Graham: There are many iPhone apps for scanning documents; Scanbot, Evernote Scannable, Prizmo, Readdle Scanner Pro, and many more. Many of them have OCR built-in, but Office Lens goes one step further. When you scan a document with Office Lens you are given the option to export it as a Word, PowerPoint, OneNote, or PDF document. And it won't just be a Word document with an image attached, it will actually create an editable Word document that replicates layout of the document you captured. Just like OCR isn't 100% accurate, neither is Office Lens, but it does an admirable job and you'll save a lot of time not having to recreate the Office document layout. But my biggest gripe is that it will only process one page at a time, which is frustrating if you want to replicate a multi-page document or slide deck.
MacStories Collections
iPhone Essentials
At MacStories we live on RSS, Twitter, and Podcasts. So this week, we're bringing you three Collections in the one Issue, with our favorite apps for reading RSS, using Twitter, and listening to podcasts on the iPhone.
Graham: I trust Reeder a lot, it's been around for years and lived on my Home screen since the day I installed it. Over the years there have been many changes to Reeder and although some of the updates have been slower than I'd like, they're always well thought out and terrifically executed updates that make the app significantly better. If you're an RSS power user, Reeder is an app you need to try. And unlike many other RSS apps, Reeder also has Mac and iPad apps.
Federico: I've tried many RSS apps and services since the demise of Google Reader, but none of them offered me the control and personalization that NewsBlur gives me. NewsBlur allows you to train RSS with keywords, authors, or entire websites you like or not. For instance, if you subscribe to a particular site but don't like it when they cover politics, you can start muting related keywords so articles containing those won't show up in your unread list at all. NewsBlur doesn't look great, but the training is an excellent addition to my everyday RSS consumption habits.
Graham: There are some differences in the way that Unread's user interface works when compared to the more traditional Reeder and NewsBlur style. When I switched to Unread for a month recently, I found Unread to be reminiscent of a Twitter app in the way that it displayed article headlines and snippets. It didn't work for me personally, but I can imagine that for many others it might be a superior way of skimming RSS feeds.
Federico: Twitter's official app for iOS lacks many features of third-party clients such as timeline sync and share sheet support, but it also shows the future of the service in a way that other apps can't. With Cards, special hashtags, full search, group direct messaging with photos, and tweet recommendations in the timeline, the Twitter app is the modern Twitter experience.
Graham: Although tempted by the allure of the (quickly improving) official Twitter app, I've stuck with Tweetbot as my favorite Twitter app. The downside of using a third-party app for Twitter like Tweetbot is that it won't support all of Twitter's new features such as Cards. But the advantage is that it has many other neat features that Twitter just doesn't bother implementing like a better and more powerful mute functionality.
Graham: Twitteriffic is the other third-party app to consider and in many respects it is as great as Tweetbot. The only real reason I use Tweetbot and not Twitteriffic is just my personal preference for the way Tweetbot looks and works. There are very few meaningful feature differences between the two, so I'd recommend everyone try both.
Federico: There's a lot to like in Marco Arment's Overcast for iPhone and iPad, but Voice Boost and Smart Speed are the key features for me. Voice Boost makes my favorite episodes sound better, while Smart Speed makes them shorter without speeding them up – it removes the tiny bits of silence that add up and can me save hours when listening every day. Plus, Overcast looks great, has good playlist management, and it comes with solid recommendation features.
Graham: If you've never tried Pocket Casts before, you really should. It's full of features, is well designed, and comes with some really nice touches. My favorite little detail of Pocket Casts is that they have a database of emoji that are assigned to different podcasts – which you'll see when you get a notification about a new episode (e.g. 🇺🇸 This American Life, 💰 Planet Money, 🍊 Freakonomics).
Graham: I've been using Castro for well over a year as my podcast app of choice. It is not as fully featured as Overcast or Pocket Casts, but I'm a big fan of the design and simplicity of Castro. And even if it doesn't have as many features, it's still got all the key things you'll want (sleep timer, playback speed adjustments, and automatic downloads).
Tips with Ticci
Tips and tricks to master your apps, this week by Federico
For the past several years, I’ve come up with various ways to be alerted of new iOS releases – either public versions or betas – within a few minutes. Since last year, I’ve added the Twitter account of @iOSReleases to my list of services I use to keep track of new firmware releases. @iOSReleases is timely in their alerts and I’ve combined this account with Pushover through Zapier. This way, whenever @iOSReleases tweets a new iOS version, I can receive a high-priority Pushover notification on my iPhone and Apple Watch with a loud alert as well. For a noisier but more complete Twitter account (which also tweets new Apple press releases, developer portal status changes, etc.), check out @iOSOTA.
Interesting Links
Great reads and links from around the web.
Bitcode was one of Apple’s announcements for the App Thinning initiative to make apps slimmer. Medium user Inertial Lemon has some thoughts on what it could mean for the future.
Facebook has launched Moments, a new app to share photos with friends. Another experiment by Creative Labs that wants to rethink how multiple users can share photos taken at the same event.
Federico: Scottish electronic music producer and DJ Hudson Mohawke (whose song ‘Chimes’ was used in Apple’s ‘Stickers’ commercial for the MacBook Air last year) is out with his sophomore album Lantern this week, and I have been listening on repeat to the new single from this record, Warriors. With Lantern, Hudson Mohawke wants to move past the label of electropop and rap music that has defined his first body of work (notably, he collaborated with Kanye West) and embrace a more versatile and sometimes melodic style with different collaborations throughout the record. While some songs on Lantern are reminiscent of his roots, Warriors is a good example of his change: this collaboration with Ruckazoid and Devaeux has an anti-hater attitude that blends a catchy piano line with an open chorus and persistent electronic beats. Warriors sounds to me like an anthem against online haters and harassment (“we might lose a battle but we’ll win the war”), but the message can be interpreted in many ways. Overall, a solid single from Hudson Mohawke with a new direction I like.
Graham: Two weeks ago Netflix released the entire first season of Sense8, a new TV series from the creators of The Matrix. Sense8 tells the stories of eight strangers who live across the world from each other. The twist is that an event in the first episode causes the eight 'sensates' to become connected to each other, in a mental and emotional way.
One of my favorite aspects of Sense8 was that the show is actually filmed on-location (and not in a Los Angeles studio) in the city that each of the sensates live in. The result is visually breathtaking because in any given episode you'll be transported to the worlds of Seoul, Nairobi, San Francisco, Reykjavík, Berlin, and more. The other great part of Sense8 is when you experience a moment where the sensates "connect" with each other, particularly when it comes to some of the action scenes. There are some weaknesses with some of the stories, but overall, I'm really quite positive about the show and think it's something you should try.
