TaskPaper 3 by Hog Bay Software is a deceptively simple task manager. The cornerstone and greatest strength of TaskPaper is plain text, which is portable, adaptable, and as future proof as you can get. Using a simple syntax reminiscent of Markdown and an abundance of keyboard shortcuts, Taskpaper’s straightforward interface conceals considerable power under the hood.
TaskPaper 3 Conceals Its Power Beneath a Simple Interface
MacStories Weekly: Issue 25
The iPad Pro Changed Zoe Olson’s Illustrating Career→
A remarkable story by talented illustrator Zoe Olson, who used an iPad Pro and Procreate to illustrate a children’s book. Nice to see Tim Cook acknowledging it, too.
(via John Gruber, who points out that she’s been saving for a year to afford an iPad Pro.)
Shazam Gains Deeper Apple Music Integration with iOS 9.3→
One of the changes in iOS 9.3 – an API to add Apple Music tracks to playlists and the user’s library – especially made sense for apps like Shazam. And sure enough, Shazam for iOS has been updated with the ability to add tagged songs to any playlist and find all tagged songs in a ‘My Shazam Tracks’ playlist on Apple Music. There’s also support for playback of entire songs without leaving Shazam.
These features have been possible for Spotify users for a while now, and it’s nice to have them for Apple Music as well.
Apple Airs New Apple TV Commercial Highlighting Siri, Apple Music Integration
Apple aired a new Apple TV commercial today starring Alison Brie and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau to highlight the Siri capabilities and Apple Music integration of the device.
In the ad, Brie and Coster-Waldau are practicing a kiss scene behind the scenes of a movie set by watching some sample footage on the new Apple TV. Both actors control video playback through the Siri remote, which can be used to scrub through video just by talking to it. After asking Siri to “find Game of Thrones”, the Siri remote is then used to play Jeremih from Apple Music.
The ad follows a string of short Apple TV commercials focused on quick app and game highlights. Earlier this week, Apple released tvOS 9.2 with improved Siri features, the ability to organize apps in folders, and more.
You can watch the ad below.
Five Years of Sword & Sworcery→
“When I look back after five years, I am most surprised by how such a huge audience was willing to embrace something like Sworcery,” adds Vella. “It’s such a slow, meandering game built to be a music box for Jim’s beautiful soundtrack. You fight shapes, lose health over time, read a book that collects thoughts. You are meant to just stand and look at moody pixel art. All of it seems really damn strange. But millions of people did it. They meandered and fought shapes and stood and looked. They listened to Jim’s music. Thinking about it like that kind of floors me.”
Andrew Webster looks back at five years of one of the seminal indie games for iOS. Sword & Sworcery is still fantastic today – it’s even been updated for iOS 9 – and I can’t wait to see what Superbrothers is working on next.
Apple Is Working on a TV Series About Apps→
Emily Steel, reporting for The New York Times:
Apple announced on Thursday that it was working with the entertainer Will.i.am and two veteran TV executives, Ben Silverman and Howard T. Owens, on a new show that will spotlight the app economy.
“One of the things with the app store that was always great about it was the great ideas that people had to build things and create things,” Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet software and services, said in an interview.
A docu-series about apps sounds like something I’d binge watch.
Apple Is Selling Microsoft Office 365 as an Accessory for the iPad Pro→
James Vincent, writing for The Verge:
Apple wants the iPad Pro to replace Windows, and to convince customers it’s bringing in a familiar face or two: Microsoft’s Office Suite. As part of the ordering process for the new iPad Pro, buyers are given the option of adding a subscription for Office 365 — the only non-Apple accessory to appear in the order form. Office 365 bundles in the mobile apps and full Mac versions of a number of old standbys, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. (You can also choose between the Home, Personal, and University tiers, each of which offers different features.)
The Microsoft Office apps for iOS are easily some of the best apps available, particularly for the iPad. Whilst they aren’t yet at feature parity with their Windows and Mac counterparts, they are remarkably close in many respects. I’ve been using the Word, OneNote and Excel iPad apps extensively in the recent weeks, and I have been really happy with how they work.
It is worth noting that Microsoft Office is actually free to use on the 9.7” iPad Pro, but requires an Office 365 subscription if you want to edit documents on the 12.9” iPad Pro. This disparity is because of Microsoft’s rather odd policy in which Office is free to use on any device with a display smaller than 10.1” - but for devices with a larger screen, an Office 365 subscription is required.
The 9.7-inch iPad Pro and the Embedded Apple SIM→
Matthew Panzarino, after explaining how the embedded Apple SIM in the new iPad Pro works:
That might not sound like great news, but there is one very bright spot for anyone who wants to switch carriers later. All iPad Pro 9.7″ devices have a SIM slot right on the exterior and you can put another carrier’s SIM in that slot even if the iPad Pro itself has been locked to AT&T. In other words, the internal SIM may be locked, but you can “switch” carriers by using another physical SIM that you buy.
I was wondering how this worked. Good to know.