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Drafts and Workflow Integration→

I missed this last week, but Drafts has been updated with a useful Workflow integration to easily create actions that can trigger workflows with text. From the Agile Tortoise blog:

Drafts 4.1.2 has added a new “Run Workflow” action step to provide integration with Workflow app from Desk Connect. This step makes it easy to fire an workflow in Workflow app with a single tap. The action step can be configured with the name of a workflow, has a template to construct the text sent to the workflow and optional flag for whether to return to Drafts after execution. Under the hood, Drafts is constructing x-callback-url URLs to trigger the workflow, but this makes it much easier for the novice user than constructing them yourself in Open URL action steps.

Similarly, the latest version of Workflow has added a shortcut to create a Drafts action:

As an added bonus, the latest update of Workflow has added an option, when viewing settings on a workflow, to “Add to Drafts”, which will open Drafts and automatically create an action, setup with a “Run Workflow” action step, ready to go. This feature will be rolling out over the course of the next couple of days, so if you do not see it immediately in Workflow, try again later. For more details, read the Run Workflow action step documentation.

I’m using this to quickly send links copied from Twitter (which still doesn’t support the iOS 8 share sheet) to Workflow via Drafts, and it works well.

Speaking of Drafts, the app is coming to Apple Watch.

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Behind the Scenes of Apple’s Secret Health and Fitness Lab→

Apple, known for keeping its product developments under the strictest of lock-and-key, gave ABC News exclusive access into its top secret health and fitness lab, where only Apple employees became test subjects for the new Apple Watch.

Apple engineers, managers and developers have been secretly volunteering for the past year in this state-of-the-art lab to participate in rowing, running, yoga and many more fitness activities in order to collect data for the Apple Watch’s inner workings.

ABC News got exclusive access to Apple’s secret fitness lab, where the company tested the fitness and health functionality of Apple Watch and iOS for years. I needed to watch the video with a VPN (ABC is regionally restricted to the U.S.; YouTube version embedded below), and it was worth it: Apple has set up an entire facility with equipment and machinery worth millions of dollars to accurately calculate calorie burn and the response of the human body to various conditions – this includes special climate chambers, breathing masks, and even yoga tests.

This is impressive, and it reinforces the idea that health and fitness are going to be a big deal for Apple going forward. The video makes me even more excited about the potential of Apple Watch as a daily fitness companion.

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Das Keyboard 4 Pro for Mac Review

The Das will totally dominate smaller desks

The Das will totally dominate smaller desks

Das Keyboard 4 Professional for Mac

Das Keyboard 4 Professional for Mac on Amazon

I like almost everything about the new Das Keyboard 4 Pro, but what I like best is the big volume knob on the top right corner. Not only is it way funner to use than boring old keys, but it’s also easier and quicker. You can lean in from anywhere and quickly adjust the volume without decoding your keycaps from upside down.

In fact, the whole top-left media control panel is pretty sweet. But more on that in a moment. First, what is this thing?

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Connected: They’re My Clapping Phones→

This week, the boys talk about Apple Watch apps, Force Touch Trackpads, the Apple Store and Apple’s past (and possible future) moves in television. Oh, and Teletext.

I enjoyed our discussion on upcoming Apple Watch apps on this week’s Connected (see Apple’s webpage).

And, obviously, the underappreciated beauty of Teletext. You can listen to the episode here.

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‘We Change Every Day’→

Fast Company published a great interview with Tim Cook earlier this week. I liked the sections on life at Apple after Steve Jobs, initial response to the Apple Watch, and remembering to keep core values intact. And especially this bit:

Are there any fundamental ways in which you are letting go of parts of Steve’s legacy?

We change every day. We changed every day when he was here, and we’ve been changing every day since he’s not been here. But the core, the values in the core remain the same as they were in ’98, as they were in ’05, as they were in ’10. I don’t think the values should change. But everything else can change.

Yes, there will be things where we say something and two years later we’ll feel totally different. Actually, there may be things we say that we may feel totally different about in a week. We’re okay with that. Actually, we think it’s good that we have the courage to admit it.

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Blink: Effortless Affiliate Link Generation on iOS

Launching today, Blink is a new Universal iOS app from Squibner that quickly generates affiliate links for content from the App Store, Mac App Store, iTunes Store and iBooks Store. If you’re a member of the iTunes affiliate program you’ll know that you don’t want to be manually editing iTunes links with your own token and campaign tag – Blink automates that process on iOS, making it quick and effortless.

Before I continue, a quick introduction to the world of affiliate linking for those that are unaware. Essentially, anyone can register for the iTunes affiliate program and they will receive their own affiliate token (a series of letters and numbers). If they generate an iTunes URL that includes this affiliate token and share that link with others that click on it, they will receive a (small) percentage of any iTunes sales that flow from any clicks. For many small and independent sites, such affiliate programs are a valuable source of income (and yes, MacStories uses affiliate links). Apple’s website has more details if you’d like to learn more about the technical details of affiliate linking and perhaps even sign up.

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After Six Months of Rejections, Launcher Returns to the App Store

When Greg Gardner, an independent developer based in San Francisco, released Launcher for iOS last year, he didn’t think his handy utility would make headlines around tech blogs and push other developers to approach widgets for iOS 8 differently. And yet, after months of not being available on the App Store despite being originally approved in September 2014, Launcher is about to be covered (and used as an example) by the press again. Launcher has been re-approved by Apple, and it’s coming back to the App Store today with the same feature set from six months ago.

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Skala Color 2: A More Functional and Beautiful Color Picker for OS X

Bjango is a small development studio, probably best known for the (very handy) iStat Menus utility. For the past few years they’ve also been hard at work on Skala, which will be a UI and icon design tool that Bjango promises to have ‘phenomenal rendering quality and a unique blend of vector, bitmap and 3D abilities’. But in the interim, they’ve released Skala Preview (which lets you preview Photoshop documents on your iOS device) and Skala Color (a new color picker for OS X).

Marc Edwards, founder of Bjango, explained why they’ve created Skala Color and Preview in a brief interview with Khoi Vinh:

When we began work on Skala, we decided it could be good to break out some features into separate apps. Doing so helps ensure those modules are well tested, and creates awareness Skala is coming (we’re a tiny company, so we can’t afford expensive ads).

Late last week Bjango released version 2 of Skala Color which brings a revamped user interface, support for copying color values for use with Swift, random color generation and improved format parsing.

For those that aren’t familiar with Skala Color, it adds a tab to the system color picker window in OS X. The key features you get from using Skala Color is the ability to easily copy color values in a wide variety of formats (full list here), and really fine control over selecting a color thanks to the new user interface in version 2.

Skala Color 2 may just be a little utility, but it is full of great little design touches. For example, you don’t necessarily have to use the color sliders, you can also hover your mouse over the ring of the magnifying glass and cycle through the 360 degrees of hues. Another is how Skala Color will recognise if you have a color value on your clipboard and let you select that color with one click.

One thing to keep in mind is that Skala Color is a 64-bit app, so it won’t show up in an app that is 32-bit. That shouldn’t be a problem for the vast majority of apps on OS X these days, but I did run into it with Microsoft Office Preview.

Skala Color 2 is a free utility for OS X.

 

 

 

Feeling the Interface→

Interesting thoughts by Alex4D on the new Force Touch trackpad and its possible implementation on iOS:

When I dragged the clip to its maximum length I did feel a little bump. Without looking at the timeline and looking at the viewer, I could ‘feel’ the end of the clip.

This feature presages the ability for UI pixels to be ‘bumpy’ - for user to feel the texture of application UIs without having to look at where the cursor is. This means that seemingly textured software keyboards and control layouts will be able to be implemented on future trackpads, iPhones and iPads.

Here’s what I wrote about iOS 7’s design refresh when iOS 8 came out:

What I realized in using extensions is how necessary last year’s redesign of iOS was. Imagine if Apple didn’t ship a new design with iOS 7: today, we’d have sheets of stitched leather or shiny metal on top of apps that look like agendas or little robots. The cohesiveness and subdued style that iOS 7 brought with its precise structure and hierarchy allows extensions to integrate nicely with apps, feeling like extra actions rather than eerily realistic objects.

Assuming Apple’s plan is to let users feel the interface on all their devices going forward, can you imagine doing that with UIs that have rugged leather, plastic buttons, and other physical textures close to each other? If that’s the case, I’d wager that Apple’s focus on clarity also applies to tactile feedback for on-screen elements.

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