Federico
AppStories Episode 28 - Interview: Automation and Apps with Greg Pierce of Agile Tortoise
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34:29
John interviews Greg Pierce of Agile Tortoise about the origins of x-callback-url, iOS automation, Drafts, and Greg’s other apps.
A Photo Tour of Apple’s New Flagship Chicago Store
For 14 years, Apple’s flagship retail store was a fixture at the north end of Chicago’s Michigan Avenue, the shopping district known as the Magnificent Mile. Built in 2003, Apple’s Michigan Avenue location was the company’s first flagship store, featuring a glass staircase that seemed to float to the second floor just beyond the store’s entrance. Yesterday though, after many months of construction, Apple opened a new flagship store to the public along the Chicago River that reflects the new direction in which Apple began taking its retail locations last year.
App Debuts
Lure I only recently discovered chat fiction, which are short stories that play out as a conversation in a chat app. Lure is free to download but requires a subscription to unlock its full library of stories. When you launch a story, the first chat bubble appears with a message. Tapping the button at...
Album
Juicy Carrot Carrots eating pizza, working out, and having fun make these hand-drawn veggies an interesting and different way to decorate your conversations in Messages. Sticker Me White Ghost A menacing ghost with sharp teeth making a wide variety of faces is a great way to kick off the Halloween season. Sushi Sushi with...
macOS Utilities, Vol. 1
Encrypt.me Recent reports of security flaws in WPA2 encryption were a good reminder that it pays to play it safe on someone else’s WiFi network. Originally called Cloak, Encrypt.me is a VPN that sits between you and the rest of the Internet. The app sits in your menu bar routing your Internet traffic...
AppStories, Episode 27 – Music Services and Apps→
On this week’s episode of AppStories, we compare the apps and services we use to listen to, discover, and share music.
Sponsored by:
- Balance - A wallet for all the worlds currencies and tokens.
- Mutable - Specializing in iOS development from idea to App Store.
https://staging.macstories.net/podcasts/appstories/episodes/27/embed/
Cardhop by Flexibits Takes on Contacts
Flexibits took much of the frustration out of calendars when it introduced Fantastical for macOS in 2011 by leveraging natural language input of events. It followed up with iPhone and iPad versions. Now, Flexibits wants to do the same for contacts with a brand new app called Cardhop by integrating contact creation, management, and interaction into a single text field of a macOS menu bar app. The app is beautifully-designed and powerful but solves a problem that I’m not sure many people have today.
Many contacts apps are notoriously clunky, hard to get information into, and prone to creating duplicates, which limits their utility. However, contacts apps are less necessary today than ever before. Email clients and messaging apps automatically fill in contact information based on past messages you’ve sent. Other apps and services make it easy to bypass contacts apps altogether with favorites and recent contacts lists. In a communications app-centric world, I expect Cardhop will be a tough sell.
Balance Is a Wallet For the World’s Currencies [Sponsor]
We are on the cusp of a financial revolution fueled by crypto-currencies and Balance makes it easy for everyone to get involved. You’ve probably heard of Bitcoin, one of the earliest crypto-currencies, but there are others including Ethereum. Balance connects to the most popular crypto-currency exchanges like Coinbase along with traditional financial institutions bridging the gap between the old financial world and the new one.
Balance connects with crypto-currency exchanges as well as traditional bank accounts, investment accounts, credit cards, and online services like PayPal using Plaid, a super-secure platform that works with financial institutions around the world.
When you set up accounts in Balance, the app automatically updates them periodically with new transactions, so you’re always up to date. You can view balances, transactions, notifications and gain insights about your spending. Soon, Balance will release an iOS version of their app too.
Balance is ready for the future. The current financial system is based on outdated, legacy software. Blockchains are the bedrock of a more secure and open system based on cryptocurrencies, but not many people are using them yet. Balance is poised to change that by becoming a single destination for traditional financial accounts and crypto-currency exchanges.
Balance has a great offer for MacStories readers who want to see what crypto-currencies are all about. Just go to bal.money/macstories this week and submit your email address to join the Balance iOS beta when it’s released along with $2 worth of Ether in a Coinbase account that you can track with Balance. It’s a great way to see for yourself what the financial world’s future looks like.
Our thanks to Balance for sponsoring MacStories this week.