I love this blog post by Paul Kafasis:
Rogue Amoeba’s 16th birthday is coming up this Sunday, so it seems an appropriate time to take a look back into the past. Join us for a quick tour of the evolution of our in-app License window.
Good software is born out of such attention to detail.
Marcel Wichmann has made a text adventure game inside Shortcuts. I cannot wait to dig into this.
The best podcast client for iOS keeps getting better. Marco Arment’s latest updates includes offline, local playback on the watch, in-app search, Siri shortcuts, a refreshed Now Playing screen and more.
Recent space news is all weird: Elon Musk’s questionable podcast appearance, NASA looking into selling naming rights on its hardware, and a leak on the ISS.
My thanks to our sponsors:
If you’re looking for an easy way to clean up cruft on your Mac, the new version of CleanMyMac is a great app to check out.
CleanMyMac has worked reliably for me for years, and I’m glad to see MacPaw continue to refine it. The new features and the redesign should help broaden the app’s appeal, especially to new users, but I’m also pleased to see that CleanMyMac X is focused on the fundamentals like running its scans faster because as a utility app, that counts as much anything else as far as I’m concerned.
Evernote is currently offering a sale on its Premium membership, slashing its yearly subscription price from $70 down to a much more reasonable $42. The company offered the same deal earlier this year. If you’re interested in grabbing the deal, it’s available now on Evernote’s site. It only applies if you pay one lump sum for the annual subscription.
When Evernote drastically raised it prices, many people I know finally left the service. It was just one more blow against an application that feels like it’s on the ropes. Then there is this news, as reported by Ingrid Lunden at TechCrunch:
Ellie Powers and Chris Beckmann, writing on the Google Chrome blog about the browser’s new look:
You can see it across all platforms—desktop, Android, and iOS—where you’ll notice more rounded shapes, new icons and a new color palette. These updates have a simpler look and will (hopefully) boost your productivity. Take tabs, for instance. Are you a secret tab-hoarder? No judgment. We changed the shape of our tabs so that the website icons are easier to see, which makes it easier to navigate across lots of tabs. On mobile, we’ve made a number of changes to help you browse faster, including moving the toolbar to the bottom on iOS, so it’s easy to reach. And across Chrome, we simplified the prompts, menus, and even the URLs in your address bar.
Yours truly, writing at MacStories:
iLife was brilliant because it was approachable. Programs like iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, and GarageBand were so simple that anyone could just open them from the Dock and get started creating.
Of course, not everyone’s needs were met by the iLife applications. iMovie users could upgrade to Final Cut, while Logic was there waiting for GarageBand users. And for those needing more than what iPhoto could provide, Apple offered Aperture.
John Voorhees, writing at MacStories on Twitter’s removal of the old API that powered apps like Tweetbot and Twitterrific:
How these changes shake out for third-party clients remains to be seen. I’ve used the beta update for Tweetbot over the past week, and the elimination of its Stats and Activity section has left me feeling like there is something missing from the app. I still prefer it to the official app, but the removal of that section is a meaningful loss. A similar hole will be left in Twitterrific when the Today section no longer works. Both apps have also lost their Apple Watch apps and live-streaming. If those are critical features to your use of Twitter, you may want to give the official client another try.
Janko Roettgers, writing at Variety:
Patreon wants a bigger slice of the subscription and membership business: The San Francisco-based startup announced the acquisition of Memberful Wednesday to expand into the realm of white-labeled membership services. Memberful’s entire staff of 7, including its founder Drew Strojny, are joining Patreon as part of the deal. Financial details of the transaction weren’t disclosed.
Here’s a bit from Strojny’s email to customers:
As a Memberful customer, you might be surprised by this news. You might also be concerned about the future of Memberful. Are we giving up? Are we shutting down? Quite the opposite. Memberful has been growing fast, and our growth has even accelerated in 2018. We’re partnering with Patreon to take this to the next level. Patreon brings capital, expertise, and resources that will help us make Memberful even better for you.
Steven Frank has a new Mac app out named Spect. It’s a photo browser that uses the file system as its backend. If you’re using something like Dropbox instead of Photos.app, this looks well worth the $5.
Today, we’re announcing that Pinterest has entered into an agreement to transfer ownership of Instapaper to Instant Paper, Inc., a new company owned and operated by the same people who’ve been working on Instapaper since it was sold to betaworks by Marco Arment in 2013. The ownership transfer will occur after a 21 day waiting period designed to give our users fair notice about the change of control with respect to their personal information.