Archive for May 29, 2020

Friday, May 29, 2020

Logitech Combo Touch

Josh Centers (tweet):

There aren’t many products that I try and instantly say, “Wow, this is awesome, I can’t wait to tell TidBITS readers about it!” But the Combo Touch, which comes in models appropriate for the seventh-generation iPad, third-generation iPad Air, and 10.5-inch iPad Pro is one of those products.

[…]

Strangely, the Combo Touch isn’t available for the 11-inch or 12.9-inch iPad Pro. A little birdie told me that Apple discouraged Logitech from supporting those models so as to not compete with the Magic Keyboard. After just a few hours with the Combo Touch, I see why Apple might have been worried about the competition, and I think a lot of iPad Pro users will be envious of those of us who can use the Combo Touch.

Previously:

Swift AWS Lambda Runtime

Tom Doron (also: Hacker News):

It is my pleasure to announce a new open source project for the Swift Server ecosystem, Swift AWS Lambda Runtime. Distributed as a Swift package, the Swift AWS Lambda Runtime is designed to help Swift developers build serverless functions for the Amazon Web Services Lambda platform.

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When using serverless functions, attention must be given to resource utilization as it directly impacts the costs of the system. This is where Swift shines! With its low memory footprint, deterministic performance, and quick start time, Swift is a fantastic match for the serverless functions architecture.

[…]

Modeling Lambda functions as closures is both simple and safe. Swift AWS Lambda Runtime will ensure that the user-provided function is offloaded from the network processing thread to its own thread so that even if the code becomes slow or unresponsive, the underlying Lambda process can continue and interact with the Runtime engine.

Update (2020-06-02): Fabian Fett (tweet):

This tutorial shall help you to get started with our new shiny toy swift-aws-lambda-runtime. It’s a beginners’ tutorial focused primarily on the AWS console, since it is the easiest way to get up and running. Further the Lambda we create here is very simple for the purpose of concentrating on project setup and deployment.

Backing Up Core Data Stores

Tom Harrington:

Once you use this method, the persistent store you migrated is removed from the persistent store coordinator. It also adds the newly-migrated store to the coordinator. So now the store is using the new copy instead of the old one. That’s not good for a backup, since the new copy is the backup you just made that you want to leave alone. It’s also a potential app crasher, since any managed objects you already fetched came from a persistent store that’s no longer available.

He recommends using a second, temporary persistent store coordinator as the source for the migration.

OmniFocus 3.8

Rosemary Orchard (also: release notes):

Omni Automation plugins and automation in OmniFocus Pro offer a level of customized automation previously not available on iOS. While the Mac has had support for AppleScript since it’s earliest days (and was started as a combination of OmniOutliner and AppleScript known as Kinkless GTD), this has left some of the most popular devices out of part of the automation loop. OmniFocus recently added more Shortcuts support, but Shortcuts, like AppleScript, are restricted to one platform—and they can’t offer the unique abilities that come from writing a script. Below are two example plug-ins you can download and use, or look at, to see how this new feature can enhance your OmniFocus workflows—on Mac, iPad, or iPhone. Now, with Omni Automation, plug-ins can be written once and will work the same on Macs, iPhones, and iPads.

[…]

All Omni Group applications now support JavaScript plug-ins—so you can transfer your data from one application to the other with ease. You can also turn a project in OmniFocus into a project plan in OmniPlan, a hierarchical diagram in OmniGraffle, or import templates from OmniOutliner.

Federico Viticci:

Here’s the short version of this story: our brand new Perspective Icons offer 400 unique glyphs with two distinct icon shapes available in 25 different colors, for a total of 20,000 icons included in the set. Yes, you read that number right. The icons can be easily installed in OmniFocus Pro for Mac, iPad, and iPhone using Finder or the Files app; all the icons and colors have been optimized for OmniFocus and designed to look like native additions to the app.