Question: Pre-iOS 11, I was always on the lookout for apps that, when sharing a file from iCloud Drive, would have an “Edit in” share sheet item instead of “Copy to”. In my experience, though, the only apps that I could find that did this were MindNode and Apple’s iWork apps (if you are aware...
Album
LINE Friends LINE has brought some of the characters from its social network to Messages with this assortment of black and white cartoony stickers. Build-A-Blob These stickers include pre-built blob monsters as well as facial features to build your very own colorful, custom blob. LOVEJI Loveji includes a variety of hand drawn hearts and...
The iPhone Unlocked Mobile Computing
The iPhone has had a profound impact on society and culture that’s built on a foundation of individual experiences. When I think about the iPhone’s effect on my own life, it’s hard to distill down because it’s had such a broad influence. What I appreciate the most though is the role the iPhone plays...
App Debuts
Twist Twist is a new team communication service and app from the team at Doist, maker of Todoist, the task manager used by many of us here at MacStories. Twist takes the idea of team chat apps like Slack and emphasizes topical threads as a way of keeping conversations focused and less chaotic. The...
iPhone 1.0: The 10th Anniversary MacStories Review
Author’s Note: When the iPhone was introduced in January 2007 at Macworld Expo, it was billed as a 3-in-1 device by Steve Jobs – a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough Internet communications device. The first two points were met with loud applause. Jobs was promising a better iPod and mobile phone – two things everyone understood and could get behind.
The third selling point - a breakthrough Internet communications device – was met with confused reactions. What did he mean? The answer was more broad and profound than the obvious candidates like email, SMS, or web browsing. The iPhone was a full-blown Internet-connected computer that you could put in your pocket and take with you wherever you went.
I don’t know of any product that’s had a bigger impact on so many people’s lives. Whether at work or play, the iPhone created opportunities big and small that were not possible before its launch. With a groundbreaking touch interface and intuitive design, the iPhone democratized technology and empowered people on a far greater scale than the desktop PC has managed by connecting people across the globe in a new and powerful way.
It’s hard to believe it’s been 10 years since the iPhone launched. I wasn’t there to review the iPhone when it debuted, and neither was anyone else at MacStories. Ten years ago, the founding of MacStories was still almost two years away, and I was in Adelaide, Australia visiting family.
I vividly remember staying up late in Australia to read the early reviews of the iPhone on the nearly useless WAP browser of my work-issued BlackBerry. I didn’t write about the iPhone then, so to mark the occasion of the 10th anniversary of its launch, I brushed off those old memories and wrote what I would have written in 2007.
Let’s go back in time.
The long wait is finally over. Just over six months ago, Steve Jobs took the stage at Macworld Expo to announce three products:
- a widescreen iPod with touch controls;
- a revolutionary mobile phone, and;
- a breakthrough Internet communications device.
What? Three new products in one keynote? No, not three devices – one. On January 9, 2007, after years of rumors and speculation, Steve Jobs introduced the world to the iPhone.
Jobs took the iPhone through its paces at Macworld, thrilling the crowd with feature after feature. It seemed impossible. How could OS X fit into a phone? Was Safari on the iPhone as full-featured as on OS X? Macworld raised as many questions as it answered.
It didn’t help that the iPhone wouldn’t launch until June. There were no more demos, no hands-on time for the press, just the iPhone encased in a transparent tube on the show floor for visitors to gawk at.
In the past few months, some of the press took to calling the iPhone the ‘Jesus Phone’ for its promise of salvation from WAP browsers and the broken UIs of self-proclaimed smartphones. With the launch of the iPhone today at 6:00 pm Eastern, just one day before the end of the promised June delivery deadline, we can finally judge whether the iPhone is five years ahead of any other mobile phone as Jobs proclaimed in January.
Of course, it’s impossible to judge where the smartphone market will be in five years. However, measured against the hype at Macworld, the answer seems to be yes, the iPhone does deliver, though not without some caveats and many risks that could limit its adoption by consumers. For early adopters willing to pay the price and live with some rough edges, though, the iPhone is far ahead of every other available option.
Red Sweater’s MarsEdit 4.0 Public Beta Released→
Today, Red Sweater Software’s Daniel Jalkut released a public beta of his macOS blog publishing app, MarsEdit. According to Jalkut,
It’s been over 7 years since MarsEdit 3 was released. Typically I would like to maintain a schedule of releasing major upgrades every two to three years. This time, a variety of unexpected challenges led to a longer and longer delay.
The good news? MarsEdit 4 is finally shaping up. I plan to release the update later this year.
Because the update contains many new features that my patient users have been waiting to get their hands on, I want to give folks the option of trying it out early.
MarsEdit 4 includes a long list of features including:
- Visual formatting bar for applying common formatting options;
- Typewriter scrolling mode;
- Support for MultiMarkdown; and
- WordPress-specific features like faster refresh times and Featured Image, Post Format, and Per-Post Author support.
If you want to to try the beta yourself, there’s a link in the Red Sweater blog post. The beta is free to use by anyone who has a license for MarsEdit 3 that was purchased directly from MarsEdit on the web. Also, anyone who buys a copy of MarsEdit 3 now will receive a free upgrade to MarsEdit 4 when it is released later this year.
AppStories, Episode 11 – iOS 11’s Impact on Third-Party Apps→
On this week’s episode of AppStories, we consider the effect on third-party apps of PDFKit, the system Markup extension, changes to Notes, and password AutoFill for apps.
Sponsored by:
- Zapier - Connect your apps and automate your workflows.
- Clear - Tasks, Reminders & To-Do Lists.
- What to be part of the Clear 2 beta? Sign up here.
https://staging.macstories.net/podcasts/appstories/episodes/11/embed/
Apple Music’s New ‘My Chill Mix’
Apple Music is rolling out a new automatically-generated playlist called ‘My Chill Mix’ to subscribers. The music streaming service already includes a ‘My Favorites Mix’ and a ‘My New Music Mix,’ which show up every Wednesday and Friday respectively.
‘My Chill Mix,’ which will be added to subscribers’ ‘For You’ tab and updated every Sunday, features slower tempo music based on your Apple Music listening habits. According to Matthew Panzarino at TechCrunch, ‘a small number of test users got the new playlist yesterday evening.’ Other Apple Music subscribers will have to wait a little while longer. Apple told Jim Dalrymple of The Loop that:
…the new mix will not be available to everyone immediately, but it will show up over time.
It’s good to see that Apple is continuing to experiment with computer-generated playlists, one of the strongest selling points of Spotify, which includes an excellent Discovery Mix and a Daily Mix that debuted last fall. In addition to adding playlists like an up-tempo workouts mix and genre-specific mixes, I would like Apple Music to allow me to tweak its algorithm’s variables to create playlists myself, dialing in the exact balance of genres and favorites versus new music that I want to hear at any particular time.
Apple Opens iOS 11 Public Beta→
Apple has released the first public beta of iOS 11. The first developer beta of iOS 11 was released at WWDC on June 5, 2017. iOS 11 includes many new features such as a new Files app that makes navigating files on iOS devices easier than in the past and adds several iPad-only features like drag & drop, an app Dock, and enhanced multitasking.
You can sign up for the beta program here, but be sure to follow the instructions, which include backing up your iOS device, because it’s still early in the iOS 11 beta release cycle. There will be bugs and running a beta always runs the risk of data loss.