Ryan Christoffel

991 posts on MacStories since November 2016

Ryan is an editor for MacStories and co-hosts the [Adapt](https://www.relay.fm/adapt) podcast on Relay FM. He most commonly works and plays on his iPad Pro and bears no regrets about moving on from the Mac. He and his wife live in New York City.
ryan@macstories.net

Microsoft Releases Social Scheduling iMessage App, ‘Who’s In’

Microsoft has introduced a new app called ‘Who’s In’ to the iMessage App Store. The app is designed to help friends plan social events together without ever leaving the iOS Messages app.

When you want to coordinate an event with friends, opening ‘Who’s In’ will present several types of activities to choose from:

  • Eat and drink
  • Watch a movie
  • Visit an attraction
  • Create your own

After making your selection, a Bing-powered list of relevant options will be presented such as restaurant names, movie titles, etc. These are sorted based on your location, and once you’ve picked one, you’ll be asked to specify a date and time for the event to take place. These details are all compacted into an iMessage card that gets saved into your message body so you can send it to friends. When they receive your message, they can vote on whether they’ll be attending or not.

In many ways ‘Who’s In’ resembles the scheduling app Doodle, but with a more narrow focus on the specific activities featured in the app.

‘Who’s In’ is available for download from the iMessage App Store.

Apple Launches Clips Video App for iPhone and iPad

Apple has released a new app for iPhone and iPad, the previously announced video tool Clips.

Apple describes Clips as an app “for making and sharing fun videos with text, effects, graphics, and more.” Essentially it’s a stripped-down version of a video editor like iMovie, optimized to make edits fast and user-friendly on mobile. Its key focus is allowing you to shoot seconds-long clips and string them together into a video worth sharing.

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The Twitter API Platform’s Future→

Twitter today disclosed future plans for its API platform and published a public roadmap where developers can track the company’s progress.

One of the most significant changes announced is that later this year the company will be unifying its API platform, combining the strengths of its Gnip APIs with its more affordable REST and streaming APIs. This will simplify the platform and provide more powerful APIs at, in theory, lower costs to developers with smaller-scale needs – though pricing plans have not been announced at this point.

The announcement post contains many details on the API platform’s future, but a few specific things are highlighted which launch today or in the short-term future:

  • Today, we launched the Account Activity API, which provides access to real-time events for accounts you own or manage, with delivery via webhooks.
  • Today, we also launched a set of new Direct Message API endpoints that will enable developers to build on the new Direct Message features we recently announced.
  • Later this year, we’ll launch a new set of tools that enable developers to sign up, access, and manage APIs within a self-managed account. This will including the ability to get deeper access and more features, all with a transparent pricing model.
  • We’ll also be shipping a new Search API that provides free access to a 7-day lookback window with more sophisticated query capabilities and higher fidelity data retrieval than is currently available. We’ll also provide a seamless upgrade path to full-fidelity 30-day or full archive lookback windows.

Twitter’s openness regarding its plans should be an encouragement to anyone who depends on third-party Twitter clients like Tweetbot or Twitterrific. The Direct Message API, for example, will now support media attachments like the official Twitter app.

Although it may be some time before we see today’s announcements bring specific benefits to third-party apps, Twitter has had a rocky relationship with developers in the past, and today’s announcement is a sign of commitment to its API platform and developers.

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Spotify Will Offer Time-Limited Exclusives of Some Albums to Premium Members→

Music Business Worldwide reports on a new, multi-year deal Spotify has struck with Universal Music Group. One change tied to the deal is that some new albums from Universal will be exclusive to Premium subscribers for a two-week window. Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek shares:

“We know that not every album by every artist should be released the same way, and we’ve worked hard with UMG to develop a new, flexible release policy. Starting today, Universal artists can choose to release new albums on premium only for two weeks, offering subscribers an earlier chance to explore the complete creative work, while the singles are available across Spotify for all our listeners to enjoy.”

Another change brought by the new deal is highlighted at the end of the article. Quoting a Spotify press release:

‘The new agreement will also provide UMG with unprecedented access to data, creating the foundation for new tools for artists and labels to expand, engage and build deeper connections with their fans.’

Although this information is spun by Spotify as a positive, it may be concerning to any more privacy-conscious users.

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Twitter Replies No Longer Count @Usernames Against 140-Character Limit→

Twitter has announced a major change to the way replies are handled across all platforms – on the web and in iOS and Android apps. Presumably the Mac app will be included as well. Sasank Reddy writes:

Now, when you reply to someone or a group, those @usernames won’t count toward your Tweet’s 140 characters.

With this change, we’ve simplified conversations in a few ways:

  • Who you are replying to will appear above the Tweet text rather than within the Tweet text itself, so you have more characters to have conversations.
  • You can tap on “Replying to…” to easily see and control who’s part of your conversation.
  • When reading a conversation, you’ll actually see what people are saying, rather than seeing lots of @usernames at the start of a Tweet.

One potentially confusing detail worth mentioning: although the usernames of those you reply to will not count against the 140-character limit, if you add any new usernames to the body of your reply, those new mentions will count against your limit.

You can see today’s change in action by watching the following video:

https://twitter.com/twitter/status/847479110616047616

This update is rolling out to all users now. If you haven’t seen it yet, it should be coming to you soon.

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IFTTT Adds New Applets for iOS Calendar and App Store

IFTTT, the popular web automation platform, has two new Apple-supported applets launching today: iOS Calendar and the App Store.

Both of these new applets feature recipes created by IFTTT. These include several recipes prominently featuring integrations with Apple’s competitors, such as recipes that enable creating an iOS Calendar event using Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa.

A sampling of IFTTT-created recipes.

A sampling of IFTTT-created recipes.

The applet for iOS Calendar works as you would expect, with triggers such as:

  • New event added to any calendar
  • New event added to specific calendar
  • New event added from search

The latter of these is the most interesting. It allows your trigger to fire whenever a new event contains a specific keyword or phrase. Searches for keywords look into an event’s title, location, notes, and invitees, making this a great option when crafting recipes with a deep level of specificity.

The App Store applet features a variety of interesting triggers, including:

  • New top ten app in a category
  • New app from search
  • New app featured in a collection
  • Top ten app goes on sale
  • App price dropped
  • App version updated

IFTTT is available on the App Store.