The Sweet Setup Launches ‘Learn Ulysses’ Video Course

By Ryan Christoffel

Today The Sweet Setup launched a new ‘Learn Ulysses’ course that’s designed to help users get the most out of the powerful writing app.

The meat of Learn Ulysses is its seven video guides that walk through key aspects of the app in detail. Videos cover the following topics:

Getting to Know Ulysses
Writing Tips and Tricks
The Ulysses Toolbar
Main Features
iPhone & iPad Apps
Backup & Restore
Powerful Search, Find, & Replace

Each video can be either streamed or downloaded, and they are all accompanied by full transcripts. The videos I’ve seen are of the highest quality; the team at The Sweet Setup has handled well the difficult task of going deep into Ulysses while still making everything easy to understand.

In addition to the seven main videos, Learn Ulysses includes bonus content such as a quick reference cheat sheet of additional features and keyboard shortcuts for the app. My personal favorite bonus is the included series of setup interviews, where different writers share exactly how they use Ulysses in their daily workflows. Some of these are in video form, while others are written. I always love hearing how others use a powerful app, as it helps me find new practices to adopt.

The regular price for Learn Ulysses is $29, but during launch week it’s available at 20% off for a discounted rate of $23. You can purchase the course here.

Apple Stores to Host Star Wars: The Last Jedi Toys and AR Experience

By Ryan Christoffel

Star Wars merchandise is a big deal in the retail world, especially when it coincides with a new film in the main saga. Two years ago, Disney held the first ‘Force Friday’ to kickoff the launch of Star Wars toys and other products tied to The Force Awakens. Now the Mouse House has set September 1 as ‘Force Friday II.’ And this time around, there’s an AR experience tied to the launch called Find the Force, which Apple will be involved in hosting.

Beginning on Force Friday II, Apple Stores, along with other popular retailers like Wal-Mart and Target, will begin selling Star Wars: The Last Jedi merchandise and play host to Find the Force, which lasts through September 3. During that time, shoppers can use the Star Wars iOS app to scan in-store displays as part of an AR treasure hunt. When the display is scanned, it will reveal a Star Wars character who appears through AR in the store. In total there are 15 characters to find over the three-day window. If you plan to participate in Find the Force, it’s best to download the Star Wars app now and launch the feature ahead of time, as it requires a substantial in-app download before you’re up and running.

With the launch of iOS 11 and ARKit-powered apps later in the month, September is shaping up to be a big month for augmented reality.

Final Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition Coming to iOS This Fall

By Ryan Christoffel

Square Enix has announced that its role-playing epic, Final Fantasy XV, is coming to iOS this fall. Since the original game was created for powerful consoles like PS4 and Xbox One, it’s requiring a major overhaul in its journey to mobile devices. The mobile game is being branded ‘Pocket Edition’ and brings several significant deviations from the original:

The graphics and design have been redone to give the game a more playful, cartoony feel.
While the story for the game is taken from its console counterpart, it will include some gameplay changes.
The game will be split into ten episodes, all of which will launch at the same time, with the first episode available for free.

While it’s common practice to create mobile spinoffs of popular console games, Final Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition appears unique in that it’s taking a sort of hybrid approach: major pieces of the original game, such as the story, are being directly ported over, while other aspects are changing. We’ll find out this fall how well this approach pays off.

Zapier Launches Support for Productivity App Alfred

By Ryan Christoffel

Zapier today added support for Alfred, one of the most popular productivity apps for macOS. Alfred is like a supercharged version of macOS’s built-in Spotlight; it enables you to quickly, easily search for files, webpages, or apps, perform text expansion, control music playback, and much more. Despite Alfred’s already extensive capabilities, Zapier support opens up a world of new possibilities.

Zapier is an automation web service that we use and love here at MacStories. Its power is found in integrating with a substantial number of web-powered services that can be hooked together to automate tasks in all sorts of ways. Zapier’s support for Alfred means that access to that extensive catalog of web-based services and tools is now at the fingertips of Alfred users, making tasks of varying complexity levels possible with a few simple keystrokes.

In Zapier’s announcement post, Matthew Guay walks through how to get Zapier set up with Alfred, and he also shares several examples of workflows now made possible thanks to today’s news.

Siri’s Co-Creator Shares His Vision for the Future of AI →

Linked By Ryan Christoffel

Earlier this year Tom Gruber, the co-creator of Siri and current member of Apple’s AI team, gave a TED talk focusing on his vision for the future of AI, which is rooted in a philosophy he calls “humanistic AI.” The video and full transcript for that talk recently became available, providing a broader audience with Gruber’s insights into the place of AI in our everyday lives. While he doesn’t offer any specifics regarding work Apple is doing in this space, it is clear that Gruber’s vision represents, at least in part, the vision of Apple for Siri and AI as a whole.

Gruber describes humanistic AI as “artificial intelligence designed to meet human needs by collaborating and augmenting people.” This theme of AI augmenting, complementing humans is fleshed out by Gruber in several ways; one example involves Siri serving as an accessibility tool, while another theorizes at the benefits AI can offer to the human memory. The full talk provides an interesting glimpse into how Apple sees AI evolving in the near future.

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ESPN for Apple TV Launches MultiCast Feature, Enabling Multiple Simultaneous Streams →

Linked By Ryan Christoffel

Todd Spangler has a story for Variety on an improvement to the ESPN Apple TV app that should make the most avid sports fans very happy.

A new version of the ESPN App for Apple TV’s tvOS, available Wednesday, includes a feature called MultiCast that provides the ability to view up to four simultaneous live streams at once. On any given day, ESPN users can choose from 30 or more live events airing across its networks.

From everything I’ve seen, the implementation of this feature appears well designed and well thought through. As seen at the top of the image above, MultiCast makes a number of different customization options available to users. You can watch anywhere from one to four different streams at once, and depending on the number you have playing, the screens are resized and optimized for the best viewing experience.

While I don’t see myself using MultiCast often, I know there are bigger sports fans than me who constantly flip between different games at certain times of year, such as during the upcoming college and professional football seasons.

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Twitter for iOS Adds Topic Feeds to Explore Tab

By Ryan Christoffel

Alex Kantrowitz of BuzzFeed shares news on a feature Twitter recently rolled out in its iOS app:

Now you can view tweets sorted by topic, without having to follow anyone, right in Twitter’s Explore tab…Twitter’s algorithms will show you these topics based on what they know about your interests. Eventually, the platform will give users more control over what they see, the spokesperson said. The company will roll out controls that allow people to tell it they don’t like a topic, which will inform Twitter’s decisions on what to show them.

These featured topics are the first major addition to Twitter’s app since it launched a refreshed design earlier this summer; combined with those previous changes, topics make the Explore tab a more attractive place than ever to visit. As the home to search, Moments, trending hashtags, and now tweets organized by topic, Twitter has created an information hub worthy of one of its four primary tabs.

My favorite tidbit from the Buzzfeed piece is that Twitter plans to give users more control over which topics they see. Hopefully this isn’t limited to simply disliking certain topics, but instead will extend to offering full control of topics you want to see. There are certain topics I’d love to keep up with, but that I don’t necessarily want to follow specific accounts for, so a full-fledged list of topics to choose from – whether those topics relate to accounts I’m currently following or not – would be great.

Walmart’s Vudu Streaming Service Launching Apple TV App Soon →

Linked By Ryan Christoffel

Dani Deahl reports for The Verge:

Walmart has confirmed a native app for Vudu, its video streaming service, is set to become widely available on Apple TV beginning August 22nd.

Vudu is one of the major players in the video streaming space, so its arrival on Apple TV is welcome. What that arrival will look like, however, remains to be seen. The service offers a digital marketplace where users can buy or rent films, but it’s unlikely those options will exist on Apple TV due to Apple’s policy of taking a 30% cut of all In-App Purchases. More likely, the new app will simply serve as a way to play films that are already in your library.

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OneDrive for iOS Adds Offline Folders, Improved Document Scanning, and New Sharing Options

By Ryan Christoffel

Microsoft has released a big update to OneDrive for iOS, bringing several significant user-facing features as well as a full rewrite of the app under the hood to improve performance. According to the release notes for the update, all the new features are being progressively rolled out over the next couple days, so you may not see them right away. They are also all, at least for now, exclusive to Office 365 subscribers, and it is unclear if that will change in the future or not.

The first new feature of note is offline folders. OneDrive has offered offline files for a while now, but the ability to save entire folders offline has been painfully absent. I expect this feature will make a lot of users very happy.

Earlier this year OneDrive added a scanning tool, but it was very basic and rudimentary, requiring scanned documents to be a single page only; there were also no editing options whatsoever for scanned pages. The latest version of the app remedies these issues by introducing multi-page scanning along with tools to crop, rotate, or delete scanned pages.

The final two changes to OneDrive center around improving file sharing. One of those improvements is that you can now give someone temporary access to a file by creating a shared link with an expiration date of your choosing. The other improvement is found in the app’s ‘Shared’ tab, where users with a work or school account will see a new ‘Discover’ section. This section features an assortment of documents personalized for you based on who you work with and what projects you’re working on together.

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