iPhone

The 2nd best iPhone and iPad app of the year – as chosen by me

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I’ve been thinking about this all evening and especially since Apple announced its pick for the best apps of the year for iPad and iPhone. Apple went for Pixelmator on the iPad, which I like very much and regularly use in the production of this very site, and Elevate or Replay Video Editor (depending on whether you’re in the USA or UK) for the iPhone. And I’d not heard of that.

I think my pick beats all of them. And so does my second-place pick. Okay, I couldn’t get it down to just naming one app, I have to tell you about two, but they are both gorgeous things of beauty that are transformative in my work. The first-place winner, for me, in a mo, but now, an extremely close second place spot goes to… Drafts 4 for iPhone and iPad. Easy. It’s an apparently simple note app where you just fire it up with a tap, write anything you fancy and forget it – or send it off as email. Or a text. Or an OmniFocus task. Or an Evernote note. Or all of the above. And more.

The speed of opening and getting going with your writing is a big deal. It makes Drafts 4 far faster at entering Evernote notes than Evernote itself is. Far. I’ve reached for Drafts 4 in the middle of the night when I’ve had a dreamy idea and I’ve come back to it the next day to send on to email, Evernote – or the trash. Depending.

Drafts 4 also transformed how The Blank Screen site is written. When I’m just pointing you at an interesting article someone else has written, I can go to that, highlight a choice quote and tap a button. Drafts 4 takes in that quote, turns it into an inset block quote, appends the citation including correct link back to the main article and writes me a basic paragraph referring people to that original. One tap instead of back-and-forth to the site several times. I love it for that alone.

But please imagine you’ve just written a bit of an old note. Written it and then tapped one button. This is what you see on iPhone:

drafts

There are ten options right there for what to do with your text and I only created two of them. But I could create two, it is possible to create your own. So the top one appends a note to a journal I keep in Evernote and the second one posts the Drafts text straight to this website. Write, tap, publish, gone.

It’s so good I could’ve made this my favourite app of the year and probably should have done because it came out in this version in 2014 whereas my real best-app-ever pick is one whose iPhone version was last released late 2013. Still, it’s best-app-ever and its iPad one was September this year. Come on. That’s up next.

 

The iPhone App(s) of the Year – as chosen by Apple

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Spot the difference:

best-iphone-apps

On the left, Apple’s iPhone App of the Year – Elevate. On the right, Apple’s iPhone App of the Year – Replay Video Editor. The difference is that I took the screen grab on the left on my iPhone while logged in to my USA iTunes account and the other while back on my UK one.

Interestingly, both Elevate and Refresh are available in the two stores. I just don’t know anything about them because I’d not even heard of either until twenty minutes ago. This is another thing that makes me wonder if they are really the best app(s) but then that is being a bit parochial of me. Maybe I’m just looking for my favourite apps of the year and these aren’t them.

If you fancy the brain training utility Elevate – seriously, I don’t know anything about how it elevates your brain, you’re on your own there – or Replay then you’ve just read over the links.

New Android switchers: solve the iMessage black hole

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Instead of texts, iPhones default to using iMessage: same thing but more, better, free. If you switch to an Android phone, though, this causes problems. Most of us keep the same phone number and from now on that rings your Android phone but nobody tells iMessage to shut up.

So if someone on an iPhone sends you a text message, it goes via iMessage and simply never reaches your Android phone. It can’t. And until now that’s been tough luck: there was no way to say oi, iMessage, I’m outta here.

Now there is a tool to say oi, iMessage, I’m outta here. It’s called the Deregister iMessage tool and is available free from Apple. Details on the official site.

Microsoft updates OneNote for iOS

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I’m an Evernote user so I have little experience of Microsoft’s equivalent but I did work with a guy last week who has the most impressive use of it I’ve seen. And he uses it on a Surface, so it took some impressing. If I weren’t so comfortably settled into Evernote with several gigabytes of data in it, I’d look at OneNote, especially as Microsoft seems to be updating for iOS pretty promptly these days.

Since I don’t use it, here’s someone who knows it better enough to tell you what’s new:

Microsoft has pushed out updates for its OneNote client on both iPhone and iPad, adding support for new features added in iOS 8 and a design that’s optimized for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.

Users can now password protect sections of documents directly from mobile devices (a feature that used to require a Windows PC). Those with an iPhone 5s or newer will also find that they can now unlock password-protected sections of documents using Touch ID. That feature isn’t mentioned in the iPad change log, so users on the iPad Air 2 or iPad mini 3 might need to wait for a future update to enable it.

Microsoft OneNote for iPhone and iPad updated with iOS 8 support, iPhone 6 design, and more –Mike Beasley, 9to5Mac (28 October 2014)

Read the full piece.

Am I dumb or what? Why Fantastical dropped its price

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Short version: the calendar app Fantastical dropped its price as a launch offer to promote the new features it has for iOS 8. Thick William here just saw the price drop and reported that.

In my defence, the first word I had of it was an alert about the price drop and that didn’t mention new features. I even went into iOS 8’s Notification Centre to see if Fantastical had added anything and it hadn’t. But later that same day, an update to Fantastical 2 appeared and it has Notification Centre stuff, it has sharing stuff, it has all sorts of goodies. So on the one hand I will let myself off for missing what wasn’t there at the time, but on the other I’d now like to hand you over to someone who didn’t miss a trick:

Fantastical 2.2, available today on the App Store, brings iOS 8 features that allow the app to be more easily integrated with iOS workflows thanks to a share extension and that extend the app beyond its silo with actionable notifications and a widget.

Before iOS 8, I never turned on Fantastical’s notifications because they couldn’t have the same level of integration found in Apple’s native Calendar and Reminders apps. I enjoyed the ability to mark reminders as complete or snooze them from Apple’s notifications, and I didn’t want to miss that kind of shortcut with Fantastical notifications.

iOS 8 allows Fantastical to send interactive notifications that are (mostly) on par with Apple’s. In my tests, I turned off Apple’s notifications and activated Fantastical’s for events and reminders. For events, Fantastical can show banners that, once swiped down, reveal a Snooze button to postpone an event. Tap the button, and Fantastical will open showing the selected event with a popover for snooze shortcuts and manual controls.

Fantastical 2.2: Interactive Notifications, Share Extension, and Today Widget – Federico Viticci, MacStories (22 October 2014)

Read the full piece. And then go get Fantastical 2 for iPad and for iPhone.

Small but good price drop for the excellent Fantastical 2 for iPad

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I still use Apple’s Mail, iTunes, Maps, Camera, pretty much everything: I’m not much of one for ditching the provided apps in favour of replacements by other companies. I get it and I do try them out, but those Apple apps I keep are good and usually I don’t find alternatives to be compelling.

Except Fantastical 2.

That has replaced Apple’s Calendar on my iPhone and iPad. It’s the way I can type “Lunch at York’s Bakery with Bert next Tuesday from 12 to 3 /a”. (The /a at the end adds the appointment to my joint calendar with Angela. It just needs that first letter to know which calendar I want.) And it’s also now, right now, this moment, talking to you, that I like it for how it detected that lunch example. I wanted to be sure I wasn’t steering you wrong, that this slightly more complex than average line would still work. So I copied it, went to Fantastical 2 for iPad and was going to paste it in but didn’t have to: Fantastical popped up a little note saying that it had detected an event in my clipboard, did I want to add that?

So I did and it worked perfectly. That’s impressive and I thank you for it, I hadn’t seen that before.

I’m glad of it because I like there being specific things I can point to that are good. For me, the reason to stay with Fantastical 2 is more a general, nebulous, comfortable one. I like the design, mostly, and when I go back to Apple’s one I’m missing the look and the feel of Fantastical.

I like it enough that having used it on iPad, I bought a copy for iPhone. I don’t like it so much that I’ve also bought it for my Mac, but I keep thinking about it.

Along the way of thinking about the iPhone version and whether to buy it, I did find that during my trying out of alternative apps, I had at some point bought and discarded Fantastical 1 for iPhone. I tried using it again and I couldn’t see why I’d chucked it away before. I think in the end the reason I spring for a new app with Fantastical 2 is that I liked it so much on the iPad that I wanted to reward the makers a little. A very little: Fantastical 2 is cheap.

But it’s now that little bit cheaper. Fantastical 2 for iPad is down from £6.99 to £5.49 (and if you like, from $9.99 to $7.99 which does seem like more) and you can get it here.

The iPhone version has also dropped from £2.99 to £1.99 and from $4.99 to $2.99. It’s here.

And because I don’t think I’ve conveyed the benefits of Fantastical 2 very well, here’s a video from the makers, Flexibits:

Apple’s iOS 8.1 is out and adds some goodies

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I’ve a friend I like a lot who doesn’t have an iPhone. I know. But when she texts me, I can be knee deep in my Mac or on my iPad and I’ve got to get out my phone and send her a reply from there. I know, crazy.

As of now, in fact as of about midnight last night, that ends.

With iOS 8.1, when she texts me in her ordinary texting way, my iPhone will get it in its ordinary way but will automatically, unthinkingly, un-setting-up-ily pass that text on to my Mac and iPad. She’ll be there in amongst everyone else I exchange iMessages with.

And I’ll be able to reply to her from there.

So, yes, I’ll type at my Mac and it will pass the text over iMessage to my iPhone and my iPhone will text it out to her but you are reading the only time I will ever have to spend even this long thinking about it. It’ll just be what happens.

You can get iOS 8.1 on your iPhone and iPad now. Open Settings, General and tap on Software Update.

Handiest. Thing. Ever. Make and take phone calls on your Mac

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If you’re the kind of person who leaves your iPhone in a pocket or purse placed inconveniently across the room, you’ll appreciate the ability to answer an incoming call with your Mac. You can also initiate calls from your Mac—to the other person, the call will look like it’s coming from your iPhone, but you’ll be chattering away with your Mac’s built-in microphone and speakers. For this to work you have to configure both your Mac and iPhone.

How to make and receive iPhone calls with your Mac – Christopher Breen, Macworld (17 October 2014)

This is the thing I think I am most looking forward to using now that I’ve moved from the OS X Yosemite beta to the final release. In theory it worked before but I had problems and put them down to the beta nature of it all. Plus I just put it down, decided to do it again some day.

That day is now. Or it would be if I were back at my office. I’m away with my iPad and I have already used that to make and receive calls. The audio quality is subtly different but receiving calls sounds great and making calls sounds fine. I love how it just happened, too. I’d left my iPhone in my office and was reading something on my iPad somewhere else in the house when the phone rang – and then so did my iPad. One tap and I was taking that call. Gorgeous.

So I know I’ll use that again and I know that I’ll use it when my Mac is doing it too. Maybe even more so: I do a lot of phone interviews so I’m assuming I will be able to use Audio Hijack Pro to record these. This could even transform my biggest problem of prevaricating before phoning people. When they are one tap away, I’m going to tap.

If you’re using iOS 8 on an iPhone and an iPad, those two already work together, you’re set. If you want to do it with your Mac too, you need to do a couple of things. Read this full piece on Macworld for exactly how to do it.

Check your calendars and contacts: iOS 8 not syncing reliably

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If you check this out online with a swifty Google search you’ll find many reports and some solutions to a problem about syncing. For instance, this: Apple Support page.

But it’s not working for me. And given how reliant I am on this stuff, it’s becoming a big issue: calendar entries on my iPhone don’t make it to my iPad and vice versa.

I’ve no solution myself but wanted to warn you: check your calendar to see that it’s all copying across the way nature intended.