"If there is an app for that"

Have you seen Pinterest’s new-look iOS app yet?

April 19, 2016 by macjeff

Pinterest today announced a completely overhauled iPhone and iPad application—"our fastest, cleanest app yet"—that lets you focus on more Pins than ever before. The app, used by more than a hundred million people around the world, is a lot faster than the previous version it replaced, with your Home feed now loading up to three times faster.

The refreshed application is now rolling in the App Store so check back later if the new version isn’t immediately available where you live. The Android edition of Pinterest and its web-based counterpart are next on Pinterest’s list to tackle, though they wouldn’t commit to a firm release dates for these.

More Pins than ever before

Pinterest’s new design and a cleaner user interface makes it easy to focus more on Pins. As mentioned, when you open the app your Home feed now loads three times faster than before. Scrolling through other feeds is noticeably smoother with up to 10x improvements in touch responsiveness and scrolling smoothness. The app features some nicely designed animations and transitions done in a performant way.

Pinterest’s major speed increased is due to the fact that developers haven’t simply given the app a new coat of paint—they’ve actually re-architected the entire platform from the ground up around a new framework that’s faster to build in and easier to scale.

Major architectural changes

The app relies heavily on multithreaded code: user interface rendering, image downloading, GIF decoding, model processing and other critical aspects of the app take full advantage of multiple processing cores in Apple’s A-series chips.

"The fastest and easiest way to reduce energy usage and increase performance was to take advantage of the fact that most iPhones have multiple processors," said developers.

Oh, and those Pins and general layouts you see are now device agnostic and Pinterest’s new framework will automatically scale fonts, margins and kerning depending on your screen size and language.

Localized for your market future-proof

"We found Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages appear too large to native readers without a bit of scaling, so our framework automatically handles that," as per the Pinterest Engineering blog.

"These changes have laid the groundwork for future improvements, too," they added.

"Now that we’ve rebuilt things in a smarter way, engineers and designers here at Pinterest will be able to develop features faster than ever before."

Pricing and availability

Pinterest requires an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad with iOS 7.0 or later.

The app is localized in English, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian Bokmål, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese.

Grab Pinterest for free on the App Store.

Source: Pinterest

Messaging app Viber follows WhatsApp’s lead, adds end-to-end encryption

April 19, 2016 by macjeff

Viber's more than 711 million users can now enjoy encrypted messaging, safe from third-party snooping. A new Hidden Chats feature will also hide your conversations from the main screen of the app.

The post Messaging app Viber follows WhatsApp’s lead, adds end-to-end encryption appeared first on Digital Trends.

Plex 4.0 for iOS review: A “free” personal media player worth paying for

April 19, 2016 by macjeff

When it comes to media player apps, many stream content from the cloud, while others require users to transfer files directly to the device. Plex (App Store link is different breed of player, one that creates a personal cloud securely hosted on a computer or network-attached storage (NAS) device at home. If you’re already converting discs into digital files, Plex organizes this media with beautiful artwork and metadata, then serves it up for playback from nearly anywhere.

You’ve been served

By itself, Plex for iOS doesn’t do a whole lot aside from casting the contents of your Camera Roll to other client apps on Android smartphones and tablets, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, game consoles, or late-model smart TVs. There’s also no way to directly sideload content like other media player apps.

Instead, the universal app requires free Plex Media Server software running on the Mac, Windows, or Linux PC where content is stored, or an NAS from one of nine different manufacturers including Synology and WD. (You can also mix-and-match—I use a NAS mounted on a vintage mid-2007 Mac mini, for example.) Once installed, the server can be managed from any web browser, where users set up libraries for Movies, TV Shows, Music, Photos, or Home Videos.

This process is as simple as pointing the server to where local media files are stored, although there are plenty of settings available for advanced users to tinker with. The software automatically indexes and organizes content in the background, downloading relevant artwork and metadata from a variety of internet sources. (Worth noting: DRM-protected content and disc images/folders are not supported.)

Plex secures all communication using SSL certificates and encryption; remote connections are streamed through your home broadband connection, but can be converted on-the-fly to conserve bandwidth. The server also keeps track of what you’ve been watching, making it easy to resume or dive into the next episode of a TV series.

Pay to play

There’s never been a better time to try Plex for iOS since the app is now free. However, in this case, “free” is really more like a feature-limited trial, since full access to the core functionality requires a $5 in-app activation. (That fee doesn’t apply for those who own a previous version.)

The free version allows casting from your Media Server to other Plex apps, but limits same-device video and music playback to only a minute. It’s a fair compromise considering the amount of backend work required to maintain the ecosystem, but the absolute best experience comes with a subscription.

Available in monthly ($5), annual ($40), or lifetime ($150) flavors, Plex Pass is completely optional, but adds a ton of premium benefits including managed accounts for other members of the household (great for keeping kid’s shows out of your queue), offline sync for mobile devices, the ability to wirelessly upload camera content, and free access to all apps, including early releases.

The makers of Plex aren’t exactly pocketing all the activation and subscription income—some of that money now goes to metadata providers like Rotten Tomatoes, whose movie ratings (and soon, full reviews) are now displayed in the iOS app. Plex Pass subscribers can also generate automatic music playlists using Gracenote metadata, along with access to movie trailers and more than 140,000 music videos from VEVO.

Discover and browse

In recent months, Plex has been preoccupied updating other apps with improved browsing and discovery, often at the expense of the iOS version. I’m happy to say this situation has been fully rectified with the latest release, which offers new features like a mini-player that allows viewers to browse other content while the current video continues playing in a small window, similar to the YouTube app.

With the 4.0.1 update, Plex also splits the iOS home screen into separate Discover and Browse tabs for faster access to recent content. The former contains the same On Deck, Recently Added, and related categories, along with a large Continue Watching banner across the top for picking up where you left off.

Other categories like libraries, Playlists, and Channels (plug-ins added from the web app which deliver free streams from web providers like Apple Movie Trailers) can now be found consolidated into the Browse tab instead. Individual movies feature a new option to display related titles from your library, along with easy access to other content from the same genre, director, or stars.

Plex 4 also now parses chapter information from videos, making it easier to jump to specific scenes, and finally speeds up the process of syncing content (including entire playlists) to mobile devices for offline playback. Last but not least, you can now view or listen to partially synced files—no more leaving home with useless half-downloaded content.

Bottom line

Assuming you already make digital versions of packaged media or want to be able to view personal media from anywhere without storing it in the cloud, it doesn’t get any better than Plex for iOS. It’s worth $5 to unlock core features, but the absolute best experience comes with a premium subscription.

SoundShare review: A social network for you and your music-loving friends

April 19, 2016 by macjeff

Have you ever seen the movie (or read the novel) High Fidelity? For a few years of my life, I was one of those guys in the record store. As far as discovering new music was concerned, this was the most fertile period of my life. Stu W. ran the store, and a bunch of us hung out there in the early evening, sharing our new records, and sampling those in the store. We all liked some of the same music, but our tastes diverged enough that there were always surprises.

At that time, in my early 20s, it was great to be able to discover so much music. Now, with digital downloads and streaming, there are lots ways to share music, from Spotify’s shared playlists to the dozens of apps that let you share music in different ways.

A friend recently showed me an iOS app called SoundShare. This free app lets you play music and, if you want, share it with your friends. You can follow people, as you would on Facebook or Twitter, and see what they’ve listened to, while sharing what you’ve heard.

When my friend—let’s call him Bob—showed me the app, it was interesting. Part of our conversation went like this:

Bob: So pick a song and search for it.

Me: How about Everything Merges with the Night?

Bob: You’re just saying random words...

Me: No, you don’t know that song? It’s great. Wait, let me find it...here.

Bob: Hey, that is cool. I don’t know much of Brian Eno’s music.

This was very similar to the way my friends and I, both in the record store and at each other’s homes, would turn each other on to new music. Bob and I were talking on Skype while doing this, each in a different country, and we were able to share music essentially in real time by adding songs to a shared playlist. Sure, you could tell someone to search for something in Apple Music or Spotify, but this is more immediate. Other users can also see what you’ve listened to, and you can see their listening history.

SoundShare piggybacks on YouTube, the world’s biggest music streaming service, so you can find lots of music. I consider this a bit of a gray area, as far as compensation is concerned, but it’s not the only music player that uses YouTube. One of the problems with YouTube is that the “music videos” uploaded may by mislabeled, or may be different versions of a specific song. If there is a video, as opposed to just a still frame with an album cover, you can watch that video on your iOS device while listening to the music.

Sometimes you get some random video by someone covering the song you searched for on an acoustic guitar, filmed in their bedroom, or you see a bootlegged concert video rather than a studio cut. This is a bit disconcerting, and there should be a way to flag such versions, or find correct versions when you stumble on videos you don’t want to see.

Bottom line

SoundShare is a great idea, and it’s frankly what’s missing in Apple Music. You can make playlists with Apple Music, and your friends can subscribe to them, but there’s no two-way sharing in Apple’s service. As with any social networking app, SoundShare will live or die according to the number of users it can attract. If your friends use it, then you’re likely to want to try it out. For now, there aren’t a lot of users, but perhaps that will change.

Alternatives to Apple’s iOS Music app

April 19, 2016 by macjeff

If you like listening to music on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, but don’t use Apple Music, you may find the new Music app to be overkill. It’s got lots of features that don’t add much to your listening experience and just get in the way. With a cluttered interface, Apple’s Music app has lost its main vocation: the ability to let you choose the music you want to listen to quickly and easily.

Fortunately, there are lots of alternatives. Most of these apps try to simplify the experience of spinning songs on your iOS device, or offer more intuitive ways of controlling your listening sessions.

While Apple doesn’t let you easily replace its bundled apps—for example, even if you have another browser installed on an iOS device, Safari opens when you tap a link—there are no such limits with music player apps. They can all access the music you sync over iTunes, and the music you download to your device from iCloud or the iTunes Store. So any music player app can access your library, and you can control playback from your iOS device’s lock screen, or even your Apple Watch.

Here’s a look at four apps you can use to play music on your iOS device.

Ecoute

The $1 Ecoute is a minimalist player that lets you browse your music library by viewing its artwork. It has the essential controls—play music in order, shuffle it, repeat it, and manage a play queue. But it also has some extras, such as a Shuffle Albums feature, which many people will find useful; I especially like this to listen to classical music.

Ecoute offers AirPlay streaming, and even lets you play podcasts. It supports AirPlay, offers a night mode, and lets you sort music by many criteria.

And Ecoute is already updated to take advantage of 3D Touch, available on the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus (it’s the only music player I’ve found that is, so far). When you hard-press its icon, you get shortcuts to Search your library, Shuffle All, or Play All your music. For the 3D Touch Shuffle All feature alone, this app has earned a place on my iPhone.

Cesium

The $2 Cesium is a minimalist music player, similar to what the iOS Music app used to be before Apple added all the extra menus and buttons. It’s got a whole slew of tiny features that make playing music a lot better. You can control it using gestures, you can choose a number of sort options (including “Classical Mode,” which sorts classical music by composers’ names instead of artists), and you can use it to play audiobooks.

With Cesium, you can shuffle by album, manage your play queue, view your listening history, and even choose custom colors for the app’s theme, or use a night mode. I wish Cesium had better documentation and support, rather than just a page on Reddit and a Twitter account for the latter; figuring out how to use its gestures takes a while. But Cesium is a slick app, and once you’ve figured it out, it makes Apple’s app look bloated.

Picky

If you have a lot of music on your iOS device—if you’re carrying around a 128GB iPhone, for example—you may find it daunting to choose what to listen to. The $3 Picky steps in to let you filter your library to choose exactly the music you want to hear. Tap Filter, and, in the different views—Artists, Albums, Songs, or Playlists—and you can choose to view only those entries with more than a certain number of tracks. For example, lets say that, for today’s playlist, you want to only hear your rock, electronic, and alternative songs. Sort by those genres in Picky, and the rest of your music stays hidden.

This lets you choose when you want to listen to singles or occasional tracks that are outliers in your library. It can take a while to get used to this, but when you do, you realize how much easier it is to choose what to listen to if you have an eclectic music collection.

Aside from these filtering features, Picky is a clean, minimalist player, that offers the usual features: shuffle, repeat, a play queue, and more.

Musixmatch

While it’s not the most attractive music player out there, Musixmatch (which is free, but offers in-app purchases for some features) is great if you like to sing along to your favorite songs. Musixmatch has a database of more than 7 million songs in 38 languages, and while it doesn’t find lyrics for everything in my library, it does for most songs.

You can also use Musixmatch to identify songs you hear around you, and display their lyrics. Musixmatch has an Apple Watch app, which can control the iPhone app, display lyrics, and listen to music to identify songs. There’s also a Notification Center widget, if you want to be able to see lyrics on your iOS device’s lock screen.

There are plenty of other music player apps available for iOS, but these four offer a streamlined approach to choosing and playing music, as compared to Apple’s stock Music app. If you listen to music on your iOS device a lot, try one of them out.