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Logitech Unveils New Keys-To-Go iPad Keyboard

Earlier today, Logitech unveiled updates to its line of iPad keyboards and cases (Ultrathin and Type+) and announced a brand new Bluetooth keyboard called Keys-To-Go.

The Logitech Keys-To-Go is a standalone ultra-portable Bluetooth keyboard that is thin, light and durable, making it the perfect partner for on-the-go typing. At just 6.1 mm thick and 180 grams, it’s simple to tuck into your purse, briefcase or coat pocket without taking up precious space or weighing you down, and is compatible with the entire iPad lineup. What’s more, the rechargeable battery can last up to three months on a single charge, so it’s ready to type whenever (and wherever!) inspiration strikes.

The Keys-To-Go will be compatible with the iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV, and its FabricSkin material will make it waterproof and durable. The keyboard is fairly reminiscent of Microsoft’s Touch Cover for the Surface tablet, which attaches to the device and lets touch-type via Bluetooth on physical “keys”.

Since 2012, I’ve been using Logitech’s original Tablet Keyboard as my external keyboard for the iPad and I love it. The keyboard is large enough (smaller than Apple’s Bluetooth keyboard but larger than Logitech’s keyboard cases and upcoming Keys-To-Go), it has dedicated iOS shortcuts (I use the Home and Spotlight keys a lot), and it’s sturdy and durable. When it comes to controlling iOS with a keyboard, I can’t recommend the Logitech Tablet Keyboard enough.

I’m intrigued by the Keys-To-Go: it comes in multiple colors, it keeps the dedicated iOS keys, and it has a rechargeable battery. And, it looks really thin and it can be wiped clean easily. But I’ve never typed comfortably on small Bluetooth keyboards, and I’m afraid that I would miss the subtle clickiness of the Tablet Keyboard.

The Keys-To-Go will be available next month at $69.99.

iOS 8 Now on Over Half of Active iOS Devices→

Juli Clover, writing for MacRumors:

After five and a half weeks of availability, Apple’s iOS 8 operating system is now installed on 52 percent of iOS devices, according to new numbers posted on Apple’s App Store support page for developers.

The number is measured by Apple through App Store stats.

iOS 8 has been, in my personal experience, “difficult” to explain: some of its new features like widgets and extensions are best demonstrated with third-party apps that not everybody has, and additions like Handoff and keyboards aren’t immediately noticeable like a new design. It appears that more people are now upgrading to a new major version of iOS after a few updates, but there are also new iPhones and iPads with iOS 8.1 pre-installed that may have influenced Apple’s statistics.

Still, iOS 8 numbers are going up and that should be good news for app developers, but it doesn’t seem like iOS 7 can be completely left behind yet.

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The New musiXmatch Widget for iOS 8

I’ve talked about musiXmatch, an app to find lyrics for songs playing on your device, before here on MacStories. Earlier this year, I covered the app’s new version for iOS 7, noting how an officially-licensed database of lyrics with a polished interface makes it a superior choice for anyone who wants to read song lyrics on iOS:

Overall, musiXmatch is impressive and accurate. I’ve discovered lyrics for hundreds of songs and finally learned some of my favorite ones thanks to musiXmatch. The app can listen to songs playing on the same device, and its integration with iOS’ local music library means it can display lyrics for songs you already have without having to use the microphone at all. I mostly find myself trying to find lyrics for songs that are playing on my computer or iPad, and the app’s on-time, licensed lyrics provide a great experience for those interested in knowing the lyrics of songs they like.

musiXmatch rarely fails to find lyrics for me, and I like its design and integration with Apple’s Music app. And last week, they released an iOS 8 update with one of the most impressive widgets I’ve seen to date.

Here’s how it works: start playing a song in Apple’s Music app, open Notification Center, and musiXmatch will show you synced lyrics that follow the song you’re listening to. If you’re used to the traditional musiXmatch experience (in the iOS app or one of their desktop integrations, such as Spotify), you’ll recognize the service’s display of lyrics and timeliness – only as a widget on iOS.

From both technical and user experience perspectives, this is excellent work from the musiXmatch team. Over the weekend, I tested the widget with music I had in iTunes Match, albums I synced locally, and, today, Taylor Swift’s new album, and musiXmatch always found lyrics and displayed them at the right time in the widget, which needs less than a second to appear (tested on an iPad Air 2 and iPhone 6; obviously, musiXmatch needs an Internet connection to work). The widget also has buttons to open the Trending, Music ID, and Search sections in the musiXmatch app as well as playback controls, but synced lyrics with artwork preview in Notification Center were the highlight of this update.

Unfortunately, due to iOS limitations, musiXmatch can’t display lyrics in the widget for third-party music streaming services such as Spotify, Rdio, or Apple’s Beats Music, but it’ll work for apps that use Apple’s Music as the background player. The widget can’t access the device microphone to identify a song without launching the app, and, for now, musiXmatch can’t display lyrics in the widget for iTunes Radio streams either. These limitations narrow the potential user base (people who only use Spotify or Beats won’t see lyrics in Notification Center), but hopefully musiXmatch will be able to develop some kind of integration with third-parties.

The musiXmatch widget for iOS 8 is too good to pass up. If you use Apple’s Music app and would like a way to see synced lyrics with a single swipe, download musiXmatch for free from the App Store.

Transporter: Your Own Private Cloud [Sponsor]

Transporter is your own private cloud for syncing, accessing, protecting, and sharing all your files across all your devices. A storage device that you control, Transporter starts at $99 with no monthly fees or other recurring costs and it doesn’t put your files on anyone else’s cloud.

Setting up a Transporter is easy: you create an account and create a folder on your Mac or PC to hold all the files you want to make available on multiple devices. Whether you choose the Transporter (in 500 GB, 1 TB, or 2 TB variations) or the Transporter Sync (turn any USB drive into a Transporter device), your files will always be securely stored in your own private cloud that you can access with desktop and mobile apps. On OS X, unlike other sharing services, you can select any folder and set it up for syncing and sharing.

Transporter is great for storing any kind of file, especially private photos and videos. With the iOS app, you can automatically upload new photos and videos to your Transporter device, which can hold hundreds of GBs worth of media and securely share them with your friends and family. Your data is always encrypted during transfers to protect it against snooping, and images are always saved at full resolution from the iOS camera roll.

Alternatively, you can use your Transporter for work purposes and keep important documents and projects in a cloud that’s under your control. Last week, Transporter launched versioning, a feature that lets you save revisions of files automatically and restore them at any time. Think of it like Time Machine for Transporter files: it doesn’t consume too much space thanks to incremental versioning, and you can rest assured that you’ll never lose changes to a file.

Transporter lets you access everything you want, right when you need it. Find out more here.

Our thanks to Transporter for sponsoring MacStories this week.

iOS 8.1 and iCloud Issues

Since upgrading to the first beta of iOS 8.1, I started noticing that a few apps were randomly hanging or crashing at launch. I thought that the problem would be fixed for the public release of iOS 8.1, but soon after updating to the stable version, it occurred again.

I then thought that a clean install of iOS 8.1 would be the solution, but both my iPhone 6 and iPad Air 2 on a clean install of iOS 8.1 (not restored from a backup) are still experiencing the iCloud hanging/crashing bug. For the past week, apps like MindNode, Twitterrific, Pixelmator, and (before the latest update) Drafts have been hanging or crashing at launch on my devices, forcing me to force-quit them, reboot (with a hard reset), or manually copy data because iCloud wasn’t syncing. Each app was tested with existing document libraries as well as an empty database.

Greg Pierce has been investigating the issue with his app, Drafts 4, and he writes:

iOS 8.1 shipped with a serious bug affecting apps that use iCloud. If you have seen apps randomly hang, especially on launch, it’s likely you are seeing the effects of this issue. Many apps use iCloud for a variety of data storage needs, so even apps that you were not aware were using iCloud may exhibit issues related to this bug.

As he notes, there’s little third-party developers can do to fix the issue:

There is little developers can do to avoid this problem, so if you are a user seeing this issue, please be patient waiting on a fix and do not blame your friendly neighborhood app developer for this problem. Especially, do not blame them in an App Store review.

Greg managed to ship a workaround with Drafts 4.0.3, but that’s not a solution to the underlying problem of iCloud and iOS 8.1. Based on my informal polling on Twitter, the bug doesn’t affect all iCloud accounts but it is common, and even when an iOS device is affected the issue is intermittent and only partially “fixed” by rebooting or logging out of iCloud (read: it’ll happen again after a few hours or days). In short, there doesn’t seem to be a solution for affected accounts for now.

Hopefully the issue will be fixed soon by Apple, as it is a serious problem that makes apps with iCloud features unreliable and essentially unusable. If you’re developer, read Greg’s post for more technical details.

What Photographers Need to Know About iOS 8.1 and Yosemite→

The new OS X and iOS jive better now than ever before. Both platforms are packed with new features and I’ve only touched on the aspects that are especially significant for photographers. I’m personally most excited about iCloud’s ability to give us access to our image archive at all times and AirDrop between Mac and iPhone.

Photographer Austin Mann (you may have heard of him before) has shared a good collection of tips and tricks for taking pictures and managing files on iOS 8.1 and OS X Yosemite. I’m trying iCloud Photo Library as my main photo management solution, and I’m positively (and surprisingly) impressed so far.

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Connected: An Italian Stephen→

This week, the boys discuss the ever-expanding iPad line and Stephen yells about Yosemite.

This week’s episode of Connected was recorded before I got my iPad Air 2, and it includes some thoughts on moving from the iPad mini to the larger iPad as well as software we’re not seeing from Apple. You can get the episode here.

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distribute()→

Created by Vlambeer (the indie studio behind Apple Design Award winner Ridiculous Fishing, Luftrausers, and other games), distribute() is a new tool to help game developers keep track of a press list. From the website:

distribute() is modelled to save you valuable development hours you’d otherwise have to spend on distributing builds and maintaining press lists. Simply send out a distribute() link for your game to your press contacts, and distribute() will organise all required information into a neatly organised list the system manages and maintains for you. Furthermore, distribute() will simplify numerous public data sources into a simple Reach statistic to help you decide how to prioritise your press strategy for your new release.

There are several interesting ideas in distribute(), but this one struck me as a genius addition:

Verified press contacts help you avoid fake requests from video content creators or people pretending to be from larger websites or YouTube personalities. Verified press contacts are manually vetted and constantly updated to reflect the ever-changing games press landscape. Additionally, distribute() can be set to handle requests from verified accounts automatically, so that you can be sure esteemed members from the press can get access to your game as soon as you flip the switch.

Properly maintaining a press list is hard, especially if you have to focus on other aspects of launching a game on the App Store or other platforms. If you’re a game developer, sign up for the distribute() alpha here. Vlambeer also made presskit(), a free tool to create press pages.

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