Dr. Drang, bouncing off my recent post on Reminders:
If you have the Move tool in your Mail toolbar, you can select all the messages you want to move, click on the Move tool, and select the appropriate folder from the drop-down menu. Because the menu is long, this may seem no easier than dragging and dropping, but it is. The key is that once the drop-down menu is active, you can start typing the name of the folder and it will be selected. Boom.
Every summer, I take some time with Apple’s updated stock apps. Many of them are quite good, and meet the needs for the vast majority of users.
I fully understand that sometimes you and I are not the vast majority of users, and that third-party apps can often better fit our needs.
Every year, I feel the call of Reminders. It looks nice, is integrated with the system in a bunch of fun ways, and unlike my normal app Todoist, is easy to use with Siri.
Yesterday morning, I got obsessed with the 10-day forecast section of the Apple Weather iOS app—specifically, how it presents each day’s temperature range. I still don’t understand the logic behind it.
The blog post is impressive, but the footnote contains a straight-up murder:
Several readers on Mastodon told me the alignment was fine on their phones and suggested Larger Text/Dynamic Type as the reason the charts on my phone are messed up. They were absolutely right. I bumped up my text size so long ago I’d forgotten all about it, but I should’ve known to look into that before posting. Interestingly, moving my text size down just one tick got all the bar ends to match up. The colors still seem a little off to me, but I’ll need to zoom in and look more carefully.
“It’s inspiring to see how developers are using our technology to create exceptional apps and games that enhance the lives of users,” said Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations. “This year’s winners have demonstrated how apps can create powerful and moving experiences — and we’re excited to celebrate their hard work and ingenuity at WWDC this year.”
Seven different categories recognize one app and game each for delight and fun, inclusivity, innovation, interaction, social impact, visuals and graphics, and a new spatial computing category. Winners were chosen from 42 finalists.
Ben Surtees, the original developer behind the excellent macOS utility Bartender, concerning the recent sale of the app:
After the release of Bartender 5, I came to the realization that supporting all the users and maintaining the app at the high standard I expect and you deserve was too much for one person. It required a dedicated team that could provide continuous support, innovate, and keep up with the fast-evolving macOS landscape. This realization led me to make a difficult decision.
Kristof Gruber, Product Engineer at Craft:
Entering a new platform only happens a few times in a developers life. It is a rare and delicious event, when you step in the realm of something genuinely new. If you are fast, you can feel yourself like the explorers in old times. Everything is new, and flexible; the new platform doesn’t yet have established patterns, which gives you plenty of space to experiment.
Mario Guzman is back, with yet another nostalgia-powered music player for macOS:
Control Apple Music with this simplified controller that has the look and feel of QuickTime 7 and Mac OS X “Tiger”.
JUST LOOK AT THIS THING:
I recently noticed a new folder in the root level of my Home directory, named ai_overlay_tmp:
In preparation for a Mac Power Users episode, I’ve been playing with a bunch of AI software, and I assumed something I downloaded generated this folder. I deleted it, just to be frustrated when the folder reappeared on its own.
Adding a new folder to the Home directory is a Cardinal Sin of Mac Programming, so I was on a mission to root out the cause. After some searching online, it seems that this folder was generated by Logi Options+, the software that came with my mouse, the Logitech MX Master 3S. 1
Earlier today, David and I shipped version 6.2 of Widgetsmith. This release is for both iOS and visionOS, and packs some cool goodies:
Widgetsmith 6.2 brings a brand-new widget type: Background Sounds!
Beyond the standard White and Brown Noises, this release includes sounds from nature, including various intensities of rain, forest sounds for both daytime and nighttime and waves at the beach. These sounds are high quality and uncompressed, creating seamless loops for a rich soundscape. Create an immersive ambiance right from your home screen with the following sounds. All users have access to White Noise and Stream.
I adore Soulver for Mac, and am so glad version 3 is now out for iOS.
The Verge’s Jon Porter and Jess Weatherbed:
In a press release on Monday, the EU Commission said its investigation found that “Apple bans music streaming app developers from fully informing iOS users about alternative and cheaper music subscription services available outside of the app,” in addition to preventing app providers from sharing instructions on how to subscribe to such offers.
“For a decade, Apple abused its dominant position in the market for the distribution of music streaming apps through the App Store,” said Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President in charge of competition policy. “They did so by restricting developers from informing consumers about alternative, cheaper music services available outside of the Apple ecosystem. This is illegal under EU antitrust rules, so today we have fined Apple over €1.8 billion.”
Chance Miller with some big news over at 9to5Mac:
Last month, Apple confirmed that iOS 17.4 would remove support for Home Screen web apps in the European Union. At the time, Apple said this decision was due to requirements under the Digital Markets Act related to support for alternative browser engines on iPhone.
Apple is now walking back that decision and says it will “continue to offer the existing Home Screen web apps capability in the EU.”