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Posts tagged with "app"

Apple Immersive Video Utility Released

Apple has released a new companion app called Apple Immersive Video Utility for Vision Pro owners that allows them to organize and manage immersive content with the help of a Mac. The utility, which is available for the Mac and Vision Pro, allows users to view, stream, and organize Apple Immersive Video into playlists. The app supports more than one Vision Pro, too, synchronizing playback of content streamed from a Mac to multiple Vision Pros. Videos can also be transferred from the Mac app to a Vision Pro for watching them there.

Apple Immersive Video Utility.

Apple Immersive Video Utility.

The App Store description only touches on it, but Apple Immersive Video Utility, the company’s first new Mac app in a long time that wasn’t released as part of an OS update, appears to be designed for post-production work by video professionals. The app could also be used in group educational and training settings based on its feature set.

The Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive Camera. Source: Blackmagic.

The Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive Camera. Source: Blackmagic.

However, the fact that NAB, the National Association of Broadcasters, conference is going on this week suggests that the app is primarily designed for post-production video work. In fact, the app seems to go hand-in-hand with Blackmagic’s URSA Cine Immersive, an Apple Immersive Video camera that was also shown off at NAB this week, and DaVinci Resolve Studio 20, which supports editing of Apple Immersive Video.

To expand the library of available Apple Immersive Video, there need to be tools to create and manage the huge video files that are part of the process. It’s good to see Apple doing that along with companies like Blackmagic. I expect we’ll see more hardware and software solutions for the format as the months go by.

Nintendo Today App Debuts Just in Time for the Next Switch 2 Reveal

Earlier today, Nintendo held its last Direct for the original Nintendo Switch. Next week, Nintendo will share more about the Switch 2 during another Direct.

In addition to the many games showcased during today’s event was a new iOS and Android app called Nintendo Today. The app is a mix of Nintendo news, a game release calendar, and fun posts like Super Mario short movies and Metroid Dread concept art. Users can theme the app with images from their favorite Nintendo franchises and pick the games and characters they want to follow, which determines what you’ll see in the app’s Home and Calendar tabs. There are also settings to fine tune whether you get notifications about news and events.

Source: Nintendo.

Source: Nintendo.

The iOS app includes two styles of widgets, too. A medium widget displays content, such as video from today’s Nintendo Direct, news, and more. The larger widget displays the current month’s calendar and a list of upcoming game releases and other events, and is themed to match the franchise you pick when setting up the app.

Nintendo's widgets. Source: Nintendo.

Nintendo’s widgets. Source: Nintendo.

According to Nintendo, it intends to continue to announce games via Nintendo Directs. However, the company also says it will be releasing more information about the Switch 2 via the app after its April 2nd Switch 2 Direct, so fans can expect a mix of Directs and app announcements going forward.

Whether intentional or not, the app disclosed a small bit of information about the Switch 2 by labeling a new button on the Joy-Con with the letter ‘C.’ The C button has been rumored for quite a while, and no one knows for sure what it does, but the Nintendo Today app’s image of a Switch 2 appears to confirm that the button is in fact a ‘C’ button.

Nintendo Today is obviously meant to get Nintendo and its products in front of consumers more often via the device that most people are glued to throughout their days. So, yes, it’s marketing. However, it’s also a fun, playful app that’s beautifully designed and the kind of app that I expect Nintendo sickos like me will turn to daily for a little dose of their favorite franchises.

Nintendo Today is available on the App Store for the iPhone as a free download.

MusicHarbor’s Latest Update Creates a Richer Music Experience with News and More

Marcos Tanaka kicked off his App Store career with a real banger when he released MusicHarbor, an app for following the work of your favorite music artists on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. We awarded MusicHarbor App of the Year in 2020, and since then, it has been steadily updated, making it my go-to app for catching up on my favorite bands. Today, MusicHarbor’s latest update, version 5.0, takes the app even further with new news, top chart, time capsule, and list features.

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Terminology 5: Rebuilt and Better than Ever

It’s been quite a while since I did a full review of Agile Tortoise’s Terminology, an extensible dictionary and reference tool for the iPhone and iPad. It’s hard to believe the app has been around for 15 years now, but with today’s release of version 5.0, Greg Pierce has introduced a thoroughly modern ground-up rewrite of the app that is richer and more extensible than ever, making it one of my favorite research tools.

Let’s take a look at what’s new.

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Scratchpad: The Cross-Device Text Utility That Pairs Perfectly with Your Clipboard Manager

One of the best indicators of how sticky a cross-device utility will be in my setup is how quickly I install it everywhere. For Sindre Sorhus’ Scratchpad, the answer was “very sticky.” The simple text utility works on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Vision Pro (via iPad compatibility mode), and as soon as I tried it on my desktop Mac, I grabbed all of my other devices and installed it on them, too.

At its core, Scratchpad is a single view for typing or pasting plain text that syncs everywhere. What sets it apart from similar apps is its many small touches that demonstrate a deep understanding of the way people use a scratchpad app.

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PicoChat or PictoChat: Can You Tell the Difference?

It’s been a very long time since I reviewed an iMessage app, but past issues of MacStories Weekly and this site chronicle the hundreds of iMessage apps Federico and I tried and wrote about. Today, though, I was reminded that there’s still fun to be had in what has to be Apple’s most obscure corner of the App Store because this afternoon, Brendon Bigley sent me a link to PicoChat for iMessage, a nostalgia-filled delight from developer Idrees Hassan.

PicoChat lovingly recreates the look and feel of PictoChat, a local messaging app that shipped with the Nintendo DS beginning in 2004 and later with the DS Lite and DSi. PictoChat used a short-range proprietary wireless protocol that could only extend about 65 feet, which ultimately led to its demise as smartphones with cellular connections and Wi-Fi became popular. However, for several years, it served as a short-range communications and creative outlet for a generation of kids.

For context, here’s PictoChat running on my matte black Nintendo DSi, a model that is one of Brendon’s ‘dream devices,’ as he recently shared on NPC: Next Portable Console:

Now, here’s a close-up of the original PictoChat interface and the iMessage app side-by-side.

PictoChat on a DS (left) and the PicoChat for iMessage app (right).

PictoChat on a DS (left) and the PicoChat for iMessage app (right).

Just like the DS, the iMessage version has a teeny tiny keyboard with space above it for doodles. If it weren’t for the lower resolution of the DS’s screen, I bet most people would have a hard time telling them apart.

Getting back to Hassan’s app, it’s accessed like other iMessage apps from the Plus button in a Messages thread. Once you’re finished composing your masterpiece, the app converts it into an image and sends it like any other image is sent in Messages.

That’s it, but it’s more than enough to have sent a whole lot of Nintendo DS fans down a nostalgia-filled rabbit hole today, which was cool. Even if the DS wasn’t your thing, check out PicoChat and send some doodles to your friends and family. It’s a lot of fun.

PicoChat is available as a free download on the App Store.

Hyperspace: Quickly Recover Mac Storage Without Deleting Files

Earlier today, John Siracusa released a Mac app called Hyperspace. The app scans any folder on your Mac, identifying duplicates. When the scan is finished, you can review the results and choose whether to reclaim the unnecessary space taken up by the duplicates.

Ready to scan.

Ready to scan.

Because of the way Apple’s APFS file system works on the Mac, Hyperspace’s deduplication of files doesn’t delete or move anything. How APFS does this is complicated and explained on the app’s website if you want to learn more, but to over-simplify a bit, APFS allows Hyperspace to eliminate duplicative data without changing the location of the files or their metadata. That means it’s a non-destructive operation, allowing you to reclaim drive space at no cost to your data’s integrity.

Hyperspace gives you a chance to review the files it has identified as duplicates.

Hyperspace gives you a chance to review the files it has identified as duplicates.

The app has safety measures in place so system files aren’t affected, and users can label certain folders as ‘Source’ folders that will never be altered. You also have an opportunity to review the results of Hyperspace’s scan before the app does anything to your files.

Hyperspace requires a subscription or one-time purchase to reclaim space.

Hyperspace requires a subscription or one-time purchase to reclaim space.

I took Hyperspace for a spin to see what it could find on my Mac Studio, which stores about 2.5 TB of data. The scan was impressively fast at around 30 seconds, identifying 4.04 GB of data that it could free up. That’s not a lot in the grand scheme of things, but it was also nice to know that I don’t generate a lot of duplicate files with my workflows.

Hyperspace is free to download from the Mac App Store. The free version allows you to scan the folders on your system. However, to recover space, you need to subscribe for $9.99 per month or $19.99 per year, or purchase a lifetime license for $49.99. There are also options to purchase a single month license for $9.99 or a single year for $19.99.

Mela 2.5 Adds Web Search Engine and Recipe Import from YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok Videos

Back in 2021, Silvio Rizzi, developer of the all-time great RSS client Reeder , released Mela, an app for importing, collecting, and sharing recipes. Right from the start, Mela stood out as a delightful take on the recipe app genre. Just like Reeder, it features a beautiful design and is a joy to browse and use. The app originally shipped with the ability to import recipes directly from the web, subscribe to RSS feeds, and even scan recipes found in physical cookbooks and magazines. Combining those features with its built-in tools for converting measurements and dynamically adjusting meal sizes, Mela truly cooked up the perfect recipe (pun intended) for becoming your one and only cooking app companion. You can check out John’s original review of the app on MacStories to learn more.

This month, Mela was updated to version 2.5 with several improvements, including an option to search for recipes on the web using a new native recipe search engine and the ability to import recipes from video descriptions on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, all of which have become popular platforms for discovering and sharing cooking ideas. This new version takes the app’s web scraping capabilities even further than before, and I was curious to see how it fared.

Let’s check it out.

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Game Tracker: A Powerful App to Track, Organize, and Customize Your Videogame Library

Game Tracker is a new videogame tracking app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac from Simone Montalto, who is probably best known to MacStories readers for developing the excellent Book Tracker. In fact, Montalto has created an entire suite of tracking apps that also includes Movie Tracker, Music Tracker, and Habit Tracker. That experience with various tracking apps shows with Game Tracker, which does a fantastic job of tailoring to the particularities of videogames and leveraging metadata to allow users to make the app their own.

Let’s take a closer look.

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