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

GitHub is Now Free For Teams

Nat Friedman making the announcement on the GitHub Blog:

We’re happy to announce we’re making private repositories with unlimited collaborators available to all GitHub accounts. All of the core GitHub features are now free for everyone.

Until now, if your organization wanted to use GitHub for private development, you had to subscribe to one of our paid plans. But every developer on earth should have access to GitHub. Price shouldn’t be a barrier.

Fantastic!

He further adds…

We’re also reducing the price of our paid Team plan from $9 per user/month to $4 per user/month, effective immediately. Existing customers will have their bills automatically reduced going forward.

April 14, 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

Modernist Sandcastles

Artist Calvin Seibert grew up on a ski resort strongly influenced by brutalist architecture in 1960s Colorado. 

“The construction sites were never fenced in, so they were great places to play and always had piles of sand,” he says. Later, after studying at the School of Visual Arts in New York, Seibert began making modernist sandcastles.

April 13, 2020 ✚ Permalink

Greg’s Review of the MX Master 3

Logitech’s MX Master series of mice is fantastic. I started using them with the MX Master 2 and I’m currently using the MX Master 2s. These mice are almost perfect. They’re —

  • Great at Comfort
  • Great at Customizability
  • Great at Performance
  • Great at Battery Life
  • But, Terrible at the ability to Last Long.

That’s right. There are numerous reports on the web about these mice dying on people. Logitech’s MX Master mice keep dying on me like a herd of sheep gracing on top of a steep cliff. I’ve had to go trough 3 different MX Master 2 and this is my second MX Master 2s. I am waiting to see how the MX Master 3 performs for everyone.

I haven’t purchased one yet, because it’s not yet available in India and it’s going to be a few more months before it arrives, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I’ll wait.

April 12, 2020 ✚ Permalink

Facebook eyes multibillion-dollar stake in Reliance Jio: FT Report

Anjli Raval, Tim Bradshaw and Benjamin Parkin reporting for the Financial Times:

Facebook is in talks to buy a multibillion-dollar stake in Mukesh Ambani’s digital operation Reliance Jio to expand its presence in the Indian digital market, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions.

The Silicon Valley technology giant was close to signing a preliminary deal for a 10 per cent share, one person said, but negotiations stalled because of the global travel bans that have been implemented since the coronavirus outbreak.

That’s one way of getting into the country that struck down Free Basics.

March 24, 2020 ✚ Permalink

Satechi's Charging Dock for Apple Watch

Satechi has launched this pretty cool charging dock for the Apple Watch that can be used without a cord. It has a USB-C port that is attached directly to the dock, allowing you to plug it directly into your iPad Pro or Mac devices and rest your Apple Watch right onto it.

I’m not sure if I’d use it attached to the iPad Pro like that, but on the Mac, hell yes! Long cords are so unnecessary and need to die.

December 20, 2019 ✚ Permalink

The Morning Show Producers Feel Early Reviews Were an 'Attack on Apple'

Julia Alexander, writing for The Verge:

Early reviews for The Morning Show weren’t exactly positive, and executive producers Kerry Ehrin and Mimi Leder believe a lot of the feedback was an “attack on Apple.”

Both Leder and Ehrin felt like critics were reviewing Apple TV Plus as a service, and looping in The Morning Show with those critiques.

The Apple TV+ service launched with much hype and marketing around four shows — The Morning Show, For All Mankind, See, and Dickinson. I haven’t yet seen See or For All Mankind, but Dickinson and The Morning Show both look fabulous. I personally like watching The Morning Show, but that’s largely due to the star cast it has and the cinematography/direction, not because of its writing. I can see why the reviews were bad.

But to say that the reviews were an attack on Apple? Ha!

November 20, 2019 ✚ Permalink