Category: Apps

In March, app developer Alex Hay tragically passed away. Hay’s apps, which include Toolbox Pro, Logger for Shortcuts and Nautomate.

Thankfully they all have a new home, and the news couldn’t be better. Here’s Rosemary Orchard:

We’re truly honoured to be able to announce that we have taken over development of Toolbox Pro, Logger for Shortcuts, and Nautomate.

All three apps were originally developed by indie developer Alex Hay before he tragically passed away back in March after a battle with cancer.

Alex was a well loved member of the indie development community, featuring on numerous podcasts and articles. He was always known as being a kind and generous man, being willing to share his time and knowledge with anyone who asked.

While Alex was an incredible talented developer, producing a series of much loved Apps, his day-job was as an editor and filmmaker where he worked for a variety of TV channels, including programmes such as “My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding” (Channel 4), “Ambulance” (BBC One), as well as cutting content for various Formula 1 brands.

Ashley Belanger at Ars:

Earlier this month, Zoom announced a surprising decision to require some of its employees to return to the office, where they were expected to work more effectively. Now, leaked audio from an internal Zoom meeting shared with Business Insider has revealed that Zoom CEO Eric Yuan called employees back to the office because he believes that “remote work didn’t allow people to build as much trust or be as innovative.”

Adobe:

It is with profound sadness that Adobe shares the passing of the company’s beloved co-founder Dr. John Warnock. Dr. Warnock passed away on Saturday surrounded by his family.

Dr. Warnock co-founded Adobe in 1982 with Dr. Charles Geschke after meeting as colleagues at Xerox. Their first product was Adobe PostScript, groundbreaking technology that sparked the desktop publishing revolution. Dr. Warnock retired as CEO in 2000 and he was chairman of the board, a position he shared with Dr. Geschke, until 2017. He was a member of the Board of Directors since then. In recognition of their technical achievements, Dr. Warnock was awarded the prestigious National Medal of Technology and Innovation by President Barack Obama; the Computer Entrepreneur Award from the IEEE Computer Society; the American Electronics Association Medal of Achievement; and the Marconi Prize for contributions to information science and communications.

Casey Liss has launched a new iPhone and iPad app that makes learning about TV shows and movies a breeze. Here he is on his blog:

Callsheet, in short, allows you to look up movies, TV shows, cast, and crew. You can think of it as similar to the IMDB app but… with respect for its users. Which, actually, makes it not like IMDB at all.

When I watch a movie or TV show, I’m constantly trying to figure out who that actor is, who the director is, and so on. Early this year, I wanted a way to look this up that was native to iOS/iPadOS, but also fast, with no fluff that I wasn’t interested in. I wanted a bespoke version of the IMDB app.

So I wrote it. It’s called Callsheet, and I’d love for you to try it.

Callsheet is the indie app scene at its best — taking on a huge app written by people who don’t seem to care about their users — and doing a better job at it in every single way.

Casey’s business model for Callsheet is very simple: the app will run you $1/month or $10/year after a one-week trial period or your first twenty searches.

The app itself is very clever, and I encourage you to go check out Casey’s post about some of the features he has built, like the ability to hide potential spoilers, integration with JustWatch and more. If you find yourself reaching for IMDB but want to live a better life, Callsheet deserves a place on your phone.

Dr. Drang, writing about the Medication reminder feature in iOS:

After I got my pills entered into the app and set the time of day at which they should be taken, I enabled Notifications so I’d get an alarm and a persistent notice on my phone’s lock screen. This is where the app and I got crosswise. I usually didn’t have my phone with me when I took my pills, and even when I did, I’d often fail to tap the button in the app that marked them as taken and dismiss the notice. So later in the day I’d see the notice and question whether I’d failed to take the pills or just failed to mark that I’d taken the pills. The problem was that taking the pills—even the horse pill—was not so memorable that I’d know for sure that I’d done it a few hours earlier. I ended up questioning myself about the pills every week or so.

Is this related to the fact that I’m 62 years old? Probably, but I’ve always been a bit absent-minded (my wife would say more than a bit). And while I will certainly take the lion’s share of the blame for my inability to keep perfect track of my medications through the Health app, I doubt that I’m the only one who has trouble disciplining themself to mark their pills as taken as soon as they’re swallowed.

I love the solution he came up with for dealing with this, in fact it’s also been in use at my house for quite some time.

Two great new indie iOS apps launched today, and I’m enjoying both of them.

One is Rebecca Owen’s new app, Chronicling. Built with fancy new tools like Swift Charts, Chronicling makes it easy to track things over times. Here’s a bit from OTJ at MacStories:

Trackers like Chronicling are the perfect fit for the iPhone. Most people have the device with them all the time, which makes it perfect for collecting data frequently, but it’s what you do with that data that matters the most. Maybe you’re trying to learn a new language and want to track how often you practice to hold yourself accountable. Or maybe your knee has been bothering you, and you want to keep track of when it flares up to see if it corresponds to an activity in your life. The point is, whether you’re trying to form a new habit or find patterns in things that happen throughout your day, part of the process is gathering the data. The other half of the equation is breaking the data down in a meaningful way. Chronicling does both well.

The other is Peak, developed by Harshil Shah, which brings easily-digestable and customizable widgets, charts and more to see your Fitness data in new ways, as Zac writes at 9to5Mac:

At a glance, Peak will look very familiar to the data you can see in the Health and Fitness apps on iPhone. Where things start to diverge is with the ability to really personalize how and where Peak appears.

Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro are out now for select iPad models. I played with Logic for a few minutes, and was pretty disappointed when it failed to import the template I use to edit Connected, running in to the same error Dan Moren got. I should be able to adapt my files for the iPad, but being an iPad mini user, I don’t see me switching over very often. All of that said, I am psyched that these apps are finally here.

Don’t miss Jason Snell’s hands-on with them.