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Turbulence Forecast

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DetailsPro: A Design Tool for SwiftUI [Sponsor]

DetailsPro is the accessible, graphical tool for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac that brings your app designs to life with SwiftUI. The future of modern app design on Apple’s platforms is SwiftUI, and with DetailsPro, you can be up and running immediately, designing UIs without typing a line of code.

DetailsPro uses a drag and drop interface to make designing app interfaces, widgets, and screens a completely graphical, natural experience. There are no multi-gigabyte downloads or any of the complexity you find in a tool like Xcode. Instead, DetailsPro focuses on your design first. The app is also a fantastic way to learn core SwiftUI concepts in an environment that provides immediate feedback. There’s also a terrific DetailsPro community that offers in-app downloadable templates to learn, remix, or use as starting points for your own projects.

When you’re happy with your design, simply export it to SwiftUI code to Swift Playgrounds or Xcode. That’s the sort of design pipeline that makes handing your work off to your developers simple while ensuring that the fidelity of your designs is preserved in the process.

Built in SwiftUI itself by a former Apple Design Prototyper, DetailsPro is trusted industry-wide by designers at companies like Apple itself, Starbucks, Microsoft, Nike, and Porsche, and it’s easy to see why. DetailsPro brings sophisticated SwiftUIs to life quickly and easily in a way that feels like magic.

If you’ve been looking for a way to get into designing with SwiftUI, your search is over. You can download DetailsPro today for free and use it with five files, but you can unlock unlimited files, MapKit maps, and upcoming features like versions, reusable components, designing with data, and more for just $19.99/year or a one-time payment of $49.99. That’s a fantastic price for an app that will save you time and simplify your design process.

So, download DetailsPro today, and get started designing with SwiftUI.

Our thanks to DetailsPro for sponsoring MacStories this week.

AppStories, Ep. 254 - 30 minutes

App Trends for 2022

FedericoJohn
AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps
0:00
29:43

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AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

This week, Federico and John look at the trends they expect to see in 2022, including trends that will continue from 2021 and new trends they think will emerge in the new year.

This episode is sponsored by:

  • Memberful – Monetize your passion with membership
  • Linode – Simplify your cloud infrastructure

[Subscribe here.](https://staging.macstories.net/podcasts/appstories/plans)

Subscribe here.

We deliver AppStories+ to subscribers with bonus content, ad-free, and at a high bitrate early every week.

To learn more about the benefits included with an AppStories+ subscription, visit our Plans page, or read the AppStories+ FAQ.

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MacStories Unwind: Best Videogames of 2021

AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps
0:00
35:52

AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

This week on MacStories Unwind:

Best Videogames of 2021

MacStories Rewind

Swift Playgrounds 4.0: First Look

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Yesterday, Apple released Swift Playgrounds 4.0, the first version of the app from which you can build an app and publish it on the App Store. That’s a big step forward for the app that started as a limited sandbox for learning to code. The app is not as capable as Xcode. Still, with support for Swift 5.5, live previewing of the app you’re building as you code, multiwindowing, access to SwiftUI, UIKit, the ability to move projects between Swift Playgrounds and Xcode, and more, the app has an enormous amount of potential waiting to be tapped.

Apple's coding course selection has grown steadily since 2016.

Apple’s coding course selection has grown steadily since 2016.

Swift Playgrounds has steadily improved since its introduction in 2016 on the iPad and launch on the Mac last year. Early versions of the app were firmly grounded in learning to code. That’s still the case. The app includes an extensive catalog of lessons on how to code and build apps. There’s also a new ‘Get Started with Apps’ lesson and an App Gallery section that includes several sample apps to help teach coding basics.

Read more

Pixelmator Photo for iPhone: First Impressions

Pixelmator Photo has long been one of my favorite iPad photo editing apps. The app makes great use of the iPad’s large screen, which provides space for tools alongside the image you’re editing. Reducing that experience to even the largest model of iPhone is a tall order, but from my preliminary testing, it looks as though the Pixelmator team has pulled it off.

Pixelmator Photo on the iPad offers an extensive suite of editing tools that strike a nice balance. The app makes it simple to apply the app’s machine learning-based tools for quick editing and sharing, but it also includes fine-grained controls for when you want to more finely tune a photo. The same is true on the iPhone, but the design tilts in favor of quick access and edits, which I think is appropriate on a device like the iPhone. The deeper tools are still there, just beneath the surface and easy to access when you need them, but on the iPhone the emphasis is on accessing frequently-used tools quickly.

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iOS and iPadOS 15.2 Overview: Music, Privacy, Security, and Safety, and a Grab Bag of Other Additions and Refinements

Yesterday, iOS and iPadOS 15.2 were released with a grab bag of new features, refinements, and fixes. There are some handy details in this release, many of which are found deep within the Settings app, so it’s worth poking around to find the ones you want to try.

Music

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

One of the first things Apple announced in October alongside the new colorful HomePod minis was Apple Music Voice Plan, a more affordable version of the company’s music streaming service that is controlled solely by Siri. The new plan lets subscribers access Apple Music’s deep catalog of music, playlists, and radio stations with Apple’s voice assistant. Specific items from Apple Music’s catalog can be requested, or you can ask for songs that fit a mode or ones that are picked based on your like and dislike history. There’s also a feature called Play it Again that allows you to access recently played music.

The new Voice Plan costs $4.99/month and has some limitations compared to other Apple Music Plans. Like Individual Plans, the new Voice Plan is limited to one person. There is no multi-person family plan. Voice Plan doesn’t include the following features either:

  • Real-time lyrics
  • Music videos
  • Spatial audio
  • Lossless audio
Searching inside a playlist.

Searching inside a playlist.

Playlists are searchable now too. When you open a playlist in the Music app, swipe down to reveal the search field at the top of the screen, which will allow you to find individual songs – a nice addition for lengthy playlists.

However, I still wish Apple would allow me to search for playlists organized into folders. You can’t make folders of playlists on an iPhone or iPad, but you can on a Mac. Unfortunately, organizing playlists into folders comes with a substantial penalty. If you go to the Playlists section of Music and search for the title of a playlist that happens to be in a folder, it won’t show up in the results unless you first navigate to the folder where the playlist is stored.

Read more

AppStories, Ep. 253 - 59 minutes

The 2021 MacStories Selects Awards

FedericoJohn
AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

AppStories Episode 253 - The 2021 MacStories Selects Awards

0:00
59:20

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AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

This week, Federico and John introduce the fourth annual MacStories Selects award winners and interview the first MacStories Selects Lifetime Achievement award winner, James Thomson, the creator of PCalc.

This episode is sponsored by:

  • MacStadium – The developer cloud for Mac.
  • Memberful – Monetize your passion with membership

The 2021 MacStories Selects Awards

[Subscribe here.](https://staging.macstories.net/podcasts/appstories/plans)

Subscribe here.

We deliver AppStories+ to subscribers with bonus content, ad-free, and at a high bitrate early every week.

To learn more about the benefits included with an AppStories+ subscription, visit our Plans page, or read the AppStories+ FAQ.

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