Category: Apps
Day One Acquired by Automattic ⇢
Paul Mayne, writing on the Day One blog:
Today, I’m thrilled to announce that Day One is being acquired by Automattic Inc. This is incredibly exciting news. For the past 10 years since I started Day One, I’ve worked to not only create the best digital journaling experience in the world, but one that will last. By joining Automattic, I’m now more confident than ever that the preservation and longevity of Day One is sure. This acquisition will provide Day One access to the same technological, financial, and security benefits that WordPress.com, Tumblr, and other Automattic entities enjoy.
On Shortcuts for Mac ⇢
Yours truly, over on Six Colors:
Over the last several years, there has been a lot of hand-wringing about what Shortcuts would mean for old-school Mac automation. It is clear to me that Apple thought about this, and has designed Shortcuts for the Mac to be able to support the old and new, all at the same time. That’s not always Apple’s modus operandi, but it was the right move in this case.
Considering a More Mindful Apple Watch
Yesterday, Khaos Tian reported that a text string saying com.apple.Mind had popped up in conjunction with the App Store ahead of WWDC.
Mark Gurman chimed in later saying that Mind is an updated version of Apple’s rather basic Breathe app.
Assuming Mind is being announced tomorrow as part of watchOS 8, I have some wishes for the app, as someone who uses Breathe more than most probably do.
I’d love to Mind be more expansive than Breathe in terms of the types of mindfulness exercises it offers. For the last couple of years, I’ve used the uber-popular Headspace app on my phone and like the variety of guided sessions it offers, especially the ones designed to be used while trying to go to sleep.
Dark Noise Launches on macOS ⇢
I love Dark Noise on iOS, and Charlie really put in a lot of work to make it a great Mac app via Catalyst.
Selling Apps in 2003 ⇢
Apple likes to claim that the App Store replaced the system of selling software in physical boxes in stores and over the mail.
But it’s not true.
My experience selling apps before the App Store was not unique or new — it’s only interesting now because people may have forgotten this history, and younger people may never have heard it.
On Apple Podcasts’ Slow Refresh Speeds ⇢
I’m getting a lot of tweets and emails saying the same thing: the latest episode of (some podcast I’m involved with) hasn’t shown up in Apple Podcasts.
Unfortunately, right now my only answer is to say, “It’s displaying properly in every other podcast app around, so if you’ve ever thought of using Overcast or Castro or Pocket Casts or any other alternative podcast app, now might be a good time to try.”
RIP, Nuzzel ⇢
Twitter announced today that they will be acquiring Scroll and this version of Nuzzel will be shutting down on May 6, 2021. However, Twitter has spun up an internal team of Nuzzel acolytes whose goal is to take the best of the Nuzzel experience and build it directly into Twitter. Nuzzel users who are interested in helping us define what that should look like or get early access to what we build should sign up here.
Scorecard ⇢
Scorecard is a new $5 app from the fine folks over at Lickability that makes it easy to track scores without the need of notebooks, pencils and arguments. It all syncs with iCloud and can track multiple different games over time. As you’d expect from Lickability, the polish on this app is outstanding.
VMWare Provides Update on Fusion Running on M1 Macs ⇢
Michael Roy, giving an update on how development work on Fusion of Apple silicon is going:
You can see here that I have 7 ARM VMs booted at once… 2 are CLI only (Photon and BSD), the others are full desktops… each is configured with 4CPU and 8GB of RAM. 6 different Linux flavors and 1 FreeBSD… MacBook Air. On battery. No fans. Yep.
Of course, just booting a bunch of VMs that are mostly idle isn’t quite a ‘real world experience’, nor is it the same as doing some of the stress testing that we perform in the leadup to a release. Even with that said, and note that I’m using ‘debug’ builds which perform slower, in my 12 years at VMware I’ve never seen VMs boot and run like this. So we’re very encouraged by our early results, and seriously can’t wait to get it on every Apple silicon equipped Mac out there.
Watchsmith 2.0 ⇢
Underscore has a new version of his excellent Watchsmith app out today, with a bunch of new features including a bunch of new complications, updated workout metrics a Golden Hour calculator and more. If you wear an Apple Watch, you should take some time to check this out.
Clubhouse Announces Creator Payments ⇢
Today, we’re thrilled to begin rolling out Payments—our first monetization feature for creators on Clubhouse. All users will be able to send payments today, and we’ll be rolling out the ability to receive payments in waves, starting with a small test group today. Our hope is to collect feedback, fine-tune the feature, and roll it out to everyone soon.
A user can select a creator and the amount they want to send. They give Clubhouse a debit or credit card for payment, then the money is sent: