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Posts tagged with "iPadOS"

Apple Marks International Day of Persons with Disabilities with Video and Ebook

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Sunday, December 3rd is International Day of Persons with Disabilities, and to mark the day, Apple has released a short film directed by Taika Waititi. The film, shot in New Zealand, stars a young girl and a menagerie of fanciful creatures searching for one of their voices. The narrative is told in rhyme in a style that’s reminiscent of a children’s book, which foreshadows the final scene of the video between a father and his daughter, which I won’t spoil. The narrator is Dr. Tristram Ingham, a physician from Taika Waititi’s hometown in New Zealand who has a rare form of muscular dystrophy and uses Personal Voice to narrate the film.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

The video is a touching way of promoting Personal Voice, an important new accessibility feature of iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and macOS Sonoma. Users record 15 minutes of themselves speaking, which is processed privately, on-device, creating a facsimile of their voice. It’s an invaluable feature for anyone who is at risk of losing their voice as a result of a disease or disability.

As Apple explains in its press release, the voice that is created is stored locally on the device on which it is recorded but can be stored in iCloud and shared with up to three devices. If you choose to use iCloud, voice data is end-to-end encrypted. The device on which you record your voice must be password-protected, too.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

The film released today also highlights Live Speech, a feature of iOS, iPadOS, and macOS that allows users to type responses that are spoken aloud in a system-generated voice or your Personal Voice. You can learn more about setting up Personal Voice and using Live Speech from this Apple Support video on YouTube:

Alongside the video released today is a free ebook version of the story told in the video, which is designed to continue the conversation about voice loss and help people faced with losing their voices.

Apple Announces Apps of the Year

Today, Apple unveiled the winners of its annual App Store Awards in 10 categories. Earlier this month, Apple revealed almost 40 finalists across its award categories for their innovation and excellence.

As in the past, this year’s winners represent a broad cross-section of the App Store:

Apps

iPhone App of the Year: AllTrails, from AllTrails, Inc.

iPad App of the Year: Prêt-à-Makeup, from Prêt-à-Template. 

Mac App of the Year: Photomator, from UAB Pixelmator Team.

Apple TV App of the Year: MUBI, from MUBI, Inc.

Apple Watch App of the Year: SmartGym, from Mateus Abras.

Games

iPhone Game of the Year: Honkai: Star Rail, from COGNOSPHERE PTE. LTD.

iPad Game of the Year: Lost in Play, from Snapbreak Games.

Mac Game of the Year: Lies of P, from NEOWIZ. 

Apple Arcade Game of the Year: Hello Kitty Island Adventure, from Sunblink.

Cultural Impact

For the App Awards Cultural Impact category, Apple picked five apps and games, which the company chose for their “ability to drive positive change through apps and games:”

Pok Pok from Pok Pok

Proloquo from AssistiveWare*

Too Good To Go from Too Good To Go

Unpacking from Humble Bundle

Finding Hannah from Fein Games GmbH

As always it’s great to see some of the MacStories Team’s favorite apps on this list, including Pok Pok, Photomator, and SmartGym. Congratulations to the developers of all the winning apps and games.

Play 2.0 Adds YouTube Channel Support, Folders, and a New Premium Subscription

Marcos Tanaka’s Play has become the way I watch YouTube, which isn’t something I expected would happen as much as I’ve enjoyed the app since its launch early last year. The app, available on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV, started as a way to save YouTube links to watch later. That made Play indispensable for keeping track of videos in a way that is similar to how I save articles I want to read later in Matter.

With version 2.0, Marcos has transformed Play from a utility where I save links for later to how I find videos and watch them in the first place. The big difference is that Play now allows users to manage YouTube channels inside the app. I still come across YouTube links on social media, iMessage conversations, on the Club MacStories Discord server, and elsewhere that I add to Play using its excellent share sheet integration. However, with support for YouTube channels, I now have a chronological list of everything published by my favorite channels delivered to an inbox where I can quickly pick the ones I want to watch, which is wonderful.

If that sounds a lot like RSS, that’s because it is. That’s how I prefer to scan my favorite websites for articles to read, and now, it’s how I’m watching my favorite YouTube channels.

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Procreate Dreams First Impressions

Artwork source: Procreate.

Artwork source: Procreate.

I’ve been playing with Procreate Dreams for about a week. The brand new animation app from Procreate shares a lot of DNA with the company’s flagship drawing and painting app. As a result, despite my limited time and scant artistic talents, I expect Procreate Dreams will be a hit.

Procreate made a name for itself with artists with its gesture-driven, hands-on approach to art. By focusing on gestures, the company’s first app puts your artwork front and center, providing the maximum context for what you’re working on and reducing distractions. The approach also encourages interacting with the app’s canvas in a natural, fluid way.

Artwork source: Procreate.

Artwork source: Procreate.

That same approach is the hallmark of Procreate Dreams. The app tackles animation in much the same way Procreate reimagined drawing and painting on an iPad. The tools at your fingertips are deep and sophisticated but get out of the way of your creation. At times, the discoverability of features suffers a little as a result, but after spending some time tapping UI elements, long-pressing to reveal context menus, and experimenting with multi-finger gestures, Dreams reveals itself, rewarding the curious who take the time to learn what it can do.

All of the familiar Procreate brushes and tools are available in Dreams. Artwork source: Procreate.

All of the familiar Procreate brushes and tools are available in Dreams. Artwork source: Procreate.

Procreate Dreams, which has been in development for five years, offers multiple ways to create 2D animation. The full suite of Procreate brushes and tools is available to artists. For anyone who has used Procreate before, this is the perfect place to start with Dreams because it will immediately feel like home. However, underlying those familiar brushes is a new and more powerful painting engine that allows for larger canvases and more complex artwork, giving the app room to grow into the future.

Dreams also introduces a new way to animate called Performing, which allows artists to record the movement of their creations using touch. Tap record and drag a selected item on the app’s stage, and Procreate Dreams will add keyframes and paths automatically, simplifying the process of bringing your artwork to life.

Artwork source: Procreate.

Artwork source: Procreate.

Other edits can be accomplished from the timeline, which supports multiple layers, manual keyframing, cel animation, video editing and compositing, and more, all using gestures to access features and select content. When you put it all together, there’s a lot going on, but it works smoothly thanks to Apple’s Metal framework running on Apple silicon.

You’re not limited to hand-drawn animation on a blank canvas, either. Dreams supports video, to which you can add an animation layer and edit, crop, zoom, pan, and more. Separate audio tracks can be added, too.

I plan to spend some quality time in Procreate Dreams over the holidays. Drawing apps has never been my forté, and drawing on a timeline adds an additional element of complexity. However, Dreams isn’t like any other animation app I’ve tried before. My familiarity with Procreate gave me a head start, easing me into unfamiliar territory. That’s a big advantage for the app and an even bigger one for anyone who has ever wanted to try their hand at animation.

Procreate Dreams is available on the App Store as a one-time purchase for $19.99.

Apple Updates Logic Pro for iPad and Mac

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Today, Apple announced updates to Logic Pro for the iPad and Mac. Both platforms gain support for 32-bit float recording and Mastering Assistant, which the company says “can instantly analyze the audio and make expert refinements to the sound, adjusting elements such as the dynamics, frequency balance, timbre, and loudness.” Mastering Assistant’s processing can be manually tweaked by musicians, too.

The update to Logic Pro for Mac adds Sample Alchemy and Beat Breaker, two tools that debuted on Logic Pro for iPad when it was introduced earlier this year. Apple also added new sound packs to Logic Pro for Mac:

The Hybrid Textures sound pack includes a collection of 70 patches, as well as over 80 Apple Loops featuring Sample Alchemy, while the Vox Melodics sound pack contains a diverse collection of over 475 lyrical phrases, hooks, layered harmonies, FX, and one-shots.

On the iPad, Logic Pro now supports Split View and Stage Manager, allowing musicians to work in multiple apps at once and take advantage of drag and drop between them. The app also has a new Recorder mode for recording sounds with the iPad’s microphone and a Quick Sampler plugin to create instruments from sounds. Samples can be previewed with gestures in Logic Pro’s Browser, and new in-app Lessons are available to help users learn the app’s new features and more.

It’s great to see Apple continue to expand Logic Pro’s capabilities and bring the Mac and iPad’s feature set closer together. More than anything, though, I’d like to see iPadOS-level audio routing added to enable the iPad to handle multiple audio inputs and outputs so I could participate in a Zoom call and simultaneously record a separate microphone input.

TV Remote: Control Your TV From Your Lock Screen, Home Screen, and Live Activities

Developers have come up with endlessly clever uses for interactive widgets. I love testing them all, but one type is beginning to stick more than others. It’s the widgets for apps that require quick interactions when you’re in the middle of something else. Turning off the lights in my home office when I’m finished working for the day, toggling work timers as I switch from task to task, and then checking off those tasks as I complete them are all perfect interactions for widgets that require minimal switching away from whatever I’m doing. Hopefully, that means fewer distractions and, in turn, a more productive day.

But not everything is about peak efficiency and checklists. Sometimes, you just want to relax, which widgets can help with, too. One of my favorite apps to help with that, which recently added interactive widget support, is TV Remote by Adam Foot. Foot’s app is one I already used with my LG C2 TV, but it’s the app’s new widgets that have graduated it to a regular part of my TV routine.

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Longplay 2.0: An Album-Oriented Apple Music Player with Loads of New Features

Longplay 2.0 by Adrian Schoenig is out, and it’s a massive update of the iOS and iPadOS album-oriented music app.

If you’ve tried Longplay before, the update will be familiar. The first time it launches, it quickly checks your Apple Music library (about six seconds for over 1200 albums in my case), finds all the nearly complete and complete albums, and displays them in a grid of album art. I’ve always loved this interface because it does such a great job of emphasizing album art. However, what’s different is a long list of new features, but since we’ve only covered the app for Club MacStories members and AppStories listeners, I’m going to cover everything and call out the updated features as I go.

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Obscura 4 Features A Refreshed Design, New Features, and A Different Business Model

Ben McCarthy’s career as a developer coincides almost exactly with mine as a writer. As a result, I’ve had the pleasure of watching Obscura evolve from little more than an idea to one of the best camera apps on the App Store. As with so many apps, what sets Obscura apart from others is Ben’s attention to detail, impeccable design taste, and deep knowledge of the app’s subject matter – photography.

Today, Obscura 4 is out, less than two years since I reviewed version 3 with a refreshed design and a handful of new features. The update includes a change in Obscura’s business model, too. In the past, the app was paid up front, with each major release being a new purchase. Going forward, Obscura is free to download, with certain advanced features, known as Obscura Ultra, requiring a subscription.

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Mercury Weather 2.0 Adds Trip Forecasts

If you’ve ever found yourself repeatedly checking the weather of a trip destination in the days leading up to your travels, you’ll appreciate Mercury Weather 2.0, which was released today for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch. The update’s marquee feature is Trip Forecast, which lets you set up a trip once and keep tabs on your destination’s weather as your travel dates approach. I reviewed Mercury Weather a couple of weeks ago, so for more on the app’s other features, be sure to check out that review.

From Mercury Weather’s Locations view, there’s now an option to add upcoming trips. Just add your destination and the dates of your trip, and it will appear in a separate, collapsable ‘Upcoming Trips’ section, along with the current conditions and dates of the trip. You can also name your trip and add a custom icon.

You can switch between home and upcoming trips in the Daily Forecast section of Mercury Weather.

You can switch between home and upcoming trips in the Daily Forecast section of Mercury Weather.

As your departure date approaches, your destinations will appear along the top of the Daily Forecast graph. Tap a trip’s name to see that location’s weather forecast or the ‘Home’ button to return to your home location’s weather. Once your trip dates pass, the forecast for your destination just disappears from the app unlike destinations you might otherwise save in a weather app’s list of locations.

Trip Forecasts have been incorporated in Mercury Weather’s small and medium-sized ‘Daily Forecast (Customizable)’ widgets too. The widget includes a summary forecast for the next eight days, and if any of those days are part of your upcoming trip, it will show the forecast for that location instead of your current location.

Mercury Weather on the Mac.

Mercury Weather on the Mac.

Trip Forecast is an excellent addition to Mercury Weather. I love that I can set up a trip once and forget about it, letting the app show me the upcoming forecast as my travel day approaches and staying out of the way until then. One thing I still miss from other weather apps is radar data, but aside from that, I’ve loved using Mercury Weather this summer.

Mercury Weather is free to download on the App Store, with Home and Lock Screen widgets, the Apple Watch app, historical data, and more than one saved location available to subscribers for $1.99/month or $9.99/year, with a $34.99 lifetime purchase option. A Family Sharing subscription is $3.49/month, $16.99/year, or $59.99 for a lifetime purchase.