Overcast, the podcast app of choice for lovers of good design, powerful-yet-straightforward features, and the color orange, just added a brand-new recommendations feature.
Previously, Overcast used a Twitter-based recommendation engine. But developer Marco Arment says almost nobody used it. Now, he’s replaced it with recommendations based on users’ personal listening habits, and the result is amazing. I already added a few new podcast subscriptions based on its suggestions.
This week we take a ride with Swapfiets bikes, mangle music with Eventide’s new iOS effects apps, save money with Spend Stack, and more.
This week we embed YouTube videos in music apps, do kind deeds with the Awesome social network, and never search for files again on the Mac (thanks to Hook).
This week we create smart playlists with Miximum, let anyone use our internet connections with HotSpotMe, put our MacBook’s Dock in the Touch Bar with Pock, and more.
It’s impossible to create smart Apple Music playlists directly on the iPhone. Or rather, it was impossible. Previously, you had to fire up iTunes on your Mac or PC, create a smart playlist there, and then let it sync to your iPhone over iCloud.
Even in iOS 13, this is still the case. But now there’s another way. A new iOS app called Miximum can create smart playlists, and even sync them to the regular Apple Music app. It is, as they say, a game-changer.
Here’s some pretty big news for iOS musicians: AudioKit’s Digital D1 synth is now an Audio Unit. What? That means that, instead of running as a standalone app, you can now run it as a plugin inside your music app of choice. It also means you can run more than one copy, putting one instance on each track of GarageBand, for instance.
And what makes D1 more interesting than other synths for iOS? A few things. One, it’s open source and built by volunteers. Another is that it looks and sounds amazing. And finally, it’s totally ’80s, giving you the synth sounds of pop music’s best decade. Radical.
This week, we remix memes with Meme Machine, sync SSH in iOS with Secure ShellFish, and go two-up in the Finder with Commander One. And more. As usual.
June 30, 2011: A little more than a year after the iPad goes on sale, the number of iPad-exclusive apps in the App Store passes 100,000.
The milestone caps a brilliant first year for Apple’s long-awaited tablet. And the amazing breadth of iPad-only apps proves the device is much more than just a bigger iPhone.
This week, we make our music more magical with FabFilters on iOS, edit multiple streams of 4K video with Lumafusion 2, stay private with Guardian Firewall, and ridicule Microsoft’s Office to-do app, which has finally been released on the Mac.
Guardian Firewall claims to be the first proper firewall app for iOS. It works by routing all the network connections from your iPhone or iPad through a VPN, and then filtering out privacy-invading trackers on Guardian’s own servers.
The idea is that all the heavy lifting is done on those servers, so you don’t have to worry about battery drain, or on the iOS security features that prevent an app from futzing with your internet connection.
Sounds good, but should you trust Guardian Firewall?
LumaFusion is probably the best video-editing app on the iPad. It’s so capable that you can use it to edit movies at a professional level, and plenty of people do. And now you can buy LumaFusion 2, an updated version with more power, and some great new features, including support for working on an external screen, and six tracks of 4K video.
This week we check out the new Twitterific, mourn the demise of simple ol’ Dropbox, get all Hollywood with iMovie special effects, and more.
This week we play GTA III on our iPad Pros with real playstation controllers, use the new keyboard shortcuts in Affinity Photo, sequence samples with WoodStepper, and create AR promos with Captum.
This week we find nearby friends with Yoke, count our steps with Pedometer++, add lights and shadows to our photos with Apollo, and enjoy Ulysses’ superior split view on the iPad.
Ulysses, the best long-form writing app on iOS and Mac in my opinion, just got a sweet update. It adds support for publishing to Ghost blogs, but even better for almost everyone is the addition of split-screen editing. This lets you view two Ulysses documents side by side, on the same screen. It might not sound like much, but it’s surprisingly powerful.
This week we read the news (later) with Fiery Feeds, squeeze out music with Korvpressor 2, add photos to our contacts with Vignette, and way more.
Korvpressor 2 is an amazing update to what was already one of the best music production apps on iOS — as we’ll see in a moment. But the real reason I’m writing about it today is the beautiful interface. I mean, look at it. Just look at it. Oh, and it also comes on Mac.
Fiery Feeds is my favorite RSS reader app on iOS. It strikes the perfect balance between power, good looks, and ease of use. For instance, you can customize the entire look of the app with themes, you can set it to share stories to your chosen apps with a single swipe, and the whole thing is navigated with swipes. Version 2.2 just showed up, and it’s a biggie. Apart from some neat UI changes, Fiery Feeds now has iCloud syncing, and its own built-in Instapaper alternative.
This week we sell our skills in videos, slow down any song in Apple Music, make wild music with Factory, and more.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 good news is that subtitles are easy. And the bad news? There is none.
