John Voorhees

5429 posts on MacStories since November 2015

John is MacStories' Managing Editor, has been writing about Apple and apps since joining the team in 2015, and today, runs the site alongside Federico. John also co-hosts four MacStories podcasts: AppStories, which covers the world of apps, MacStories Unwind, which explores the fun differences between American and Italian culture and recommends media to listeners, Ruminate, a show about the weird web and unusual snacks, and NPC: Next Portable Console, a show about the games we take with us.
@johnvoorhees@macstories.net
@johnvoorhees.macstories.net
voorhees@macstories.net

AgileBits Announces 1Password 7 Beta for the Mac

AgileBits has announced a public beta for the next Mac version of 1Password. The company says there are more features to come during the beta, but what was released today already includes many new features and a refreshed design. I particularly like the new dark-themed sidebar, which is reminiscent of Slack’s default theme. It has a more modern look and serves the purpose of focusing users’ attention on the selected items.

The newly-collapsible sidebar comes with enhanced utility too. You can drag items between vaults or onto the ‘New Vault’ button to create a vault containing the item you drag onto it. That should reduce a lot of friction if you use multiple vaults. You can also edit a vault’s name, description, and avatar from the sidebar.

I’m a fan of the Courier Prime font, which is one of a few fonts I switch between to write. AgileBits has added a custom version to 1Password called Courier Prime Bits that should make passwords more readable, so it’s easy to distinguish between characters like the number one, a lowercase l, and a pipe character.

In addition, the beta adds:

  • Rich text formatting to secure notes
  • Easy access to multiple pop-out ‘sticky windows’ for stored items
  • A new under-the-hood architecture that should make everything faster
  • Several other smaller improvements

Even without the additional features that AgileBits expects to add during the beta, 1Password 7 for Mac is shaping up to be a big release. I haven’t had a chance to try the beta yet, and betas come with the usual caveats about bugs, but so far I like what I’ve seen a lot.

Twitterrific for Mac and iOS Adds New Muting and Muffling Features, Plus Video

Twitterrific, for iOS and the Mac, has a unique, fine-grained approach to what you see in your Twitter timeline using a combination of muffles and mutes. Muffles are rules that partially hide tweets from your timeline, while mutes hide tweets entirely.

With the update to Twitterrific for Mac and iOS today, The Iconfactory has migrated muffles of users that were set up as mutes to Twitter’s mute system. Mutes can be created from the action menu that’s accessible from any tweet or a user’s profile. With the new system, a mute created in Twitterrific will sync cross-platform to all copies of Twitterrific you use and also register as a mute with Twitter, so muted users’ tweets won’t show up on Twitter.com either. Muting prevents push notifications of a muted user’s tweets too.

All other muffle rules are unaffected by the change to mutes, but The Iconfactory has also extended the way muffles work. Any muffle can be applied to everyone in your timeline or just a specific person. For example, you can muffle all retweets, all retweets by a specific person, all retweets of a specific person’s tweets, or all retweets by a specific person of another person’s tweets. You can also muffle quoted tweets, quotes of particular tweets, or mentions of someone. There is a knowledge base article on The Iconfactory’s website that covers all the possibilities.

The Twitterrific update also adds support for video attachments to tweets. Videos must be less than 140 seconds long, but that’s the only limitation. On iOS, videos can be added from your photo library, if you long-press the camera icon, from any file provider, or with the app’s share extension.

The rate of updates to Twitterrific for the Mac and iOS continues to impress me and I love the addition of even more granular controls over my timeline that sync across iOS and macOS. If you haven’t tried Twitterrific in a while, it’s worth a look.

Twitterrific is available on the App Store for iOS and on the Mac App Store.

Apple Extends the Everyone Can Code Curriculum and Adds Everyone Can Create

Everyone Can Code is a curriculum that Apple created to teach students the Swift programming language. Much of the information shared about the curriculum by Apple at its education event in Chicago today wasn’t new. However, the company did announce a new ARKit module that will be available inside Apple’s Swift Playgrounds app.

Apple also introduced a new curriculum called Everyone Can Create:

Everyone Can Create is a new, free curriculum that makes it fun and easy for teachers to integrate drawing, music, filmmaking or photography into their existing lesson plans for any subject. The new curriculum joins Apple’s successful Everyone Can Code initiative as one-of-a-kind programs for teachers that keep students excited and engaged.

Available now as a preview, new materials will continue to be added throughout the summer so teachers can use them beginning this fall. In addition, Apple Stores will provide training as part of their Today at Apple programs beginning later this spring.

The curriculum focuses on four creative areas: music, video, photography, and drawing. Everyone Can Create includes a teacher guide, student guide, lessons, ideas, and examples to assist teachers who want to incorporate the new curriculum into existing subjects like math and history.

Although the new curriculum shares a similar name with Everyone Can Code, Everyone Can Create’s approach is quite different. It’s designed to fit with existing subjects taught in schools, supplementing teachers’ lessons in new and interesting ways that leverage the power of the iPad.

You can follow all of our Chicago education event coverage through our March 27th event hub, or subscribe to the dedicated March 27th event RSS feed.

Apple Updates GarageBand and Clips for iOS with School-Friendly Features

Just as Apple’s education event keynote concluded at Lane Tech College Prep High School in Chicago, Apple released updates to the company’s GarageBand and Clips iOS apps.

GarageBand has been updated with a downloadable ‘Toy Box’ sound pack that includes sound effects like animals, vehicles, and people counting to ten in different languages. There’s a ‘Modern Wah’ guitar stompbox effect too. If you’re an iPhone X user, the update uses ARKit and the TrueDepth camera to let you control effects like guitar wah and synth parameters hands-free using only facial expressions.

Clips was updated too. Version 2.0.3 adds new Live Title styles with new fonts, colors and layouts, animated labels (some with new drop shadows), stickers, and posters. Among the many new options are several that will work well in the classroom, including chalkboard and notebook posters, hand drawn arrows, circles, underlining, and more. There are two new Pixar movie selfie scenes too: one set on a reef from Finding Dory and the other on the Scare Floor from Monsters, Inc.

You can follow all of our Chicago education event coverage through our March 27th event hub, or subscribe to the dedicated March 27th event RSS feed.

Chicago Education Event Video Now Available

Apple has posted the video of its education event keynote held earlier today at Lane Tech College Prep High School in Chicago. The video can be streamed here, as discovered by Guilherme Rambo, and a higher quality version should be made available soon through iTunes (on the Apple Keynotes podcast).

You can follow all of our Chicago education event coverage through our March 27th event hub, or subscribe to the dedicated March 27th event RSS feed.