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Reeder for Mac now available

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This week’s updates to the iOS versions of Reeder have been followed by the first full release of Reeder 2 for Mac. It’s now out of beta and available to buy from the Mac App Store for £2.99 UK, $4.99 US.

It’s an RSS reader: it brings you all the news from any number of websites who have these RSS feeds and that you chuck into Reeder. There are many such services and if they’ve stuck around for any length of time at all, they each have their fans. I’m sufficiently a fan of Reeder, though, that when it was pulled from the App Store last year because Google changes stopped it working, I stopped reading RSS.

Only on my Mac. I couldn’t stop reading it on iOS and I’m not sure now what the chain of events was. I think Reeder lasted longer on iOS but anyway, the iPhone one was updated last September and I so very clearly remember the delight at that coming out while I was on holiday. Learnt about it, bought it, had a really good time getting reacquainted with an old friend in a new design.

Similarly, the iPad version is a pretty constant friend.

But I did miss reading news on my Mac, most especially on those days when I’m here for twelve or fifteen hours. Maybe I should go take screen breaks, but I just used to really enjoy spending a few moments downtime catching up with news. Today, after so very many months without Reeder being available on the Mac, it is again and I’m enjoying it again.

Here’s me enjoying it.

Screen Shot 2014-05-29 at 21.06.48

I’m not going to claim that Reeder is the very best RSS software, I am just going to say that it is the very best for me. And along with OmniFocus, Evernote and Mail, it’s got to be on my machine for it to feel like my machine.

 

Here’s how Apple’s WWDC keynote will go

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june_2014_posterframeSo there was this journalist, right, who complained that Apple took two hours to do its annual Worldwide Developers’ Conference keynote, “exactly like they always do”. He was covering it for somewhere and it was all how dare they do exactly what they always do. If he’d said they took long on certain parts, I’d have agreed. If he’d said he could’ve read all the news in a press release afterwards, I did agree. I just didn’t know why he wouldn’t do that. If you don’t like the keynote and you know it is two hours long, skip it.

I do like the keynotes.

WWDC is for developers and my own development projects are small. But this one speech is always for every Apple user, it is always the same, it is usually good fun and occasionally it is really interesting. I remember wondering how I’d tell Angela that I was definitely going to buy an Apple phone when she came home saying “did you hear that Apple’s making a phone?” We both got one.

But like or loathe the Apple announcements, the one next Monday 2 June at 6pm UK time will go thisaway:

18:00-18:10 “Good morning!” (It’s 10am in California.) “We’ve got some great announcements for you.

18:10-18:25 Statistics about how Apple has been doing since the last keynote. Expect only good numbers. Be sure that you know how Mac sales are up and that maybe more people buy Android phones than iPhones but they don’t appear to be using them much at all. (With graph.)

18:25-18:30 Retail. There’ll be a count of how many Apple Stores there are now or there’ll be something like how many sales were made in total. There will be a video of a new and impressive store with a new and impressive queue of customers lining up outside it on the first day.

18:30-19:00 These half-hour blocks are interchangeable, depending on what Apple wants to emphasise. But a typical one will cover Mac OS X first. It will do it by revealing new hardware then the latest version of OS X. Expect a wacky name to follow “OS X Mavericks”.

19:00-19:30 Again, may swap with either 18:30-19:00 or 19:30-20:00 but a typical one will cover iOS. Specifically iOS 8. There will be a video with designer Jony Ive filmed against a white background.

19:30-20:00 Potentially the most interesting half hour. It can change if there’s something really new to mention about Macs, in which case Mac stuff moves to here. Same with iOS. But this is where newer stuff goes. It’s also the last half hour so if there is to be one of Apple’s near-patented “One more thing” (Columbo is disputing the patent) then naturally it has to be here.

This year Apple is live-streaming the lot on its website here. I won’t be watching. But only because I’m working that evening. Otherwise, I will be tuning in to the recording later and I’ll probably be avoiding reading too many news sites because it genuinely is fun to see the show. Apple presents very, very well. Just watch a Microsoft presentation, preferably with Steve Ballmer, and then contrast it to an Apple one. Regardless of the products being shown, Apple’s presentation works and Microsoft’s tends to be a bit embarrassing.

I have no idea what Apple will reveal or release this year. They do like saying “available today”, which I like too. I like that they don’t very often talk about products that are coming out eventually or that they intend to make, it’s always about what they’ve made now and what you can buy now, if you so choose.

And I will be buying, if you can call it that. There is no question but that iOS 8 and the next OS X will be revealed, if not yet shipping, and both of those will be free. Both of those I will get. Beyond that, I don’t know.

But I do enjoy finding out. Call me a geek, but.

Microsoft plans Star Trek-style universal translator

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Captain Kirk’s flip communicator, check

The USS Enterprise’s warp engines, nope

Transporters, nope

Tablet computers, check

Universal Translator – maybe

In Star Trek, it looks like this:

In the real world, it may yet look like this:

Disclose.tv – Microsoft has invented a working universal translator

That’s from Disclose.tv which shows Microsoft Chief Research Officer Rick Rashid demonstrating speech recognition. We have a lot of that and some of it is very good, but this one aims to recognise the speech and then speak it back in another language. We’re a few years away from it being on our phones, but.

Smart stuff from Gwyneth Paltrow at tech conference

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My bad: I knew Paltrow is an actor, I didn’t know she is one of the people behind the lifestyle website Goop.com. Maybe primarily because I hadn’t heard of Goop.com. It’s got more about clothing than I’m interested in – look at me, do I look like I pay attention to clothes? – but there’s travel, recipes and also a related app with travel guides. And Gwyneth Paltrow just spoke at California’s Code Conference about the site, the app and much more.

According to Re/code, she spoke about anonymous internet comments and how it feels to be “a person in the culture that people want to harm”. Read the full Re/code piece for more but I was especially taken with this series of comments about the internet in general and Facebook in particular:

Facebook actually started as a place to judge women on their pulchritude or lack of it. I think it’s kind of fascinating that a company that’s so huge and that would come to define much of the modern Internet was founded on this objectification of human beings.

—

Celebrities, we’ve always gotten stones thrown at us and, you know, for good reason: We’re annoying. Some of us look okay, we look like we have money, our lives seem great. That may or may not be the case … Nevertheless, we get it. Or, at the very least, we expect that it’s part and parcel to what we do. Anyone in any field who has their head rise above a poppy in the field, they get their heads chopped off. It’s our human nature to feel that way, and to do it. … Everybody takes shit, it’s just the way it is.

—

Perhaps the Internet has been brought to us as a test in our emotional evolution. What is growth? What is maturity? It’s being able to experience an external event and creating the space within to contain that experience, to see it through the filter of who you really are, to not be reactive. To see someone in a dress you don’t like, and instead of writing from a username like shitebomber207: ‘Who does this fat bitch think she is,’ or whatever, even though you might feel that way, just stopping and saying to yourself, ‘I wonder what this image represents to me that I feel such a surge of anger?’ To love the Internet for what it provides, but to know it’s not real, and it’s sometimes dangerous for our development.

—

I don’t ever expect my venture Goop.com to contribute and advance the collective code-base or redefine social selling, though don’t count us out. But I expect us to be ourselves no matter what the reaction, to know that it’s okay to be at once irreverent and practical. … And above all, to not give a fuck if the Facebook guys think we’re hot or not.

Reeder updated with background refresh

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reederMy favourite newsreader app for iPhone and iPad has today been updated to version 2.2. It includes a lot of bug fixes (can’t say I ever noticed any bugs in my daily, near hourly use) and behind the scenes differences to how many news feeds it can handle. But the biggie, the reason to mention this instead of just update it on my iOS devices and forget about it is this:

Background app refresh (per account setting, disabled by default)

It sounds like such a small thing and perhaps it will be but I’m looking forward to trying it. Background app refresh means that Reeder will get news stories for me behind the scenes. I won’t even have to be in the app. So instead of opening it and refreshing the list for myself, I can pick up Reeder and know that it us up to date right now.

But.

You saw that bit about it being “disabled by default”. It took me a minute to find out where to switch the thing on.

To do that, go to Reeder and swipe left-to-right until you reach a screen with a settings cog wheel. Tap that, choose your account name toward the top of the screen that appears. In there, tap on Sync and change it from On Start or Manually to Background refresh. Then tap the < arrow to get out of that screen and the √ tick to confirm the change. Reeder for iOS is a universal app (so it’s for both iPhone and iPad) and costs £2.99 UK or $4.99 US. The Mac version is currently still free in beta but reportedly not for very much longer.

Don’t be evil (terms and conditions apply)

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Is this true?

Just over 15 years ago, two Stanford University students set out to commercialize PageRank, a brilliant new search engine concept they'd developed to organize the Internet's vast array of information. However, the same intellectual property rights Google now opposes in regard to Android would have prevented Larry Page and Sergey Brin from ever having got their company off the ground back then.

Google's Current Stance on Patents with Android Would Have Prevented Google from Ever Having Existed – Daniel Eran Dilger, AppleInsider (25 May 2014)

It's a detailed and interesting article that takes not only that headline argument but goes into specifics of when Google allegedly played with less than saintly techniques.

Personally I'm still annoyed they killed off Google Reader, though after a year or more I'm finding things have sorted themselves without Google. And I can cut through all the Android vs iPhone arguments and who created what by just glancing at the difference in all smartphones before and after the introduction of the iPhone.

Oh, and I think Google Docs is clunky. And actually Gmail is a bit ugly. But powerful.

Still, I want Google to have and to stick to this “don't be evil” mantra.

Rumour – Apple to launch home automation

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My story's headline begins with the word 'rumour' and there'll be a quote in here with the words “according to people familar with the matter” so I wouldn't hold your breath. But if fancy doing that, you only have to stop breathing until around 10am Pacific Time on 2 June when Apple makes its next announcements.

And allegedly one such announcement will be that:

Apple is readying a new software platform that would turn the iPhone into a remote control for lights, security systems and other household appliances, as part of a move into the “internet of things”.
Apple plans to take on rivals Google and Samsung and make a “big play” in the world of smart home technology at its Worldwide Developer Conference on June 2 in San Francisco, according to people familiar with the matter.

Financial Times

The full Financial Times article requires registration to read but you get the gist.

I don't know if I want Apple to let me control my house. If I did, there are many, many ways of doing it already.

But I do remember seeing a Sony image of the future at a house show a few years ago. Whizzy lights, expensive props, and a journey through the imagination of everything that will be possible soon with Sony's PCs and Sony's technology.

I can't remember the details now but I remember wandering off, disappointed, because every single thing that was promised in this wonderful future I was already doing with my Mac and had been for a long time.

I don't know how that story came to my mind but I wanted to share it with you. Apple doesn't introduce much that's actually new, it just tends to find the way to make things right, so I'm not joining you in holding my breath.

Actually, I'm not holding it for much this time: I like Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference announcements and I'm sure I'll be paying attention to what they say about the next versions of iOS and OS X, the two operating systems that run my life.

I just don't think I want them to run my house too.

Tackling an illiterate government

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Britain's Education Secretary doesn't want people reading. That's not the way Michael Gove has or would spin it, but he is trying to prevent people reading in general and specifically about poverty, social injustice and the how mobs can be led. Specifically, he's taking Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird and The Crucible – my personal favourite – off the UK schools' syllabus.

So let's just keep buying them. Buy them for ourselves, buy them for our children, buy them for our schools.

Of Mice and Men (UK editions, US editions)

To Kill a Mockingbird (UK editions, US editions)

The Crucible (UK editions, US editions)

Look forward to Google ads on your fridge

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“Look forward” is perhaps an optimistic – no, it's just bollocks, there's no looking forward to this, there's no optimism, it's just coming. We don't know when but The Wall Street Journal says Google intends to serve ads to everywhere:

In a December letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which was disclosed Tuesday, the search giant said that it could be serving ads and other content on “refrigerators, car dashboards, thermostats, glasses, and watches, to name just a few possibilities.”

Google made the statement to help justify why it shouldn’t disclose revenue generated from mobile devices, a figure the SEC had requested and that companies like FacebookFB +1.37% and TwitterTWTR -3.24% both disclose. Google argued that it doesn’t make sense to break out mobile revenue since the definition of mobile will “continue to evolve” as more “smart” devices roll out.

Google Predicts Ads in Odd Spots Like Thermostats – Wall Street Journal, 21 May 2014

Marco Polo lost again – if you’re a woman

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Previously… Marco Polo is a new 69p iPhone app for helping you find your phone when you've left it around the house. Just shout “Marco!” and your iPhone will reply “Polo!”.

The trouble is, it doesn't work for women. Or children. Or the Bee Gees. Hats off to The Unofficial Apple Weblog for bothering to test it out – and hats off to the app's maker, Matt Wiechec, who's taken TUAW's criticism and is dealing with it.

Read their coverage of his response and hear their test of the app too.