Category: Apps

My favorite white noise app for iOS just got even better. Here’s the developer, Charlie Chapman:

Dark Noise 2 is the next major evolution of the best ambient noise app on iOS. Mixing sounds has been the most requested feature since launch and I’m excited to announce it’s finally here! A lot of work went in to maintaining the simplicity and tight iOS integration Dark Noise is known for and I’m very proud of the results. Along with iCloud syncing, new sounds, new icons, and loads of bug fixes this is the biggest update to date.

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Richard Moss, writing at Ars Technica:

Whichever side of the love-hate divide you land on, there’s no denying the fact that Flash changed how we consume, create, and interact with content on the Web. For better and worse, it helped shape the Internet of today.

But now, after roughly 25 years, Flash is finally nearing its end. In less than six months—December 2020—Adobe will officially end support and distribution of Flash Player, the browser plugin we all associate most strongly with the technology. And already, months ahead of this end-of-life switch, Flash has been disabled in most Web browsers (often flagged as a security risk should you choose to override the default settings). Even Google Chrome, long the browser of choice for Flash content, will soon remove Flash Player.

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Benjamin Wallace at Vulture:

The streaming platform raised $1.75 billion and secured a roster of A-list talent, but it can’t get audiences to notice.

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Kellen Browning and Jack Nicas:

The Times is one of the first media organizations to pull out of Apple News. The Times, which has made adding new subscribers a key business goal, said that Apple had given it little in the way of direct relationships with readers and little control over the business. It said it hoped to instead drive readers directly to its own website and mobile app so that it could “fund quality journalism.”

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Depending on how you count them, Apple has several different routes for developers to take when it comes to modernizing their apps for the future of macOS. Let’s take a look at these related technologies to see what they can provide.

Traditional Mac apps

The future for traditional, built-with-AppKit applications seems to be solid, at least for now. With Big Sur’s redesign, AppKit has received a major overhaul, and I don’t think there’s any real reason to think it can’t live side by side with other technologies like UIKit and SwiftUI for years to come. However, these apps have been rooted in the world of Intel for a long time, so Apple has a couple of ways to help developers get them up and running on Apple Silicon Macs.

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I haven’t written about this yet, but wow, is Apple in the wrong here.

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When Apple added the Breathe feature to watchOS 3, I — like many of you, I suspect — turned it off pretty quickly. However, over the last six months, it has come to be one of my favorite things about wearing my Apple Watch.

If you aren’t familiar with this, here is how Apple describes it:

The Breathe app guides you through a series of deep breaths, and it reminds you to take time to breathe every day. Choose how long you want to breathe, then let the animation and gentle taps help you focus.

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Michael Steeber at 9to5Mac:

On June 15, 2010, Apple released the Apple Store app in the App Store. The app recognized the growing importance of mobile shopping on the iPhone and elevated the in-store experience at Apple Retail Stores. On its 10th anniversary, let’s take a look back at the app’s design evolution and how it changed the way we shop.

This is really cool, and I think I miss the old glossy black buttons apps used to use for things.

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Apple:

Apple has been hard at work building the next generation of apps for both teachers and students:

• Classroom turns your iPad into a powerful teaching assistant, helping teachers guide students through a lesson, see their progress, and keep them on track.

• Schoolwork helps teachers save time and maximize each student’s potential by making it easy for teachers to share class materials, get students to a specific activity in an app, collaborate with students, and view student progress.

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Apple, in an email to book publishers:

Thank you for being a member of the iBooks Author community. We have some news to share with you about the future of book creation.

Two years ago we brought book creation into Pages. With key features such as the ability to work on iPad, collaborate with others on a shared book, draw with Apple Pencil, and more, Pages is a great platform for making books.

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Pastel is a new iOS app from Steven Troughton-Smith that makes working with colors easy. The app comes with some pre-loaded collections, but it’s easy to make your own. I took some time to enter the colors for all of our podcasts over on Relay FM, and also made a collection of colors I use here on 512 Pixels:

This makes grabbing the value for any of these colors super easy. To my shame, I was just keeping the hex values in Apple Notes until this app came along.

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Juli Clover, MacRumors:

Beta builds of Premiere Pro include support for Apple’s Afterburner accelerator card, Adobe told Premiere Pro users earlier this week. Premiere Pro and After Effects were recently updated with native ProRES RAW support.

The Apple Afterburner is a ProRes and ProRes RAW accelerator card that is an optional add-on accessory available in the 2019 Mac Pro. It supports playback of up to 3 streams of 8K Pro-Res RAW or 12 streams of 4K ProRes RAW.

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