Why 2Do Is My New Favorite iOS Task Manager

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.

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  1. One of my favorite places in Italy. ↩︎

Pixelmator Updated with iPad Pro, Apple Pencil Support→

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.

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HeartWatch: An Accidental but Heartfelt App→

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.

David has shared the full story behind the creation of HeartWatch in a blog post:

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.

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Connected: Snoozepocalypse→

Gathered in mourning over Mailbox and Carousel, Federico, Myke and Stephen wallow their way through some follow-up and Apple’s latest accessories.

Some interesting discussion on Dropbox and email clients in this week’s Connected. You can listen here.

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djay Pro Launches on iPad, Built for iPad Pro

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.

djay Pro is available on the App Store at $19.99 for a limited time sale, and it’ll rise to $29.99 in the future. In the meantime, to celebrate the launch of djay Pro, djay 2 for iPhone is available for free for a limited time.

Eddy Cue on Hardcore Gaming for Apple TV, New Siri Remote App Launching Next Year→

In an interview with BuzzFeed published this morning, Apple’s Eddy Cue has shared some details on how the company sees the new Apple TV as a gaming device.

“When we first announced the iPhone, we didn’t tout it as a gaming device. But games became a huge part of iPhone, because it turns out that a lot more people than just hardcore gamers love games. We expanded the market. I think the vast majority of people around the world probably aren’t looking to buy an Xbox or PlayStation. But that doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy playing games. I think Apple TV expands the gaming market to those people.”

Cue goes on to say that “hardcore gaming isn’t exactly the ecosystem we’re after with Apple TV”, adding that, however, hardcore games will be released on it in the future. Essentially, Cue’s pitch is reminiscent of Nintendo’s goal with the Wii in 2006 – to expand the gaming market to people who don’t want to buy a console but would be comfortable with casual games on a TV. Only this time, Apple has an existing multi-billion iOS ecosystem backing the efforts of developers approaching the TV App Store.

Also from the interview, Cue revealed that the full functionality of the Siri Remote will be available in a new iPhone app next year:

“We’re working on a new Apple TV remote app that will give you the full functionality of the Siri Remote on your iPhone,” Cue said. “We’re hoping to ship that in the first half of next year.”

Yesterday’s tvOS update restored support with Apple’s existing Remote app for iOS, but it sounds like Apple has bigger plans that involve full Siri integration on the iPhone, too. I wonder if this app will also unlock deeper multiplayer features for gaming – with the “full functionality of the Siri Remote” on an iPhone, will multiple users be able to use their iPhones as controllers for games?

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Apple News Can Now Feature Top Stories, Curated by Apple News Editors

(L-R) The Apple News launch screen after you update to iOS 9.2, the Top Stories channel in my Favorites section, the For You section which features Top Stories (note the red tag on the right).

(L-R) The Apple News launch screen after you update to iOS 9.2, the Top Stories channel in my Favorites section, the For You section which features Top Stories (note the red tag on the right).

Peter Kafka, writing for Re/code, reports that yesterday’s iOS 9.2 software update also included a big new feature for Apple News:

Apple’s update for its iOS app, which begins rolling out today, has two components. Only one of them will be visible to regular users: Apple’s editors will curate a list of “top stories” they’ll display for all of the apps’ users, at least a couple of times a day.

That’s a change in philosophy from this fall’s launch, when the app was supposed to highlight stories based on each of its users’ tastes and reading behaviors.

That’s still going to happen throughout the day, but in the morning and in the afternoon, Apple will assemble a handful of stories it thinks all of its users would want to see. You know — like a newspaper.

After you install iOS 9.2 and open Apple News for the first time you’ll be given the open of adding ‘Top Stories’ to your Favorites. If you do add it to your favorites, the ‘For You’ section of Apple News will prominently feature articles that Apple editors have deemed to be a top news story for the day. You can also go directly to the Top Stories channel in your Favorites to view all of the top stories in one place.

In my launch review of Apple News I was critical of the overall Apple News experience, which I found to be disappointing. One of my chief complaints was that you couldn’t rely on Apple News to give you all of the day’s big news stories – the lack of human picks and poor automated curation was readily apparent:

Arguably the most frustrating part of For You is the fact you never get a good sense of what the big stories of the day are. To me, this is vital to any news app, website, or service – I don’t just want to read interesting articles that I might like, but I want to know the most important of those stories.

I’ve only spent 20 minutes with iOS 9.2 and the updated Apple News, but early signs are positive. The For You section began with stories which were prominently marked as a “Top Story” and indeed they were (mostly) appropriate. I was pleasantly surprised to see they even have Australian editors, curating the top Australian news stories. So I’m going to give Apple News a second chance and see if it fares any better with the addition of human curated top news stories, and I’ll report back to you all next week.

Apple Publishes Best of 2015 App Store Lists for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV

Early this morning, Apple unveiled the 2015 edition of their annual Best of App Store lists – a collection of the best apps and games released on the App Store over the past 12 months. This year, in addition to iPhone, iPad, and Mac apps, Apple has added editorial picks for the newly launched watchOS and tvOS platforms, highlighting the best apps and games released by third-party developers on Apple Watch and Apple TV.

We debated. We argued. Everyone had favorites, but to make this list of 2015’s finest, there could be no doubts. What you see here made the cut—they’re the most visionary, inventive, and irresistible apps and games of the year. After you’ve browsed our selections, don’t miss the titles that topped the charts in 2015.

In this year’s Best of App Store, Apple has picked Periscope, The Robot Factory, Affinity Photo, HBO Now, and Dark Sky as apps of the year on its five developer platforms. On iOS, Apple also features special mentions for most innovative apps (Workflow on the iPhone), best app on the iPad Pro (uMake), and best app on the iPhone 6s (Instagram). On Apple TV and Apple Watch – the most recent additions to the App Store ecosystem – Apple hasn’t picked any runner-ups, but instead they’re simply showcasing the best apps and games. The iOS section includes apps that dominated the top charts as well, with Minecraft, Trivia Crack, Messenger, and Snapchat unsurprisingly in there.

Overall, Apple’s picks offer a good mix of big budget titles and smaller, indie studios such as DeskConnect, Readdle, or The Soulmen. You can find Apple’s complete Best of 2015 on the front page of each App Store today; a recap of all the winners and runner-ups (from the US App Store) is available below.

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Apple Airs New ‘The Future of Television’ Apple TV Ad

Apple aired a new one-minute Apple TV ad today, once again highlighting the device’s new Siri features and native app platform.

Your favorite TV shows, movies, games and more are on Apple TV. The future of television is apps.

The commercial – unlike the company’s recent iPhone ads – doesn’t feature any voiceover; instead, it draws from Apple TV’s selection of apps and content to show brief snippets of popular movies and TV shows from Netflix and iTunes, footage from the NBA app, scenes from The Simpsons and Pixar’s Inside Out, and more. As for apps, games such as Asphalt and Guitar Hero Live make an appearance alongside icons of other apps from the Apple TV Home screen.

The commercial is an extended version of Apple’s shorter Apple TV videos and is part of a campaign that also includes billboards reminiscent of the company’s iconic six-color logo. You can watch the video below.

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