Posts tagged with "iOS"

Mona 6 Moves from High Visual Customization to Advanced Automation

Mona, the Mastodon client for iOS, iPadOS, and Mac from Junyu Kuang, is out today with a significant version 6 update. Mona is my choice for using Mastodon primarily due to what John referred to in his review as its ‘epic level of customization.’ Everything from how the taskbar at the bottom of the screen looks to how posts are displayed is fully customizable. Even the main app view on iOS can be vertically split in two.

But Mona is not just about looks; it’s also a solid tool for navigating Mastodon. Things like the ability to privately set colors or notes to other users, timeline syncing across your devices using iCloud, and full support for VoiceOver make it a strong choice for a wide variety of people.

Which brings us to this new update. In the year and change since the mass Twitter exodus, Mastodon has matured a lot as a platform, introducing new features that users can take advantage of while filling some of the gaps impeding the platform from growing. Version 6 of Mona includes those new features while advancing its power user functionality with powerful new Shortcuts actions, including one that takes advantage of the Action Button on the iPhone 15 Pro.

Let’s dive in.

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Looks Like Rain: Visualizing the Weather on a Color-Coded Timeline

I’m always excited when a new weather app is released, especially when it’s a weather app that looks different from most of its counterparts. Looks Like Rain by Thinkbits is beautifully designed, and it certainly looks different, to say the least. The layout of the app is clean, the elements are well-spaced, and the color palette has clearly been composed with care. Most importantly, though, I’m absolutely loving its unique approach to visualizing the weather forecast on a color-coded timeline.

I’ve been using this brand-new weather app for the past few weeks on the iPhone, the iPad, and the Mac, and it has already earned a permanent place in the rotation of my favorite weather apps.

Let’s check it out.

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feeeed: Embracing Feed Diversity and Personal News Curation

With The Iconfactory launching Project Tapestry this week, I was reminded of an indie app that I first started testing a few months ago. feeeed – that’s with four ‘e’s – by Nate Parrott is a feed reader app unlike any other I’ve seen on iOS.

Today, with our favorite content scattered across social media platforms, apps, blogs, and newsletters, it’s honestly really hard to keep up, and there is clearly a demand for an app that could juggle with all of them. feeeed is an attempt at embracing that diversity, and letting you build your own feed, merging all those sources into one continuous and beautifully designed stream.

I was excited about this app when it originally came out, and for the past week, I have once again given it a prime spot on my iPhone Home Screen to properly try it out as my main reading app.

Let’s jump in.

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The Browser Company Announces Act II for Arc: ‘The Browser That Browses For You’

Today, The Browser Company announced a selection of new features coming to their Arc browser for Mac as part of what they are billing ’Act II’ of their increasingly popular app. There are four features in total, centered around the theme of ‘the browser that browses for you.’

For those unfamiliar, Arc started as a Mac browser built around the Chromium code base with eye-catching features like tabs listed down the side, Split View, built-in ‘easels’ and notes, and the ability to adjust the visual look of webpages. Arc is now targeting what CEO Josh Miller has called ‘a post-Google Internet’ by implementing AI within the browsing experience, amongst other strategies.

Current ‘Arc Max’ AI features like ‘Ask On Page,’ which answers questions about the contents of webpages, and ‘5 Second Previews’, which summarises a webpage at the other end of a link, have all proved to be hits with users.

It’s no secret I’m a fan of Arc. I would even call their ‘Shared Quotes’ feature my favorite ‘little’ feature in any browser right now. The Browser Company has big ambitions for 2024, including an imminent launch on Windows, and Miller had this to say about Arc’s next step:

“Here is our vision. It’s really simple. You tell Arc what to do, and Arc will go and do it for you.”

It’s a very broad statement, but with the new features announced today, the context of what he is saying comes more into focus. Two of these new features are available today, with the other two coming soon. Let’s take a look at them in detail.

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The Iconfactory Launches Project Tapestry, a Kickstarter Campaign to Create a Universal Inbox for RSS, Social Media, and More

Source: The Iconfactory.

Source: The Iconfactory.

We’re at an exciting moment in the history of the Internet where the downsides of walled gardens of content have become painfully obvious to more people than ever. Those downsides weren’t so clear when companies like Twitter got their start. As it and other companies grew, the convenience and instant gratification of social media put a dent in things like blogging, RSS, and other ways people shared their thoughts, links, and other media online.

But, if there’s a silver lining to what’s become of Twitter, it’s that it opened the eyes of a lot of people who are now helping revitalize the open web standards that never went away for many of us. The trouble is that the feeds we monitor are spread over more places than ever before. There’s RSS, of course, but there’s also ActivityPub, Bluesky, and more. That makes it the perfect time for a new approach like the one The Iconfactory has announced via a Kickstarter campaign.

The campaign was launched today to fund the creation of Tapestry, an iOS universal inbox for the feeds in your life. The Iconfactory makes it clear that it doesn’t intend for Tapestry to replace your RSS reader or Mastodon client, though. Instead, the company wants Tapestry to be a unified, chronological timeline that will help you keep up with what’s new so you can pick the best that your favorite sources have to offer. The Iconfactory has also said the app will have a simple API for adding your own data sources to your feed.

I love this idea and backed the project immediately. The Iconfactory says that they expect the development to take 9 - 12 months, which comes with the usual caveats about the risks of funding a Kickstarter campaign, which is why I rarely link them except in cases like The Iconfactory’s, which has a proven track record. The initial goal is $100,000, and as of the publication of this story, they’re about 25% of the way there. The first stretch goal is $150,000, which would add features like muting, theming, bookmarking, filtering and searching, local notifications, a share plugin system similar to Shortcuts, a curated library of plugins, and a Mac app.

There are also multiple reward levels with a variety of rewards for anyone who pledges $5 to $1,500. To learn more, check out the campaign on Kickstarter and The Iconfactory’s blog.

Apple Shares List of Alternate Browsers That Will Be Available to EU Users in iOS 17.4

One element of the changes coming to iOS in the European Union is that beginning with iOS 17.4, EU users will see a choice of browsers when they first launch Safari that can be set as the systemwide default browser. For each country, that list will contain the 12 most popular browsers from its App Store storefront displayed to the user in a random order.

As you can imagine, there is overlap among EU member countries, but there are plenty of differences, too. If you’re curious which browsers will be listed in your country, check out the lists for each of the 27 EU member countries after the break that Apple has told us will appear the first time Safari is launched in iOS 17.4.

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Hands-On: Ford Debuts New in-Car Digital Platform with Dual-Screen Apple Maps via CarPlay→

Today, Ford announced its next-generation in-car infotainment system built on Google’s Android Automotive platform, which includes an expansion of its CarPlay support.

Chance Miller at 9to5Mac got a preview of the new system last week, which includes support for a variety of built-in apps but can also run Android Auto and CarPlay. As Chance explains, this isn’t the next-gen CarPlay Apple showed off at WWDC 2022, but it does represent an extension of CarPlay onto more screens in Ford vehicles:

As part of the new Ford and Lincoln Digital Experience, Ford is adding support for dual-screen Apple Maps for the first time. This means that when you start Apple Maps navigation on the primary CarPlay screen, the Apple Maps interface will expand into the instrument cluster display.

Be sure to catch 9to5Mac’s full hands-on video because it’s interesting to see how CarPlay has been embedded in a sort of Android Automotive wrapper, allowing drivers to access the apps chosen by Ford or the CarPlay apps are on their iPhones.

This approach makes far more sense to me than GM’s abandonment of CarPlay. However it also comes with a certain amount of visual dissonance between the design of the two systems, which I find jarring.

Also, don’t miss the end of the video where the person demoing the system breaks out a foldable Bluetooth keyboard and starts browsing the web because it has some very big in-car Viticci productivity vibes.

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Apple Releases iOS and iPadOS 17.3 with Collaborative Playlists, Stolen Device Protection, New Black Unity Wallpaper, and More

Update: This story previously listed paying with Apple Pay as one of the actions protected with Stolen Device Protection on. Apple has since clarified in a Support document that paying with Apple Pay can still be performed using the iPhone passcode.

Today, Apple released iOS and iPadOS 17.3, the third major updates to the operating systems that launched in September and Federico reviewed on MacStories.

iOS and iPadOS 17.3 bring only a couple of major new features, including one that was previously expected to be released in iOS and iPadOS 17.2 (but was then delayed), a welcome new layer of protection and security for your Apple ID, and a set of new dynamic wallpapers.

Let’s jump in.

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Globetrotter: Your Photos and Memories on a World Map

Every time I open the Memories tab in Apple’s Photos app, I feel disappointed. The memories it surfaces always seem to rehash the same events in my life, and they never really achieve to put my photos back in context. This is a big reason why, for so many years, I’ve been keeping a personal journal in Day One, which lets me revisit my journal entries by looking at a map of everywhere I’ve recorded a memory. Likewise, the ‘Places’ section in Apple Photos is my favorite way to browse through my older photos.

Globetrotter is a delightful new app created by indie developer Shihab Mehboob that embraces this idea of revisiting your photo memories by looking at them on top of a world map. The app does so in a beautifully-designed interface, with a focus on your travel memories. Let’s take a look.

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