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LATEST ARTICLES - PAGE 2

MusicSmart Puts the Spotlight on Music Credits

Apps
Jason Tate

Federico Viticci, writing at MacStories, about the new app MusicSmart:

Here’s the amazing part – the “aha” moment that brought back the same feelings I had as a kid when reading through liner notes: in the Tracks section, you can tap any of the listed songs to view detailed credits for the selected song. These go beyond the standard “written by” credits you see in Apple Music: MusicSmart lists engineers (including mixing, mastering, and assistant engineers), producers, and even the name of the label and studio where the song was mastered. But there’s more: MusicSmart can show you the names of all the artists credited for the creation of a song even if they’re not core members of a band, including backing vocalists, percussionists, keyboard players, saxophonists – you name it.

I’ve been playing around with this app for the last couple of weeks and it’s a really nice addition for those that want to dive deeper into the credits of a song. In past I’d be listening to something and often wonder who was playing one of the backing instruments, or trying to figure out if the strings were real or fake, and end up Googling around and hoping I could find the information or a photo of the album credits. This is much nicer.

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Casey Liss Launches ‘Vignette’ App to Fix Your Contact Photos

Apps
Jason Tate

Casey Liss has released a new iOS app to quickly add photos to your contacts using their social media profiles. MacStories has a good rundown:

Unlike many other apps that aim to streamline the act of adding contact photos, Vignette doesn’t require access to any of your personal social media accounts. Commonly, apps will ask you to log in to Facebook, for example, so they can crawl your friends list to extract profile images and other data for your contacts. While this is an effective method, it also requires giving a third-party app special access to your social media accounts. Vignette takes a different approach.

Drafts 5 Released

Apps
Jason Tate

The new version of one of my favorite apps, Drafts, has been released:

Drafts is a launching-off point for text – use the actions to copy it, share it, or deep link into other apps and services. Compose a tweet or message, create a file in Dropbox, send a task off to Reminders – there are hooks into tons of your favorite apps.

If I need to make a note of anything, Drafts is where I start. Once I get the text out of my head and into the app, then I can decide where it needs to go (is it a tweet, task, reminder, note, etc.). It’s changed how I think about text and notes on my phone.

Worth a Look: Scratch Track

Apps
Jason Tate

Today I came across this app called Scratch Track. The app lets you record song ideas and easily share them with bandmates to foster collaboration and keep everything in one spot. Here’s the founder on Medium talking about the app:

The concept for Scratch Track came from years of playing in DIY/punk bands, where musicians are always adapting to the latest, cheapest recording tools for capturing basic ideas. In recent years, we’ve found ourselves and many others relying heavily on the Voice Memo app (a simple recording tool that comes pre-installed on the iPhone). Capturing new ideas with Voice Memo was incredibly easy, but unfortunately, everything after that was a struggle.

You can watch a quick trailer here. The group sharing/collaboration feature is pretty great. I think being able to add notes and tags to the song clips would help with searching and sorting. This is definitely an app I’ll be keeping an eye on.

Read More “Worth a Look: Scratch Track”

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Letterboxd Comes to iPad

Apps
Jason Tate

Letterboxd, an app for tracking movies that I’ve talked a bit about before, has launched version 2.0:

In the 22 months since the launch of our iPhone app, we’ve consistently received the same feedback: please make this work on my iPad! We’re pleased to announce that today we’ve shipped Letterboxd 2.0 for iOS, a universal app with native iPad support that brings the richness of our community to the larger form factor.

You can follow me here if you’re interested.

Pixelmator Pro Releases to Mac App Store

Apps
Jason Tate

Pixelmator, one of my favorite image editors on the Mac, has released Pixelmator Pro:

The Pixelmator Team today released Pixelmator Pro, a brand new Mac app that redefines image editing on the Mac, providing professional-grade editing tools in an incredibly intuitive and accessible design. Pixelmator Pro 1.0, codenamed Whirlwind, includes a modern single-window interface, nondestructive, GPU-powered image editing tools, machine learning-enhanced editing features, and more.

MacStories has a good review:

The decision of whether to move to Pixelmator Pro won’t be a clear one for everyone given the price differential. That’s exacerbated by a small, but real learning curve associated with the Pro version because many of the tools have moved and the menus have changed. In addition, Pixelmator remains a solid app that includes many of the features that Pixelmator Pro has. That said, Pixelmator Pro has been built from the ground up with Apple’s current technologies, which I expect will mean that in time, Pixelmator will be left behind its Pro sibling, gaining fewer and fewer of the Pro version’s features.

From the Makers of Fantastical: Cardhop

Apps
Jason Tate

Flexibits, the creators of my favorite calendar app Fantastical, have launched their new contacts app, Cardhop.

MacStories has a good run down:

Cardhop is based on a single text field that sometimes acts as a search field and other times is a text input field. Clicking on Cardhop’s icon in your menu bar opens a detachable drop-down window with a cursor blinking in an empty field. Below that is a column of contact groups on the left, which are the same ones you’d find if you open Apple’s Contacts app, and a list of recently contacted people and upcoming birthdays on the right. If you want to see all your contacts though, they are just one button click away. You can also hide the groups panel with a button at the bottom of the Cardhop window, which reduces Cardhop to its most minimal UI, which is how I prefer to use it because I don’t usually organize contacts into groups.

I think it looks really good, but I don’t have much of a usage for something like this. It sure is pretty though.

Read More “From the Makers of Fantastical: Cardhop”

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Twitterrific 5.0 for Mac

Twitter
Jason Tate

Twitterrific, the long running Twitter client, has released a new Mac version today:

Twitterrific for macOS features a clean, uncluttered timeline displaying just the content you care about. There are no advertisements, promoted tweets, or “while you were away” updates getting in the way of the stuff you care about most. In addition, tweets are presented in chronological order and other people’s likes aren’t cluttering up your timeline.

It looks like a solid release. I still prefer Tweetbot, but the customization options offered here are really nice. I hope this inspires Tweetbot to keep pushing forward and improving their version.

Rogue Amoeba’s 15th Anniversary Sale

Apps
Jason Tate

Rogue Amoeba is having a 15-year anniversary sale on a bunch of their fantastic audio software. I record the Encore podcast each week using Audio Hijack, and it comes highly recommended:

We want to celebrate with savings for customers both new and old. For a limited time, we’re matching our 15 years in business with 15% off all our apps! But it gets better: Scratch the card below to save even more! The savings boost you uncover will multiply your discount, with a lucky few saving as much as 60%!

Add Favicons to Tabs in Safari

Apps
Jason Tate

Favicongrapher:

Faviconographer asks Safari.app for a list of all visible tabs (and their positions) in the current window, and for the URLs of those tabs.

It then uses that information to fetch the corresponding icons from Safari’s Favicon cache (WebpageIcons.db), and draws them above the Safari window.

It’s a “hack” — the cleanest solution would be Apple implementing Favicons in Safari — but it works surprisingly well.

Note: Faviconographer does not “hack” your system. It does not inject code into other apps or manipulate system files. In fact, it doesn’t even require Administrator access!

I’ve gotten used to not having favicons in tabs, but I know a lot of people live by them.

Cool App: Streaks

Apps
Jason Tate

After reading the MacStories review of the Streaks app, I decided to give it a shot:

Streaks helps you set personal goals and stick to them using a combination of reminders and tracking. One of the hallmarks of the app, and what undoubtedly won it an Apple Design Award in 2016, is its obsessive attention to ease-of-use. By the very nature of its mission, Streaks is an app in which you shouldn’t spend a lot of time. Whether it’s in the main app, widget, or Apple Watch app, Streaks is designed to remove the friction of turning goals into habits by tracking tasks in a way that doesn’t become tedious, which makes it important to be able to mark items as completed quickly and easily.

I’ve only been using it for three days so far, but I think this will be something I stick with for a while. I like the idea of having a few (currently only four) streaks set up to help form some habits I’ve been having trouble with.

Things 3: The To-Do Listing App I Recommend Most

Apps
Jason Tate

Things 3 was recently released. MacStories has a good run-down:

An app’s visual design is, in many ways, a matter of preference. But as far as I’m concerned, you would be hard-pressed to find a better looking to-do app than Things. The first time I opened it on my iPad, I couldn’t help but pause a few moments to admire it. And while that initial sense of awe wore off after a few days of use, its residual impact can be judged by the way Things has ruined other apps for me. Things 2 looks archaic by comparison, and even more modern task managers like Todoist and 2Do appear dated after using Things 3. The only task manager I’ve come across that feels like it’s from the same design era is Microsoft’s successor to Wunderlist, To-Do.

This is the to-do/task manager app I most recommend. I, personally, still use Omnifocus, but that’s because I’m a crazy person and have pretty specific way I manage tasks. But, for most people … Things 3 is the way to go.

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1Password Adds Travel Mode

iPhone
Jason Tate

Jacob Kastrenakes, writing for The Verge:

1Password received a handy new feature last week that allows the app to temporarily remove all passwords, credit cards, and other stored data from a user’s devices. The feature is called Travel Mode, and it was created to protect users worried about running into trouble with security agents while traveling.

Increasingly, people are being asked to turn over and unlock their phones at the border, and doing that can expose a huge amount of data. Add in an app like 1Password — a central repository for a ton of private data — and it’s easy to see why someone would be worried about having to hand over their phone.

I can’t believe we need something like this … but we do.

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