[[ryan]] Interact is an app designed for creating and managing contacts on iOS. It was made by developer Greg Pierce, who is also known for the excellent Drafts and Terminology. While the average user may be content using Apple’s default Contacts app, for anyone who wants an easier, yet more powerful tool, Interact is a...
My Game Plan for WWDC
[[ryan]] We are just a few short days away from WWDC 2017, which will commence with the all-important keynote announcing the latest updates to iOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, and perhaps a few hardware products as well. Exciting days ahead. This will be my first keynote as part of the MacStories team. I joined the crew...
Apps with Apple Pencil Support, Vol. 1
{.app-collection} [[ryan]] LiquidText LiquidText is a PDF reader and annotation tool that’s geared especially toward the task of research. It offered Apple Pencil support upon the Pencil’s launch, but that support was widely expanded in a major update released in March. Thanks to that update, LiquidText now features one of the most extensive Pencil implementations...
iOS Apps with Great Dark Themes, Vol. 3
[[ryan]] {.icon} Castro Castro’s dark theme employs several different shades of dark grey and black to create contrast between sections, similar to how its light theme creates contrast with light grey and white. One nice thing about Castro’s dark theme is that it can be enabled from anywhere in the app using a two-finger swipe...
Battling ‘Inbox Zero’ Tendencies on Twitter
[[ryan]] I fight each day to maintain inbox zero with my email, a battle I win more often than lose. I like to keep things organized and manageable, and shudder at the prospect of living like those poor souls who have tons of emails in their inbox all the time. Getting to zero each day...
Newton
[[ryan]] Newton is an email client for iOS, macOS, and watchOS that combines power user features with a clean, attractive interface. Formerly known as CloudMagic, Newton rebranded last September as part of its shift toward providing a subscription service that offers powerful email tools. The company’s new tagline embodies this focus well, reading: “Supercharge your...
Widgets for iOS Apps, Vol. 3
{.app-collection} [[ryan]] IFTTT IFTTT’s widget can be used in a wide variety of ways; by installing widget actions within the app, your widget can be used to post a tweet, start a note in Evernote, send a photo to Slack, and much more. You can create your own widget actions or choose from a gallery...
Apple Updates TestFlight with Improved Testing Options
Yesterday Apple launched TestFlight 1.5 on the App Store. The update’s release notes didn’t highlight any specific changes, but developers are discovering today that its release was timed with a few major updates.
Developers can now create different builds of an app to be distributed to different groups of testers. These changes will make A/B testing of apps possible for the first time, so developers can gauge feedback from different groups who are testing different versions of the same app.
Multiple builds can also be distributed to the same people so that testers can choose from a variety of builds that they wish to test.
https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/851837283900825600
Longer testing periods is another change – up from 60 days to 90 days. These are not yet noted in Apple’s official documentation, so they are likely still in the process of rolling out. Developers we’ve spoken with as well as the MacStories team have been able to see builds with an expiration time of 90 days.
Widgets for iOS Apps, Vol. 2
{.app-collection} [[ryan]] Timepage The excellent calendar app, Timepage, contains a whopping four different widgets to choose from: Countdown, Month, Today, and Weather. Each widget is beautifully designed and offers valuable information. Countdown is simple, displaying a countdown to a specific event that you’ve chosen to add to the widget. Currently I have WWDC as my...