Reeder 3 Reeder 3 has exited public beta this week, with a final release on the Mac App Store that brings new themes, better extension compatibility, and support for El Capitan. Continuo Continuo is a new simple activity tracker for iPhone that lets you keep track of any activity you’d like to complete on a...
Tweetbot 4
{ .icon } [[federico]] $4.99 - Download Universal iOSApp Tapbots’ latest Tweetbot release brings a variety of refinements and new features to the iPhone, plus a dramatic redesign of the iPad app. Tweetbot 4 builds upon Tweetbot 3 and keeps its popular advanced features (such as timeline sync, filters, and easy access to lists) and...
Apps I’ve Tried This Month
Outlook Like todo apps, I’ve never been completely satisfied with email clients. I’ve tried many over the years, and as I observed inmy review of Readdle’s Spark, both big and smaller companies are trying to modernize email apps by making them do more than simply displaying a list of messages. This summer, I used Apple’s...
Brief Thoughts on September 2015
For me, Apple’s big announcement from September 2015 was the iPad Pro. For a long time, I thought that Apple didn’t want to release a bigger iPad that would simply scale up apps to a larger screen, but that was before iOS 9. Now, I think it makes perfect sense for Apple to explore new...
Making of: iOS 9 Review
Writing my review of iOS 9 has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done for MacStories. The feedback I received has been amazing and I’m still enjoying the tweets and comments from readers around the world, but that doesn’t change the fact that I spent three months working on it, exclusively from my iPad, and...
App Debuts
[[federico]] Storehouse Storehouse 2.0 has been released with a major redesign that gets rid of social features and other complexities. Here’s CEO Mark Kawano on why they did it. Pinner Pinner, an excellent Pinboard client, has been updated for iOS 9 with iPad multitasking, Safari View Controller, and – first time I see this since...
Home Screen: Federico Viticci
{.no-bio} My iPad Home screen has gone through some changes over the past year, primarily aimed at focusing on apps I truly use on a daily basis. Since I started using iOS 9 (beta 1) on my iPad in June (risky, I know, but had to be done), I found myself liking more Apple apps...
Introducing Club MacStories
Since 2009, MacStories has delivered quality articles for the Apple community with a focus on depth, accuracy, and personal stories. We’ve written thousands of detailed app reviews. We’ve covered news with facts and opinions. We’ve shared stories on how technology is changing our lives.
Now, we’re ready for the next step. Today, I’m thrilled to introduce Club MacStories.
Spotify Launches ‘Discover Weekly’ Personalized Playlists→
The personalized playlist game is heating up after the launch of Apple Music. Spotify has announced Discover Weekly today, a personalized playlist that will be sent to users every Monday morning with a selection of deep cuts and new discoveries based on listening history and other users’ listening sessions.
From the press release:
For the first time ever, we’re combining your personal taste in music with what similar fans are enjoying right now. This means every song in Discover Weekly is based both on your own listening as well as what others are playlisting and listening to around the songs you love - making your playlist completely unique and full of deep cuts and new discoveries.
It’s like having your best friend make you a personalized mixtape every single week.
As your music taste evolves, so will Discover Weekly. In fact, the more you listen, the better it gets. And because it’s a playlist you can access and listen to it across all your platforms and devices. Plus, sharing it with friends or making it available offline for your Monday commute is super easy.
Dan Seifert was able to try Discover Weekly for The Verge:
I had a chance to check out the Discover Weekly playlist ahead of launch. It served up 30 tracks totaling almost two and a half hours of music that ranged from dad rock, to sad rock, to hipper chillwave tracks. Some of the artists were ones that I’m closely familiar with, while others were complete unknowns to me. But all of the songs were new to me, either completely so or different versions of songs I’d heard before. From my experience, Discover Weekly fulfilled its mission of delivering songs I hadn’t heard before, but would likely enjoy.
This seems like a good idea from Spotify given their tech and expertise in algorithmic recommendations, especially because it doesn’t try to compete with Apple Music’s combined human-algorithmic approach of the For You section yet.
It’ll be interesting to see if Spotify will eventually expand editorial staff to deliver human-made picks and playlists, but until then they’re going to use algorithms and users to build personalized playlists. Not surprising and likely not as unique as Apple’s For You (my favorite part of the service), but probably a good option for Spotify right now.