[[ryan]] Not long ago, if you wanted to use Apple Music, there was only one place to do so: the Music app by Apple. Given the company’s history of wanting to control the entire user experience around its products, this was no surprise. However, Apple did surprise us in recent years by opening up the...
Thoughts on a March Event
The first quarter of each year is, in many respects, the most unpredictable time for Apple. Though the company follows strong patterns at other times of year – WWDC in June, iPhone event and OS releases in September – winter and early spring contain a lot less precedent. About the only thing you can count...
iOS Utility Grab Bag, Vol. 2
{.app-collection} [[ryan]] If you missed my first assortment of iOS utilities, you can find those apps in MacStories Weekly issue 207. Today I have five more apps to share that span a wide variety of use cases. Cardhop From the makers of the just-updated Fantastical, Cardhop is for contacts what Fantastical is for calendars and...
MacStories Selects 2019 Honorable Mentions
Earlier this week we recognized the year’s best apps, updates, features, and more in our 2019 MacStories Selects awards. As always, though, despite how many different apps we were able to highlight – 20 this year – there are always plenty of excellent runners-up that are left out. That’s where today’s Collection comes in: although...
Flow by Moleskine
[[ryan]] When the iPad mini 5 debuted in March, it marked a momentous occasion: for the first time ever, the entire iPad lineup supported the Apple Pencil. The timing couldn’t have been better for Moleskine, the famed physical notebook creators, to launch a brand new notebook experience on the iPad: Flow, which debuted the very same...
Imagining a TV App Overhaul
[[ryan]] With the debut of Apple TV+, Apple accomplished at least one of its goals for the service: people finally opened and explored the pre-installed TV app, in many cases for the very first time. I’ve used the TV app consistently ever since it first launched on iOS and tvOS in late 2016, which means...
Will Apple TV+’s “All-Original” Angle Work?
[[ryan]] Over the last couple weeks Apple’s been hosting premiere events for its debut Apple TV+ shows. Following each premiere the company’s Newsroom page has published a brief summary of the event, and all of those summaries end with what has become Apple’s default way of describing Apple TV+: “the first all-original video subscription service.”...
Arcade Highlights: Too Many to Cover
[[ryan]] Earlier this week I published the first entry in our new Arcade Highlights series on MacStories, wherein I shared my thoughts on Card of Darkness, the Arcade title that’s occupied the majority of my play time over the last couple of weeks. The purpose behind Arcade Highlights is right there in the name: it’s...
Dark Noise
[[ryan]] It’s not often that I find an app that puts a smile on my face upon first use, and it’s even rarer for an app to continue instilling that level of delight on subsequent uses. One exception that comes to mind is Castro, the podcast client, due to the breadth of thoughtful design flourishes...