1Password 5.5 Brings UI Tweaks and Improvements to Touch ID, Apple Watch App, and Security

By Alex Guyot

Released today on the App Store, the latest update to our favorite password manager brings some nice minor adjustments. Most of the changes improve the flow and ease of use of the app, and while there aren’t any game changers here, numerous tiny annoyances that have been frustrating me for a while have been wiped out.

The first feature mentioned in the release notes is the ability to switch between multiple vaults with only two taps using their new vault switcher. I personally only use one vault with 1Password so I don’t have much to say here, but I’m always a fan of doing things in fewer taps so this feature gets a thumbs up from me.

My favorite changes have to do with Touch ID and security tweaks. There have been quite a few times when I’ve accidentally canceled the Touch ID dialogue, and until now that meant that I was then required to type my password back in before the app would unlock. With version 5.5, there is now a very nice looking fingerprint button that will show up beneath the password input box. If you accidentally cancel Touch ID before unlocking the app, you can now tap the fingerprint button to bring the Touch ID prompt back up and unlock without typing. The feature of course still respects your Touch ID timeout settings, so if you’re trying to unlock when Touch ID has been disabled until the next time your password is typed, tapping the fingerprint button won’t do anything.

Next on security, in regard to the 1Password extension, the extension and the main 1Password app now share unlock settings. This means that if you unlock the app, the extension is unlocked, and vice versa. If you, like me, have experienced typing your password into the extension (which should then enable Touch ID) and then going to the main app and discovering that you now need to type the password again, then you’ll be happy about this feature as well. Timeout settings are still respected on the extension as well, also of course.

Another small but appreciated security improvement: if you fill your login credentials on an unsecured website (think http://) when the saved URL for the login is secure (think https://), 1Password will warn you that this is about to happen. This is one of those features that you hope you would never need anyway but if you do it could save you a lot of trouble.

Finally, among some other various and very minor changes, the Apple Watch app has been updated to allow you to see the PIN numbers on your credit card entries. Convenient if you’re into that sort of thing.

Overall, 1Password 5.5 is a solid update. Mostly polish, but polishing shiny things just makes them shinier, and who doesn’t like that? If you don’t have 1Password yet then I’m not sure why you read all of this, but you can find it in the App Store, and you should go buy it right now.

Dropbox Adds Support for Storing URLs Alongside Files

By Alex Guyot

Example from the Linked Dropbox Blog post

Dropbox yesterday announced a new feature to allow you to drag URLs from websites into your Dropbox folders to store them alongside your files. The feature is available on both the desktop and web versions of dropbox, and is as easy as dragging from the address bar on a web browser and dropping the URL into a local Dropbox folder or the Dropbox web app in a browser window. The URL is stored right alongside the rest of your files. Clicking on it from a Finder window opens it right away, while clicking on it from the browser version will open a page with a large “Open in new tab” button in the center. You can open the same page on the Dropbox mobile app, and open the URL in Safari from there, but there’s no way as of yet to store URLs to your Dropbox from mobile.

The new feature is reminiscent to me of a similar feature in the upcoming iOS 9/OS X El Capitan version of Apple’s Notes app. You can save URLs directly into your notes, which allows you to easily keep relevant sources or other web media close at hand while working on or reviewing the note. Dropbox’s take on this allows that type of easy organization of sources or relevant web media without forcing you to use a proprietary file format. While Notes may let you view previews of the URLs inline, in exchange the files can only be opened in the Notes app. If you want them elsewhere you’ll need to export them to PDF and lose any interactivity with the file or the associated URLs. With Dropbox’s new URL storing feature, you can store websites alongside files no matter what the project that you are working on may be, and then access them from any platform.

The lack of support for adding URLs from mobile does seem like a shame to me. I often go through Twitter on my iPad or iPhone, and it would be great to be able to quickly save URLs to my Dropbox via the iOS share sheet when I come across something relevant to a project I’m working on. That said, it seems like such an obvious feature that I would be surprised if it was not implemented eventually. Hopefully we’ll see it soon.

While I’m not certain right now if I will go all in with this feature and start saving all of the sources for projects I’m working on into Dropbox alongside the project files, it’s definitely nice to have the option. In fact that’s my favorite part of the implementation: it will integrate directly into existing workflows without requiring any changes whatsoever. Since the URLs are stored separately from the files, the most you’ll need to do is move your project into it’s own folder (but let’s be real, who doesn’t keep projects in their own folders anyway?) and then you can drag links on top of the folder to store them alongside the rest of the project. You can do this right now, the feature already works.

This feature is an excellent example of Dropbox innovating on its platform while still staying true to itself. Rather than getting sucked into the modern trend of proprietary file formats with fancy inline previews and interactivity, Dropbox kept things simple, and kept their hands out of our file extensions; yet they still made a way for us to achieve the same overall goal that apps like Notes and Evernote have shown to be useful. I love seeing implementations like this from Dropbox, and I hope they continue finding new ways to make their system more powerful without adding layers of complexity for their users to deal with.

Apple Posts New Apple Music Ads with the Theme of “Discovery”

By Alex Guyot

Today Apple released three new videos advertising Apple Music, all focused on the discovery aspects of the service. The new tagline debuted in the ads is “All the artists you love and are about to love”.

While that tagline seems like a bit of a mouthful, I suppose it makes its point. Apple wants to position Apple Music as the new home for your music: there’s no downside to trying it because all of the artists you already know and love are there waiting for you, but it’s also the best place to discover new artists you’ll love that you are currently missing out on.

To showcase this, two of the ads are almost entirely made up of performances by artists James Bay and Kygo. At the end of the “Discover James Bay” and “Discover Kygo” ads, some text and buttons scroll down on top of the video. It is the artist’s name, a “Following” button, and three radio buttons: All, My Music, and Connect. This is the view you see in Apple Music when you open an artist’s page.

Amusingly, while in both ads the “Connect” radio button is selected, Kygo does not actually even have a Connect page at this time (meaning that “Connect” button which is selected doesn’t even exist on his page in Apple Music), and James Bay has only ever posted a single item. Probably not the best two artists to use to drum up interest in the Connect features of Apple Music.

The third video, titled simply “Discovery” is voiced by Trent Reznor, and features a variety of artists (including Bay and Kygo) preparing to be filmed. Reznor’s narration describes the motivations behind starting Apple Music, leading up to the new tagline. I would be surprised if we didn’t see some more of these “Discover [some artist]” videos soon, featuring the other artists that were shown in “Discovery”.

You can check out all three ads below.

watchOS 2 Overview

By Alex Guyot

watchOS 2

At today’s WWDC 2015 keynote, Apple announced watchOS 2, the next revision of its Apple Watch operating system. Despite being announced only two months after the Apple Watch itself was released, watchOS 2 includes a multitude of powerful new features that have the potential to greatly improve the experience of the Apple Watch.

WatchKit for watchOS 2

WatchKit, the development framework for Apple Watch apps, is seeing a huge update with watchOS 2. WatchKit apps are now able to run natively on the Apple Watch, meaning they no longer need to communicate back to the iPhone to get all of their information. This should result in huge improvements in the speed and efficiency of Apple Watch apps on launch and during use.

Furthermore, in watchOS 2, WatchKit apps will have access to the hardware components and sensors on the Apple Watch. Developers will be able to incorporate the Digital Crown, Taptic Engine, heart rate sensor, accelerometer and microphone into their apps. This will open up a whole new world for third party apps, giving them just as many abilities as Apple’s built-in apps and letting them access the full set of features the Apple Watch has to offer.

New to all Watch apps, Apple’s included (with the exception of the phone app), WatchKit apps can now play audio and video directly on the Apple Watch, as well as run animations. Yes, this means using the built-in speaker for more than just taking phone calls.

OS X El Capitan Overview

By Alex Guyot

OS X El Capitan

This morning at Apple’s WWDC 2015 keynote event, SVP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi took the stage to announce OS X El Capitan. The next major version of Apple’s Mac operating system, El Capitan has two major areas of focus: Experience and Performance.

Experience

The improved experience in OS X El Capitan revolves around three main categories: Spotlight search, built-in apps, and window management.

Spotlight Search

Improved Spotlight search

Spotlight search has greatly improved search functionality, making the feature smarter and more powerful by building in natural language processing and integrating it with more services. Now you can perform searches with phrases such as “big sur sunset,” and Spotlight will surface videos from the web that show the sunset in Big Sur. Spotlight has also gained some other nice touches such as the ability to resize or move the spotlight window around on your screen and integration with weather, stocks, sports, transit, and the aforementioned web video.

Apple Releases ResearchKit to Medical Researchers →

Linked By Alex Guyot

A few ResearchKit apps were launch partners when Apple first announced the framework, but starting today it is being released to all medical researchers who want to make use of it.

From Apple’s press release:

The first research apps developed using ResearchKit study asthma, breast cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and Parkinson’s disease, and have enrolled over 60,000 iPhone users in just the first few weeks of being available on the App Store. Starting today, medical researchers all over the world will be able to use ResearchKit to develop their own apps and developers can also contribute new research modules to the open source framework.

As noted above, Apple is releasing ResearchKit as an open source framework, and they’ve actually uploaded the entire framework to GitHub, so anyone can see, use, and contribute to the project.

You can find our complete overview of ResearchKit here, or check out Federico’s assessment of the framework’s possible impact in his Thoughts on Apple’s March 9th Event.

Permalink

Photos for OS X Review

By Alex Guyot

Editorial Preview

Let me begin this review with a disclaimer: I am not a photographer. In high school I took a class called Photo Imaging, which taught me how to use Photoshop and attempted to teach me how to take quality pictures. Now I know the Rule of Thirds, and can create images of middle schoolers defeating lions in battle, but it didn’t fix the problem that I simply don’t have a natural eye for photography, nor the patience to develop one.

What I do have, however, is a world-class camera that I carry in my pocket everywhere I go. While I might not be taking world-class photos with it, I do take pictures of my family, my friends, and my life. These pictures are not thoughtfully composed, they are not shot in Raw, and I do not spend hours meticulously editing them. Despite that, they are very dear to me.

As someone who’s written tens of thousands of words on automation, you might expect me to have some crazy photo management workflows in place, or at least to be using one or two or five different services devoted to the practice. In truth, I don’t use any photo management workflows or services. I’ve always been interested in them, and I’ve tried almost all of them, but they’ve all been too much of a hassle for me.

I take all of my pictures on my iPhone, and I take a lot of them. I have a habit of hitting the shutter button at least three or four times whenever I’m trying to capture something, because often at least one or two of them are blurry, or someone’s eyes are closed, etc. Eventually I get around to going through and deleting all but one of these groups of multiple pictures, but sometimes this isn’t until days or weeks later, and any third party photo management service I’ve used will have already uploaded the duplicates. The result is huge amounts of extra photos taking up often limited space and cluttering companion apps built to let me view my stored photos. Worse, making changes to the photos on my phone won’t sync to the backups, and vice versa.

Eventually I’ve grown tired of every third party service I’ve tried and reverted to just cramming everything into iPhoto (so that I at least had some sort of backup) and ignoring it. iPhoto is outdated, slow, and ugly. Any time I’ve wanted to look through my photos, I just go to my iPhone and look there. Any necessary edits are similarly completed on my phone, and the extra features that iPhoto may have offered (smart albums, faces, etc.) I’ve simply gone without.

Enter, Photos for OS X.

Apple Releases iOS 8.2

By Alex Guyot

On the heels of today’s keynote, Apple has released iOS 8.2 to the public. The update includes support for the Apple Watch, improvements to the Health app, increased stability, and bug fixes.

Apple Watch support includes a new Apple Watch app (for us all to stare at longingly for the next few weeks), which is available on iPhone 5 and later.

Improvements to the Health app include the ability to select units of measure for certain statistics, the ability to add and visualize workout sessions from 3rd party apps, and new privacy settings which let you turn off tracking of steps, distance, and flights climbed.

There are also lots of improvements to stability and even more bug fixes for various small issues across the system.

In my personal usage, iOS 8.2 has been far more solid than previous iterations, and feels like the first release in which iOS 8 has really stabilized.

The iOS 8.2 update is available now in Software Update.

Apple’s ResearchKit: Our Complete Overview

By Alex Guyot

One of the unexpected announcements from Apple’s Spring Forward keynote this morning was ResearchKit. ResearchKit is a new initiative by Apple which will enable medical researchers to tap into the vast amount of iPhones in use around the world in order to gather new types of data on an unprecedented scale.

During the keynote, Jeff Williams, Apple’s senior vice president of Operations, took the stage to talk about the problems of medical research. Last year Apple announced a similar initiative, HealthKit, which was more focused on personal health. According to Williams, while talking to medical experts regarding HealthKit, the conversations often led to research and the problems that the field faced. Some of the biggest challenges to medical research, as Williams stated them, are limited participation (small sample sizes), subjective data, infrequent data, and one-way communication. He went on to say that there are hundreds of millions of iPhone users in the world, and many of them would gladly participate in these studies if it were only simpler and easier to do so.

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WatchKit for watchOS 2

Experience

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