Charlie Sorrel - page 19

Bunch is a new Mac utility from Brett ‘I Just Made This’ Terpstra, the developer of the nvAlt Mac notes app. Bunch sits in your Mac’s Dock, and lets you launch groups, or bunches, of app with one click. You could, for instance, have a Work bunch, which launches your writing app, your mail app, your calendar app, and more. You get the idea.

But there’s more to it than that. Bunch can also quit apps, open web pages, run Applescripts, and even attempt to make your chosen app the frontmost app when it launches. It’s very handy indeed.

This week we sell our skills in videos, slow down any song in Apple Music, make wild music with Factory, and more.

Did you ever wish that Safari on the Mac had a proper download manager? Or at least a proper download window,

instead of the popover that sticks to the browser window and gets in the way until you close it?

Well, today your wishes will come true. Or this one modest wish will come true at least.

Apple’s new TV app, available pretty much everywhere with iOS 12.3, lets you subscribe to TV and movie channels, as well as renting films and shows direct from Apple. The bad news is that, if you only want to watch your own sideloaded videos, the app is worse than the old Videos app. But if you subscribe to channels, or would like to, then TV is a fantastic way to consolidate all that entertainment.

And guess what? It’s even useful when you’re traveling or commuting. Today we’ll see how to download and watch TV shows and movies offline.

Perfect Tempo lets you speed up or slow down any song in Apple Music, so you can learn how to play it. Unlike every other app that does this, Perfect Tempo works on any song on the Apple Music service, not just purchased and/or downloaded songs. It also has a great, easy-to-use design, which is way better than the utilitarian drop-down lists of many other apps.

With a podcast like the CultCast, you can drop in and start listening at any time. News-based podcasts are meant to be listened to, and then discarded. Another one will be along soon. But what about more structured podcasts? Podcasts that work episodically, like a TV series? With those, you want to listen from episode one, and listen in order — episodes 2, 3, 4, etc.

But podcast apps don’t let you do this. They’re geared towards disposable, periodically-updated podcasts. They may show you a list of previous episodes, so you can tap to download them manually, but then it’s no longer a podcast.

What you need is a service that takes any podcast feed and rejigs it, serving you a new episode each week as if the series had just started.

Factory is an aptly-named new iPad synthesizer from SugarBytes. In fact, calling it a synth is underselling it — kind of like calling GarageBand a “tape recorder”. Factory does synthesize sounds, but it also has built-in effects, a sequencer, an arpeggiator, and a totally wild DJ-style crossfader, which lets you morph between presets.

The app is ultra-flexible, as capable of finely-crafted sound design as it is of sonic mayhem.

In the bad old days, there used to be just one way to send an email attachment from your iPhone. You had to find the file or image, and use the share sheet to send it via email. Then, you’d add the address, subject line and message, and send the mail. And if you needed to add another file to that email? Tough.

Now, things are much better. There are now several ways to send mail with attachments on iOS — the exact number depends on whether you’re using the iPhone or iPad. Let’s check them out.

I love rolltop backpacks, both for their flexibility and because they keep the rain out. WaterField Designs’ new Tech Rolltop is a cool-looking waxed-canvas bag, with some typically smart WaterField details.

Way back in iOS 9 days, Apple added “content blocking” to the iPhone and iPad. More commonly known as “ad-blockers,” this tech lets you use third-party apps to block ads, malware, trackers, comments, and more, in Mobile Safari. Apple itself doesn’t do any more than make blocking possible. To actual decide what to block, you need a third-party app.

Enabling ad-blocking is easy, once you know how, and you can set-and-forget it once done. Or you can keep on top of things, adding custom rules, and white-listing trusted websites. Here’s how.

The Sensel Morph is a different kind of “keyboard” for the iPad or Mac. It’s a pressure-sensitive panel onto which you can slap various silicone overlays, turning it from a QWERTY keyboard into a piano, a movie-editing controller or many other specialized interfaces.

It’s a customizable, wildly imaginative input device designed for musicians, video editors, illustrators, writers and other creative types.

This week we control our HomeKit homes form our wrists, control our iPad music with Audiobus 3.4, get help talking to foreigners with Day Interpreting, and more.

If Apple Watch ever becomes as common as the smartphone, TV dramas will get a whole lot less dramatic. You know how when a beloved character is in danger — perhaps there’s a killer stalking them in their own home — and you scream at the screen, telling them what to do?

Well, the Apple Watch’s SOS Mode pretty much does everything you’re telling them to do. It can call the cops, notify a friend, and track your location, all with a squeeze (and maybe a swipe). That might not be great as a standard storytelling trope, but it’s fantastic for your personal safety.

Did you know that you can record the music playing on your iPhone, to your Mac, straight up the USB cable? Just hook your Mac up to your iPhone (or iPad), using the Lighting cable that came in the box, and you can record anything. You could record songs from Beats One radio in Apple Music, for example.

It’s just like taping off the radio when you were a kid — or maybe when your dad was a kid — only better quality.

The Synclavier is a digital synthesizer from the early 1980s. Synclavier Go! is an iPad app that mimics the classic synth. But this post isn’t about those. It’s about the Synclavier Knob, an accessory for the app.

The Synclavier Knob is a single knob on a mounting plate the size of an iPad mini. That’s it. Oh, and it costs $399.

The song you’re listening to on your iPhone is a bit too quiet, so you adjust the volume. Perfect. Then the song ends, and the next one blasts your ears. You fumble your iPhone from your pocket and tap the volume down a notch or two.

Thanks, Apple Music. Why can’t you just play all the songs at the same volume? Obviously that’s what everyone wants.

Wait, what’s that? You can? How?

Both macOS and iOS have excellent built-in support for subtitles. And many video player apps will play a subtitle file for you if you just drop it into the same folder as a movie, or even drag and drop it onto a movie that’s already playing.

But if your hearing is fine, why should you bother with subtitles? I came up with a short list:

• The audio on the movie/TV show is unclear.
• English isn’t your first language, and you appreciate the help.
• You want to watch a movie with the sound low.
• You don’t understand the accents in that British TV drama.

The good news is that subtitles are easy. And the bad news? There is none.

You’re listening to an awesome podcast, and one of the hosts makes a super-smart point about a fascinating subject. It’s so good that you just want to share it with people. But how? Tweet a link to the podcast along with a timecode so folks can hunt down that pithy quip themselves? Good luck! People on Twitter are too lazy to… well, they’re just too lazy.

But if you use the Overcast podcast player app, then you can now share a short audio or video clip of any podcast, to Twitter, Instagram, or anywhere else. It’s dead easy, and it might be the best thing to happen to podcasts in quite a while.

If you play an electric musical instrument, and you also listen to music from your iPhone, and you also (perhaps) have a pink neon flamingo on your nightstand (bear with me here), then you will L-O-V-E the new Roland BTM-1, a combo Bluetooth speaker and guitar/synth amp.

Let’s check it out.

This week we view Instagram on the Apple Watch, customize Apple Music, and finally remove those terrible auto-playing previews in Netflix.

Siri may still be hopeless, but one thing it’s always been good at is setting alarms. In fact, I don’t use Siri much at all any more¹, but for alarms and timers, I use it exclusively. Even with iOS 12’s great 3-D Touch timer widget, Siri is quicker.

Today we’ll see how to tell Siri to create an alarm, set a timer, how to edit an alarm, and how to delete one.

Twitter is a swamp of spoilers. You can’t move for tweets about the plot of the new Star Wars movie or spoilers about whatever new TV show is dropping all its new episodes this week. There are two ways to avoid spoilers. One is to avoid Twitter entirely.

The other is to mute keywords, so you don’t see references to — well, references to whatever you want. Mutes don’t have to be about the long-awaited meeting between Spock and Obi-Wan, though. You can mute anything. You could avoid all mentions of President Donald Trump, for example. Brits could stanch the flow of Brexit mentions. Or you might temporarily mute mentions of a sports event if it’s taking over your timeline.

If you’re an iOS-using musician, then AUM is an utterly essential app. It’s an audio mixer, but that description hides its power. AUM does let you mix the audio from various apps, but it also hosts audio units (like plugins), routes audio between them, records those channels, and more.

This week, AUM got a huge update, adding a whole bunch of great new features.

If you have an old Mac that doesn’t support AirDrop, or you use a PC with your iPhone or iPad, then getting files from one to the other is a real pain. Readdle’s Documents app fixes this, making it easy to beam anything from one place to the other, wirelessly. Today we’re going to see just how easy it is. And one other neat trick is that you can use this on any computer, not just your own.

A recent rumor says the iPad Pro will soon be compatible with USB-C mice. The idea is that you can just plug one in, and — perhaps by enabling an option in the Accessibility settings — use a mouse just like you would use a mouse on the Mac.

But what would such a feature look like? And would it actually be useful, or would it just be confusing? Let’s think about that.