Kindle for iOS Redesigned with Clean, Streamlined Organization

By Ryan Christoffel

Amazon’s Kindle app for iOS received a major update today, bringing redesigned navigation tabs, a new light theme, and more. The change that excited me most, small as it may be, is the greatly improved app icon – it includes a beautiful new illustration, and the word Kindle has been removed.

The Kindle app now feels more at home on iOS, with a familiar navigation tab layout lining the bottom of the screen. The first tab, Library, is essentially what the main interface of the app was before – all your books are found there. The Library tab is cleaner and simpler now, as several options it formerly contained have been assigned to other areas of the app. The Goodreads and Discover pages, for example, now live in the main navigation bar as Community and Discover tabs, respectively. Extra items like settings and sync have been moved into the navigation bar’s final tab, More. There’s also now a search bar at the top of the screen that’s accessible from nearly anywhere in the app. Overall, these layout changes make the app easier to navigate and less cluttered than before.

Joining the app’s original dark theme, you can now turn on a light theme for the app; this navigation theme is separate from the reading theme, which has long had dark and light options. The light theme looks nice, and I plan to keep it turned on. Another change is that while reading, it’s easier to get back to your library – the upper left corner contains a down-facing arrow that instantly closes your book.

I do nearly all of my book reading digitally, and I’ve long preferred reading in iBooks over Kindle due to it having the superior app in my mind. Today’s update fixes several of the issues I’ve had with Kindle, but unfortunately there’s one big problem outstanding: Kindle still doesn’t support Split View on iPad. Once Amazon adds that to its app, I’ll have less reason to always go with iBooks.

Apollo: A Powerful, Modern Reddit Client for iOS

By Ryan Christoffel

Reddit is one of those spaces on the Internet that I’ve historically stayed mostly away from. Due to my role at MacStories, however, and a thriving Apple subreddit, I’ve been there more in the past year than all prior years combined. During that time I’ve tried all the best iOS Reddit clients in an attempt to find one that’s right for me. For one reason or another, none have stuck; today, however, that changes, with the release of Apollo.

Ulysses 12: Writing on iOS Has Never Been Better

By Ryan Christoffel

This summer Ulysses announced a major business model shift, with its iOS and macOS apps moving from up front purchases to subscription supported. As tends to happen, the move stirred up some controversy. In my mind at least, the company’s reasoning was sound – as the app’s co-founder stated, “Writers want to rely on a professional tool that is constantly evolving, and we want to keep delivering just that.”

Today brings the first major update to Ulysses following its switch to subscriptions. Bolstered by Apple’s recent focus on evolving the iPad platform, Ulysses 12 is primarily an iOS release; while the Mac version gains some improvements, it clearly isn’t the centerpiece here. Ulysses on iOS gains drag and drop support, multi-pane editing, streamlined library navigation, and image previews – all of which make an already powerful writing tool even better.

Microsoft Outlook for Mac Undergoing Major Redesign →

Linked By Ryan Christoffel

Tom Warren of The Verge reports on Outlook for Mac details shared at the Microsoft Ignite conference last month:

A lot of the changes look very similar to the Outlook for iOS app, with a single-line ribbon and a smaller set of default commands. Reducing complexity is one of the key aims of the redesign, to make it easier for new and existing Outlook users to navigate the email app.

A new customizable ribbon will let Outlook for Mac and Windows users control which buttons are available, so you can tailor the email interface to your own common tasks. The left navigation panel will include quicker access to folders across multiple accounts, and looks like the switcher in Outlook for iOS.

Outlook for iOS has long been among the top email clients on the mobile platform. It pairs a clean, beautiful interface reminiscent of iOS’ Mail.app with the power user features Apple appears content to ignore. Moving Outlook for Mac away from its traditional desktop roots and further into the modern era looks to be a clear win.

The full Ignite session detailing future Outlook changes is available on YouTube.

Permalink

More Great Shelf Apps to Boost iPad Productivity

By Ryan Christoffel

Left to right: Yoink, Gladys, Copied

Last month after iOS 11’s launch I pulled together a roundup of iPad apps belonging to a whole new category of apps. Dropped, Workshelf, The Shelf, and Scrawl Pouch all launched as manifestations of Federico’s dream for a drag and drop-powered temporary holding place for content on the iPad. If you’re unfamiliar with this concept, here’s how I described it in my last shelf roundup:

The need for a shelf springs from the addition of drag and drop to iOS 11. It’s not always practical to drag content directly from one app to another; sometimes you know you’ll need that content soon, but you’re not ready to drop it elsewhere yet. Additionally, in some situations you may wish to drop the same data into multiple places over a short period of time, and it can be cumbersome to re-open the data’s source app to pull it out multiple times. A shelf can solve these problems: it serves as a temporary resting place for anything you know you’ll need quick access to soon. In this way it can serve a role similar to the macOS desktop, which is commonly used as a temporary holding zone.

While all the apps I originally highlighted continue to fill this role well, several additional quality apps have launched that bring new things to the table in this young category of apps.

CARROT Weather Adds New CARROT Voices, Weather Underground Improvements, and More

By Ryan Christoffel

Within a matter of a few months, CARROT Weather has launched a major new version, then followed up with a fun AR mode, and now with version 4.2, it’s adding several key refinements to improve the overall experience.

CARROT’s snarky personality is the defining characteristic of the app, yet recent updates have seen that personality gain customization options – both for users wanting more snark, and those begging for less. With today’s update, CARROT goes through perhaps an even more drastic transformation. From the Personality screen in Settings, there are now a variety of new voices that can be set for CARROT, including both female and male options. Among these is FRED, the voice used for the original Mac. My personal favorite is JEEVES, whose smug butler tone makes me feel inferior in a way I thought only the original CARROT could.

Users of CARROT Weather’s alternative data source, Weather Underground, get a couple nice updates in this release. Now, available weather stations can be seen and selected from a map view, making it much easier to get the absolute most accurate data for your current location. Also, severe weather alerts are now available for all of Europe so you’ll be kept in the know regarding official hazards.

If you prefer your weather app to provide a little more business, a little less party, CARROT’s Professional mode has been enhanced in a couple ways. Not only will the maniacal A.I. be de-snarked when set to Professional, but now the little characters and animals in illustrations will be hidden by default as well, AR mode will present a more civilized CARROT, and secret locations can now be turned on.

Premium subscribers have a new vertical view option for daily weather info, which can be accessed from Settings ⇾ iPhone/iPad ⇾ Daily ⇾ Details. I’ve found that I prefer the vertical view over the default horizontal, and I enjoy how it still fits right in with the setting of a landscape – when details slide up from the bottom, it feels like you’re simply delving deeper below the surface.

CARROT Weather keeps getting better. The additions in version 4.2 aren’t blockbuster features, but they make for an overall more complete package. Now users with all kinds of weather and personality preferences can benefit from this top-notch app and customize it to their liking. Without losing its distinct sense of flare, CARROT Weather is quickly becoming a weather app for everyone.

CARROT Weather is available on the App Store.

Spark Adds Key Email Productivity Features: Send Later and Follow-Up Reminders

By Ryan Christoffel

In updates to Readdle’s Spark app for iOS and macOS released today, the email client gained two key power user features: send later and follow-up reminders.

Send later works exactly as you would expect. When composing an email, hitting the send later button in the compose bar will present several default options for when you’d like the message sent: Later Today, This Evening, and Tomorrow. Perhaps the most common use case will be responding to emails late at night and wanting them to send as soon as the next work day kicks off, which the Tomorrow option is perfect for. Thankfully, you can also set a custom date and time. Once you schedule the delivery time, Spark will take care of the rest.

With follow-up reminders, there are five default options joining the custom date picker: Later Today, This Evening, Tomorrow, Weekend, and Next Week. This feature serves to stifle a key pain point I’ve regularly encountered in email management: reminding me to follow up on an email when I don’t receive a response.

In the past I’ve tackled this problem by pairing my email client with a task manager, such that after sending an important, time-sensitive message, I would assign myself a task to follow up with a second email on a certain date in the future. The problem with this approach is that it requires two apps, and that my task manager has no way of communicating with my email inbox – it doesn’t know if I received a response to the message or not, meaning I may end up with an unnecessary task on my list. Integrating this function within an email client is exactly the right move, and Spark does it well. When your set follow-up point arrives, if you haven’t received a response yet, the sent message reappears at the top of your inbox with an icon denoting it’s a reminder. It’s easy from there to open the original email and send a quick follow-up.

The team at Readdle continues adding functionality into Spark that sets it apart as a true productivity-focused email client. With third-party integrations, snoozing, deep customization options, and now the ability to send later and receive follow-up cues, Spark is growing into an email powerhouse that every power user should give a serious look.

Pixelmator for iOS Adds Drag and Drop Support and HEIF Compatibility

By Ryan Christoffel

Following just a few days behind Pixelmator for Mac, which recently received support for HEIF and editing files stored in Apple Photos, Pixelmator for iOS was updated today with the aforementioned HEIF support – Apple’s new file format for images in iOS 11 – as well as drag and drop support on iPad.

Drag and drop enables, as you might expect, moving images and graphics out of or into Pixelmator. Dropping images into a work in progress will import them all as new layers. Depending on the size and number of images you’re dropping, there may be a brief delay before they appear in your working document, but overall this action works well. When it comes to dragging content out of Pixelmator, you’ll need to do it with a single layer at a time – once you’ve lifted a layer, you can’t use drag and drop to pick up any additional layers. In a document containing many different layers, this can be fairly limiting, but there is a type of workaround: you can merge layers together in the sidebar to then drag the newly merged layer out of the app as a single image. Unfortunately, this only solves the problem if you want both layers permanently combined into one when dropping them elsewhere.

This layer merge technique is the only way I’ve discovered to drag a final image, containing multiple layers, out of Pixelmator and into another app – if you don’t want to first merge all layers together, you’ll have to use a more traditional data transfer technique like the share sheet. I would have liked to see drag and drop enabled within Pixelmator’s main image browser for moving a completed image out of the app, or for importing photos into the app to edit later. Currently, long-pressing an item from the image browser simply engages rearrange mode.

One nice side effect of drag and drop support is that when dealing with layers that don’t fit inside your canvas – such as an image you’ve dragged in that’s larger than the canvas itself – previously it was difficult to easily determine how large the full layer was. But now, grabbing the layer and watching it lift from the screen will provide a view of the full image, regardless of canvas size. Once you start dragging the layer away, it will shrink into a smaller drag preview, but until that move is engaged, the lifted image will be shown in full.

Despite its limitations, drag and drop support in Pixelmator is definitely great to have; before today I have tried several times to drag images into the app only to remember I couldn’t do that yet. Perhaps when the upcoming Pixelmator Pro arrives on the iPad, it will include a richer implementation of drag and drop. Until then, I’m grateful to have one less app limiting my iPad drag and drop experience.

Bobby: Subscription Tracking Made Easy

By Ryan Christoffel

We live in a world where media and apps are increasingly available only through recurring subscriptions. Besides the common Netflix or Spotify subscriptions, we may have subscriptions for our favorite apps, for iCloud Drive storage, for news publications, and more.

Last year Bobby launched on the App Store as an easy way to keep track of this growing mess of subscriptions, but in version 1.0 the lack of a few key features – such as iCloud sync – hindered the app’s overall value. The recently released Bobby 2 remedies those few initial drawbacks, and presents one of the best App Store options for keeping on top of where your money goes each month.

This Week's Sponsor: