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Evernote Wants to Go Beyond Note-Taking→

At its conference in San Francisco today, Evernote announced a slew of updates for its core iOS and OS X experience as well as a redesigned web app (currently available as public beta), a redesign of Penultimate, a new scanner app, and new Market products.

Harry McCracken has an overview of the announcements at Fast Company. He concludes with a legitimate concern:

As a pretty committed Evernote user–I have more of my digital life stored there than any one other single place–all of these announcements leave me both excited and at least a tad concerned. Profoundly useful though the service is, it’s never quite felt like it’s nailed the best, simplest, most intuitive interface for what it does. (The fact that it has a habit of radically redoing its user interface on a regular basis is presumably an acknowledgement of that.) Adding more features will only make it tougher to keep Evernote coherent and approachable.

I’m curious to check out the updates to the iOS apps (I use Evernote for work every day) and the redesign of the Mac app for Yosemite looks nice. I’m a fan of the web app: by default, it lets you write a new note with just a few clicks, but it packs most of the features available in other versions of Evernote. It was a much needed change.

I have my doubts about the contextual and messaging features Evernote announced, but they also have potential and I’d rather wait until I can try them. I’m not sure I’d ever benefit from links pulled in from the WSJ or LinkedIn while I’m doing research, but other sources would be welcome. As for messaging, it is going to be hard for Evernote to beat the workplace integration that’s being built by Slack, but I imagine it could be a nice plus for businesses that rely heavily on Evernote internally.

I liked the tone and message of the keynote. Phil Libin is a good presenter and he genuinely seems to be invested in Evernote as a product. Evernote is often derided for their frequent redesigns, but they have struck a good balance with iOS 7 in the past year (both Evernote and Skitch are now highly polished and functional apps) and the Yosemite update looks like a moderate refresh rather than a ground-up redesign. Evernote has insanely high goals – software for “your life’s work” is the new slogan – and a willingness to adapt to people’s ever-changing needs can be a good thing. The partnership with News Corp. seems a little strange, but, overall, the event was solid.

Check out the Evernote blog for details on Context, the new web app, and Work Chat.

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Working with Mac OS 9 Today→

Andrew Cunningham tried to work with Mac OS 9 and published an interesting account of his experience at Ars Technica. Make sure to reach the conclusion for some good points about software updates:

People love to complain about change. Those complaints aren’t always unwarranted. We live in an era of constant updates, where your browser changes every six weeks, and your operating system changes every 12 months. Who even knows how often they’re changing Gmail and Twitter and Facebook? The idea of supporting and using a single OS for 13 years seems completely absurd. Sometimes you just want everything to stand still for, like, a second.

Also, don’t miss Riccardo Mori’s counterpoints at System Folder.

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Twitter for Mac Updated with Image Features→

Speaking of Twitter apps, Twitter today released an update to their official app for Mac that brings support for images in direct messages and tweets with multiple images (first rolled out on the iPhone in December and March, respectively).

Progress on Twitter for Mac has been slow, but I’m glad the app isn’t completely abandoned. It would be nice to have all the recent features and design changes of the iOS app, though (particularly Cards and redesigned profiles).

Side note: you can use this Terminal command to enable circular avatars in the app.

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Emoji++ Is an Emoji Keyboard That Makes Sense

I wouldn’t consider myself a professional emoji user as Casey Liss, but, like many others, I do use emoji to enrich communications with friends and colleagues on a daily basis. Apple’s Emoji keyboard never made much sense to me: it’s hard to find the right emoji in the keyboard’s questionable category choices and characters are organized in pages that you need to swipe multiple times. I often want to use new emoji I haven’t sent before, and it always feels like I’m playing a guessing game against iOS to remember where the koala or the monkeys are.

Thankfully, Underscore David Smith has accepted the challenge of improving the emoji keyboard and released Emoji++ today, an iOS 8 custom keyboard that makes it easier to find and use emoji.

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Firmware Update Brings CarPlay to Selected Pioneer Products

Pioneer has today issued firmware updates for several of their aftermarket in-dash receivers that brings direct support for Apple’s CarPlay software. The firmware update is available for users of Pioneer’s AVIC-F60DAB, AVIC-F960DAB, AVIC-F960BT, AVIC-F860BT and the AVH-X8600BT dashboard systems, as well as the new SPH-DA120 model.

“CarPlay enriches the iPhone experience in the vehicle by providing a safer way to access the iPhone features they want to use most while driving,” said Philippe Weyers, marketing communication manager at Pioneer Europe. “With Pioneer’s implementation, CarPlay can now be integrated into millions of vehicles already on the road.”

Spotify has also updated its app today, bringing support for CarPlay. It joins other apps such as Podcasts, Beats Music, iHeartRadio, MLB At Bat, Stitcher and CBS News in supporting CarPlay.

Apple has partnered with dozens of car manufacturers, as well as Pioneer and Alpine, to bring an improved experience for iPhone users in cars. By leveraging the power of Siri, CarPlay focuses on making it easier and safer to accomplish basic tasks while driving. You can learn more about CarPlay here. 

Paste+, a Clipboard Action Widget

When iOS 8 launched three weeks ago, I came across a company called Avanio Labs that had launched a set of three apps on the App Store: Paste+, Agenda+, and Forecast+. The apps were presented as Notification Center widgets, and I found that interesting as I assumed that Apple would reject apps that only offered widgets with no primary functionality. Of Avanio’s three apps, I’ve been using Paste+ on a daily basis. I think it’s a nice little utility to save taps and launch specific iOS features faster with Notification Center.

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Implementing iOS 8 Document Pickers

The new document picker and provider functionality in iOS 8 is exciting technology because it expands on the possibilities of what we are capable of doing with our devices. We are already seeing a flood of great apps integrating document pickers and extensions from developers like Dropbox, Panic, and Readdle. I recently had the need for the new UIDocumentPicker functionality so I decided to dive in and see what it takes to implement the feature. As it turns out, getting a basic implementation is extremely easy and only requires a few lines of code. Of course, this is well documented by Apple and seasoned developers will have no problems implementing a picker but for us noobs it helps to see the process laid out – so here is a brief walkthrough.

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