Chris Hannah

Apple has announced the dates for this years WWDC, and as we all expected, its back in it's all-online format that we experienced last year.

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today announced it will host its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) June 7 through 11, in an all-online format. Free for all developers, WWDC21 will offer unique insight into the future of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS. Building on the record-breaking participation and learnings from last year’s online conference, WWDC21 is an opportunity for developers to learn about the new technologies, tools, and frameworks they rely on to build innovative and platform-differentiating apps and games.

I'm very much excited for WWDC this year. A bit more than usual as well. Since I'm on the lookout for a new project to work on, and I'm hoping a new API or technology can unlock something for me.

I’ve been trying out a couple of new apps this week, and although they aren’t related at all, I’m using both for the same reason.

The apps are Alfred 4 for Mac and Spotify. Both of these apps are replacing Apple’s solutions, Spotlight and the Music app.

It started with Spotify, and the reason behind the switch was the way search works in the Mac app. I have a thread with a few videos, but essentially Spotify searched as you typed your query, whereas the Music app only^[1] allowed you to see the results after you finished typing a query and then pressed return^[2].

This is most likely a minuscule quality of life enhancement to many people. But if there’s one thing I know about myself, is that I become frustrated quickly when it feels like I’m being held back. So I thought for once maybe I should try and see what I can do to make my life a bit easier.

This then opened my eyes up to Alfred.

I’ve been aware of Alfred for a while, but I always saw it as a much more advanced and customisable version of Spotlight. And while that may be the case, as I don’t need any advanced functionality, I didn’t give it a real go.

However, I started to think that forgetting the additional features, it might just be a better Spotlight. And after using it for a few days, I certainly think it is.

There’s not much I used Spotlight for, apart from opening applications, launching various system preferences, or looking up a definition. Alfred does all of these, and at a much faster pace than Spotlight.

I think it’s a bit of an odd situation where I’m using two alternative pieces of software simply because I can type and receive feedback faster, instead of it being a feature comparison. One thing is for sure. It does represent my recent attitude towards software. Where I would rather things “get out of the way” and just let me get things done and fast. It feels like a type of maturity.

I have many thoughts on how this relates to iPadOS because I think the OS is slower in general. But I’ll leave that to another day.

---

1. Music does have a short list of suggestions which do slowly appear as you type, but these aren’t actionable. They are simply links to a page in Music. ↩︎

2. Sometimes I’ve found that you actually have to hit return more than once to get the results. ↩︎

Some absolutely incredible shots of the eruption.

A small update to Text Case has just been released to both the iOS and macOS versions, and this time it’s just a small collection of fixes.

To be specific:

• There was an issue when using an empty clipboard with certain formats.
• The Add Suffix format wasn’t working correctly.
• In some situations, the Share Extension would regularly close after launch.
• A few Title Case variants were not always capitalising adjectives correctly.

As you can see, not exactly the sort of features one may wish for.

However, now these issues should be resolved, the focus can now switch back to more interesting features. For example, I have a few formats in mind that I want to add next. Some involving regular expressions, which should be fun.

Download

This update is available now for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS!

Victoria Park & Kris Bramwell, for BBC News:

Around 3,500 gorillas have been adopted by Reddit's WallStreetBets (WSB) community in six days.The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International, a charity for the protection of endangered mountain gorillas, has also received more than $350,000 (£252,000) in donations.

Reddit can be a bad place, but it can also be pretty amazing.

In case you were wondering what was actually new in Ghost 4.0, Matt Birchler made a great video going over the major changes.

Weirdly a lot of this was already "available". Albeit marked as being experimental. For example, I've been using the members feature and email newsletter feature for a few months, and I have an accent colour selected already.

The thing I'd like them to focus on next would be for a better mobile/tablet interface. I don't think we'll ever see a native app from them, seeing as they are a web company. But I'd settle for a website that's at least usable on an iPad.

Ghost, the blogging platform that this blog runs on, recently received a major update. So I decided that I would update the version of my instance. Mainly because the update's main focus was adding support for members and email newsletters, which previously have been part of their "labs" section.

I took the necessary precautions, exported the content, even made a complete backup of the base folder. However, I still assumed that it would go well since Ghost has a command-line tool that should take care of everything.

Unfortunately for me, this migration didn't work. The cause was a failing database migration, which seemed odd to me since this is not something that I have changed. And it turns out; the rollback feature doesn't support major versions.

The next step was installing a new version of Ghost v3, which is pretty easy if you use the CLI tool. Once that was installed, I restored the content, and it worked as usual.

I was still set on updating to v4, though. So I tried again. This time thinking it will work because I have a completely fresh install. Sadly, the same error occurred. Which meant my only option was to start with a new v4 instance.

Luckily, the import functionality worked with my data, even though it was exported with a previous version. All I had to do was verify that worked, migrated members, configured the email newsletter, and made sure the images were all available. Everything went perfectly this time.

I'll need to look into the changes more and see if I can make use of anything. One thing I did notice was the excellent new default theme. So maybe I can steal a few things.

While the blog hasn't visibly changed, this migration did cause one annoyance. As after you set up a Ghost instance, it starts you off with a few default blog posts. So every time I did this, these dummy posts were available in the RSS feed. I think this also meant that a few recent posts were triggered when I did the import. This means, if your RSS reader/service polled for changes during this period, you'll most likely have a few posts that you can ignore. Sorry about this!

Something that has slowly evolved for me is how I use task managers. I've used apps like 2Do, Todoist, Things, and a few more in the past. But they never stuck with me for various reasons. The most annoying part of this was that I'd have to keep migrating the data into new apps.

One of those times, I decided to go all-in on the stock Reminders app. Because then I know that my data is available on all of my devices, my tasks slightly would be slightly more accessible than they would be from a third-party app, and it's a pretty simple system.

Being simple attracted me since I always felt like every task manager I used tried to do too much. At least for my uses. I don't do anything fancy with my tasks. I have an inbox where I put rough ideas and tasks that need either more information or to be planned. And I have a few essential lists which I sort tasks into, of which I'd say 99% of the tasks fall within four lists: Blog, Newsletter, House, Text Case.

I didn't settle on Reminders as my task manager "app" of choice, though. For that, I've been using GoodTask. For the simple reason of it being based upon the built-in Reminders system. So while I can access my data via the Reminders app on any platform, GoodTask is essentially my "frontend".

The main thing that I like about GoodTask is the user interface, how flexible it is with the various view options, and the theming (although themes are more limited on macOS). Add in the Smart Lists feature, where you create dynamic lists based on various criteria, and you can create a pretty complex system, all still based on the same Reminders data.

I've also started to use Quick Actions a bit more recently. My usage is relatively simple with some date options, but I imagine these may grow as I play around even more.

It's certainly a good feeling having stuck with a solution for a relatively long period. I used to be someone who would try out any new and trendy task manager, but I really see the value of just making a decision and sticking with it. I definitely think it's something I should take into other aspects of my workflow. The trend I'm noticing in my app choices seems that they're relatively simple, not packed full of wow factors, but do one job and do it well. To be honest, the first two describe me as a person.

If you're interested, Josh Holtz interviewed me over at Indie Dev Monday. It's a great weekly newsletter that showcases one or two independent developers per week.

Notification Centre on macOS is a feature that's confused me for a while and one that I think wastes a lot of it's potential primarily because I don't think its anywhere as convenient as its counterpart on iOS.

I would guess that it's down to the interaction needed to use it. On an iOS device, you can see your notifications on the Lock Screen and can swipe up to reveal the full Notification Centre. But on macOS, it's hidden behind the date and time in the menu bar. So it's certainly not as visible or accessible.

This hidden nature leads me to hardly ever use it. So when I do open it up, it's full of old notifications that I need to clear out.

There's also the fact that notifications in Big Sur are plain dumb. If you've used Big Sur, then I'm sure you understand. I don't think I need to go any deeper.

But in general, I think that notifications on macOS could be a super helpful feature. It just needs to be brought out of the shadows. It needs to be accessible, and actions should be able to be accomplished with a single click or swipe.