New Year, New Audio Setup: SoundSource 6 from Rogue Amoeba
Our Third Annual Apple Watch Check-In 
This week, in what has become an annual tradition, Federico and John talk about how they’ve set up their Apple Watches, including the complications they use, the third-party apps on which they rely, and what’s in their Watch docks.
Today Microsoft previewed a fascinating new experiment in mobile: a brand new iOS app, simply dubbed Office, that houses versions of Word, PowerPoint, and Excel in one place, integrated with OneDrive, while also including Sticky Notes, Microsoft’s OCR-powered Office Lens camera, and a variety of mobile-friendly actions. Until test slots are full, you can sign up to access the beta version of the app through TestFlight.
For now, the beta version of Office is iPhone-only, but Microsoft states it “will bring this experience to tablets as well.” It will be interesting to see how that pans out, since currently Microsoft requires Office 365 subscriptions to edit in its Office apps on iPads over a certain size, while devices under that size can edit documents for free. It’s likely the new Office app will follow the same restrictions, but we’ll have to wait to find out.
I’ve spent a little time working with the beta version of Office, and I think Microsoft may be on to something here.
Adobe MAX begins today in Los Angeles and runs through November 6th. As in past years, the three-day conference is an opportunity for Adobe to announce new products and updates to existing ones.
Last year, Adobe previewed Photoshop for iPad and Aero, an iOS AR creation tool. Today, those apps are finally out of beta and are available to everyone in the App Store. In fact, both Photoshop and Aero showed up on the App Store the evening before the start of MAX, providing me with a little hands-on time with them in advance of their official release.
Adobe has also previewed an iPad version of Illustrator, another of its core Creative Suite apps, which the company says will be available sometime in 2020.
Adobe’s announcements are packed with updates to a wide range of its products, but there’s a clear focus this year on mobile apps. In addition to Photoshop, Aero, and Illustrator, the company also announced updates to Lightroom for iOS and iPadOS and its Rush video creation app.
However, the centerpiece of Adobe’s mobile announcements is Photoshop, the company’s iconic professional design app relied upon by creative professionals worldwide. Ever since word of Photoshop for iPad was leaked to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman in July 2018, the idea of ‘full’ or ‘real’ Photoshop on the iPad has captured imaginations. That initial leak, combined with Adobe’s early marketing efforts, led to outsized expectations for the first version of the app.
Instead of the full-featured, desktop-replacement app that some people were expecting, Adobe says that it has built a foundation with its new cloud-based PSD files and Photoshop’s desktop engine, upon which it will evolve with the guidance of users. Based on what I’ve heard from Adobe and seen from my limited use of the app, I believe the company truly is committed to building a more fully-featured version of Photoshop for the iPad; however, it doesn’t appear that users will be able to abandon their desktops anytime soon.
Pixelmator Pro proves that powerful Mac image editors don’t need to be complex. The app, which is the successor to the original Pixelmator, is designed for ultimate ease of use. It’s the ‘image editor for the rest of us’ who want a native Mac app that’s instantly familiar.
The app introduced a refined, single-window design that puts the focus on your work instead of your tools. Pixelmator Pro features a completely nondestructive editing workflow that allows you to experiment, unleashing your creativity with the confidence that you can always revert any changes you make.
https://vimeo.com/295375647
Pixelmator Pro has full RAW image support and advanced photo editing tools for careful fine tuning. The app also includes extensive machine learning-based tools that can automatically enhance your photos. There’s even a Photos app extension that lets you use Pixelmator Pro inside the Photos app and save your edits nondestructively.
The app isn’t just for photographers though. Illustrators will love Pixelmator Pro for its vector tools and SVG file support, and digital painters will appreciate the app’s powerful painting engine and extensive set of dual-texture brushes.
Best of all, Pixelmator Pro’s features are lightning fast because they’ve been built from the ground up using Apple’s latest technologies like Metal 2, which powers the app’s editing engine. Pixelmator Pro is ready for the upcoming Mac Pro too with full support for multiple GPUs.
To learn more, visit Pixelmator Pro’s website where you’ll find even more details along with terrific tutorials. Then, download the app’s free trial to start editing your images like a pro.
Our thanks to Pixelmator Pro for sponsoring MacStories this week.
On this week’s episode of Adapt:
Conversational shortcuts make Siri a programmable assistant, and Federico details how that works. Then Ryan commends Federico with a (symbolic) trophy for his creation of a Mac-like desktop environment on the iPad, complete with file and folder launchers.
You can listen below (and find the show notes here), and don’t forget to send us questions using #AskAdapt and by tagging our Twitter account.
On this week’s episode of Connected:
Federico and Myke break down the new features of iOS 13.2 and watchOS 6.1, before giving their first impressions on the AirPods Pro.
You can listen below (and find the show notes here).
Sponsored by:
A couple weeks ago on our iPad-focused podcast Adapt, Ryan challenged me to figure out a way to turn the iPad’s Home screen into a desktop-like environment with icons to reopen files and folders directly in the Files app. At first, I thought it couldn’t be done: unlike the Mac’s Finder, Files doesn’t let you create aliases to folders or place files on the Home screen; the Shortcuts app can create Home screen icons, but it doesn’t have access to documents located outside Shortcuts’ iCloud Drive container.
As I detailed on Adapt yesterday, I’m happy to introduce FS Bookmarks, a shortcut that lets you create direct launchers for files and folders stored in the Files app. FS Bookmarks is a hybrid Shortcuts-Scriptable tool that takes advantage of a native Files API (which I will call “bookmarks”) to expose the filesystem path of any file or folder stored in the Files app.
With the launchers created via FS Bookmarks, you’ll be able to reopen any document in the Files app (in Quick Look preview mode) or navigate to any folder you want to quickly access. Best of all, you don’t need to know or even see Scriptable’s JavaScript code at all: FS Bookmarks takes care of installing the necessary scripts for you; you just need to pick the files and folders you want to create launchers for, and that’s it. FS Bookmarks was designed to abstract the complexity involved with retrieving the filesystem paths used by the Files app.
MacStories Weekly: Issue 198 This week, in addition to the usual links, app debuts, and recap of MacStories' articles and podcasts:
Today Adobe released an update to its Creative Cloud app on iPhone and iPad which introduced a set of thousands of fonts that can now be installed on those devices via the new font provider system Apple added in iOS and iPadOS 13. Once installed, fonts from Creative Cloud can be used within any other app that supports custom fonts. The Creative Cloud app is a free download, and all users can download 1,300 fonts in the app for free; users with a Creative Cloud subscription, however, have access to a whopping 17,000 fonts.
Federico
John
