Apple released a new iPhone ad tonight focused on fitness apps & accessories, titled "Strength".
What just kills me about this ad is that it is set to the tune of "Chicken Fat".
The song has an interesting history. It is also one of my dad's favorite workout songs.
I about fell over when the music started playing.
As someone who grew up in South Dakota, I can say that this list is pretty spot on. The one thing that had me go "What the heck?" Was the part in 8 about a hot bar. Hot dish, totally. One of my favorite meals of all time is Pizza Hot Dish. But a hot bar? I have never heard a dessert referred to as that.
Must be some weird West River thing.
Come next Monday, I'll be firing up the Apple TV to livestream the WWDC keynote in my home theater. Can't wait to see what Apple has in store for us this year.
This is an epic rundown of the various aspects of Apple's empire — both strengths and weaknesses — by my very good friend Nik Fletcher. I even had the privilege of reviewing a few drafts to offer some input.
This is a long read, but essential leading up to WWDC next week.
It must be Youtube video week at techese HQ, because the official trailer for Christopher Nolan's next movie just came out. I love that Nolan doesn't give too much away in his trailers. Inception was a fantastic film that wasn't ruined ahead of time by giving away the whole movie in the trailer.
Interstellar looks simply fascinating.
Apparently I am on a comic book hero kick today, so here is a video of an awesomely crazy fella who made himself some pneumatic Wolverine claws.
I just love how freaking excited this guy is!
This is not one of those "Turn off every useful feature of iOS" posts that grinds my gears. My goal is to deliver practical steps to truly solve your iOS battery woes.
Scotty Loveless lays out the best advice I've read on how to get the battery in your iOS device to go the extra mile, without compromising the experience Apple designed in iOS. This is a must read.
A while back my colleagues & I won an Editor's Choice Award from Macworld.
Because the folks running the company are amazing, they made sure everyone in the company received their very own Eddy. They started showing up at our doors a few weeks ago, and to celebrate, a great many of us took out our cameras to get our photo taken with Eddy.
You can see everyone's photos at the link in the title, and you can see mine below.
The Internet can be a scary place. One thing that always makes me a little leery is public Wi-Fi. You never know what anyone else is up to on public Wi-Fi. One of the best things you can do in that situation is to use a VPN.
Unfortunately, VPNs are not something that most folks a) know about, and b) know how to use.
That's where Cloak comes in. Cloak makes using a VPN easy, as it does all the work. It even works on your iOS devices. I've been using Cloak for a year now, and today Cloak 2 was released.
The first Cloak worked fine on the Mac, but on iOS it felt very finnicky. This is where Cloak 2 really shines. Cloak 2 brings a new feature called Trusted Networks. You can tell it which networks you use that you trust, and it will disable the VPN when you are on those. Then when you venture onto an untrusted network, the VPN automagically kicks in and secures your connection.
And you only need to set this all up once, as Cloak will pass your Trusted Network settings on to all of your devices.
Cloak operates off a monthly subscription, and has a couple tiers.
I've found the mini plan to be more than adequate for my occasional afternoon working at a coffee shop, but if you are a heavy VPN user, then the unlimited plan is priced fantastically, too.
As I said, the Internet can be a scary place. Stay safe out there.
Today my longtime friends at The Iconfactory released Twitterrific 5.7, and with this update they set Ollie free. Or rather, freemium.
From their announcement:
Today marks a new era for our venerable Twitter client, Twitterrific. We’re pleased to say that with the 5.7 update, Twitterrific is now free to download from the App Store. It is supported by revenue from Deck Network ads displayed at the top of the timeline and in-app purchases that unlock advanced features such as push notifications and tweet translation.
Twitterrific has been available in the App Store since day one and we’ve experimented with different revenue models in the past, including the one we’re returning to today. Our hope is that this helps get Twitterrific into more people’s hands than ever before so they can enjoy the simple beauty of reading and posting tweets once again.
If you're a longtime fan of Twitterrific, I'm sure the first thought is whether or not you need to pony up for the in-app purchase. Iconfactory is using one of the awesome new features of iOS 7 to make sure existing owners of Twitterrific 5 for iOS don't need to do that. They are smartly using iOS 7 Receipt Validation to check whether you had paid for Twitterrific 5 before, and if so, the in-app purchase is waived.
I think this is a smart change in business model for them. Exposure is everything in the App Store, and this will definitely remove the barrier to entry to get people to see how great third-party Twitter apps are compared to Twitter's own app.
The very first app I bought when I got my iPhone 3G (which was also the launch day for the App Store) was Twitterrific 1.0. The Iconfactory has always had the most sensible approach to Twitter in my mind and Twitterrific has always been my preferred app.
I'm glad to see The Iconfactory setting Ollie free so he can soar higher than ever.
