After three weeks with the new MacBook, I can easily declare it as my favorite Mac, and none of the details that left some of the tech press wailing and gnashing their teeth have actually been a problem. Only one port? A minor annoyance at worst. Performance? It works great for everything that I need to do. Keyboard? I absolutely love it and can’t imagine switching back. In hindsight, the only regret I have is spending all that money on an iPad Air 2.
My Favorite Mac: The New 12” Retina MacBook
A Weekend at KansasFest→
Good story by Jason Koebler on KansasFest:
Every summer, about 70 people descend on Kansas City’s Rockhurst University for KansasFest, a conference that can best be described as a 5-day sleepaway camp exclusively for fans of the Apple II, one of the first commercially successful personal computers. KansasFest started in 1989 as an Apple II developer’s conference—26 years later, it’s still entirely dedicated to the Apple II.
Apple Music and DJ Apps→
Allen Pike, one of the developers behind WeddingDJ and the excellent Party Monster, has written on the new issues introduced with Apple Music for third-party media apps:
According to our latest stats, 17% of Party Monster users have been unable to play a song in their iTunes library, and 22% of WeddingDJ users have tried to cue a playlist that has so many unplayable tracks that we need to display a warning. While it’s a miracle that we’ve been able to maintain a 4 star rating through all of this, it’s not going to last if we stay the course.
Given all of this, we have a couple options. We could double down and go pro, catering to serious DJs who can load DRM-free music into our sandbox. Pro DJs who use our apps often have a large licensed library of songs, and won’t rely on iTunes Match or Apple Music.
Alternatively, we could steer towards the mass market, drop crossfading support, and regain full iTunes compatibility. We could also put in the work to add support for Spotify or other competing streaming services, and focus our apps less on playback features and more on having a great UI for queueing.
The standard iOS media player has never given a lot of freedom to third-party developers. I wonder if Apple Music with its “love” system could be even more of an excuse for Apple not to make the media player APIs more flexible. Not to mention, of course, DRM.
Virtual: Great Taste→
This week Federico and Myke discuss Nintendo’s Q1 results, Dragon Quest coming to the Nintendo NX, and why Angry Birds 2 makes them so mad about free-to-play games.
If you’ve been curious to know my take on Angry Birds 2 (released this week on the App Store), today’s episode of Virtual is for you. You can listen here.
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- Igloo: An intranet you’ll actually like, free for up to 10 people.
Connected: The Edition Episode→
On the golden anniversary of Connected, the crew sits down to talk about Apple Pay in the UK, Apple News and RSS before sharing a little about how they write articles and prepare for podcasts.
It seems crazy to me that we’ve already done 50 episodes of Connected. This week’s episode is a good one, as Stephen and I talk about our writing process and Myke takes us behind the scenes of Relay FM. You can listen here.
Sponsored by:
Reeder 3 for Mac Enters Public Beta→
Speaking of public betas, Silvio Rizzi launched a public beta of Reeder 3 for Mac earlier today. The updated app is built for Yosemite, has some new themes and a private browsing mode, and it’s also an Instapaper client. If you’re running El Capitan, the beta already supports San Francisco and Split View. Plus, it will be a free update when it launches.
Pocket Launches Public Beta with Recommendations
Pocket wants to build a save button for the Internet, and with over 2 billion items saved to the service the company is now turning to personalization as a way to entice users to save more to get more out of it.
Today, Pocket founder Nate Weiner has announced a public beta of Pocket for iOS, Android, and the web, featuring a new Recommendations feature to receive new items similar to what has been saved in the main list.
Apple Music on Snapchat→
Adario Strange, reporting for Mashable on Apple’s usage of Snapchat for Apple Music:
In a fairly unprecedented move, Apple has taken its promotional message to a competing software concern: Snapchat.
The company’s brief Snapchat story takes us to Los Angeles, where Beats 1 DJ Zane Lowe (sporting an Apple Watch) goes behind the scenes of Beats 1 L.A. After a few scenes of Lowe DJing in the studio, he throws it to his colleague, DJ Julie Adenuga, to continue the music program in London.
I have Snapchat installed because of stories and how publishers are using it (see our previous articles on it), and this is pretty cool indeed. Apple Music has been very active on Twitter, and I hope this Snapchat experiment is successful because I love this kind of “behind the scenes” access.
Fantastical 2.4 Adds Drafts Support
Released today on the App Store, Fantastical 2.4 adds support for Japanese and a new drafts feature that, once again, shows how Flexibits is building a smarter calendar app with delightful little touches.