The latest version of Tweetbot for iOS has upgraded its iCloud syncing engine to CloudKit, bringing faster performance for timeline, DM, and mute filter sync. From the release notes:
This update is all about sync. We’ve switched our syncing engine to use CloudKit which will provide you with faster, more consistent syncing between your iOS devices and Macs. It also sets up a foundation for some cool features we have planned for future releases. We know improved syncing doesn’t sound too exciting, but it will provide a better underlying experience.
From a user’s perspective, nothing’s changed – Tweetbot still uses iCloud and you don’t have to change anything in your preferences. However, Tweetbot is now using a better version of iCloud, with near-instant sync of changes between devices.
I’ve been running this version of Tweetbot with CloudKit sync for a few weeks, and it’s a very nice upgrade from the old iCloud sync. I’ve often left two devices running with Tweetbot in the foreground at the same time, and I’ve seen the timeline scroll on one device just a second after I stopped scrolling on the primary device. It’s impressive.
If you haven’t tried iCloud sync in Tweetbot in a while, go check it out again. Tweetbot 4.3 is available on the App Store (my review of Tweetbot 4.0 is here).
Tumblr’s iOS app now allows iPhone 6S users to add Live Photos to their posts, just as though they were adding any other photo. When someone on an iPhone comes across it in their feed, they’ll see the Live Photo icon in the corner, letting them know it can animate. Like in the iOS Photos app, iPhone 6S users can use 3D Touch to activate the hidden video and sound. If you’re on an older iPhone, you can still view Live Photos by pressing and holding on the image. Android users appear to be out of luck, however. Despite receiving an app update today, Tumblr on Android just displays Live Photos as a still image. Same thing on the web.
Arguably, Tumblr is the first major social app to integrate with Live Photos. Kind of odd that Twitter and Facebook weren’t ready with official support a few days after iOS 9.2 – especially because Facebook appears to be on a 12-hour update schedule for their iOS app.
I wonder if Twitter will natively support Live Photos or convert them to their GIF-like format, but with audio as well.
I found this game yesterday via 9to5Mac – developed by Asaf Avidan Antonir, Steady Square is a simple game where you have to keep a square steady and let it pass through openings in a series of walls. The twist: on the iPhone 6s, the game is controlled through 3D Touch.
Steady Square is extremely basic: there’s no sound, no items to unlock, no menus – it’s more of a proof of concept, really. But, there’s something compelling about the simplicity and silence of Steady Square and I find it to be somewhat relaxing. The collisions are unforgiving (it’s reminiscent of Flappy Bird in this sense) and 3D Touch adds an interesting dimension to an otherwise unsurprising mechanic. It’s free on the App Store.
Fun new camera app for iPhone by William Wilkinson and Deepak Mantena: Slide lets you create animated GIFs with a 3D effect that you can share with others. The 3D effect, as delightfully explained in the app’s weird promo video, is achieved by sliding the iPhone quickly to the side after selecting a subject.
I bought the app, and it works as advertised. Slide doesn’t work with the front-facing camera because it requires high frame rate to build the 3D animation, which, depending on what you’re looking at, may produce odd and funny results. I’m sending pictures of 3D furniture to my parents right now and they’re asking what’s going on.
There’s only one thing I like more than switching todo apps: writing about it. On the surface, it surely seems like I’ve been doing a lot of both in the past year.
In reality, while I have been guilty of periodically changing the way I organize my tasks in the past – going as far as trying a different app each month – I’ve made an effort to stick with a system, learn it, and use it as much as possible over the past three years. Since 2013, I’ve only replaced my task management app of choice once – when I moved from Reminders to Todoist upon realizing that my life got too busy for Apple’s basic app.
I liked Todoist for reasons that made sense at the time: I was preparing our multi-article coverage of iOS 8; I wanted a task manager that lived in the cloud and could be used to collaborate with other people; and I was intrigued by the idea of filters. Todoist served me well for months, and I was happy to see that others were also rediscovering a service that had been around for quite some time and built a profitable business. If you’re looking for a task manager that does more than Wunderlist and is built for teams and external integrations, Todoist still is my top recommendation.
Around early July this year, I realized that my daily work routine wasn’t the same as the Fall of 2014 and that it was also about to change again with the launch of Club MacStories and my iOS 9 review. On the verge of major alterations to my workflow and personal schedule, I always want to reassess and optimize how I get work done so that I don’t end up fighting a system that’s supposed to help me. Life is ever-changing, and there’s no point in thinking that our approach to manage it should perpetually stay the same.
Primarily out of curiosity but also with a hint of app boredom, I installed 2Do on my iPhone and iPad while I was in Positano1. I had no idea it would become the task manager I’ve felt the most comfortable with since getting an iPhone eight years ago.
Great update to Pixelmator for iOS released this morning: the app is now fully compatible with the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, with support for 16K images up to 100 megapixels and a new collection of brushes. I tried the app with the Pencil for a couple of minutes, and it works as expected; if you don’t have an iPad Pro with a Pencil but you have an iPhone 6s, pressure-sensitive painting has also been made available via 3D Touch:
Pixelmator on iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus adds full 3D Touch support. In addition to useful shortcuts when pressing firmly on the Pixelmator icon from the home screen and on an image in the Pixelmator gallery, Pixelmator for iOS 2.2 also brings 3D Touch-sensitive painting. Now you can change the look of a stroke simply by varying the pressure you apply on the screen with your finger, without having to change the brush settings.
The new Pixel brush is a lot of fun, and I’m curious to see what kind of creations pixel artists will come up with. Pixelmator 2.2 is available on the App Store.
Great story and app idea by David Walsh: dissatisfied with the presentation of heart rate data in Apple’s Health app, he created HeartWatch – a dashboard for your heart rate data. The app works best if you’re an Apple Watch wearer (you get readings every 10 minutes) and it includes features such as peak zones, timelines, and – my favorite – separate tabs for regular, waking, and workout heartbeats.
Heart Watch lets you see how your heart is beating across three simple views. Waking, Regular & Workout. Each of these views are isolated because, while you may want a higher heart rate during a workout, if your heart is racing when you aren’t doing any exercise then this is likely not a good thing and probably something you might want to show your medical practitioner.
Now I wanted to dig a bit further to find when and what was happening with my heart. Unfortunately, the Health app wasn’t very much help from here forward. There’s a summary graph, then to go any further, you have to read every single heart beat reading captured. With no search! Proverbial needle in haystack. So I looked around to see if there were any apps to help. Short answer. No. They seem to fall into finger on the camera apps, “fitness junkie” apps or just giving a simple average.
My research also made me realise a simple average is close to useless if you work out. Obviously your heart rate will be higher when you work out. This then throws out the daily average compared to days you don’t work out.
So I started a side project. Something that could show me what was going on. This then of course grew, as these things tend to do.
I took HeartWatch for a spin, and I like what David is doing. The app imported months of heart rate data from Health in less than a minute and it presented me with a clear calendar view of different reading types. HeartWatch can show percentage changes from previous readings, and it neatly breaks down a day’s data with colored charts and labels. I would love to see these kinds of average stats for weekly and monthly stats too, but, overall, HeartWatch is off to a good start.
Like David Smith’s Pedometer++, HeartWatch is another app that uses data from the Apple Watch in an interesting and useful way. If you care about your heart rate as measured by the Watch (and you should), I recommend giving HeartWatch a try.
Algoriddim launched djay Pro for iPad today, the latest version of their award-winning DJ software for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. The new version (which I played around with over the past couple of days) has been built with the iPad Pro in mind, with tons of design changes and new features for the new platform.
From the app’s product page:
At the heart of djay Pro is an innovative, modern user interface that provides flexible layers of functionality. It features advanced performance modes including horizontal and vertical colored waveforms, live sampler and drum pads, FX racks, a video mixer, as well as a powerful four deck view that allows you to play, mix, slice, and synchronize up to four tracks simultaneously.
And:
The sheer performance of iPad Pro enables a host of new features that were previously impossible on a mobile device, including mixing of up to 4 audio tracks, plus two simultaneous 4K video streams, all rendered in pristine sound quality and with brilliant video output in full HD, at 60 frames per second. djay Pro combines rock-solid stability with unrivalled performance, delivering a powerful, dependable solution for performing DJs and VJs.
What Algoriddim has done with djay over the years has always been impressive, but this time they’ve gone far beyond what I’ve seen in any other music app for iPad.
The interface has been completely revamped to take advantage of the bigger screen, so it’s not just another scaled up app without a deeper consideration of what the larger canvas enables. The hardware of the iPad Pro is used throughout the app with tangible benefits: scrubbing through 4K video streams is silky smooth, as is mixing audio tracks, applying effects, and rendering the final product. If you use an external keyboard, djay offers an insane Discoverability menu with pages of keyboard shortcuts – the first time I’ve seen a paginated layout in the cheat sheet. The list goes on (and you should check out the website for more details), but I want to mention one feature: with its Music integration, djay has rolled out multitasking support for music playback before Apple’s own Music app.
A few weeks ago, there was a lot of talk about the lack of pro software for the iPad Pro. djay Pro is a great example of how developers who know their audience can rebuild their apps from the ground up with the iPad Pro in mind, catering to a new category of users – those who want power and the portability of an iPad. I believe djay Pro shows the way for more kinds of professional software to come to the App Store in the future. I want to see more developers follow Algoriddim’s approach and build iPad-first software that’s just as powerful as desktop counterparts – if not more powerful thanks to iOS. It’s possible.
