Stephen Hackett (with help from the Relay FM designer – @forgottentowel), has created a page containing every default macOS wallpaper in 5K!
I’ve downloaded a few myself of course.
The AnyWatt comes in three versions: one for square-headed chargers, like those found on Lenovo laptops; one for more traditional barrel plugs; and perhaps most surprising, one for Apple’s MagSafe 2 adapter.
I really don’t see the amazement at this product, it’s just an adapter. Sure, the automatic voltage adjustment is nice. But if you have a Mac, are you really going to ask a Lenovo user for their charger?
Just bring your own.
I had my third experience triggering Emergency SOS on my Apple Watch this morning, but this one was the most annoying.
If you haven’t heard of it, then iMore has a good guide on what it is and how to set it up. But basically, it’s something that when triggered, will start beeping loudly while it counts down from 10, and when finished it will call your local emergency services, and share your location with a rather urgent message to your emergency contacts.
To be honest, it sounds really useful. Not something that would get used 99.9% of the time, but it’s nice to know it’s there if you need it. However the action to trigger it, is by holding down the buttons on your watch. Which I believe, is a terrible idea.
As I mentioned before, I’ve accidentally triggered this a few times. I was pretty sure that I saw somewhere that the latest betas had an issue with cancelling it, I’m not sure if this is still true, but nothing I did stopped everything from happening. So my watch beeped loudly on the train for 10 seconds, the (not so equal to 911) emergency services were dialled, and my location was shared with a few people. All because I was leaning on my wrist in a weird way when trying to get off the train.
It’s a nice feature, and is vital to someone in an emergency. But it should be harder to trigger.
I made my first API today, and I used Swift to do it!
Basically, I got bored this afternoon and decided to have a little research into server-side Swift programming. I’ve heard about this before, but I’ve not gone too deep into it myself.
The problem with me tying things like this, is that I ever really have a good idea, or scenario which I could use to learn the new thing. Well as you may already know, I’m slowly working on a title casing application for iOS and macOS, and therefore I’ve already created a few functions to format text.
So far the base TextCase functions are:
From these formats, the only ones I could see being useful are Title casing, and the fun SpongeBob format.
From making use of various APIs myself, I knew that all I needed was a super simple HTTP server, which had support for a few GET requests.
Perfect was the tool I used to write the server side code, and I found a quick tutorial which explained the basic HTTP server that I needed. I must say it was really easy for me to create this, as I’m already familiar with Swift, so the only thing to learn was the “Perfect” way of doing things.
Because it was in Swift, I could also reuse my main TextCase class which handles the formatting. There was a slight exception, where the arc4random_uniform function isn’t available on Linux, but I found a Linux suitable replacement for this.
There are also a few more reasons why I wanted to try this out, but they’re rather meta. For example, I’m a big fan of Swift, and it feels good working with “low-level” Swift if you can really call it that, and also because I just love the look of Swift in the default Xcode theme, with the SF Mono font 😍 (weird, I know, but it’s the truth).
The final code (as in what I’ve done so far), is three endpoints, which are actually just two. /title/{input text} is to return the given text in title casing, /spongebob/{input text} is for the SpongeBob case. The third one is just /{input text}, and it returns the text in every format available, which is just the two I mentioned so far. The results are in plain JSON, and also include the plain value that was sent in the request.
For example, here is an example response to the / endpoint:
{
"plain" : "what the hell is this",
"title" : "What the Hell Is This",
"spongebob" : "wHAT ThE Hell iS thiS"
}
Anyway, you can view the project over at GitHub, and if you want to suggest any new formats (or even write some yourself), just let me know on Twitter at @chrishannah
Snapchat has just released a new feature, and it’s one that can be taken in a few different ways. It’s Snap Map, and basically it’s a way to share and view peoples locations.
To activate Snap Map, just pinch to zoom out, and you can view any of your friends that are currently sharing their location with you.
In their short video showing the new feature (Now unavailable), it seems as it’s being advertised as a way to see where your friends are, so you can go hang out with them.
But at the same time, it’s very easy to accidentally share your location with more people than you want. This becomes a much bigger problem with a service such as Snapchat, as the majority of users are very young.
Fortunately, there is a setting in Snapchat where you can limit who can view your location. I would suggest turning this feature off completely, but it’s not a problem if it’s managed properly.
So here is how to fine-tune your privacy preferences in Snapchat:
When sharing your location in Snapchat, there are three different options to choose from (of course there’s also the option to not share it at all, by never enabling the feature).
So you can either hide it completely, share your location with all of your friends, or just to a selected group. In some cases, “My Friends” is a completely fine option, but that only makes sense if you only add close friends. But if you like to add other people you don’t know very well, or you just want to completely sure who you’re sharing your location with, the latter “Select Friends” option is much better suited.
My friend Cesare Forelli has just released his fourth app, and it’s a pedometer to help keep track of how far you’ve walked.
It’s a simple application, in that it’s primarily a way to view your walking data, but that’s not all it does.
It tracks your steps, the distance you actually walked, and if you’re on an iPhone 6 or newer it also shows you how many stairs have climbed.
This data is combined with a set goal, which is an amount of steps you want to hit every day. This is all presented in main ring, but if you swipe to the left you will also get to see the Stats view. Here you can find your past steps and distance walked, but also other data points such as the most steps walked, longest distance, and most floors in a single day.
There’s also a today widget, that let’s you keep on top of your walking at a glance.
I’m a big fan of the interface, and how it shows everything I need to see, and in a beautiful way.
Walk More is free to download on the App Store, but there’s also a few tip options in the settings, just in case you want to help keep the app going!
Starting in iOS 11, users will no longer be able to associate social media accounts, such as Twitter or Facebook into the Settings app.
Previously, users could add an account to Settings, which would then allow other apps to request these details as authentication. Which was quite useful, as there are a lot of apps/services that authenticate via Twitter, and this meant you didn’t have to keep entering your password.
There is an alternative that developers can use, and that is the built in Keychain that can be used to store authentication details, such as username or password. And they can combine this together with the new additions to in app autofill, so that stored details can be loaded into the login form automatically.
This also means that the Social app framework, that developers used to initiate content sharing to built-in social networks has changed. Instead of providing a simple way to post to LinkedIn, Weibo, Facebook, is Twitter, it is now a generalised framework that can be manipulated to be used with any social account.
From the documentation:
On iOS and macOS, this framework provides a template for creating HTTP requests. On iOS only, the Social framework provides a generalized interface for posting requests on behalf of the user.
A common way to use this framework is:
- Create a network session.
- Get the activity feed for a user.
- Make a new post.
- Set properties on a post, add attachments, etc.
- Publish a post to an activity feed.
So it’s still helpful, in that it can be used in more ways than before, and a general interface is also provided. But from the point of view of something like Twitter that was previously integrated, it will be a bit more work to integrate.
Firstly, that was an amazing keynote.
There were so many different features announced, that it just went super fast. I’m especially looking forward to finding out all the little things that didn’t make it.
I won’t be posting an entire summary of the event, as there’s loads more great writers doing just that. But I thought I’d share my brief opinion on a few things here, before any smaller pieces that I share here on my blog.
Not much was announced for tvOS, apart from Amazon Prime Video. That’s pretty cool, and definitely something I’ll be using, but nothing really to give an opinion on.
The watch faces were, apart from Siri, a bit uninteresting in my opinion. But the Siri face is something I’m really intrigued about.
I hope that the complications I use on my current watch face (Dark Sky, Overcast, and Todoist) can find ways to put their content in this view. It also looks like Apple have finally found something that makes good use of the Digital Crown.
I’m a fan of the new Activity features, as it’s something that can really benefit from being personalised.
The Music app looks pretty nice, with the same card style as the Siri face. But I don’t listen to music from my watch at all.
“High Sierra”, wow.
Again, just like tvOS, there’s nothing to really shout about with the latest update of macOS. Maybe that’s why they didn’t pay much attention to the name.
I’m sure they’ve added a lot of great features, but I just installed it on a second MacBook I have, and I didn’t notice anything different.
APFS is pretty cool though.
There is however some great VR functionality, and it’s really pleasing to see Apple go full throttle into this industry.
Quite a few new Macs, with some good improvements. But the real announcement was the iMac Pro, what a machine. It looks beautiful.
It’s way too powerful for what I use a Mac for, but Apple are truly moving forward in the pro market. 128 GB RAM and 18-Core processors just blow my mind.
I really need the space grey external keyboard and mouse.
I like the fact messages are now stored in the cloud, and that they managed it while still providing the same level of security as before.
Nice!
Some great improvements with the voices, and translation. But overall, Siri is becoming pretty clever!
Something I didn’t take in initially was that you now have “one Siri”, as the data is shared between your devices.
I like this a lot! It’s a bit ugly, but it can do a lot more than before, and it’s even customisable!
Could they have done this any better?
I’ve played with iOS 11 a tiny bit so far, and the interface is really clean.
The multitasking is a lot better than before, and the Dock just makes it so easy.
When I was first playing with the beta on my iPad, I found it a bit confusing when how to activate Split View when viewing an app. But it’s a nice way to do it, and having an app “over” another is really helpful. I guess it will also help when apps don’t support Split View, so you’ll still be able to have something above.
It’s a drag fest. – Craig Federighi
All of this just makes sense, the multiple file selection, moving them between apps, it just feels perfect for iOS.
Arranging icons on the home screen is also easier because of this as well, because you can pick up an app, and swipe between screens whilst holding the app!
😍
I use this quite a bit already, but it’s way more powerful in iOS 11.
I love that when you take a screenshot it let’s you activate it right away as well, that’s all I use Markup for!
Great new iPads. I need one.
It’s a speaker and a voice assistant, but at the same time it’s so much more.
I have an Amazon Echo, but because it’s not integrated very well into the Apple ecosystem, I hardly use it.
And while I don’t think this is worth purchasing just for Siri, if I ever move out, this would be a perfect addition.
Andy Rubin (co-founder of Android) has came out with a new product, the Essential phone. Basically, it’s a new phone that runs Android, which is built upon a few beliefs:
Going by these principles, it sounds like something I could get behind. But at the minute, that is still in principle. With the physical implementation all that matters in the real world.
If we disregard the fact it runs Android for now (I’m not exactly a big fan), the phone has a few features that will intrigue some people.
The display is the biggest part of the device, and that’s what everyone will be drawn to. It follows the theme of slimming the bezel down, which most manufacturers are doing.
The Essential phone has done something a bit strange in my opinion, by expanding the screen further up the device, but leaving a cutout for the front facing camera. You could say this is clever, in that they managed to produce a screen that fits around a camera. Or possibly sneaky, although that’s probably not the word I want to use, because it allows them to market it as a bigger screen, although that section won’t be used for the main content.
This then leads into the camera, which is a big focus point for phones nowadays. The front facing camera is 8MP and can even film 4K video, and the rear camera is 13MP and can also film in 4K. I haven’t researched too much into the camera specs, but from what I can gather, it will at least sit with phones like the iPhone 7 and the Google Pixel.
Another feature of the phone is the ability to connect accessories. It’s nothing fundamentally new, as the iPad has the smart connector, and then there’s already a ton of Bluetooth accessories. But with the Essential phone, you have two connector pins on the top of the rear or the device, and accessories connect magnetically.
There are currently two accessories on the website, which are the 3D camera, and the charging dock. Two okay accessories in my mind. Sure they look great, but I wouldn’t get them.
It is a rather small 3D camera though, and their is an opportunity to make more accessories in the future. Then again, there are always opportunities for more accessories, so too much hope shouldn’t be put into this thought.
While I don’t think this phone will be for everybody, it’s another competitor, and that can only be a good thing for the industry.
In principle I like the Essential phone, but I just can’t imagine myself switching to Android (this is a deeper problem I’ll expand upon in the future). I would of preferred it to run a separate operating system, but I do respect the amount of work that would take to build, not even thinking about the app ecosystem.
However it is a step in the right direction for Android phones, which I believe was started by the Google Pixel. In my mind, android phones were all about quantity, and not necessarily being the best devices. But it’s started to take a different course, and it’s only for the best.
Find out more about the Essential phone on their website.
It’s nearly halfway through the year already, and I’m surprised to say that apart from the odd accessory, I haven’t purchased any new gadgets this year. And the only big things last year was my new MacBook with Touch Bar and an Echo Dot (which I rarely use now).
That probably isn’t anything spectacular for most people, but I’m a young lover of technology, and a general fan of most things new and shiny. But with a mix of being a student, and the prolonged life of most devices nowadays, I simply haven’t needed to upgrade anything.
But there are a few things that I think may be due an upgrade in the next six months – my Apple Watch and my iPad.
As I’ve wrote about before, I’m still using my Series 0 Apple Watch. And while it’s providing me with everything I think I need from it, I was slightly tempted to upgrade to the Series 2. So if Apple were to come out with another updated model – the new features, speed increase, and the fact that my current watch screen has had a chip for about a year may push me to upgrade.
So there isn’t an immediate requirement for me to upgrade my watch, I think a Series 3 would be time to do so. I’ve had my current one for quite some time.
My iPad is another weird one, I’m currently using an iPad Air 2, so it’s still a relatively new device. But it’s not a pro.
Ever since the Apple Pencil was announced, I really wanted to get one, but this was when my iPad was still pretty new, so I knew I couldn’t warrant an upgrade so soon. And the 12.9" iPad Pro was also a thought, but with the "recent" purchase of a new MacBook Pro, I thought that I would simply not use it enough. However, I’m growing into using my iPad more and more everyday, and while I’m not Federico Viticci, CGP Grey, or Matt Gemmel, the iPad is becoming more of an important device in my life.
Usually the need to upgrade a device is because it is no longer fit for purpose. But that doesn’t apply to my iPad, and it’s mainly because of the software. Sure, Apple makes iOS available on a huge number of previous devices, but I’m talking about apps. I’ve started using a few apps recently that while have reignited my iPad usage, also reinvigorated my iPad, giving it a new sense of power.
These apps are Workflow, Magic Launcher, 1Password, Ulysses, and Todoist, just to name a few. Granted these apps have been available for a while, but I’m now starting to use them properly. Which has made a lot of difference to the way I see my iPad, and has now led me to understand even more how people have moved fully to iOS. One of the best parts of these apps are the widgets you get to use in the Today view. By seeing more at a glance, and to compile bigger actions together in Workflow/Magic Launcher, it lets you do more by actually doing much less.
Putting all of this in the simplest terms, my iPad has become so much more, and it’s leading me to want to use it to do even more of my daily tasks.
What I want in my future iPad is Pencil support, a slightly larger screen than my iPad Air 2, a smart connector for an external keyboard, and general speed improvements. Everything else is down to iOS. And in that regard I’m hoping to see a deeper Siri integration, native drag and drop, and a better way to handle choosing apps in split view.
Apart from these two apple devices, there’s nothing else that I particularly need. I think I’d like to get a Nintendo Switch, but then again I’d probably stop using it quite quickly, as I do with most other games consoles.
Then there’s the next iPhone, but for once I don’t have a desire to upgrade my phone at all. I’m using a 7 Plus, and it’s a mature device that I honestly can’t think of many features right now that would push me to upgrade.
What I’ve learned over the last 6 months to a year, is that hardware isn’t really ever the issue, software is. Which is what got me in this predicament having a bunch of old devices.
Software nowadays can be an elixir of life for old devices, and as much as hardware manufactures won’t like it, they’re lasting a lot longer than they used to.