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Text Case Guides – Chris Hannah

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Chris Hannah writing about Text Case:

Just over one week ago, I released the first major update to Text Case. Since then, I’ve written and published four guides on different parts of the app. While they don’t combine to create a Text Case “User Manual”, I think they explain the most fundamental parts, and hopefully some features that users will be surprised by.

Text Case is becoming more and more part of my text editing arsenal and these guides Chris has put together are superb.

If you haven’t tried this app out, you should.

Goodbye AirPower

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Matthew Panzarino writing for TechCrunch:

Apple has canceled the AirPower product completely, citing difficulty meeting its own standards.

“After much effort, we’ve concluded AirPower will not achieve our high standards and we have cancelled the project. We apologize to those customers who were looking forward to this launch. We continue to believe that the future is wireless and are committed to push the wireless experience forward,” said Dan Riccio, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering in an emailed statement today.

After a delay of over a year since it was first announced in September of 2017, the AirPower charging mat has become something of a focal point for Apple’s recent habit of announcing envelope tickling products and not actually shipping them on time. The AirPods, famously, had a bit of a delay before becoming widely available, and were shipped in limited quantities before finally hitting their stride and becoming a genuine cultural moment.

AirPower, however, has had far more time to marinate in the soup of public opinion since it was announced. Along with recent MacBook keyboard troubles, this has functioned as a sort of flash point over discussion that something isn’t right with Apple’s hardware processes.

Everything I’ve personally heard (Apple is saying nothing officially) about the AirPower delay has been related to tough engineering problems related to the laws of physics. Specifically, I’ve heard that they ran too hot because the 3D charging coils in close proximity to one another required very, very cautious power management.

As Stephen Hackett said on 512 Pixels said:

This is pretty unheard of when it comes to Apple, and I suspect the company won’t be pre-announcing hardware so far in advance any time soon. That said, I’d rather see the company kill a product than ship something that doesn’t work.

Honestly I am glad Apple made some kind of decision on this. I am sure the AirPower jokes won’t die anytime soon, but I would rather this era of Apple ends poorly than never end at all.

It also pains me to do this but…. #ChrisWasRight.

Capture Your Ideas and Organize Your Writing with Learn Ulysses

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Shawn Blanc over at The sweet Setup:

Learn Ulysses 2.0 is now available!

Learn Ulysses is our popular video course to help you take your notes, ideas, and writing from scattered to structured.

Over 2,500 folks just like you signed up for the original version of this course. After listening to their feedback, we made a bunch of improvements: We re-did every single video and added a whole bunch more of advanced workflows plus additional writing coaching.

  • Save time with your new, improved workflows.

  • Enjoy the benefits of having a spot to quickly capture your ideas and enjoy the writing process.

  • Relax as you finally get a structure for your notes and writing.

Today, we want to give you all the heads up so that you will know exactly what you’re getting when you sign up for Learn Ulysses tomorrow. Basically, we want to convey just how much value there is in the new materials!

I was one of those people who bought the original course when it came out and it was a no-brainer for me to upgrade to the updated version. Ulysses is an app I have been playing around with for well over a year now but I am not entirely sure that I am using it the best I could. So far I am about halfway through the App Tutorials section and I already have 3 pages full of notes and ideas written out.Shawn Blanc is the real deal when it comes to these courses and the fact that he had Mike Schmitz come and make the screencasts for it is just icing on the cake. I highly recommend this course to anyone looking to get into Ulysses as a writing tool.

Drafts 5 for Mac

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From Tim Nahumck:

For many years, Drafts has been the place on iOS where text starts. But for all of those years, there has been a missing component: a macOS counterpart.

That ends today.

Drafts for Mac has finally been released to the public. Last time there was a major release, I wrote the Macstories Review. But when it comes to a Mac and how best to integrate Drafts into the macOS ecosystem, I’m simply not the right person to do the review justice. But thankfully, one of my favorite internet people reached out to me privately about writing the review for it, and I was thrilled to even be asked. To be clear: they didn’t owe me that, but it is honestly a nice feeling to feel respected within this community. They also reached out to Federico about writing for MacStories, and he agreed.

So, it’s my pleasure to point you not here for a review, but over to MacStories where Rosemary Orchard has written a review of Drafts for Mac.

Rosemary Orchard writing for MacStories:

The quest for the perfect text application – for some of us it has been a lifelong goal, or at least it feels like it. I realised very early on in my computing life that I did not enjoy playing with formatting in Word or Pages, and when I discovered that Markdown provides the ability to make items **bold** or _italic_ with just a few simple characters, I felt like I had finally found my text formatting holy grail.

Many years ago I discovered Drafts for iOS, and the idea appealed: you open the application and type. No creating a new file, or trying to decide what to do with the text before the thought is fully formed, just open, type, then decide. I frequently need to jot down notes, save links, and have found being able to write without thinking too much about where the words need to go, and how they’re going to get there, is extremely helpful in today’s world of constant interruptions.

Last year saw Drafts 5 released for iOS with even more capability than before, allowing you to truly customise it to be the text editor you’ve always dreamed of having. There was only one small but important snag – no Mac version.

Today there is a Mac app. It is what many of us have been waiting for, albeit with a few missing features at the moment. Drafts for Mac has landed.

It’s great to see two of my favorite people on the internet write about the new Mac app for Drafts 5. I played around with the beta and Greg Pierce, the sole developer of Drafts 5, has been doing a fantastic job with it. I can’t wait to see more improvements to come on the Mac app as time goes on.

Mocktail Shortcut

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Jodan Merrick writing on his blog found via Supercomputer:

Instead of framing screenshots using just these images, I wanted to create mockups using different product images that are more distinctive and, in some cases, three-dimensional. The result is Mocktail, a shortcut that creates framed iOS screenshots using various device images I’ve sourced from Apple’s website (e.g., product landing pages or the online store).

This is some of the most extensive and beautiful work I have ever seen in a Shortcut. Jordan has created something incredible and I plan on using it every chance I get.

Just look at these screenshots I used with this Shortcut

Mocktail1

Mocktail2

Download this Shortcut now and follow Jordan’s blog post on getting it setup.