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Weather Nerd

Federico: I didn’t think I could become obsessed about detailed weather data and forecasts until I tried Weather Nerd. Available on the iPhone and iPad, Weather Nerd uses data from Forecast.io to provide an accurate report of current conditions as well as a forecast for the next day and week. I’ve tried many weather apps for “power users” before, but Weather Nerd is the first one to make in-depth forecasts understandable and easy to remember.

Weather Nerd excels at combining multiple pieces of data in a clear structure. The Today view shows temperature as a line over the course of 24 hours; this line is compared to a lighter one so you can see the temperature for the previous day at the same time. Alongside temperature, the app shows lines for wind and precipitation, useful to make decisions about going outside or traveling. My favorite part is the summary at the top: Weather Nerd can show messages like “1° warmer than yesterday. 10% chance of rain”, and that’s usually all I need to know about the weather. The Today and Tomorrow tabs are my most used ones, and I find the mix of summaries and visual representations of weather conditions fantastic.

Weather Nerd can also show forecasts for the upcoming week and any date in the calendar through historical averages. If you live in a supported country, you can also check out a detailed precipitation forecast for the next hour.

Weather Nerd is the first weather app that gives me advanced forecasts with a simple design and message. It’s one of my new favorites this year.

MacStories Collections

WWDC 2015 Wishes

New iPad Multitasking

Federico: As someone who works from his iPad every day, I find the multitasking experience of the device a bit antiquated and clunky. Even after extensions, widgets, and custom keyboards in iOS 8, working with multiple apps at the same time can still be difficult on an iPad even for trivial tasks such as researching on the web while you’re writing a document or referencing an email while you’re talking to someone over Slack. In iOS 9, I’d like to see a way for iPad apps to show parts of other apps or sub-sections of their own UI on screen, although I’m not sure how Apple could make the experience seamless and intuitive for casual users.

More Health Features

Federico: Apple’s Health app offers a basic selection of categories and charts to keep track of your fitness and nutrition data, but that data can be meaningless if you don’t know what you’re looking at. I’d like to see practical advice in the Health app, using correlations between data points to more easily explain to users what they’re doing and how. By surfacing more data and presenting it in a more user-friendly way, the Health app could become more than a collection of graphs.

Native Watch SDK

Federico: Current Apple Watch apps are slow, and that’s just the nature of WatchKit. Apple already confirmed they’ll roll out a native Watch SDK later this year, so it seems fair to assume we’ll hear more about this next week. I’m hoping that third-party apps will gain native access to sensors: fitness apps could use the heart rate sensor to monitor my performance and send me feedback in real-time; games could take advantage of new interactions with Force Touch; and, all apps could use haptic feedback and the Digital Crown.

Revamped Spotlight and Siri

Federico: In iOS 9, I’d like to see a way for Spotlight to look for content into apps, such as documents from Pages or notes from Drafts. Spotlight can search and open items from native apps like Mail and Reminders, and I believe this ability should be opened up to third-party developers as well. Similarly, users should be able to issue simple commands to third-party apps with Siri. Apple Watch is showing that quick voice interactions are the best way to communicate with people and apps on a smaller, wearable screen; a Siri API for every app would speed up the iOS experience considerably.

Apple TV Apps & New Hardware

Graham: It’s time for Apple to bring the App Store to the television. Time and time again, Apple has reaped the benefits of (carefully) opening up their platforms to the millions of developers who have crafted useful, innovative and exciting apps for the iPhone, Mac, iPad and most recently, the Apple Watch. In order for TV apps to be useful, I’d like to see some updated Apple TV hardware which is more powerful and perhaps includes a more functional (maybe touch screen) remote. Last but not least, Apple needs to bring voice recognition and Siri to the TV. I own and frequently use an Xbox One, and in my experience, voice recognition is a great fit for TV. 

International Focus

Graham: Apple’s last quarter saw 63% of its revenue come from countries outside of the United States. But Apple products often remain US-only for extended periods of time, frustrating international customers. My wish is that announcements at this year’s WWDC see global launches, or at least a fast international rollout. Specifically, there’s the rumored music streaming service, public transit in Apple Maps and TV service partnerships. On a related note, Europe, Australia and other countries are still waiting for Apple Pay, despite already having NFC technology in retail stores for years. Don’t dissapoint us non-US folk, Apple.

Tips with Terpstra  

I use Bee mostly with GitHub Issues, and track tickets from nearly 20 projects from one screen. Bee makes it easy to scan, respond to, and check off all of my tickets. With smart folders and search capabilities, issue management becomes a manageable task. As an aside, Bee also has a surprisingly good Markdown editor.

Download Bee on the Mac App Store.

Interesting Links  

appFigures has launched an iPhone app. Useful for developers who want to view details about their app revenue, ad performance, reviews, and downloads natively on iPhone.

Daniel Jalkut on personal information that shows up on the iPhone’s Lock screen by using Siri.

Thunderbolt 3 uses the new USB-C format, “creating one compact port that does it all”.

A tip by Allen Pike on how to fix performance issues on any Mac.

Zoommy for Mac lets you browse and find free stock photos. Currently in beta.

Streaks is a todo list that lets you form good habits and that also integrates with Apple’s Health app.

FuzzMeasure 4 is “an audio and acoustic measurement tool to produce, analyze, and publish beautiful graphs”. Fantastic design and powerful feature set. $99.99 for a personal license.

Boom, an excellent audio utility to boost a Mac’s volume, now offers a free remote app for iOS. The app can change the volume, select equalizers, and control apps like VLC and QuickTime from an iPhone or iPad.

TextExpander 5 has added support for JavaScript automation on OS X.

Home Screens  

Mohammed Taher

Kyle Seth Gray

I like keeping my Home screen somewhat default, and so I use a lot of Apple apps, mainly Maps, Mail, Calendar, and Reminders. And yes, I still use my Phone app a lot. There are many third-party solutions to Apple’s apps, and I do use some of them, but I always come back to the defaults since they have features such as Siri integration that other apps simply don’t have yet.

I’m on Twitter 24/7, and Twitter.app is my client of choice. But I keep it off my main Home screen just to try and keep myself distraction free.

A while ago I used a service called OhLife for my daily journal, but it sadly shut down last year, so I switched to using Day One. Day One is in the top left to help remind me to write in my journal and share stories with myself more often, for things I may want to remember but I don’t want to post to social media. And if you do actually want to share one of your entries, it’s only a tap away.

The Fitness folder is filled with Pedometer++, Pillow, Fitbit (for competing with friends), LFConnect (my gym’s treadmills integrate with Health.app, which is seriously the coolest), and Lifesum. Before I got my Apple Watch, RunKeeper was my app of choice for keeping track of runs and activities. It has great programs that can help improve running times, and it feeds your data into Health.app, allowing other apps to see this data, like Lifesum.

Lifesum is great for diet and health goals, and has helped me focus on a healthier diet, and balancing out exercise and calorie intake.

I use Clear alongside Reminders to use with long lists such as groceries, packing lists, and tasks that I have to do over and over. It does seem to have issues from time to time with notifications, so I still use Reminders for due dates. Clear has an Apple Watch app which is great, and makes me wonder why Apple doesn’t have a Reminders app on the Apple Watch.

Photography wise I have Metapho, Layout, Hyperlapse, Instagram, VSCOCam, and Manual. I think the best one out of these is Manual, which has great settings for someone that knows a little bit more about cameras and wants to take advantage of the hardware on the iPhone.

OneNote has become one of my killer apps. Over the last semester, I’ve exclusively taken notes on my iPad via OneNote, and being able to see all those notes on my phone, or even make flashcards or lists to study and review available on my Apple Watch is really great. You can do anything from typing, writing, taking photos of whiteboards or lecture slides, and you’re able to search all of this content, which has helped me a lot when working on school assignments or studying for a final. It is vastly better than any other note taking app, beating Evernote or Notability, because of its cross platform tools, speed, and many many other features. It’s surprising, to me at least, that it’s from Microsoft, but they continue to impress lately with their iOS app offerings.

CARROT Weather’s sarcastic forecasting, along with Forecast.io’s excellent weather service, provide the best forecast out there.

You’ve definitely heard it before, but 1Password is the app to get if you don’t want to memorize complex passwords, or want more secure online accounts. It has a ton of features, and I store everything from online accounts, codes I need to remember, and 2-Factor Authentication inside of it.

For entertainment, I Spotify, Pocket Casts, and Music.app. There’s a lot of bonus tracks and indie EP/LPs I’ve bought over the years that aren’t offered on streaming services, which is the main reason behind using Apple’s Music app. Other than that, all of my playlists are in Spotify, which just updated with a bunch of great music features.

Previously, on MacStories  

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