I’m a voracious web reader. I spend most of my working days either writing or checking Twitter, NewsBlur, Nuzzel, Techmeme, and The Tech Block looking for interesting stuff I can link to or longer articles I want to read later. When I’m not writing or looking for stories, I spend my time reading and playing videogames. I read a lot. And Instapaper has always appealed to my reading taste with a thoughtful design, fair business model, and powerful features.
Instapaper Launches Notes, Bringing Annotations to Articles
What Twitter Can Be→
Chris Sacca’s essay on what Twitter can become is worth a read if you’re interested in the future of the company. The piece contains several interesting ideas for enhancements to Twitter’s curation, discovery, and timeline design – this bit on Nuzzel in particular:
A third way to organize content from Twitter is to highlighting what the Tweets are linking to. If you’ve used Nuzzel (disclosure: one of our portfolio companies) you know exactly what I mean and how simple yet magical that experience can be. If you haven’t used it, try it. Nuzzel makes Twitter better.
Want to know what are the most popular articles linked to on Twitter? That should be a channel. What are the most popular sites linked among the people we follow or people that our friends follow? Great channel. Which books are people Tweeting about? Channel. Which videos are garnering the most attention? Channel. Any particular .gifs blowing up? Channel.
I use Nuzzel every day, and I love it. As I argued last year, I’m a fan of Twitter’s experiments with the timeline on iOS, but I also believe they should experiment more and break free of old ideas about Twitter. I disagree with some of Sacca’s proposals, but the entire piece is spot-on.
Apple’s Privacy and Cloud Services→
Thomas Ricker, writing for The Verge in response to Tim Cook’s speech on privacy and cloud services:
Arguably, Google Maps is better than Apple Maps, Gmail is better than Apple Mail, Google Drive is better than iCloud, Google Docs is better than iWork, and Google Photos can “surprise and delight” better than Apple Photos. Even with the risks.
If Apple truly cares about our privacy then it should stop talking about how important it is and start building superior cloud-based services we want to use — then it can protect us.
As John Gruber eloquently commented:
There’s much I would quibble with regarding Ricker’s piece, but his conclusion, quoted above, is spot-on. Apple needs to provide best-of-breed services and privacy, not second-best-but-more-private services. Many people will and do choose convenience and reliability over privacy. Apple’s superior position on privacy needs to be the icing on the cake, not their primary selling point.
This is a tricky scenario: is machine learning the only way to build intelligent services and client apps for the future? Google Photos is showing impressive results in recognizing places, objects, and people – but at the cost of letting Google’s cloud analyze your entire memories and visual history. It’s only natural for some people not to be okay with that today.
Will consumers start demanding that sort of intelligence going forward? Is there any way to build intelligence at scale without being creepy? Is privacy a product or a feature?
Sunrise Launches on Apple Watch
Sunrise, the calendar app/platform acquired by Microsoft earlier this year, has always been about integrating your schedule with as many devices and services as possible. Pierre Valade and his team wanted to build a calendar app that could go beyond a traditional representation of calendar events, and this meant opening up Sunrise to third-party services like Todoist, Wunderlist (now also part of Microsoft), Songkick, and more. Sunrise’s willingness to integrate deeply with users’ workflows can even be seen in Meet, a custom keyboard that brings Sunrise’s scheduling features to any app.
Sunrise is launching on Apple Watch today, with another integration that rethinks a core aspect of the app for a new device. Sunrise for Apple Watch, which I’ve tested over the past month, puts the focus on viewing what’s coming up, with an elegant UI and a glance that make it easy to check and act on upcoming events.
Todoist Launches PowerApp for Integrations with Google Calendar, Evernote, and GitHub
Todoist – my favorite task management service that recently also landed on Apple Watch – has never shied away from integrating with other services. The company has long supported automation through IFTTT and Zapier; it can mirror a user’s daily tasks to Sunrise; and, it can import files from Google Drive and Dropbox when you need to add attachments to a task. Today, Todoist is launching PowerApp, the next generation of the company’s integration system based on a new developer platform they’re also debuting today and opening up to third-party apps.
Apple Watch Launching in Seven More Countries on June 26, Retail Store Sales Begin in Two Weeks
Apple announced today that the Apple Watch will go on sale in another seven countries beginning Friday, June 26. Those countries are Italy, Mexico, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland and Taiwan. They join Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, the UK and the US, where the Apple Watch first began shipping to customers on April 24.
10 Corso Como in Milan, BOONTHESHOP Cheongdam in Seoul and Malmaison by The Hour Glass in Singapore will have a curated selection of Apple Watch available at launch.
To customers in the original launch countries, Jeff Williams, Apple’s senior vice president of Operations, says they will begin selling ‘some models’ of the Apple Watch in their retail stores in two weeks time. Williams also notes that all Apple Watch orders placed in May will be shipped to customers within the next two weeks, “with the sole exception of Apple Watch 42 mm Space Black Stainless Steel with Space Black Link Bracelet”.
“The response to Apple Watch has surpassed our expectations in every way, and we are thrilled to bring it to more customers around the world,” said Jeff Williams, Apple’s senior vice president of Operations. “We’re also making great progress with the backlog of Apple Watch orders, and we thank our customers for their patience. All orders placed through May, with the sole exception of Apple Watch 42 mm Space Black Stainless Steel with Space Black Link Bracelet, will ship to customers within two weeks. At that time, we’ll also begin selling some models in our Apple Retail Stores.”
Apple Support Document on HomeKit and Apple TV→
Following the launch of the first HomeKit devices yesterday, Apple has published an official page with a list of compatible products and a support document detailing the setup process for HomeKit.
In that document, Apple confirmed the long-rumored “hub” feature of Apple TV:
If you have an Apple TV (3rd generation or later) with software version 7.0 or later, you can control your HomeKit-enabled accessories when you’re away from home using your iOS device.
Sign in with the same Apple ID on your iOS device and Apple TV, and you’ll be able to use Siri commands to remotely control your accessories.
Earlier today, The New York Times reported that Apple won’t announce any new Apple TV hardware at its upcoming WWDC. Considering that HomeKit (which is rumored to get some stage time next week) can already work on the current-gen Apple TV, it’s no surprise Apple may prefer to sell the current model and wait to get the next generation just right. It’ll be interesting to see Apple’s plans for the Apple TV as a connected home hub unfold over the next few months.
Clips 1.2→
Clips, developed by Clean Shaven Apps, is an app I use on a daily basis to copy multiple bits of text and move them between apps using a widget, an action extension, and a fantastic custom keyboard – one of the few keyboards I keep on my devices, in fact. I reviewed the app when it came out last September, and I’ve been using it since.
Today, Clips 1.2 has been released with a refreshed design, Apple Watch support, and a faster keyboard. While I’m not sure why I’d want to use Clips on my Watch, I believe it can be useful to those who use the app to store text they access frequently and not as a temporary holding place for clipped items. I’m a fan of the new dark design and the increased contrast between URLs and plain text, and I continue to appreciate the time the app saves me when composing articles, researching topics, and collecting a bunch of notes from different apps with just a few taps. Clips is the epitome of iOS 8’s extensibility features for productivity apps, and it’s one of my must-have utilities.
Clips 1.2 is available on the App Store.
ETA Brings Travel Times and Traffic Status to Apple Watch
I first covered ETA back in September, and I noted how the app simplified the process of getting travel times for favorite locations by taking advantage of a widget in Notification Center:
ETA’s best feature is actually a way to never open the app itself. Taking a clue from Apple’s Today Summary in Notification Center, Eastwood created an iOS 8 widget that lets you see driving times in the Today view and tap them to quickly load directions in your mapping app of choice (Google Maps, Apple Maps, or Waze). Your preferences for walking/driving directions and time of arrival are carried over to the widget, which is simple, elegant, and useful.
Today, ETA 2.0 has been released with a new design, the ability to show multiple routes and traffic information, and an Apple Watch app that lets you quickly view travel times and traffic directly from your wrist.