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It’s not for me but I think the app looks good and the animations are gorgeous. Listen lacks traditional playback controls or buttons, relying on gestures, swipes, and taps to play, pause, and skip music. The idea is that you can drag the album artwork around to trigger various actions, but it works well for some things and not so much for others. I think developers have to keep in mind that removing buttons adds a lot of complexity — in this case something simple like playing a song over AirPlay requires a very specific drag gesture. Listen’s great for shuffle play, but not so much for rummaging through your music collection. Also, what’s up with circular artwork lately?
Check it out on the App Store — it’s free to download.
Ole Begemann writes about the dilemma Apple may be facing with adding new inter-app communication features to iOS:
I think Apple faces a real dilemma here. Any API that facilitates data sharing between apps without user interaction can easily be abused for tracking purposes, a practice Apple has opposed pretty strongly – at least in word if not in actual rejections of apps.
After Apple forced Smile to stop using the Reminders database to sync TextExpander snippets across apps, this was often mentioned as the reason behind the removal of named pasteboards (which Smile used to leverage): advertisers were abusing the system to track users.
Ole’s proposed solution is “an official sharing API that only works with user interaction”, and I agree with that idea. I have lost hope over the years and I don’t think that Apple will bring something like Automator to iOS any time soon (though I’d always accept a surprise), but adding user-controlled app sharing features would be a good start.
My idea is still the same one from May:
This is an issue that I have been pondering for years. In 2010, Chris Clark posted a prototype (powered by Briefs) of a “services menu for iPhone”, and I keep thinking that such menu could be the solution to iOS’ inter-app communication woes. I don’t see Apple moving away from the one-app-at-a-time model, but I think that allowing users to invoke a menu (either for text selection or general shortcuts) to activate actions could help in better linking apps together. The menu would be sanctioned by Apple and available with a new API, so that developers would also be able to integrate it in more classic versions of “Open In” and “Share” menus.
Furthermore, by leveraging technologies like XPC, I’d like to see Apple enabling users to do less switching back and forth between apps. Today, you can tap on “Email” buttons to bring up a Mail.app modal view that doesn’t yank you out of the current app. Imagine, with iOS 7, being able to “read this later” by tapping on a link and saving it in a Pocket popup; pasting text and links from Safari into a Pages popup of the document you are working on; or, tweeting a photo from the Camera app with a Tweetbot menu and composing a Drafts note from anywhere.
Today, Greg Pierce tweeted about a possible “OAP” (Other-App Purchase) concept, and that’s also something I’ve been thinking about. If apps could better communicate with each other, apps could become “features” to unlock. Imagine if the user could choose to save a photo to Evernote or Dropbox from any app using a Mail-like popup that doesn’t take you out of the current app. Maybe next year?
Khoi Vinh, writing on Medium:
[…] what I find is absent from streaming music is everything that complements the act of listening to music. It’s the very thing that digital music, more even than records and CDs, should excel at: metadata.
Who produced that debut album from Lorde? Who were the musicians who played with her on it? Where was it recorded, and when? Does Lorde thank God, her parents, and/or her cat for making the record possible? I don’t know the answer to any of these questions, because I’ve only ever experienced Lorde’s music via Spotify, where such information is absent entirely.
Remember when Apple promised richer, digital equivalents of liner notes and album artwork with iTunes LP?
What I don’t want is a PDF copy of that album’s included artwork, nor do I want glitchy Flash-like interactive experiences that sidestep my music app when I purchase music from the iTunes store. The former feels lazy and the latter feels like a cheap gimmick. I’d rather see lyric metadata in the songs I purchase from iTunes, which would show up when that album artwork is tapped on iPads, iPhones, and iPod touches. Heck, Nine Inch Nails was doing simple stuff like embedding individual pieces of artwork into their digitally downloaded songs and that was actually cool. Making digital music feel like it has more substance doesn’t need to be complicated. And if it’s just metadata we’re talking about, then there’s no reason little things like this couldn’t be done by any service to make music feel much more tangible.
Music streaming service Rdio has today released an update to their iOS app that brings a new design for Profile views, a sleep timer, and various UI improvements for iOS 7.
The Rdio app has been regarded as one of the iOS 6 apps that, in hindsight, got the design of iOS 7 right before Apple even unveiled iOS 7, but, after the release of the OS in September, Rdio hasn’t done much to turn what was a forward-looking iOS 6 app into a real iOS 7 app. Today, version 2.5.4 shows an iOS 7 keyboard for search and it brings subtle changes to backgrounds, but otherwise Rdio hasn’t received a major redesign for iOS 7 yet.
Profiles views have been updated, showing avatars in the middle of the screen on a blurred background of the profile picture itself. The new design is available for both your personal profile and other people’s profile views, and it gives you easier access to a person’s “FM” station as well as the song they last played on Rdio.
In this update, Rdio also included a sleep timer feature: from the Settings, you can choose to automatically stop music playback after 15 to 120 minutes, which is a handy addition for people who like to put on some music before bedtime. You can get Rdio 2.5.4 on the App Store.
For the past three years, I’ve been running a series called “My Must-Have Mac Apps” that, once a year, would list the apps that I found indispensable on my Mac. This year, considering the changes that I went through from a workflow perspective, I thought it would be appropriate to start focusing on iOS as well. The first installment was about the iPad; today, I’m going to talk about the Mac.
As I wrote when Mavericks was released, I don’t need my Mac as much as I used to. I can do most of my work from iOS (particularly from my iPad mini), but that doesn’t mean that I don’t need a Mac for some tasks or that I’ve stopped using it altogether. I still have to use a few OS X-only apps and tools to get work done – stuff that wouldn’t be possible on an iPad, no matter how hard I try.
I may not be covering new Mac app releases on a weekly basis anymore, but, honestly, 2013 has been the year of iOS 7, with thousands of third-party developers shifting their focus to Apple’s mobile platform in order to update and redesign their apps in time for September. And the fact that Mavericks didn’t bring a radical new design or groundbreaking user features didn’t help either, as developers of Mac apps chose to release updates that focused on under-the-hood improvements and general optimizations.
And yet, in spite of a new design direction and several changes to built-in apps, iOS 7 still doesn’t come with valid alternatives to the stuff OS X is great at: a filesystem with easy management of files that can be opened by multiple apps, precision editing with a cursor, command line utilities, system-wide automation tools, and more. For as much as the iOS ecosystem is maturing and changing at an incredible pace, I haven’t stopped using my Mac and there are some things that can only be done on OS X. And therefore, like every year, I have put together a list of the apps that I consider my must-haves – apps that I install every time I set up my Mac and that I use regularly.
This year, I’ve simplified the list and gotten rid of extra layers for apps that I’m no longer using. You can compare the 2013 list to last year’s one and follow links from there to go back to previous years. You also won’t find last year’s section for price and Mac App Store stats at the bottom: developers often make price changes and release new versions of their apps outside the Mac App Store, so, ultimately, those stats couldn’t be properly contextualized over time.
The list below is organized in four sections: Main, for apps that I use several times every day; Writing, for tools that I employ to research and craft articles for MacStories; and Image & Video Editing, listing apps that allow me to put together screencasts, GIFs, and images for the site. Each app is listed with its App Store/website link and, at the end of the article, you’ll find my Mac app of the year.
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Such a great story about an Apple retail store’s staff opening early to make a kid’s day feel special. Read the post to see why, look at the photos, and remember the importance of Apple’s work on Accessibility features for iOS:
Over the last few years Ben’s various vision team members have talked about how wonderful the iPad is as an assistive device. Kit researched and learned more about the amazing technology it has to help people with visual impairments, the list of apps great for kids with visual disabilities, even built in features like Siri can make a significant difference in the day to day lives of someone with a vision challenge. We just didn’t know how to make that happen with the budget, so it was something we kept in the back of our minds but hadn’t pursued. Once again little miracles started to fall into place with offers of help and surprises here and there and so much support and love from friends and family.
Christmas is upon us once again! #MacStoriesDeals is the best place to find great deals for Mac and iOS apps and games, Apple hardware deals, and some great book and audio specials.
There are thousands of software and hardware deals online. We carefully pick the best ones and collect them in a single post with links to buy or share discounted products. You don’t need to be overwhelmed by App Store holiday deals because we take care of finding the best stuff for you.
Bookmark this post, and come back every day to find updated deals for each category. Updates will be listed as new entries at the top of each category.
You can find us as @MacStoriesDeals on Twitter.
Released today as a free update for existing customers, Camera+ 5.0 for iPhone brings new editing features in a section called “The Lab”, redesigned icons, and interface updates to captions and filter layering. Read more
