1Password Adds an Archive

Chris De Jabet, writing on the 1Password blog:

We learned from customer feedback that some people would make a vault named Archive and move these items there, and others were storing those items in the Trash. While both solutions work, neither was ideal. That’s why we’re rolling out the new Archive feature in our latest updates.

For the longest time, I’ve had an ‘Archive’ vault in 1Password to hold old items that I no longer used, but still wanted to store in 1Password to reference. Items such as old server passwords, accounts from sites that are now dead or moved, random secure notes, etc. were all moved to this ‘Archive’ vault. I can finally delete that vault now that 1Password has native support for the Archive.

May 25, 2021 ✚ Permalink

Pastel is a Fantastic App for Working with Colors

Steve Troughton-Smith has just released his new app ‘Pastel‘ on the App Store. Available for iPhone and iPad, with a Mac app coming later, Pastel lets you create your very own library of colors and color palettes. It’s a fantastic app for anyone working with colors and I highly recommend you try it out.

I have been relying on sites like Coolors and Color Hunt for inspiration, but having something native and handy is so much better.

Pastel App

Pastel is a modern iOS app, meaning it supports many of the new features of iOS. You can drag & drop any color from Pastel onto any iPad app that supports dropped colors, which makes it super easy to quickly use a particular color in your work.

All your colors in the library seamlessly sync over iCloud across all your devices, so your favorite colors are always handy.

Pastel is available for Free on the App Store and you can add up to 20 of your own colors. To unlock unlimited colors, there’s a simple $4.99 IAP.

Get Pastel from the App Store →

June 10, 2020 ✚ Permalink

Email is Good for Remote Productivity

Bron Gondwana, CEO of FastMail, explains on the company blog why “Now more than ever, it’s time for email.“

He says,

Through all the interruptions and turmoil in your life, email is a constant. Everyone has email, and every email system can email every other. It lets us stay connected, but doesn’t demand an immediate response. You can read it in your own time, and have the space to craft a thoughtful reply.

The beauty of Email is that you can use it in your own way. While it’s a great form of asynchronous communication, it’s also a fantastic tool for collaborating with your team and getting work done much faster. At Readdle, we have been working on some exceptional new things for Spark that we can’t wait to show you.

I have been using FastMail as my primary email service provider for several years now, and it is worth every $$. It’s great to see an email service so focused on privacy and core email experience. FastMail has been rock solid over the years and I urge you to consider it. If you sign up using this link, you’ll get 10% off.

May 23, 2020 ✚ Permalink

Manton Reece's Archive of App.net

How cool is this? Manton Reece, creator extraordinaire and the man behind the awesome microblogging service Micro.blog, has created an archive of all posts from the now defunct microblogging platform App.net

In the final week before App.net shut down, I whipped up a few scripts to download every post on the platform via the API. After that finished, I also attempted to download small versions of many of the photos, but ran out of time. This data has been sitting on one of my servers for the last 3 years.

Why did I bother? At a high level, see my post from 2012 called Permanence. I also hoped to build a tool that would let anyone export their personal archive, or even migrate it to a blogging platform like Micro.blog.

Here are all my posts, with my first post created on December 16, 2012 and the last one on February 01, 2017, totaling 3320 posts.

The internet needs more things like App..net, and definitely more people like Manton Reece.

May 12, 2020 ✚ Permalink

Backdrops Wallpaper App Now on iOS

Backdrops — the only wallpaper app on Android worth talking about — is now also available for iOS devices.

Backdrops has a massive collection of awesome wallpapers and it is very frequently updated with new content. You’ll find different kinds of wallpapers in the app, and you can browse by categories, browse by tags, or just browse the ones featured on the main screen. You’ll possibly never run out of new wallpapers in there.

Just like on Android, the iOS app is available for Free on the App Store. There’s an optional $3.99 upgrade to “Backdrops Pro” that enables an ad-free experience, unlocks exclusive collections and supports the developers.

Get Backdrops for your iPhone & iPad →

April 29, 2020 ✚ Permalink

PDF Expert’s New Reading Mode Makes it Easier to Read PDFs on iPhone

We, at Readdle, have just shipped a massive update to PDF Expert for iOS that introduces Reading Mode — a feature that improves the experience of reading PDFs on iPhone. Reading Mode makes it easier to read the text from PDFs on the tiny iPhone screen. I’ve been playing around with this feature for a few weeks now as part of the marketing team, and have been terribly excited about its release. With Reading Mode, reading PDFs on iPhone is a delightful experience now.

Read PDFs on iPhone

PDFs are usually hard to read on the small screens of iPhones, especially the ones that are formatted in multiple columns. You have to constantly keep zooming in & out, panning in all four directions to make sense of the content. The Reading Mode reformats and adjusts the text and images in these PDF files and displays them on the screen in a single column, presented in a beautiful way. It’s like activating the Reader view in Safari or using Read Later apps like Pocket or Instapaper. Here’s what that looks like in practice.

You can change the theme from the default ‘Day‘ theme to ‘Sepia‘, ‘Night‘ or ‘Auto‘. You can also adjust the font-size and toggle the ‘Keep iPhone Awake‘ and ‘Crop Header and Footer‘ settings.

My dad loves to read, and spends several hours in the day reading e-papers, PDF books & magazines, blogs, etc. on his iPad. For many months now, he’s been asking me, complaining in fact, why he can’t enjoy reading PDFs on his Android phone. I think it’s time to switch him to an iPhone.

There are a lot more exciting features that we’re working on at Readdle, and I can’t wait to talk about our feature-packed upcoming releases. Stay tuned to our PDF Expert, Spark Email, and Readdle blogs in the coming weeks.

Now go grab the latest update of PDF Expert for iOS from the App Store to try out the Reading Mode on your iPhone. I’m happy to hear your feedback.

April 15, 2020 ✚ Permalink

Arq Backup Version 6 is Now Available

Haystack Software has announced the release of Arq Backup Version 6 — a major update to the backup app for macOS.

Michael Tsai has a written a fantastic overview about this release, so you should go ahead and read that first. Although I’ve been a SuperDuper! user for the longer time, I had been considering making a switch to Arq every now and then. Both apps are vastly different, and I was looking to use Arq to back up selective data from my primary machine, which is the 2016 MacBook Pro. However, Version 6 is a strict no-go for me, as Michael notes:

The bad news is that the app you interact with is now built with Electron. (The background agent process that does the work remains Objective-C.) The problems with Electron range from the superficial (everything just looks and feels off) to the functional (you can’t navigate outline views with the arrow keys or type-selection).

A lot of people are unhappy with the switch to Electron:

Marc Edwards tweets:

Agreed. This is absolutely a dealbreaker for me. If Electron stays, I go.

Peter Steinberger tweets:

Arq 6 is now Electron-based? ?

Joseph P. Hillenburg tweets:

Long time user: Use of @ElectronJS is a severe impediment to usability. Example: https://josephg.com/blog/electron-is-flash-for-the-desktop/

René Fouquet tweets:

Another crappy electron replacement for a once native Mac app. This just makes me sad, both as a user as well as a developer. This cross-platform disease has to die. Needless to say I’m not going to upgrade to Arq 6. I’ve been using Arq for ten years, but I’m not supporting this.

Now, I understand that the switch to Electron is just for the main UI, while the core backup agent is still Obj-C on the Mac. And the developers, who need to build both a Windows and Mac app, probably picked a method that they thought was best for them. But being a native app was what was so good about Arq.

Moreover, version 6 is also a big departure in terms of the familiar UI. Arq just doesn’t look and feel like the Arq everyone knew and loved. There are several complaints on Twitter about bugs and missing features. The makers are inspired by an improved mockup of the UI and are considering making improvements.

I’m very grateful to @mohrstudio for mocking up some ideas about an Arq UI. Very inspirational. Planning to rework Arq 6 so the layout is more like Arq 5, but more usable

As for me, Arq 6 was going to be my first dive into the app, and I just don’t want to make my first few interactions with the app through the utter shit that is Electron. I’ll definitely be waiting it out for a few updates and releases. Thankfully, the developers are hard at work releasing bug fixes and improvements to Arq 6.

April 14, 2020 ✚ Permalink

Apple Addresses Spotify’s Claims in a Statement

After Spotify filed a complaint against Apple earlier this week, Apple has today released a statement trying to address Spotify’s claims.

According to the statement:

What Spotify is demanding is something very different. After using the App Store for years to dramatically grow their business, Spotify seeks to keep all the benefits of the App Store ecosystem — including the substantial revenue that they draw from the App Store’s customers — without making any contributions to that marketplace. At the same time, they distribute the music you love while making ever-smaller contributions to the artists, musicians and songwriters who create it — even going so far as to take these creators to court.

and

Spotify wouldn’t be the business they are today without the App Store ecosystem, but now they’re leveraging their scale to avoid contributing to maintaining that ecosystem for the next generation of app entrepreneurs. We think that’s wrong.

Great points, but the statement complete sidesteps why the company disallows apps to mention other available payment models. I think Apple is fair in asking for a 30% cut for payments made through the App Store, but Spotify (and other apps) should also be allowed to tell their users that they can purchase the same subscriptions, using other payment methods, sometimes cheaper, from the service’s own website. Apple itself says that many Spotify users are free users and Apple is fine not getting any revenue from them. For any revenue Spotify receives outside of the App Store payment system, Apple shouldn’t need to ask for a cut.

Moreover, Spotify wouldn’t be in this tough position if Apple didn’t have its music streaming service, with substantial unfair advantages over Apple, offered at the same price as Spotify. Right now, Apple offers a competitor service on the same platform as Spotify, at the same price as Spotify, and has substantial advantages that users like.

March 15, 2019 ✚ Permalink