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Posts tagged with "iPadOS"

MacStories Selects 2022: Recognizing the Best Apps of the Year

Introduction

John: It’s time for the MacStories Selects awards, our annual celebration of the apps we love and the people who make them. Every year since 2018, we’ve paused at the end of a busy year to reflect on the hundreds of apps we’ve tried and recognize the best.

It’s been another big year for apps, driven by the ingenuity and creativity of the developers who make them combined with new technologies introduced by Apple. Note-taking apps were big again, and just as we get ready to put 2022 in the rear-view mirror, the read-later app space has begun heating up like it’s 2010 all over again.

Last year, we kicked off the MacStories Selects Awards with a new Lifetime Achievement Award, which we gave to PCalc by James Thomson whose app will celebrate its 30th anniversary in a couple of days. This year, we’ve got another app that has stood the test of time and had an outsized impact on the world of apps, which you can read about in a special story written by our Alex Guyot, whose history with the winning app makes him the perfect choice to present the award.

It’s also time to pause and honor the best apps of the year in the following seven categories:

  • Best New App
  • Best App Update
  • Best New Feature
  • Best Watch App
  • Best Mac App
  • Best Design
  • App of the Year

which were picked by the MacStories team, plus the winner of the Readers’ Choice Award, which was picked by Club MacStories members, for a total of nine awards, plus six runners-up, all of which are covered below.

We also recorded a special episode of AppStories covering all the winners and runners-up. It’s a terrific way to learn more about this year’s apps and includes an interview with our Lifetime Achievement Award winner.

You can listen to the episode below.

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So, without further ado, it’s my pleasure to introduce the 2022 MacStories Selects Awards to the MacStories community.

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iPadOS 16.2 and Stage Manager for External Displays: Work in Progress, But Worth the Wait

Stage Manager in iPadOS 16.2.

Stage Manager in iPadOS 16.2.

Ever since I last wrote about iPadOS 16, I have continued using Stage Manager on my iPad Pro. As I wrote in October, I like the idea behind Stage Manager more than its implementation. Despite the flawed design of its multitasking concepts and bugs I still encounter on a daily basis, it’s undeniable that Stage Manager lets me get more things done on my iPad by virtue of its concurrent app windows.

With today’s release of iPadOS 16.2, the idea behind Stage Manager achieves the full vision first presented in June, while its design and technical implementation remain stuck in an unpolished, half-baked state. Which is to say: conceptually, I love that Stage Manager in iPadOS 16.2 allows me to extend my iPad to an external display and put four additional windows on it; I’ve waited years for this feature, and it’s finally here. Technically speaking, however, the performance of this mode leaves a lot to be desired, with frequent crashes on my iPad Pro and an oft-confusing design that, I will reiterate, needs a rethinking.

Over the past couple of months, I’ve learned to live with Stage Manager, accept its quirks, and use what’s good about it to my advantage. As I recently wrote for Club MacStories members, I’ve put my money where my mouth is: I’ve gone all-in with Stage Manager on my iPad Pro and completely rebuilt my work setup around the M2 iPad Pro and Apple Studio Display, using Universal Control to seamlessly control iPadOS from a nearby Mac mini. (You can read the full story here.) After all, no other device in Apple’s ecosystem can effortlessly turn from a tablet into a laptop and into a desktop workstation like the iPad Pro can.

I’ve been working toward this vision for iPad modularity and contextual computing for the past several years. So now that Stage Manager has unlocked the final piece of the puzzle with external display integration, how good is it in practice?

And more importantly: was it worth the wait?

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Sofa 3.4: List Sharing, Shortcuts Actions, Lock Screen Widgets, and More

Shawn Hickman is back with another excellent update to Sofa, the downtime/media organization app for iPhone and iPad that we’ve covered several times on MacStories. Sofa remains my favorite one-stop app for managing lists of media I don’t want to forget to enjoy later. The app supports TV shows, movies, books, audiobooks, videgames, music, podcasts, board games, and apps, making it the most comprehensive media organizer I’ve used. However, what makes Sofa special is its design and extensive customization options, which is why it was the runner-up for Best App Update in last year’s MacStories Selects awards.

What I appreciate most about version 3.4 of Sofa is that it extends the app beyond its existing boundaries with list sharing and new Shortcuts support. To round out the update, Sofa also adds Lock Screen widget support and TV and movie provider details for Super Sofa subscribers. It’s an excellent batch of new features for an app that I already consider one of the finest in its category.

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Apple Announces a Trio of Security Features Coming to Its Platforms

Today, Apple announced three new security features.

First, iMessage Contact Key Verification allows users to verify that they are communicating with the person with whom they think they’re communicating. The feature will alert users who use it if someone has infiltrated cloud services to gain access to the user’s iMessage conversations. For even greater security, users can compare a Contact Verification Code in person, on FaceTime, or through another secure channel.

Second, Security Keys lets users adopt hardware security keys when logging into their iCloud accounts. The new system is an enhancement over two-factor authentication because it prevents someone from obtaining a your second factor through a phishing scam.

Third, Advanced Data Protection for iCloud adds encryption on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac for a long list of data categories. According to Apple’s press release:

iCloud already protects 14 sensitive data categories using end-to-end encryption by default, including passwords in iCloud Keychain and Health data. For users who enable Advanced Data Protection, the total number of data categories protected using end-to-end encryption rises to 23, including iCloud Backup, Notes, and Photos. The only major iCloud data categories that are not covered are iCloud Mail, Contacts, and Calendar because of the need to interoperate with the global email, contacts, and calendar systems.

Apple says that iMessage Contact Key Verification will be available globally in 2023, and Security Keys is coming early 2023. Advanced Data Protection for iCloud is available in the US today for participants in Apple’s beta OS program, and will presumably roll out with the next point release to Apple’s OSes.

CARROT Weather 5.9: A Robot Relationship and Layouts

It’s never been about just the weather when it comes to CARROT Weather, and version 5.9 of Brian Mueller’s app is no exception. With the latest update, you can participate in bonding activities with CARROT. Yes, it’s as strange as it sounds, and a lot of fun too. Still, if getting to know CARROT better isn’t your thing, the update has also expanded Live Activities, updated the app’s layout UI, and more.

Charging up CARROT to earn hearts.

Charging up CARROT to earn hearts.

Tap the CARROT icon in the toolbar to get to know her better through a series of mini-games. At the outset there are three games:

  • Charging CARROT’s batteries by feeding her an assortment of objects that rotate roulette-wheel-style onscreen until you tap a button
  • Stroking her ego by repeating nice things to CARROT, which uses speech recognition to make sure you get the compliments right
  • Debugging CARROT’s code by shaking your device

But relationships take time, so you’ll find that after a while, you’ll stop earning hearts and have to wait before you can continue earning your way into CARROT’s good graces.

Complete enough bonding activities with CARROT and you can start a romance with her.

Complete enough bonding activities with CARROT and you can start a romance with her.

Bonding with CARROT is part of the app’s Achievements system, and you’ll see if you visit that section of the CARROT menu that there are additional mystery tasks available to complete once you fill op the rings of the first set. Fill enough rings, and you can even start a romance with CARROT.

Tracking your CARROT achievements.

Tracking your CARROT achievements.

I love CARROT’s new bonding activities. They’re fun and breathe new life and personality into the character that’s been abusing users for years as they check the weather. I’ve only begun earning hearts, so it remains to be seen where this all will lead, so stay tuned to MacStories for updates on that, I guess.

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Timery 1.5 Update Released with Lock Screen Widgets, Live Activities, New Shortcuts Actions, and More

Timery has been updated with a long list of new features and improvements that fans of the app are going to love.

Lock Screen Widgets and Live Activities

Timery's new Lock Screen widgets.

Timery’s new Lock Screen widgets.

First off, Timery has added iOS 16 Lock Screen Widgets and Live Activities. The Lock Screen widgets can display your current time entry, the total amount of time tracked today, or start a new timer. Each widget type includes circular and rectangular variants when added beneath the Lock Screen’s time, as well as a narrow in-line version that can be added to the top of the screen. The widgets can be configured to start a specific saved timer or show a list of timers and optionally show the app’s edit view for tweaking the details of the timer you start. It’s worth noting that Timery’s editing view now supports ‘@’ as a way to quickly search and add projects and ‘#’ for adding tags.

Timery's Live Activities.

Timery’s Live Activities.

Live Activities display the current time entry on the iPhone 14 Pro line’s Dynamic Island and the Lock Screen. Long-pressing either reveals additional information about the current project, task, and total time tracked for the day.

I’m a big fan of Timery’s new widgets and Live Activities because they offer the sort of glanceable details that weren’t possible before unless you were using the Mac version of the app and enabled its menu bar app. Now, I don’t have to unlock my iPhone or iPad to check on a timer, which allows me to get the information I want without getting distracted by other things on either device.

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Stage Manager in iPadOS 16: At the Intersection of Bugs, Missing Features, and Flawed Design

Stage Manager in iPadOS 16.1.

Stage Manager in iPadOS 16.1.

This article wasn’t supposed to go like this.

iPadOS 16 is launching to the public today, and it carries a lot of expectations on its shoulders: for the first time since the introduction of the original iPad in 2010, Apple is embracing a Mac-like windowing system that lets you use up to four windows at the same time on the iPad’s screen. You can even resize them and make them overlap. If you’ve been following the evolution of the iPad for a while, you know that’s very unusual.

But the reason this story was meant to be different isn’t to be found in Apple’s design philosophy for iPadOS 16. Typically, MacStories readers would expect a full-blown ‘The MacStories Review’ to go alongside a new version of iPadOS. That’s what I’ve been doing for over seven years at this point, and I don’t like breaking my writing patterns. When something works, I want to keep writing. That’s precisely why I had to stop writing about iPadOS earlier in the summer and until last week.

Stage Manager, the marquee addition to iPadOS that lets you multitask with floating windows, started crashing on my M1 iPad Pro in mid-July and it was only fixed in early October. When I say “crashing”, I mean I couldn’t go for longer than 10 minutes without iPadOS kicking me back to my Lock Screen and resetting my workspaces. And that was only the tip of the iceberg. For nearly two months, I couldn’t type with Apple’s Magic Keyboard or use keyboard shortcuts when Stage Manager was active. Before it was pulled by Apple and delayed to a future release, external display support in Stage Manager was impossible to rely on for production work. The list goes on and on and on.

Normally, I would use the introduction of my iOS and iPadOS reviews to tell you how I’ve been living and working with the new operating system every day for the past three months. I’ve always tried to publish annual OS reviews that are informed by practical, consistent usage of a new operating system which, I hope, has led to highly opinionated, well-researched stories that can stand the test of time. That kind of story hasn’t been possible for me to produce with iPadOS 16 yet.

Effectively, I’ve only been able to sort-of use iPadOS 16 with Stage Manager on my M1 iPad Pro again for the past two weeks. Before that, it’s not that I didn’t want to use iPadOS 16 and Stage Manager because I hate progress; I literally couldn’t unless I was okay with my iPad crashing every 10 minutes. So, at some point over the summer, I made the call to revert to Split View and Slide Over – which are still the iPad’s default multitasking mode in iPadOS 16 – and I’d check back in on Stage Manager on each beta of iPadOS 16. It was only around two weeks ago that, despite some lingering bugs I’ll cover later, I was able to finally leave Stage Manager enabled and go back to where I was when I published my iPadOS 16 first impressions article in July.

Think about my position this way: there’s a hole from early August to early October in my typical “reviewer summer” during which I couldn’t use the biggest addition to iPadOS 16 at all. The fact that Apple delayed, slimmed down, and kept iterating on Stage Manager until the very last minute seems to suggest I wasn’t the only one desperately trying to make it work.

I started using iPadOS 16 and Stage Manager again two weeks ago; what kind of “review” should this be?

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CARROT Weather 5.8: A Beautiful New iPad Layout, Lots of Lock Screen Widgets, and More

If you use CARROT Weather and have an iPad, stop. Go update CARROT, dig into its Layout settings, and pick the Multi-Column Layout Style before you read any further. I’ll wait.

It’s good, right? Even if you don’t customize it at all, CARROT’s new three-column layout will excite your inner weather geek. The layout is a natural extension of the card-like interface of CARROT’s iOS app, expanded to multiple columns. It’s a terrific update that makes much better use of the iPad’s bigger screen.

Picking Multi-Column from CARROT Weather's Layout settings.

Picking Multi-Column from CARROT Weather’s Layout settings.

The app’s signature card-like customization scheme is the perfect fit with the iPad, allowing users to pick and choose the data that’s most important to them, adjusting each component to fit nicely onscreen. In narrower Split View configurations, CARROT Weather falls back to the single-column, Plain style layout.

CARROT Weather's columns are completely customizable.

CARROT Weather’s columns are completely customizable.

The update also adds another 10 sections of weather data that can be displayed in a variety of ways, including as line and bar charts. With the existing sections, which we’ve covered before, there are more than enough data points and display choices to fill three-columns to your personal tastes.

Apple itself has headed in a similar direction, designing the new Weather app for iPadOS and macOS as a grid of tiles that offer more details when tapped. However, I prefer CARROT Weather because it lets me choose what to display and where. CARROT also lets me save multiple layouts, which opens up the option to customize layouts for each season or for different activities.

Examples of CARROT Weather's rectangular Lock Screen widgets.

Examples of CARROT Weather’s rectangular Lock Screen widgets.

A few of CARROT Weather's circular Lock Screen widgets.

A few of CARROT Weather’s circular Lock Screen widgets.

In addition to the new iPad design and new sections available in the iPhone and iPad versions of the app, CARROT Weather now comes with a whopping 20 Lock Screen widgets for the iPhone. Four of those widgets, Snark, Custom Conditions, Hourly Forecast, and Daily Forecast, are the larger rectangular variety. The remainder of the widgets are circular ones that offer a long list of data points like the current conditions, the current temperature along with the forecast high and low, the change of precipitation, wind speed, UV Index, Air Quality, and more. Whatever is most important to you, there’s bound to be a widget for it in CARROT Weather.

Finally, CARROT Weather has added another weather data provider: Apple’s own WeatherKit service. All weather data providers seem to be strong in some parts of the world and weaker in others, including WeatherKit, but it’s good to have another choice, especially since Dark Sky will no longer offer forecasts beginning next year.

I’ve been spending a lot of time pairing Lock Screens with Focus modes, and CARROT’s weather widgets have been a staple when I head out for a long walk or bike ride. Along with the redesign of the iPad app, version 5.8 is another excellent update from CARROT that I encourage everyone to check out.

CARROT Weather 5.8 is available for download now on the App Store. Some of the app’s features require a subscription, the details of which you can learn about on the App Store.