MacStories Weekly: Issue 76

In this issue: Fin, more favorite iOS Widgets from Ryan, a couple of monster Trello workflows from Federico, the story behind AppStories in the return of John’s Ongoing Development column, the results of our iOS 11 straw poll, an interview with Charles Perry, Christopher McLean’s Home screen, plus the usual Q&A, Tip, Links, stickers, App Debuts, and recap of MacStories articles.

MACSTORIES RECOMMENDS

Great apps, accessories, gear, and media recommended by the MacStories team.

Fin

John

Fin is a timer app for performers by Joe Cieplinski. I started using Fin not long ago to time segments of AppStories while Federico and I record. We are limiting the show to around 30 minutes each week, so keeping track of the length of each segment is important.

Though I haven’t been using Fin long, I immediately fell in love with it. I downloaded Fin because I had a very specific need, but now that I’ve been using it for a while, I can see a lot of uses for it. Musicians are the obvious use case, but anyone who’s ever given a presentation would appreciate this app, as would podcasters.

Fin’s strength is that it’s dead simple to use. If you’re in the middle of a presentation, that’s critical. Your focus shouldn’t be on the timer, it should on the presentation you’re giving.

Fin is available on iOS devices, the Apple TV, and the Apple Watch. I primarily use it on my iPhone, but I like knowing that it’s available elsewhere, if my needs change. In addition, with an update this week, Fin added timers that sync across multiple iOS devices, a great feature for bands and other groups of performers.

Fin features a series of preset timers that you can customize. A quick tap on the time indicator at the bottom of the screen brings up a grid of buttons from which you can pick any of your presets. We figure out how much we want to spend on each segment of AppStories before we record and I’ve found it easy to switch timers between segments with Fin without breaking the flow of our conversation.

Fin’s other strength is how easy it is to read the timer. Whether you’re in light or dark mode, the time remaining is set off from the background with a legible, high-contrast typeface. The app also provides visual cues as you approach the end of a timer using one of two selectable color palettes.

Starting, stoping, and resetting timers are all accomplished with gestures. A single tap starts and stops a timer. A two finger tap resets the timer. Dragging a finger up and down adds or subtracts time. There are several other gestures for interacting with your timers, which is smart because it eliminates the need to pick up a device and type anything with the keyboard.

Fin features background notifications so you receive timer warnings even if you’ve switched to another app. You can also receive notifications on an Apple Watch. There’s really nothing more subtle than getting a gentle tap on the wrist when your time is up.

Probably the aspect of Fin that has struck me most since I started using it is just how deep the app is. The UI is so minimal that it’s impossible to know the gesture-based utility hiding just below the surface until you try the app. If you’ve ever found yourself needing to perform to a clock, Fin’s an app you should try.

MACSTORIES COLLECTIONS

Widgets for iOS Apps, Vol. 3

Ryan

IFTTT

IFTTT’s widget can be used in a wide variety of ways; by installing widget actions within the app, your widget can be used to post a tweet, start a note in Evernote, send a photo to Slack, and much more. You can create your own widget actions or choose from a gallery of others. Unfortunately widget actions cannot perform their tasks straight from the widget, instead taking you into the app, but they can still be time savers. Interestingly, IFTTT’s widget only comes in compact view, opting to store additional content horizontally rather than vertically. Only four actions will be shown at a time, but the widget includes navigation buttons on its left and right edges to scroll through a larger number of actions. I appreciate that the widget will never take up much space; it’s an interesting trade off that some users surely appreciate, but those with bigger libraries of actions likely won’t.

Deliveries

Deliveries is a package tracking app, and thanks to its widget you don’t often have to open the full app to get the tracking information you need. Deliveries’ widget lists out deliveries that you recently received or that you will receive soon. If the item hasn’t been delivered yet, you’ll see a countdown of the number of days until you receive it, as well as the item name and latest tracking information. For recently delivered items you’ll see a checkmark, item name, and a precise description of where it was delivered (in mailbox, at front door, in parcel locker, etc.). Deliveries is one of the best package tracking apps I’ve used, and its widget is a key reason for that.

Workflow

Workflow is one of the most powerful apps in the iOS ecosystem, so it’s no surprise that its widget is one of the most powerful too. Workflow’s widget provides quick access to whichever workflows you designate should appear in it. The widget can run extremely complex workflows or short and simple ones. And though some workflows added to the widget will bump you into the full Workflow app as they run, a surprisingly large number can run in full directly from the widget. In my current widget I have workflows for tracking health data, for starting and stopping Toggl timers, for checking which articles other MacStories team members are working on, and for logging workout information after each set of reps. All of these run start to finish within the widget. In compact view four workflows are available in the widget, but expanded view allows such a large number that I’ve never hit a limit.

Todoist

Todoist’s widget provides a convenient way to keep up with your task list. The full list of tasks due today is shown, so you can see what’s up next and check off completed tasks as you go. The widget includes each task’s name along with the name and color of the project it belongs to. I appreciate that each project includes its accompanying color, not just its name, as I use that color to see at a glance which tasks to focus on next. Overall the widget is fairly simple, but it works well at letting you follow your task list without needing to open the full app often. Following your task list, the bottom of the widget includes two buttons: ‘Open Todoist’ and ‘Add Task.’

Amazon

Amazon’s widget serves two basic functions: it serves as a launcher for different parts of the Amazon app, and it shows the status of recent orders. On the launcher side, there are buttons to search, scan an item or barcode, and trigger Alexa. All three of these can be useful, but the Alexa button is the most intriguing to me personally. While this button used to simply allow searching Amazon’s store by voice, with Alexa’s recent addition to the app it has become much more powerful; hitting it will quickly opening the app and have Alexa listen for your command. In the recent order section of Amazon’s widget, you’ll see a button that takes you to your recent orders in the app, but you’ll also see a status update on your latest Amazon purchase, complete with a photo and delivery ETA.

TIPS

Tips and tricks to master your apps and be more productive.

Hidden Tools in Apple's Clips

Ryan

Amidst the plethora of editing options in Apple’s new Clips app, there are a couple of hidden tricks.

First, when recording a clip, you don’t have to continually hold the red button to keep recording. After pressing and holding to start a recording, you can slide your finger to the left to engage a lock of the recording button. Once locked, Clips will keep recording until you tap the red button to stop it.

Second, if the Live Titles feature makes a mistake in its transcription, you can correct that after you finish recording. While playing back the clip, tap on the words overlaid on-screen to bring up an editing screen where you can fix the typo.

SHORTCUTS CORNER

Get help and suggestions for your iOS shortcuts and productivity apps.

Shortcuts Essentials

Workflow and the Trello API, Part 1

Federico

Over the past few months, I’ve mentioned in various places that Trello has become the backbone of editorial management for Club MacStories, and that we’ve been using Workflow to integrate our favorite apps with the Trello API. In addition to Club MacStories, we’ve also used Trello for assigning MacStories articles, and the service has been essential in the planning stages of AppStories as well. We’re heavy Trello users, and we’ve reached the point where working without it would be a serious problem.

Last week, I received the following question from Club member Silvio:

Question: I’m creating a workflow to convert a Trello card into a Ulysses sheet. Since you are using both apps, I was wondering if you ever did something like that.

The card has to be selected among those in the list “ready to write”. The new sheet in Ulysses will be created in my group “To write”.

The conversion should go this way:

The Trello card’s name becomes the title of the Ulysses sheet;
The card’s description, in which I have put my outline, becomes the body of the Ulysses sheet;
Attachments are attached to the Ulysses sheet;
Comments become notes attached to the Ulysses sheet (

(Silvio, @silviogulizia)

This question caught my attention because Silvio is trying to achieve an automated setup very similar to the workflow we’ve established at MacStories. Furthermore, in addition to Silvio, I’ve been asked by other Club members to share the details of our Trello setup and explain how Workflow can authenticate with Trello to unlock more powerful automation than the pre-installed Trello actions.

For these reasons, I’m going to explain how we can use Workflow’s web actions and Magic Variables to work with the Trello API while abstracting much of the complexity involved with programming languages. I’m also going to describe the nature of the workflows we’ve put together for Club MacStories (in broad terms, given that the actual workflows are specific to our needs), and, more importantly, I’m going to create various examples showing how to automate Trello alongside other iOS apps.

To do this, however, I need to split this chapter of the Workflow Corner across multiple issues of MacStories Weekly (definitely two, but possibly three). I believe this is the best way to familiarize yourself with the Trello API and, if you don’t already use the service but are interested in it, set it up for future automations.

Today, I will focus on getting started with the Trello API and dealing with authentication. As you might imagine, I tried to cut as many manual steps as possible, leveraging Workflow’s visual actions and other iOS features to make the process fast and seamless.

Authenticating with the Trello API

There are two key pieces to authenticating with the Trello API that have to be obtained manually: the developer token and API key. Because we’re going to automate Trello for personal usage, we don’t have to create an authentication flow for multiple users and commercial purposes; we just have to generate and save these two bits of personal information for later.

First, open this page and copy your API key. I recommend temporarily saving it in Copied. At the top of the same page, you should see a blue ‘Token’ link as part of this sentence:

If you are looking to build an application for yourself, or are doing local testing, you can manually generate a Token.

Tap the ‘Token’ link and copy the token generated by Trello. Both the key and token are unique to your Trello account and shouldn’t be shared with anyone else. I would also suggest saving them in 1Password for additional security.

Now, make sure that iCloud Drive is enabled on your device, because we’ll have to create two text files called API.txt and Token.txt in iCloud Drive/Workflow/Logins/Trello. Open iCloud Drive, navigate into the Workflow folder, and create a new folder called ‘Logins’. Inside Logins, create a folder called ‘Trello’. If you don’t see a Workflow folder in iCloud, make sure that you’ve run the ‘Save File’ action in Workflow at least once.

Saving text files to a specific iCloud Drive app folder is surprisingly tricky on iOS, so I’ve created a workflow to speed up the process. Using this workflow, paste your Trello API key or token in the first ‘Ask for Input’ dialog, then type a name for the file. Remember: the files need to be called API.txt and Token.txt. Run this workflow for the two codes copied from Trello, and you’ll end up with two text files saved in iCloud Drive under the aforementioned file path.

Saving text files to iCloud Drive with a workflow.

And this is it for the manual part of authenticating with the Trello API. With the text files saved in iCloud, we can then move to the workflow I created to simplify the process of extracting IDs from Trello.

One of the aspects I like about the Trello API is that it’s neatly split in multiple types of objects inside of each other, each exposed to the API with consistently named fields. A user account is signed into boards; boards contain lists; each list can be filled with cards; a card can have a title, description, member, labels, and even attachments. The Trello API reminds me of a Russian doll; once you learn the names of each item’s fields, it’s very easy to follow.

For our future automation with Workflow and other iOS apps, we need to build a list of Trello items to call through the API. These include the IDs of a user’s account, boards, lists, and individual cards. Normally, inspecting and saving these IDs would require calling the API and parsing results from a JSON dictionary; with Workflow, we can make the process more visual and intuitive.

With the first workflow I put together, you’ll be able to extract IDs for your account, boards, and lists. These IDs are alphanumeric strings of text that need to be saved as text files in iCloud Drive. Unlike the API key and token, however, the contents of these text files will be fetched and automatically saved by Workflow.

There’s only one detail you need to fill in by hand in this workflow: your Trello username or email address. Upon running the workflow for the first time, you’ll be asked to enter your Trello username/email address, which allows Workflow to retrieve information from your user account and start getting more information from there. If you don’t add this single detail, the rest of the workflow won’t be able to contact the Trello API.

The workflow starts by reading the Token.txt and API.txt files from iCloud Drive, which are saved as Magic Variables for other actions. Then, by combining your username with the token, API, and a ‘Get Contents of URL’ action, Workflow pings the Trello API and returns a complete set of records associated with your account. To confirm that the first call succeeded, you’ll be presented with a menu showing your Trello email address and user ID. Tap it to confirm that the account is indeed yours and continue with the workflow.

After confirming your account, you’ll be asked if you want to save your Trello Member ID to a text file. If it’s the first time you run the workflow, choose ‘Save’, as you will need the Member ID for future automations; otherwise, you can skip this step. The Member ID will be saved in the same Trello sub-folder in iCloud Drive as Member.txt.

>The workflow will then show you a list of all the Trello boards from your account. Each board is presented with its name and ID in a list. Just like the member ID, if it’s the first time you run the workflow, you’ll want to save the board’s ID to a text file, which will be used to reference a specific Trello board in the future. Board IDs are saved to a text file with the board’s name in the filename, which makes them easy to identify in iCloud Drive. If you don’t need a board ID, you can skip this text file, too.

Finally, you can choose to extract a list from a board. Just like boards, you’ll be shown a popup with every list from the board you selected and, if you want, you can save a list’s ID to another text file.

This workflow may not be too fancy or conceptually intriguing, but it’ll prove useful once we’ll get to actual Trello automation. Thanks to this simple but effective method of extracting IDs from the Trello API, you can repeat the process for as many boards or lists as you want, building a collection of properly-named text files that we’ll use in other Trello workflows.

To demonstrate the potential of this system, I’ve also created a separate workflow to extract a specific card from a list (which goes back to Silvio’s original question).

Text files saved by Workflow to iCloud Drive. All of these are Trello IDs.

To use this, you just need to add the name of a list created with the workflow described above. Fill in the list’s name in a ‘Text’ action, run the workflow, and you’ll get a list of cards from a specific Trello list. As you can imagine, individual card IDs can be saved to text files for future reference. Rinse and repeat.

What I explained and shared today isn’t the most exciting workflow I’ve written up on MacStories Weekly. It’s actually quite repetitive and boring. However, I’ve been using these workflows for the past 6 months, and they’re the reason why we’ve been able to adopt Trello to manage every single section of Club MacStories. John, Ryan, and I have all used these workflows to extract details from our Trello accounts, save them into text files, and reference them with other workflows to process data and connect with other iOS apps. This is the easiest way I’ve found to turn the Trello API into a “plug and play” system that leverages Import Questions, iCloud Drive, and visual actions to eschew the complexity of web APIs.

We’ll cover Trello cards and the first workflows to extract data from them next week. In the meantime, start saving some IDs in iCloud Drive.

You can get the workflows here:

Submit a Shortcut Request

WEEKLY Q&A

Your weekly correspondence with the MacStories team.

Question: I’ve been an Apple Music subscriber since the beginning but, given the kerfuffle about track metadata and tracks and album art being overwritten, I haven’t yet had the nerve to turn on iCloud Music Library.

My primary concern is my Prince library. I’ve been a Prince fan since around 1986 and I’ve collected a lot of live recordings, studio outtakes, and stuff he only released online or through the NPG Music Club or whatever else he was trialing that month. This means, for example, that there are 60 versions of Purple Rain, 34 versions of Little Red Corvette, 29 versions of Alphabet St, and so on, in my library.

I fear that turning on iCloud Music Library will likely ruin my Prince library. Have any of the MacStories team been in a similar situation? What has been your experience of iCloud Music Library? (Thomas Johnston, @moosh)

Federico

I haven’t personally been through that kind of experience and, honestly, I would be skeptical as well. I wouldn’t completely trust iCloud Music Library to match every single song and upload what doesn’t get matched. Some folks have said that the technology has gotten better, but I wouldn’t take the risk with your precious collection.

If you really want to have access to that catalogue from any device with a single app, I’d consider dedicated audio players that don’t mess with your files, such as VOX or CloudBeats.

Submit your own question

ONGOING DEVELOPMENT

Trying new things, seeing what works, and discarding what doesn't.

The AppStories Story

John

This week felt like the right time to reboot Ongoing Development. The column is about trying new things, but it’s been on hiatus since shortly after Federico published his iOS 10 review. That timing isn’t a coincidence. With the biggest MacStories review of the year in the rearview mirror, it was time to start something new – a big project that no one but our families and a handful of friends knew about: AppStories.

In truth though, I’m getting a little ahead of myself. Last September was when Federico and I began spending significant time on AppStories, but the idea for the show came about a good deal earlier, as did its name, which Federico came up with long before he and I even knew each other.

From my perspective, AppStories was born in front of a kiosk near the Chipotle in Westfield shopping mall in San Francisco. That’s strangely specific, I know, but here’s the thing: sometimes an idea hits you like a lightning bolt, and you know instantly that it’s the thing to do. You remember those moments.

That’s what it felt like on the final day of WWDC last year. Someone decided that Federico needed an American burrito before he got on a plane back to Rome, which really wasn’t the best idea. Nonetheless, a group of us headed out to the mall near our hotel in search of a burrito. As we weaved our way through the mid-day shoppers, Federico leaned over to me and quietly said ‘We should do a MacStories podcast.’ I was taken a little off guard and probably said something insightful like 'Yeah, we should.’

Of course, ideas are the easy part. It was June and Federico was settling into 12-hour days working on his iOS 10 review, which also meant an increase in my day-to-day writing workload on MacStories. We didn’t have a lot of spare time to start a big project. Still, AppStories was an idea that had taken hold of us.

As the summer wore on, chatting over iMessage about our plans for AppStories became a nice break from our other obligations. We weren’t doing any heavy lifting yet, but we were refining the concept and researching what we needed to do to pull it off.

The vision for AppStories came easily in those early discussions. A show about apps is an obvious and natural fit for both of us, and surprisingly few podcasts are devoted solely to them. However, we already do reviews on MacStories and for Club MacStories, and we knew we didn’t want AppStories to be an audio version of MacStories.

Instead, AppStories will be a complement to MacStories that plays to the strengths of the podcast format. The ‘stories’ in AppStories is the cornerstone. The people, the challenges they face, the problems they solve, and the social and cultural impact of apps are all stories we want to explore that are uniquely suited to a podcast.

We have a lot of stories of our own to tell on AppStories, but AppStories is going to be broader than that. We want AppStories to be a place where developers and others in the community can tell their stories too. So soon, we will add interview segments to the show.

The idea to do an interview segment grew out of the interview series I did at WWDC last year. When I didn’t get a ticket to the conference, I started to think about what I could do to take advantage of being in San Francisco with a large concentration of developers. At the time, Federico and I were experimenting with short-form audio posts on the MacStories Lounge Telegram channel. I’ve attended WWDC since 2013 and knew that some of the most interesting stories you hear are over a drink in the Parc 55 bar. So I grabbed a GorillaPod, a Glif, attached a portable microphone to my iPhone, and set up some interviews. I ended up sitting in the hotel bar all week recording more than a dozen interviews with developers. Although it wasn’t intended as such, the interview series served as a proof of concept for the segment that we’ve incorporated into AppStories.

With the focus of AppStories nailed down over the summer, we dug into making the show a reality in the fall. AppStories.net, like MacStories.net, is a custom WordPress site built for us by Alessandro Vendruscolo. The show art and site design were created by Silvia Gatta, who also does all the design work for MacStories. We’re ecstatic about how the site turned out and couldn’t have pulled it off without Silvia and Ale. AppStories.net fits in perfectly with the design of MacStories and Club MacStories.

Throughout the fall, Federico and I continued to refine the show’s concept, began contacting potential sponsors to gauge interest, and attended to what feels like a million other tasks big and small. We’ve been gratified by the support of so many great people who were willing to sign up as sponsors before we published our first episode.

I’ll spare you the blow-by-blow of the final six months. Week after week of chipping away at a big project isn’t glamorous or particularly exciting, but it’s how you get to the finish line. However, after a year of hard work, it feels good to share the story behind AppStories. There’s a lot more to the story that you’ll no doubt hear in the coming months. For now, though, we hope you like AppStories as much as we’ve enjoyed making it for you and we look forward to making many more episodes for you.

INTERESTING LINKS

Great reads and links from around the web.

Jordan Merrick on how he uses the iPad for blogging and web development. Fascinating technical read. (Link)

Facebook is going after Slack with a free version of its Workplace communication product, plus more aggressive pricing to get teams on board. (Link)

Apple has launched a new documentary series on Apple Music to profile emerging artists called Up Next. The first entry of the series focuses on 6LACK. According to Apple, one new artist will be featured every month. (Link)

Mark Zuckerberg has undergone a transformation. The Facebook CEO has made a concerted effort to engage with the world outside of Silicon Valley, which is chronicled by BuzzFeed News. (Link)

Ad blockers have been popular on Safari since Apple released APIs that made it possible for third-party developers to create them on iOS and macOS, but as Are Technica reports, Google is bringing them to Chrome, which will greatly increase the availability of ad blockers. (Link)

Dave Mark at The Loop linked a fascinating Nightline appearance by Steve Jobs from 1981. (Link)

In a market as competitive as mobile gaming, it’s nice to see Shopify offering its Unity Buy SDK that lets developers sell physical swag within their games. TechCrunch spotlights Alto’s Adventure, one of the first games to use the SDK. (Link)

THE ALBUM

We love stickers in iMessage, and here we'll share some of our favorites.

John

Lovely Little Hearts

If you want to take a quieter approach to your iMessage stickers, send someone you love one of these expressive little heart characters. It’s a small set, but has a lot of personality.

Banana Animated

This bug-eyed banana packs a lot of personality into a piece of fruit. The animation works well, adding just the right amount of liveliness.

Your text caption goes here. You can change the position of the caption and set styles in the block’s settings tab.

Pixel Greetings

This is a big set of pixelated speech bubbles helpfully arranged in alphabetical order that are fun to add to photos or use instead of typing out a message.

Cute Animated Fast Food

These stickers remind me of the popcorn and soda that would dance across the screen before movies decades ago. Animated burgers, popcorn, fries, and more are all represented.

APP DEBUTS

Noteworthy new app releases and updates, handpicked by the MacStories team.

Ryan

The Best Photo App

The Best Photo App is a new alternative to Apple’s own Photos app. It contains many features similar to Photos, such as basic editing tools to handle cropping or adjust color and lighting, and options to hide or delete photos. My two favorite features are the smart search options and side-by-side viewing (both of which are unlocked with a $1.99 In-App Purchase). The former allows you to search for photos that are taken together or that are missing location, along with a couple other atypical queries. The latter is nice for comparing similar photos and deciding which to keep and which to delete. When you make changes to your library inside The Best Photo App, your library in Apple’s Photos is modified as well, which is exactly the way I’d prefer it.

Federico

WaterMinder

An update to the popular hydration reminder app has brought the ability to modify default and custom cups, which can now represent different drink types with personalized icons and colors. There are a ton of new options, too, such as a way to use liter units, the ability to edit previously logged items, and more drink types. If you stopped using WaterMinder a while ago, now’s a great time to check it out again.

Evolution - App

If you’re a developer and follow the proposals of Swift’s evolution, there’s now an app to easily read them all from one comfortable dashboard. You can filter proposals by type and read their full text directly in the app.

John

Road Trip

Road Trip reminds me of a pixelated version of the classic [Burnout car crashing game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnout_(series). The game is a standard endless runner with a twist. The goal is to steer your car to avoid traffic and other obstacles while you collect coins as long as possible. The fun part is that when you eventually do crash, it sets off a chain reaction of pixelated mayhem similar to Burnout Takedown. Crashes play out in slow motion as one vehicle after another creates an enormous pileup.

Funnel

Funnel aggregates audio news sources in bite-sized chunks. Sources include the BBC, NPR, and CBC. Each news outlet is represented by a colorful card. Tap the card and the latest news begins to play. Switch to another app and the audio continues in the background. It’s a simple design that makes it easy to jump in and listen to the latest headlines wherever you are.

Full of Stars

Full of Stars combines a multiple choice driven narrative with arcade-style action set in deep space. Your choices drive the direction of the narrative that is interspersed with action as you navigate your spaceship through asteroid fields and away from enemies. This game isn’t easy, but it’s a lot of fun and the narrative segments serve as nice breaks from the arcade action that requires concentration and quick reflexes.

Dropbox Paper

Dropbox Paper continues to evolve into a viable alternative to apps like Google Docs. The most recent update added a much-needed offline mode so you can view and edit your notes whether or not you have a network connection. Paper also added a new ‘content view’ that displays photos and videos in a grid.

STRAW POLL

Opinions on Apple and technology generally, from Club MacStories members.

Straw Poll #18: iOS 11

CLUB INTERVIEWS

A brief chat with friends of Club MacStories.

Charles Perry

Twitter: @DazeEnd. Founder of Metakite Software, co-founder of Release Notes conference, and co-host of Release Notes podcast.

1. Release Notes, your conference for indie developers, was held in Indianapolis, Indiana for its first two years and is moving to Chicago, Illinois this year. What was the thinking behind the change of venue and how do you expect it to affect the conference?

The main reason for the change is that we want to keep things fresh. Because organizing a conference is such a big undertaking, my business partner Joe Cieplinski and I had sort of settled on the idea of a “tick-tock” cycle so that we could take advantage in the second year of lessons learned in the first. We had two great conferences in Indianapolis in 2015 and 2016, so we wanted to mix things up in 2017. Chicago seemed like a natural fit in that it is another great location in the Midwest, and it has so much to offer our guests.

Chicago is a unique city with a feeling all its own. It has Sears Tower – yes, Sears! – the lakeshore, art, sports, culture, iconic food, and most of all attitude. Our hope is that we will be able to take that feeling and attitude of Chicago and blend it with our Release Notes experience to create an event that’s recognizable as the same conference for “everything but the code,” but that takes on the sense and spirit of its new home.

2. Your app MetaTax is a reference guide for professional tax preparers. I know you were in Europe just before taxes were due in the US, which made me wonder, is the app seasonal? And if so, when is your busy season?

MetaTax is quite seasonal, but my season peaks a little earlier than you might think. Because tax accountants in the U.S. are heads down completing tax returns from about mid-January until mid-April, most of the purchasing and support happen in the months leading up to that. So from about early November to mid-January, I see a spike in interest, sign-ups, sales, and support, and then it dies down as all my customers get busy actually using the product. My big task during tax season is to just not break anything so that it’s available to my customers when they need it most.

3. MetaTax is free with a $99.99 per year subscription. How do you balance the free parts of the app with what is only available as part of the subscription?

Actually, your pricing is a little out of date. Last year I repositioned MetaTax as less of an iOS app, and more of a web service with an iOS app add-on. At the same time, I changed the pricing model to a monthly subscription with a 14-day trial. I made the change for two reasons.

First, I frankly found that my accountant customers didn’t even think of the App Store as a place for them to find professional software. As a result, MetaTax just wasn’t discovered as often as it needed to be. Accountants think of desktop software and the web as the place to “get work done,” so that’s where MetaTax needed to be.

The second reason for the change was purely financial. There is simply a different price expectation for software on iOS than there is on the desktop or for software-as-a-service. People just expect mobile software to be cheap or free (Apple has done a really good job of commoditizing its complement, but that’s a discussion for another day). People are much more willing to pay professional prices for software on the web or desktop, so I went where the money is.

4. MetaTax is targeted at a specific professional market. How does marketing to that group differ from the marketing for your more general-audience task and time tracking app, Benjamin?

Benjamin’s customers are mostly professional, but there’s little else that connects them other than their use of a particular productivity system. As a result, they are hard to target on Facebook, and the blogs and message boards that they frequent are usually controlled by the company that promotes the organizational system. Because that company isn’t really interested in promoting my product to their customers, it’s hard to use those company-owned channels for promotion.

Accountants, on the other hand, make up a tightly focused group that’s much easier to reach. The blogs and message boards they visit aren’t controlled by a competitor, so I can reach them there. And since Facebook allows you to target ads based on occupation, I’ve been able to fairly inexpensively promote MetaTax with Facebook ads.

5. What do you find are the most rewarding and challenging aspects of owning your own business?

The most rewarding part is the freedom it provides. I’m free to do what’s most important or most interesting to me at any particular time, which leads to a lot of professional fulfillment. And because I’m not punching a clock, it’s given me the flexibility to do things like travel or kick off early to attend to a family issue.

What makes it challenging is that I’m usually burning at least a few mental CPU cycles on my business, thinking about issues in the background. So far that hasn’t been too much of a problem because I really enjoy what I do, but in the long-term, I fear that’s a recipe for burn-out.

6. You and Joe Cieplinski have done over 200 episodes of your podcast, Release Notes. What e****ffect has the show had on you professionally?

Well, it hasn’t helped me sell many more apps, that’s for sure! And the reason for that is that none of my customers listen to the podcast. What it has done for me professionally is give me a somewhat larger voice in the community. I’m not “Internet famous” by any means, but our podcast does have a strong following, and as a result, people know that I’m interested in and think about a lot of business issues like pricing and business models. This has led to some opportunities to travel and speak that I otherwise probably wouldn’t have had.

On a more personal note, what little notoriety I have has made it easier to make new acquaintances within our community. People who have heard me on Release Notes often approach me at conferences or on Twitter to talk. I’m a fairly social guy, so I love this. It makes it easier for me to meet and get to know new people, and since I now count some of the people I’ve met at conferences as some of my closest friends, I’m very grateful for these connections.

HOME SCREENS

Friends of MacStories share their iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch Home screens.

Christopher McLean

Twitter: @th3storysofar.

My iPhone Home screen has constantly evolved over the years. Whereas before I would find myself tapping “Reset Home Screen Layout” in Settings almost out of boredom or dissatisfaction with my placement choice (I know, who really cares right?), something has really clicked with how I have it today. My current setup has centered around balancing usability and glanceability while driving. I make much of my income from driving for the ride sharing company Lyft in the San Francisco/Bay Area (I just hit my 3500th ride today!) and so I’ve realized how important it is to have certain apps easily accessible.

(Side note: I must point out that I in no way condone distracted driving. My phone is always mounted even before I put my seatbelt on. I must admit that much of what a Lyft driver does: receiving ride requests and acting on them, navigating to the passenger – both in software and in real life – swapping apps, receiving calls, etc. are all distracting to someone operating a motor vehicle.)

On to the Home screen:

I’m right-handed so I keep what are probably my nine most used apps in the bottom-right corner in a 3x3 box shape.

I use Lyft, Music, and Google Maps constantly when I’m driving for Lyft. I used to use Workflow to toggle between playing particular playlists whenever I had a passenger and resuming my current podcast of choice in the downtime or travel time when I’m solo. Since I’ve gotten the iPhone 7, I use 3D Touch bring up Apple Music’s most recently played and tap the album art I’m looking for, which is much easier than using the widget and parsing out the words “Lyft Playlist” or “Resume Podcast” on the Today screen. I also use 3D Touch on Overcast (I spend so much of my day using this app) to hit the play button to resume a podcast and on Google Maps to bring up the Your Places area within the app, which I extensively use to scope out certain areas of the Bay Area to quickly get to or even return home to Sacramento when I’m ready to call it a day.

Now for a few shoutouts!

Lately I’ve been using VLC for Mobile a lot for its network stream feature. I have a list of the direct links to the livestreams of my favorite live podcasts: Relay FM’s live feed, 5by5’s live feed, and ATP’s live feed. While I still have the 5by5 app and the Relay FM app (the latter mostly for stickers and live notifications), I like concentrating these feeds into a single app separate from Safari.

I also love Renzo’s Japanese app for quick word look ups and for building study lists of words to remember, and I use the app as my SRS (spaced repetition software). It’s not explicitly built as SRS but I think it does a good job with my custom lists.

Wunderlist I use specifically for shared lists with my family and roommate. Most of these lists are for groceries, home improvement, or shared gift ideas.

2Do has become both my scratchpad and where I keep my important tasks. I have it set up where the inbox is the default list, and that I where all of my quick thoughts, reminders, and tasks go first before I process them into separate lists with due dates and tags. Many of those quick thoughts get filed away into my “thoughts graveyard” list, which is hidden from the All and Today views. I use 3D Touch (see a trend here?) whenever I add something initially, and then I use the quick add feature as I add separate items.

Apple Notes has both become my long form journal writing area and my bookmark everything area. I send links to it, attach pictures of itineraries to it, and ideas of trips I’d like to take have individual notes. I love that it quickly syncs, and is both on my Mac and iPhone. I’m even writing this post in Notes.

The following apps have been covered so much before but I think they deserve special quick shoutouts: Fantastical, 1Password, and Soulver are all excellent!

In my quest to limit distractions in my life, I’ve “hidden” many of the more distracting apps in eight categorized folders, expanding on the top four folder set-up CGP Grey shared on Cortex. I found trying to keep categories down to only four was difficult for me.

I hide apps like Twitter, YouTube, news apps, games, and so much more so I’ll at least have some friction in opening them. Overcast and Music are both exceptions to this rule for the time being. Other handy apps that I use sparingly are hidden away as well to keep my setup to a single Home screen.

All of these decisions ultimately return to my need to quickly access certain apps while driving, or keep the friction just right to dissuade myself from becoming distracted while still attempting to take advantage of this wonderfully magical tool.

Until the next time I hit “Reset Home Screen Layout.”

Feel free to get in touch with me at @th3storysofar on Twitter if you have any comments, suggestions, or ideas :).

Submit your own Home Screen