iOS Today 709 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

00:00 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Coming up on iOS today, rosemary Orchard and I, micah Sargent, discuss part of Apple's Design Award winners. Yes, we talk about some of the apps that won an Apple Design Award this year and, of course, you'll have to tune in to next week's episode for even more of that. Stay tuned. Podcasts you love From people you trust. This is TWIT. This is iOS Today with Rosemary Orchard and Micah Sargent, episode 709, recorded Tuesday June 25th 2024, for Thursday June 27th 2024. Apple Design Award winners part one. Hello and welcome to iOS Today, the show where we talk all things iOS, ipados, tvos, watchos, visionos, homepodos, which is technically just called Home and Audio. Look, there's a lot that Apple has on offer, a lot of platforms, and we talk about them on this very show, helping you to make the most of your devices. I am one of the people hoping to help you make the most of your devices. My name is Micah Sargent.

01:18 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
And I am Rosemary Orchard and, as always, looking forward to helping people learn about some great, awesome apps that Apple have selected to showcase what they consider some of the key categories and features available. Of course, that doesn't mean that the other apps suck. It just means that Apple really likes these, and we're going to talk about why we like them too.

01:38 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yes, so you know you may remember an episode not too long ago, dear listeners, about the App Store Awards, and it's important to understand the difference between Apple's Design Awards and the App Store Awards. The App Store Awards tend to be it's kind of a mixed thing. One is what are the apps that Apple sees are getting a lot of attention? A lot of downloads, a lot of interaction, a lot of downloads, a lot of interaction. And two, the App Store editorial team, the team in charge of bringing you those great kind of front page experiences on the App Store what do they think are the great apps that are out there? The Apple Design Awards are always announced at WWDC, apple's Worldwide Developers Conference. It's the time when the developers get together and learn about the new stuff that Apple's working on. And in the Apple Design Awards, it is a time for Apple to recognize apps that are using the platform to the best of its ability, using those features, using what's possible on the platform, and kind of highlight that. So I'm going to read what Apple actually says about the Apple Design Awards this year. It says every year, the Apple Design Awards recognize innovation, ingenuity and technical achievement in app and game design, but they've also become something more a moment to step back and celebrate the Apple developer community in its many forms. Moment to step back and celebrate the Apple developer community in its many forms. Apple breaks these up into a few categories delight and fun, inclusivity, innovation, interaction, social impact, visuals and graphics, and spatial computing.

03:19
Today, in this episode, we'll be talking about the first four categories and the app and game that were announced in each one. So the winners are always one app and one game. And then also, apple has announced some finalists that were part of the inclusion experience, and so those developers were invited to be there at WWDC, and the winners, of course, received an App Store award, or rather an Apple Design award. So, without further ado, let us kick things off with the delight and fun category, which Apple says this Winners in this category provide memorable, engaging and satisfying experiences enhanced by Apple technologies. There's that last part experiences enhanced by Apple technologies. There's that last part, enhanced by Apple technologies. Again, these are the kind of tip of the hat, the I see what you did there. Game recognized game moment from Apple saying look what you did with what we have for you. That is very clever. So, rosemary, why don't you tell us about the winning app and I'll take care of that winning game.

04:30 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Well, the winning app is. I mean, I kind of see it as a little game as well, because, you know, it is essentially a way to try and bring a little bit of joy into writing a daily journal. This is Bear's Gratitude. So it is. I mean, it describes itself as the most beautiful way to write your daily gratitude entry, to build happiness one day at a time and to practice self-care when life gets tough.

04:54
And it has a number of features which focuses on, you know, writing something every day that you are grateful for or are happy about, and one of the examples it gives is horrible good for a state which you know, I feel like is definitely a way to try and find the positive in the negative. And it gives you things like stickers as part of your achievements and so on. But I have to say I just find this app is very cute and colorful, but it doesn't take being cute to being cutesy in an annoying way. It is. You know, it is really genuinely nice and all of the artwork in it is hand-drawn, so there's over 100 hand-drawn bears inside, which you know, is just great.

05:36
And, yeah, it's got little mini articles on how to keep things in perspective and so on. So it is more than just a journaling app. It is a journaling philosophy that they attempt to, you know, bring into your life, and it is available on iphone, ipad and mac for free, with I believe it's uh an in-app purchase of 299 nice.

05:57 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yes, uh, the in-app purchase is for bears. Unlimited is just $2.99. Now, that is as Apple has put it out. It is a way to kind of encourage you to get in touch with things, to experience that gratitude, I think for me it's pretty doggone, cutesy, uh, I will say, but, um, I think that it is delightful at the same time. Now the game this year is one that is, uh, you know, it's a.

06:37
It's a rather large, well-known game and I've talked about it plenty on the show. It's NYT Games. So the New York Times, of course, used to have the New York Times crossword, and the crossword app contains several other games. And you may remember an episode where I was complaining aloud about how it bothered me that I could not launch the crossword by just swiping down from the top of the screen and typing in crossword, and Rosemary helped me create a shortcut that basically launched the game with my muscle memory of having done crossword. But now New York Times crossword has been renamed New York Times NYT Games because there are many a game inside of it. You have your standard crossword, as you might imagine, and it has all of the features that you could want for the crossword, but it also has the game Spelling Bee, which is where you get seven letters and you try to make as many words as you possibly can in a certain period of time. There's Wordle, which many a person plays you know that the New York Times bought Wordle. There's Connections, which is a very fun game where you have groups of words, or rather a bunch of words that you try to group together, and then you've got the mini puzzle. You've got Sudoku, letterboxd and Tiles, and all of these games are regularly updated every single day, so you can hop in and play and have a great experience. And this is what Apple has to say about NYT Games An all-time great with a compelling mix of games and the source of the fierce debate what's the best word or starting word?

08:20
In the past year, nyt Games evolved well, past its classic crosswords and breakout Smash to redesign its navigation, expand its already diverse catalog of games and introduce grabby new conversation starters like Connections, which, like Wordle, feels perfectly calibrated for maximum replayability. That's probably the one game that I launch regularly on my phone is the NYT Games app. I'm not a big gaming person, but the NYT Games app is regularly in my if I swipe back three, four, five apps that I've popped into. So good on it for its win. It is available for free in the App Store. If you want access to the back catalog of content, it's going to depend. There are lots of different purchase price options. You can pay monthly for games for $5.99, but you can also pay a little bit more and you get access to the New York Times. So I recommend that, if it's something that you're thinking about getting, that you kind of look through the options.

09:31
There are some finalists that were mentioned, including one that we'll talk about a little later because it spoiler won a different award. There's an app called Rooms award. There's an app called Rooms. There's an app called Doodle Draw, which is one that I've actually downloaded in the past and I might've even had it as a back when we were doing app caps. It is an app that just presents you with a bunch of different weird shapes and then what you do is you draw on those shapes to try to create things out of it. So it's just randomized shapes and then you make an image out of that randomized shape, and it's a great way to kind of practice your imagination but also your drawing skills. As you kind of sketch things out. They have a daily challenge to work on that. I found it frustrating because I'm not an artist in the slightest, not a sketch artist of the slightest, but I could see how folks who do have that ability could very much enjoy that.

10:38
There's also what the Car, which is made by the fine folks who make what the Golf. What the Car is kind of an adventure where you are a car and you are working through this adventure game. That has kind of like racing and different small mini games and other stuff. If you've ever played what the Golf then you will get the sense of humor for this game. It's also beautifully designed and, last but not least, is a game that I know I mentioned before Hello Kitty Island Adventure.

11:14
This is a game where you play Hello Kitty and it is an open world game that is a little bit like an RPG, a role-playing game where you are one of the kitties. I don't know if you're Hello Kitty, but you are one of the kitties and you kind of work through and it's very reminiscent of Animal Crossing. Thank you, animal Crossing. Kevin knew what I was talking about. So those are the winners of delight and fun, as well as the finalists for that category. All right, that means it's time to move along to inclusivity. This is how Apple describes this category. Winners in this category provide a great experience for all by supporting people from a diversity of backgrounds, abilities and languages. Rosemary, do you want to tell us this time about the game and I will do the app.

12:14 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Well, I've actually used the app recently, oh well then you do the app.

12:16 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Tell us about the app.

12:17 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Well, so the app is Oko, which is accessible navigation. Now, I know accessibility is near and dear to our hearts here on iOS Today and I know many of our users or listeners, sorry and viewers here on iOS Today also appreciate accessible apps, and that is Oko's aim. So the maps in Oko allow you to navigate using AI and discover places in a more accessible way. So it will do things like read pedestrian signals to tell you when it is safe to cross.

12:47
Now, many countries do have accessible crossings where there will be a tick or a buzz or a beep or similar to help those who are visually impaired cross the road safely. But that's not always necessarily possible, especially when you've got things like temporary rope works, uh, in place, which can definitely derail even the uh, you know the best of journeys, um. So, yeah, oko is all about giving you very detailed instructions, telling you, for example, that there is a signal coming ahead and things like that, and I personally think that this is an app that everybody should give a try to at least once, because then you can uh, you know understand what it might be like, uh, if you are trying to navigate without that information, which you know could be very, very tricky or very dangerous for some folks. So that is oko. It is free to download and use uh as a note beautiful, uh.

13:41 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
The second one is crayrayola Adventures. Now, crayola Adventures is a little bit like the Hello Kitty game that we talked about before, in the sense that it is a kind of again, adventure style gameplay with the experience of a bunch of different mini games. You build out a tree house and you make it look exactly how you want to. You can make your characters how you want, you can kind of craft stories as you continue to play through, and it's multiplayer so that you and your family can play together. And it's multiplayer so that you and your family can play together. It also is specific to children, in the sense that there are special online privacy and safety concerns. Crayola Adventure is both COPPA and GDPR compliant, so that's something to keep in mind. But the reason that it is in the inclusivity category is because of this. That it is in the inclusivity category is because of this, apple says a colorful adventure that sets a new standard for inclusive and gender neutral character creation options, which include different skin tones, abilities, body types, pronouns and more. These and this is what's great about it, it's not just kind of tacked on after the fact. Apple says that it is that these inclusivity options are across the board so that you can. You know it's, you'll see your choices stick throughout the game. But it also means that for folks who are unable to read or who have reading challenges, they don't have to worry that the only way to kind of go through the game is by reading the text on screen. There's full narration and, again, it works for people of many different ages because you have decorations, puzzles, reading storybooks and the whole point is that you and your family play together. It's available on iPhone, on iPad, on Mac, on Apple TV and also Apple Vision Pro and again, that's Crayola Adventures. It is available in the App Store as part of Apple Arcade, so it is free to those with Apple Arcade or the Apple Arcade subscription. For folks who are not currently members therein. Finalists in this category include the very cool Complete Anatomy 2024.

16:15
This is the folks who are learning about medicine are probably going to be very familiar with 3D4 Medical. That is the company behind this app. It is the 3D anatomy platform and it has so much built into it. I have downloaded this app before. At times it's huge, so I only keep it around for a little while, but it's just fun to look at what all is involved. You can get an individual license for $60. So it's kind of expensive, but if you need it, then it's a no-brainer to make that purchase. There are lectures built into it as well, so you can learn about different parts of the body and what they all do, what you need to know. And it's just got so much information that's packed in so many different ways of interacting. You can see how parts of the body show up in radiology versus not being you know, versus actually seeing them with your eyes. I mean it's kind of wow. I honestly recommend everybody just download this app just to see what's available for free and kind of have your mind boggled by the magic that is the human body. I think it's wow. It's absolutely wow.

17:48
That is available on the iPad and the Mac so you can check those out. There's also Timo. That's T-I-I-M-O. Timo that's T-I-I-M-O. That is a visual daily planner, so it kind of has a timer that helps you stay focused.

18:21
It's marketed as the ADHD organizer and learning app a lot of research behind it so that the app is designed for folks who are neurodivergent. In fact, it says it's a daily planning and learning app designed for people with diverse cognitive profiles, such as ADHD, autism, stress, anxiety. It is research backed and it supports executive functioning and has kind of all of the types of learning that you would need to do, depending on those different categories. It is an iPad first app, though it does have a little toggle turned on so that you can download it for the Mac. The premium version of the app ranges anywhere from $7 probably per month to $48 a year. You would just need to hop in to kind of decide what you want. Once you kind of figure out what you want, then you can log in or lock into what you'd like to have as far as those extra features. So that is Timu again a planner, but also an app that helps you to learn new things. There's also have you played Unpacking Rosemary?

19:40 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
I haven't. It's on my list of games that I would love to play, but I've just not got around to it yet. I do love things from the Humble Bundle folks. If folks don't know, the Humble Bundle often do bundles of apps, books, courses, things like that that you can get to learn various things. But they also have their own apps, which includes Unpacking things. But they also have their own apps, which includes unpacking, which is the moving story of a lifetime, as it calls itself in the tagline.

20:06 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, it's a beautiful app where you basically are unpacking, and so I don't like moving. I hate moving, in fact. But I love this game because it is just an app where you open boxes and then put things in places in rooms and that's the whole thing. But what's great about it is, as you're unpacking and moving things in and you're watching this person's life change over time. You watch them growing up, the medals they receive, how their interests change. Then they go off to college. They might have a roommate at first, then they move into their own place. You see that they move in with someone else.

20:45
I won't continue because I don't want to spoil it, but it is a story of a person that is told through the items and the places that they're moving to, and it is beautiful and also just a delightful experience of organization. There are little apps like that where you just kind of sit there and organize things and that is what it does. I think everybody should get it. It's available for $9.99 in the App Store for the iPad and the iPhone, not available on the Mac, but it is a lot of fun. Last but not least is Quadline. Quadline is a puzzle game and in it you basically have to, kind of you move squares through different rows and then, once they're linked, you kind of can rotate them. It's all about spatial awareness and spatial understanding as you try to solve a puzzle and move through each of the different spaces that are created by these squares.

21:55 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
It's a spatial awareness puzzle, but not available to play yet in spatial format because it's not yet on the Vision Pro, but it is on the Apple TV as well as the Mac for folks who are looking for more games for their Apple TV.

22:06 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
There you go. So, yes, that is Quadline, available for $1.99 in the App Store. Okay, the next category and this is the third, and we'll do one more after this the next category is innovation. Apple says winners in this category provide a state-of-the-art experience through novel use of Apple technologies that set them apart in their genre. So this category, I feel more than others, is the true tip of the hat from Apple saying a little bit. It's almost like saying whoa, you created that on iOS or you created that on iPad. They are saying this is something that we did not necessarily think was possible or that we thought was possible, but was very challenging, complex. It's very cool what you've done. So I think that these apps are really cool. Rosemary, why don't you tell us about Procreate Dreams?

23:07 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Yeah, procreate Dreams is. You know, if you have an Apple Pencil and an iPad, this is the app that you should download to try with the drawing and the coloring and the sketching and things like that, because they always do their absolute best to take advantage of the Apple Pencil. I'm holding an Apple Pencil Pro right here, and they were used in the keynote when Apple demoed the new Apple Pencil Pro with the squeeze feature to show what could be done with it. Now, to be clear, these features aren't always done by other developers in advance. Sometimes Apple just sort of like does things and makes it look like the app is already doing that, which is how we got, like what was it live activities from Uber, way before Uber actually, like probably considered implementing it, but Procreate then immediately said well, we're doing that, of course. So it's only available on iPad and it is $19.99, but this is the app for, you know, drawing, illustrating, et cetera on the iPad.

24:09
What I really love as well is it has the ability to draw over videos, which is not something that most apps have. You know most apps will be like yeah, yeah, so like, take a screenshot of your video or get a still out of your video and then do this with it. But no, procreate actually does. Let you just draw on top of videos and there's filters, um, there's obviously exporting um in all sorts of ways, um, but yeah, there's also flipbook. If you've ever wanted to make a flipbook, you can do that with Procreate. It's so much more than just a drawing app and for $19.99, it is considerably cheaper than any of the Adobe Suite, which would be $19.99 for one month of one product. So if you are looking for an app to play with your Apple Pencil on the iPad, you should get Procreate. There are additional brushes and so on available as extra purchases from third parties and so on. You can buy like Procreate packs, but you can just do so much with the basic app that I have to recommend it. It is so good.

25:13 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Nice, yeah, procreate itself and Procreate Dreams. It's just miraculous what they've been able to do. The game that won the innovation category is called Lost in Play, and it too is an adventure game. It's categorized as a puzzle game, but essentially Lost in Play is kind of like a comic book or, as apple describes it, a graphic novel that has come to life. Um, it is beautifully drawn and it has, uh, really great writing. I think that's one of the things that stood out to me was the writing for the game.

25:55
I found myself engaged, uh, playing this almost like the entire time. I kind of wanted to keep going and keep going and keep going. Use you play as a brother and sister that are trying to make their way back home. Um, you have to solve different puzzles to get back home and there are some kind of wild things, because it has moments of reality but then also moments of fantasy. So at times you are talking to goblins and riding on the back of giant stag beetles, and at times you're just walking along through a forest. It's truly delightful and looks like it belongs on Cartoon Network or something. It's like you're watching a cartoon play out, but you are playing the cartoon. I don't know how they did it. I think it's truly incredible and something that everybody should check out. Lost in Play.

27:00 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
It's like a roll and write or write your own adventure, but it's drawn as well. It's so cool, love it.

27:07 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Absolutely, and it's just $5.99 for the full game. It's free to download and then to play the whole game $5.99. And that is a price worth paying for it. Some finalists in this category include Copilot Money, which is an app that helps you keep track of your funds. It is basically a way to create a budget, to categorize your expenses and see your subscriptions and know kind of what all is out there. It connects with a bunch of different, so it's a little bit like what you've experienced in the past. If you've ever used something like Mint, then you'll be familiar with this idea of connecting your accounts and having all of those transactions available to you accounts and having all of those transactions available to you it will kind of learn about your. I think that's why it's especially called Copilot, because it learns about your behaviors and then does a lot of that work for you. But I think what's the best part of this is that this is an app that makes it front and center the fact that it is not taking what you have and sharing it with a bunch of different services to try and make money off of you. It is not trying to go around and try to show you ads for credit cards, sell your data, that kind of thing. This is an app that is just helping you manage your finances and it has a yearly subscription is $95. A monthly subscription is $13 per month and that is Copilot Money, the tracking and budgeting app.

29:03
There's also Smart Gym. Smart Gym is, as you might imagine, a health and fitness app that helps you figure out what your kind of gym exercises need to be. So you may have, you know, used a piece of paper that you say you know 10 sets, or rather not sets, but 10 reps, four sets. You know lifted this much weight. This is helping you keep track of that, but also it will help you to continue on and create personalized workouts for you that help you to figure out what you need to do.

29:46
It works with weightlifting, because you select what equipment you have. It works with high intensity interval training. It works with just you know, home workouts if you want to do, and there are 690 exercises that are kind of pre-installed so that it shows you what you need to be doing to do those exercises, integrates with the health app and helps you to keep track of all of that. So if you are looking for an app to help you figure out what your workout routine should be, then Smart Gym might just be the app for you. It is available to download for free, also with an in-app purchase of $9.99 a month and $60 per year.

30:35 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
It also appears to be available on Vision Pro, at least according to Apple's Design Awards site. If I look in the App Store it doesn't show up for me. But also Apple Vision Pro is not available yet over here in the UK.

30:48 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
They'll be later this month so yeah, and yeah I bet what it is is. It's the iPad version of the app, for now available on Apple Vision Pro. There are two more here. There is Call of Duty Warzone Mobile, which I'm not going to describe. It's Call of Duty Warzone on a mobile device with everything that's included there. Not surprised to see that in the finalists, given that it is a very popular franchise, but there's also Wavelength. I love this game so much yeah, tell us about Wavelength.

31:29 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
So Wavelength essentially is a team-based app where you get given in teams, one of you gets given. You know two words essentially and so you say, okay, well, with this end being you know extreme one and this end being extreme other. I need to give you clues not involving those words, so that you're going to guess where the arrow is on this wheel. So, for example, if you had good and evil, then you know Darth Vader may not be like the most evil person and so you know the disc not be like the most evil person. And so you know the disc spins, it lands the arrow. You look at it as though you might.

32:05
You know if the clues are good and evil, then you're probably saying something like Darth Vader to try and get somebody to guess like more towards the evil, but not like you know, completely utterly evil. You know like the end of the world, depending on which film, and so, yeah, you have to try and get them to guess. And then, yeah, your team gets points if they get it right and they don't get points if they don't get it right, and depending on how close they are, they get more points. It is a lot of fun to play in person and I did not realize before the Apple Design Awards that there is a digital version. So I'm going to be adding this to my app collection of party games, because it is something that you can play with a group of people, and people don't have to be super into games or super good at figuring out tactics and things like that.

32:52 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
You just have to know your team, and therefore you're going to hopefully do very well depending on how well you know your team, or maybe you'll do really badly because it'll be a politics based one and it turns out you don't know each other as well as you thought, yeah, um, I participate regularly in a game night and this is one of the game board games that we play, and it's always fun learning about people and sort of what they think in terms of these different extremes uh, depending on it, there was one that was casual on one side and formal on the other and having people try to determine for themselves what was casual versus what was formal and then where, along that spectrum, the pointer was pointed, and trying to say, okay, it's a, it was, it's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun and I think it sparks good discussion too. So it is cool that it is available as an app. That's very clever of them. All right, our last category for this episode you'll have to tune in next week for the rest of the Apple Design Awards is interaction.

34:00
Winners in this category deliver intuitive interfaces and effortless controls that are perfectly tailored to their platform. So in this instance, it's not just that you know they make delightful controls, but it's also that the controls are, they seem to be aware of what platform it's being used on. So you know, if you're making an iPhone app, you know, and you are using very tiny things that you have to tap on. Maybe that's not such a great idea, but if you're making an iPad app where you've got a little bit more room to spread out, the controls are a little bit bigger. It's just. It makes sense on that platform. That's the idea here and I was hoping, rosemary, that you could tell us, because you introduced me to this app, the winning app for interaction this year.

34:56 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Yeah, so the winning app for interaction is one that I mentioned to Micah and he loved it because of the interaction that you can do on the iPhone and that is Crouton. So Crouton is a recipe manager, meal planner. It's got timers in it for cooking. It can do unit conversions, you name it. It's got timers in it for cooking. It can do unit conversions, you name it. It's got so much stuff built in.

35:17
And the interaction specifically that I told Micah about is the fact that when you're looking at crouton on your iPhone or your iPad, you can use your face to interact with the recipe. Ok, so say, you've been chopping some chicken and you need to look at the ingredients for the step. What you can actually do in Crouton is use your mouth to interact so you can open your mouth to see the ingredients list, or you can wink or similar to go to the next section. And what it also has now is it has an Apple Vision Pro app, which means that those little timers that you can create automatically as you go through and start doing things, Because you know some recipes have timers in earlier steps, so like you need to start cooking the pasta here and you need to cook the pasta for five minutes and then you need to add this, the pasta, water or whatever it is. So, being able to start timers and what you can do in Apple Vision Pro yeah, you can put your timer literally on the pan of pasta.

36:11
I love that. Make sure that you don't put your hand in the pan of pasta when trying to turn off the timer. That's the only thing I'm going to say there. But yeah, I really love the way that the developer Devin, has spent a good chunk of time really thinking about, like, what do people actually want and need out of a recipe app? And for me, the fact that I can just import any recipe and be like OK, so what the heck is a cup of flour in grams, please? And it can do unit conversion for me and temperature conversions and all of that. It's. It's great. It makes my life so much easier.

36:41 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Lovely. The game for the interaction category absolutely deserves this, this award. It's a game called, so it's based on the word rhythm, so I'm going to go with Rytmos R-Y-T-M-O-S. And in this game you are kind of moving from planet to planet solving mazes. But as you solve a maze, what happens is it creates an audio loop that will play. And so you solve a maze and it starts an audio loop and then you solve the next maze and it adds something on top and it continues to layer and layer and layer and layer until you have a full musical composition that is created from the work that you did as you're moving through these mazes. Just incredible, just absolutely incredible. You feel like you're making music while playing a puzzle game and there's something so delightful about that that just it absolutely deserves the Apple Design Award for interaction. I think everybody should give this app a go. It is available to download for free, with an in-app purchase of $4.99 to completely unlock the Galaxy, which basically gives you access to more music. Go try it, seriously. Go try it. I think you're going to be amazed by it. It is available on iPhone and iPad. The finalists for this category include a winner that we've already heard about Procreate Dreams because, yes, the interactive, I should say, say, the interactions within Procreate Dreams are quite clever and make use of Apple Pencil in clever ways and also feature functionality that has come from even the latest Apple Pencil. So I'm not surprised to see it as a finalist here and wellerved to get mentioned in multiple categories.

38:52
Another app is one that I think many people will be familiar with. It's a game called Little Nightmares. Little Nightmares has existed on many a platform. It's a little adventure game that is quite creepy. It is definitely a dark tale. You're kind of you're this little individual who is trapped in this space. That is just perplexing and terrifying, and you're trying to make your way out and along the way, maybe you help people, um, or help creatures, rather, while you're trying to make your way out, it's, um, it's not for the faint of heart. I'll say that, uh, it's available for $7.99 in the app store and it is. It's really cool. All it is very cool, um, but the reason why it was received an award for interaction is because the game again I told you, it's on multiple platforms. It's on I've seen it on PlayStation, I've seen it on Xbox, I'm pretty sure I know I've seen it on Steam so that it can be played on the computer, and they have done right by the platform. It has been redesigned and revamped specifically so that it works on mobile and that you don't feel like you're trying to play a game meant for a different platform on your mobile device. No, it feels right at home on the platform, which is great.

40:24
The other finalists include Arc Search. There's the Arc browser that my friend and, of course, fellow host on the network, leo Laporte, has talked a lot about. He uses the Arc browser that my friend and, of course, fellow host on the network, leo Laporte, has talked a lot about. He uses the Arc browser. Arc search is kind of the mobile version of the browser, but it is search-based first and foremost and it is not 100% a browser. Honestly, it's something you just got to check out to see what it's all about. That is available on the iPhone, but I will say that it is a nice browsing experience for sure, and so I'm not surprised to see it here.

41:03
And last but not least is an app called Finity. That's F-I-N-I-T-Y with a period at the end, and this is an app where you are also playing. It's kind of a puzzle game. You are doing matching, so tiles can wrap around within the square that you're working in, and then what you're doing is you're trying to slide rows and columns to match three. Once you match three then it kind of gets rid of those and you only have so many moves to do it in. So I think that's the finity part of it, as things kind of move around in infinity. You only have so many moves to make it happen. So you might try playing that as well. All righty, that is going to do it for this part.

42:00
Our first episode of the Apple Design Award winners will cover the rest of the Apple Design Award winners in the next episode, but with that I can hear the music. It's time for Shortcuts Corner. It's time for Shortcuts Corner, the part of the show where you write in with your shortcuts corner request or shortcuts request and Rosemary Orchard, our shortcuts expert, provides a response. Our listener, alex, has written in and said the following Hi, micah and Rosemary.

42:36
My father-in-law has trouble at times remembering to take his medication regularly. He uses various apps and tools to help him record when he takes it, but if he doesn't get an audible alert or notification that it's time to take it, he likely will miss it. It he likely will miss it. What I would want out of a shortcut or automation is the ability for him to somehow log his medication at any given time in the health app or otherwise, and then, five hours from any time that the medication is logged, have a reminder or, more ideally, an alarm for him to take his medication again the next time he logs his medication. If it's before the next alarm or reminder, that reminder should be reset again for five hours from the time he logged the medication. So basically, when I take my medication, set a timer for an alarm five hours from now, no matter what.

43:24
Even having done some extensive shortcuts, automations and programming myself, I couldn't figure this out. This may be a bit of a head scratcher, but I hope you can come up with some creative solutions. Thank you, alex PS. As an added challenge, there should be a way to disable this shortcut or not have it act in the middle of the night so it doesn't disturb him if he's sleeping. Oh my, as if it wasn't complicated enough already with the added challenge. Rosemary, what's what's possible here? Is it possible?

43:58 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Well, I mean, I've got some good news and some bad news. The good news is is, I think that you can get pretty close to what you're after here, alex, but the bad news is is you're not going to be able to log the medication, uh, in the health app, or indeed any medication app that I know of that is currently publicly available. Uh, there may be something that I know of that's in the works, but I'm not allowed to talk about it yet. So I have, um, the health app, and I am running the iOS 18 beta here, folks. So if you are looking at my screen and going, oh, that looks a little bit funny for me, uh, you know, at least right now, compared to the iOS 17,. It's okay, these actions are the same. So the health app only has four actions Find health samples, get details of health sample, log health sample and log workout. Well, taking a medication shouldn't be a workout? I mean, depending on the size of the pills your doctor has prescribed you, maybe it is, but let's go with log health sample because that seems the most likely. But unfortunately, as we can see here, there are a number of things for, like abdominal cramps and so on, but I'm not seeing anything for medication at all, which is a real shame. So I had a little think about this and I thought that the easiest thing to do for you, alex, would be to add a icon to your father-in-law's home screen, which is what he uses to log the medication, and then, if he logs the medication as taken, then what we need to do is to create an alarm for the future and disable any you know immediate future alarms and disable any you know immediate future alarms. So, assuming that we were running this, you know, based on him tapping the home screen to say hey, I took the medication.

45:38
Now, depending on what information you need, if you actually need the record of what he's taken and when, then you might want to look into something like a data jar, or you could actually go with numbers. Numbers has a nice little action. I'm just scrolling down to it to add a row to the top or bottom of a table, so you could actually just add log something in Numbers every time your father-in-law logs the medication as taken. But what we are going to start with is we're going to start with the clock, because the clock app allows us to get our alarms, and I've scrolled past clock. There it is.

46:16
So we are going to find alarms and I am going to say where the label is medication, and if I can spell medication instead of medication, that's even better. And what we will just do is we will just add a little repeat with each, tell you what. Let's make this a little better and just say that, yeah, we want the label for is medication and we could look for a specific time, but unfortunately that's not what we want. We do want all of the medication alarms and then using the repeat with each. So we're going to go over each medication alarm and we can then delete this alarm if you are using iOS 18. But I'm going to guess your father-in-law isn't yet running iOS 18. So we're going to go with the toggle the alarm, but change that. Ok, you're going to want to make sure that you set it to turn off the alarm. Ok, so turn off that show win run as well. So we're going to find all of our alarms where the label is medication and then we're going to turn it off.

47:19
And then we are going to adjust our current date. So we're going to say add five and then change this to hours to date and then we can just scroll over and use that little magic variable current date that is always there. So we're adding five hours to now. Now, alex, you said you would like it to not disturb him if he's asleep in the middle of the night. Well, I think what we need to do is we need to actually say when is bedtime Okay, when should he not be taking his medication, say, after 10 pm? So we are going to format this date okay in the if statement. So I've added an if statement, we're going to change this and our format is going to be HH in capitals. Okay, HH in capitals is going to give us the hours in 24 hour time, and so that means that after 12, it doesn't go back to one, it goes 13, 14 and so on.

48:19
And so now in our if statement, what we can do is and I'm going to have to pop that into a number, because I forgot Shortcuts is very smart, but it's not the smartest. So I'm just going to pop in my adjusted date and I'm going to reformat that. So you pop in adjusted date and then you scroll up a little bit on it and then you change it to custom, and then I just need to set this to capital HH. That's it. So there we go.

48:45
And then if our number perfect is greater than and let's say, after 9 pm okay, if it's gonna be after 9 pm, we don't want to use that time, okay then what we can do is we can just say insert a date and I don't know, say 8 pm tomorrow, is that a good time to be reminded about your education? And then we can just change this to a specified date. So we're using the date action and then we just say 8 am tomorrow, okay, and now we need an alarm. So we're going to add an alarm and we're going to create an alarm for the if results and we're going to change this to call it medication. And that is it, very simple. It's not necessarily going to log it. If you do want to log it, then I think you should have a look at the numbers action to add a row to a table so that you can just add a row to a table with the current date and time.

49:50
But this is going to turn off any future medication alarm and turn on a new one.

49:56
And if it's after 10 pm, then it's going to set the alarm for 8 am the next day.

50:04
So I think that is going to do what you need to do, in that it's going to remind him and then he just has to tap on this, which you can add to your home screen by using the share, and then you just scroll down and go with add to home screen.

50:18
You can choose a different icon for it if you would like. So there's a little pill in there If you search for that maybe not the poop emoji, but you can use the pill and then you can just give it a name so that you have that on the home screen. And if that's how he logs his medication as taken, then that will do the trick, I hope. And if it doesn't, then please write back in and give us some more information and we can see if we can give you any more help. But that is certainly what I would do for the time being, to set those reminders to take medication. And another little bonus you can also add emoji into alarm labels. So you can add a little pill icon and maybe even put the name of his medication in there, if you wanted to.

51:05 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Nice, nice. See, it's possible. With a little thought and a little creativity and a little bit of cleverness. You mix them all together and there you have it. And that is what iOS Today is all about A little thought, a little creativity, a little cleverness all mixed together to create the show. Folks, we thank you for tuning into this week's episode of iOS Today, where we talked about the first set of Apple Design Award winners. We hope you tune in next week for our next set of ADA winners.

51:38
If you would like to reach out to us with your feedback, questions or your shortcuts corner requests, you can email us IOSToday at. Twittv is how you get in touch. I would like to invite those of you listening to this audio and the public to please consider joining Club Twit at twittv slash club twit. When you join the show or when you join the club for $7 a month, you gain access to the video version of this show. You also gain access to loads of other benefits, including the ad-free version of every single one of our Twit shows. Ad-free version of every single one of our Twit shows. Access to the video versions of our other Club Twit shows. Access to the Twit Plus bonus fee that has extra content you won't find anywhere else behind the scenes before the show, after the show special Club Twit events get published there.

52:24
Access to the members-only Discord server, a fun place to go to chat with your fellow Club Twit members and also those of us here at Twit, and, of course, that warm fuzzy feeling knowing that you're helping to support the network and helping us to continue to bring these shows to you. We'd love to have you join Club Twit $7 a month. Twittv slash. Club Twit Rosemary Orchard. If folks want to follow you online and check out all the great work you're doing, where should they go to do so?

52:49 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Well, where should they go to do so? Well, the best place to go is rosemaryautorcom, which has links to apps, books, podcasts and all of the other things that I am involved in. But the other place you can check out is that Club Twit Discord, because Club Twit members get access to the Discord no-transcript. And, of course, there is an iOS Today channel where you can suggest topics for future shows, ask questions about episodes that we've already recorded, and so on. Micah, where can folks find you?

53:25 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
You can find me at Micah Sargent on many a social media network where you can head to chihuahuacoffee that's C-H-I-H-U-A-H-U-Acoffee, where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. Thanks so much for tuning in and we will catch you again next week for another episode of IOS Today. Bye-bye, Bye-bye folks.