessibility, both at WWDC, and by maintaining APIs that make it easy to do so.

But the technical details are impersonal and abstract, which is why it is good to reflect on the real impact Apple’s efforts have on individuals. James Rath, a 20-year-old filmmaker who was born legally blind, made a short film about what the accessibility features across all of Apple’s products have meant to him since he and his family made an impromptu visit to an Apple Store in 2009:

https://youtu.be/m6c_QjJjEks
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Billings Pro: Time Tracking & Invoicing for iOS, OS X, and watchOS [Sponsor]

Billings Pro is a time-tracking & invoicing app for the Mac, iPad, iPhone & Apple Watch. It’s great for freelancers and small businesses such as consultants, lawyers, designers, or photographers who need an easy way to keep track of time spent on client work and a fast way to produce professional-looking invoices.

Billings Pro syncs all your devices across all your team members, so you can track time for a project while out on your iPhone while a team member tracks time on their Mac at the office. It supports 3D Touch, making it quick and easy for you to start a new timer or jump to a recent one, and includes a handy widget that lets you manage your Billings Pro timers within Notification Center. Easily add comments to your slips so you remember all the details of the work you did during that time.

After the work is done, Billings Pro makes it really quick and simple to invoice – whether you’re creating the invoice from your Mac, iPhone, or iPad. You just select the time slips, pick an invoice template, and send. You can also add expenses or bill by flat rate. Comments jotted down on your time slips can be added to the invoice so your client has a clear understanding of the work you did – which means you get paid faster, with fewer questions.

Read about other Mac users using Billings Pro here or experience Billings Pro for yourself with a free 30 day trial.

Our thanks to Marketcircle for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Philips Introduces Hue White Ambiance Bulbs→

James Vincent, writing for The Verge on Philips’ new set of Hue bulbs:

Are you a light connoisseur? Can you tell the difference between “cool daylight” and “warm white”? If so, Philips has just announced what could be your next favorite lightbulb: the Philips Hue white ambiance. The company promises that the white ambiance delivers “every shade of white light” from color temperatures of 6,500 k to 2,200k. And by hooking up the bulbs to the new Philips’ Hue app, you can use the “Routines” feature, which shifts the color temperature of the bulb as the day progresses, supposedly leading to better sleep.

Sounds like a good companion for the upcoming Night Shift in iOS 9.3. I’ve already been dimming my Hue lights manually after Night Shift turns on, so I should probably upgrade to these bulbs in my living room. They’ll be available in the US this Spring.

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Turn Your Mac Into a Media Server With AirParrot 2 and AirParrot Remote

Shortly after reviewing AirFoil for Mac, which acts as a hub for routing audio to multiple devices and has an iOS remote control app, I heard that Squirrels was planning something similar for its AirParrot product. AirParrot 2 for Mac acts as a hub for sharing your Mac’s screen, apps, and media to devices like the Apple TV. With an update to AirParrot and the release of AirParrot Remote for iOS, you can now control the streaming of your Mac’s screen, apps, and media remotely from your iPhone or iPad.

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Clipper Chip Redux→

Steven Levy writing on Backchannel:

Is it any wonder that the government is rebooting the crypto wars? For the first time, it’s really struggling with the results of the first war, as more information is now encrypted, increasingly in a manner the government finds really hard (or impossible) to decode.

[…]

As with the first round of the crypto wars, the stakes could not be higher. Once again, the government is seeking to control that genie first released by Diffie and Hellman. But the physics of computer security have not changed. Last July, a panel of fifteen eminent security specialists and cryptographers — many of whom are veterans of the first crypto war — released a report confirming there was no way for the government to demand a means of bypassing encryption without a dire compromise of security. It just doesn’t work.

The crypto wars, as Steven Levy calls them, are not new. In his excellent 2001 book Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government – Saving Privacy in the Digital Age, Levy recounted the struggle during the 90s between a small group academics who developed public key encryption and the US government, which was determined to outlaw encryption or mandate a back door. Sound familiar?

Memories are short, especially on the Internet. With the Department of Justice’s insistence that Apple unlock a terrorist’s iPhone, we are facing the same issues that were addressed in the 1990s. The difference is that the stakes are higher now. For individuals, there has never been more private data stored electronically, whether on a device like an iPhone or in the cloud. For governments, we have reached a point where some information is too hard, or impossible, for them to recover thanks to cryptography. As the struggle over the future of encryption plays out, it’s useful to keep in mind the perspective of those like Levy who were there the first time around.

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Connected: Don’t Be Scared, Myke. Go On.→

This week Myke and Federico share a potpourri of topics including FlexBright, malware creeping in to BitTorrent clients, Workflow, and rich text. Federico then covers the current state of text editors on iOS.

On this week’s Connected, we also discussed the differences between iOS and OS X for people who like to tinker. You can listen here.

Sponsored by:

  • Casper: Because everyone deserves a great night sleep. Get $50 off with the code ‘CONNECTED’
  • Squarespace: Enter offer code WORLD at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.
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Microsoft Builds Evernote Importer for OneNote→

Jason Snell, writing at Six Colors:

Today Microsoft announced a new Evernote importer app that lets you bring your Evernote data into its excellent OneNote application. If you’ve been thinking of leaving Evernote—especially if you’re already paying for Office 365, so you’re paying for OneNote—it’s worth considering.

Unfortunately, the tool currently only runs on Windows. Typical Microsoft. Fortunately, a Mac version is on the way “in the coming months.”

First Apple, now Microsoft. I wonder if Evernote is starting to regret adding the export option.

(I also wonder how much these import solutions are going to impact Evernote, and if they’ll decide to turn exporting off eventually.)

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Alien Blue Update Gifts Pro Users with Four Years of Reddit Gold→

Nice move from Reddit (via MacRumors): if you bought a Pro upgrade for Alien Blue (which was acquired by Reddit in 2014), the latest update will get you a four-year Reddit Gold subscription for free.

I realize that I’m spending quite a bit of time on Reddit each day (some subreddits can be surprisingly civil and informative), but I never really considered the Gold membership. It’s got some intriguing perks.

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Wikipedia’s New Focus on Discovery

For a long time, Articles by Sophiestication Software was my favorite Wikipedia app on iOS. But Articles is showing its age because it hasn’t been updated since September 2013 when developer Sophia Teutschler took a job on the UIKit Frameworks team at Apple.

Wikipedia has had its own official app for years, but for much of that time it wasn’t very good. Apps like Articles filled the gap, presenting a cleaner, better-designed experience. After years of using Articles, I lost track of Wikipedia’s iOS app, but was pleasantly surprised when I downloaded the just-released version 5, which has evolved into a great all-around Wikipedia utility.

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