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Google Announces YouTube Music Key→

Widely rumored for the past several months, Google today announced YouTube Music Key, a premium service that, starting at $7.99/month, will offer ad-free videos, the ability to keep listening to videos as music in the background, offline downloads, and access to Google Play Music (the new name for Google Play Music All Access).

From the YouTube blog:

Thanks to your music videos, remixes, covers, and more, you’ve made YouTube the biggest music service on the planet. To turn YouTube into your perfect music service, we’re launching YouTube Music Key as a beta with our biggest music fans first, and then we’ll bring YouTube Music Key to the whole world together. So, if you see an invite in your app or email, try it out for six months for free.

YouTube Music Key follows a plan to revamp YouTube’s entire music strategy with a new dedicated section:

Starting today, you’ll see a new home just for music on your YouTube app for Android, iOS and on YouTube.com that shows your favorite music videos, recommended music playlists based on what you’re into and playlists of trending music across YouTube. You can find a playlist to perfectly fit your mood, whether that’s a morning motivators playlist or Boyce Avenue YouTube Mix. Check out the newest songs from channels you subscribe to, like FKA twigs or Childish Gambino. Or quickly find the songs you’ve played over and over and over again.

The YouTube Music Key beta will start rolling out next week, and it appears that current Google Music All Access subscribers will get access to it immediately.

I’m interested in Google’s plans with YouTube because the service has what other music streaming services have always lacked: a huge catalogue of videos from artists that go beyond albums and singles. As someone who regularly watches concert videos and demo recordings on YouTube, I’m curious to see how an ad-free experience with web and iOS access could improve content that I can’t get anywhere else.

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Flashlight Extends OS X Yosemite’s Spotlight with Plugins

Developed by Nate Parrott, Flashlight is an interesting tweak for Spotlight that aims to extend Yosemite’s search utility and app launcher with plugins. Available for free on GitHub and based on a plugin system written in Python, Flashlight extends the capabilities of Spotlight with features such as Google and Wolfram Alpha search, weather forecasts, Terminal integration, and support for online search on various websites.

In spite of a major redesign for OS X Yosemite, Spotlight didn’t get the more advanced functionalities that have become a staple of third-party apps such as Alfred and LaunchBar; Spotlight can return selected Bing results, but, for instance, it can’t fire up traditional Google searches in Safari or provide results directly in the Spotlight UI. Compare that with the useful and time-saving workflows created by the Alfred community, and it’s easy to understand why the average OS X power user may prefer the versatility of a Spotlight replacement.

Flashlight is an official Spotlight API and a “horrendous hack” according to its developer, but it proves a point. I installed Flashlight on my system running the latest Yosemite developer seed, and Flashlight displayed a small popup window with the ability to enable plugins. I activated Google, weather, and Wolfram Alpha, then I invoked Spotlight and typed “g MacStories Tweetbot” – that’s a shortcode for Google queries in Spotlight through Flashlight. Google search results were displayed in a mini-web view inside Spotlight, and I could either type Enter to open the Google search results page in Safari, or click the results in Spotlight.

I got similar results with weather and Wolfram Alpha integration, although also I stumbled across bugs as Parrott cautioned in the release notes. Weather correctly fetched my location, but Wolfram Alpha didn’t accept the (theoretically supported) “wa” command and some queries just didn’t work. And, obviously, being this a rough hack that’s not officially supported by Apple, memory consumption of the Flashlight plugin occasionally went through the roof with hundreds of MBs reported in Activity Monitor.

Flashlight may be an unfinished and hacky workaround, but it offers a glimpse of what an extendable Spotlight for Yosemite could be. While I don’t think that Apple will ever allow users to write their own plugins for Spotlight, Flashlight may grow into a relatively stable and popular utility – and if things don’t work out, there will always be Alfred and LaunchBar.

iOS 8, Email, and Extensions

One of my biggest frustrations with iOS 8 so far is the lack of extension support in Apple’s Mail app. As I wrote in iOS 8 Changed How I Work on My iPhone and iPad:

I’m disappointed to see a lack of extension support in Apple’s own apps, and particurlarly in Mail. It just makes sense, in my opinion, to be able to turn messages into tasks or archived documents, but Apple hasn’t integrated extensions with Mail yet.

My feelings haven’t changed since September and, in fact, Mail’s non-existent sharing capabilities have been exacerbated by my move towards a more iPad-centric workflow after upgrading to an iPad Air 2. I’ve been working from my iPad Air 2 on a daily basis for the past two weeks, and the friction in Apple’s Mail app has led me to use other email clients simply because they came up with their own implementation of action and share extensions for email messages.

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Automatic: Your Smart Driving Assistant on Your Smart Phone [Sponsor]

There’s a mountain of data inside your car waiting to be unleashed, and all you have to do is plug in a quick little connector and download a mobile application.

Automatic is a smart driving assistant that plugs into your car’s data port and lets you connect your smartphone (either iPhone or Android) with your car. By  talking to your car’s onboard computer and using your smartphone’s GPS and data plan to upgrade your car’s capabilities, Automatic will allow you to easily diagnose your engine light, never forget where you parked your car, and save hundreds of dollars on gas.

Automatic learns your driving habits and gives you suggestions through subtle audio cues to drive smarter and stop wasting gas. Thanks to a map view available on your phone, Automatic can display a trip timeline after every driving session, showing you how you’re doing with a Drive Score; the app can even track local gas prices and tell you how much you’re spending.

In case of engine problems, Automatic can decipher what the “check engine” light means and show you a description of the issue with a possible solution. And thanks to a feature called Crash Alert, Automatic can detect many types of serious crashes and automatically alert local authorities as well as your loved ones when you can’t.

Automatic is currently available in the US for iPhone and Android devices, with a 45-day return policy and free shipping in 2 business days. Automatic retails at $99.95 with no subscription fees.

MacStories readers can go to automatic.com/macstories to get $20 off and buy Automatic at just $79.95. For more information, check out Automatic’s website.

Our thanks to Automatic for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Integrating iThoughtsX with Marked 2→

Brett Terpstra writes about the new integration of Marked 2 with iThoughtsX:

iThoughtsX is currently my favorite mind mapping tool on OS X. Marked 2 is, obviously, my favorite way to preview Markdown. Now they work together. You can simply drag an iThoughtsX map file to Marked, and it will start previewing an outline of your map as you work. Every time you save your map in iThoughts, you’ll see the changes in the resulting Markdown document, previewed in whatever theme you’re working with.

As you can see in the video above, the integration is seamless: every change you make in a mind map is reflected in the Markdown preview of Marked.

Both iThoughts and Marked are excellent pieces of software. I miss the ubiquitous preview capabilities of Marked on iOS, but, fortunately, iThoughts developer Craig Scott worked out a pretty sweet integration with Editorial.

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Virtual: Lost in a Glass of Water→

This week Myke and Federico talk about what Nintendo is doing with Amiibo and the Quality of Life strategy, Fantasy Life and Sunset Overdrive.

On this week’s Virtual, the game that is slowly consuming my free time and a discussion on Nintendo’s curious plan for their Quality of Life initiative. Get the episode here.

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Monument Valley “Forgotten Shores” Expansion Launching Next Week→

Monument Valley, one of my favorite iOS games of 2014, will receive its first expansion next week. Titled “Forgotten Shores” and priced at $1.99 as an In-App Purchase, the expansion will add 8 new levels to Monument Valley and further explore the story of Ida and Totem.

Liz Stinson writes at Wired:

Monument Valley was designed as a complete story; the 10 levels formed a beginning, middle and end. When you closed the app for the final time, there was closure. But people didn’t want closure. They wanted more Monument Valley. Its designers were torn: They wanted to add more levels, mostly because people were asking for them. But they felt Monument Valley ended on a high note–1.4 million downloads, to be exact. “It was never 100 percent settled on that we were going to create more content for Monument Valley,” says Gray. “It’s very much a self contained experience. So the question was, how do we create something that doesn’t disrupt that?”

ustwo made a beautiful and poetic game with the original Monument Valley, and I can’t wait to get my hands on the expansion pack. You can read my original review of the game here.

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Connected: Come Grocery Shopping With Me→

This week Federico and Myke talk a little about photo storage solutions, before discussing the widgets in their Today Views, what’s on Federico’s iPad home screen and his impressions of the iPad Air 2.

Following the Home screen episode for iPhone, we couldn’t avoid mentioning widgets. Myke also wanted to know about my iPad Home screen. You can find the episode with detailed show notes (including links to apps and images) here.

Sponsored by:

  • lynda.com: An easy and affordable way to help individuals and organizations learn. Free 7-day trial.
  • Clubhouse: making it easy for anyone to create and manage communities on iOS, Android, and the web.
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