The Mobile Spoon

[ UPDATE : as of April 2023 , using the ChatGPT API requires a paid subscription. See instructions below] TL; DR: OK listen up! This little shortcut is a game-changer! It takes anything you have: a link, clipboard text, or sharing of a website and uses ChatGPT to provide different types of summaries according to your need!  So if you're looking for a way to summarize long web pages (or long text blocks) into short summaries or bullet lists - there's finally a shortcut for that. The shortcut is really flexible and can help you in various scenarios so keep reading for more information about how to use it.  Install Smart Summarizer (Don't forget to place your API key in the right place 👇) The long version + how to configure The shortcut scans the content of any given website and summarizes it using an opening, a list of bullets, and a closing section.  This shortcut can be used from any web page (from your iPhone or Mac) through the Share menu (you'll have to add it to yo...

[ UPDATE : as of  April 2023 , using the ChatGPT API requires a paid subscription. See instructions below] TL; DR: Looking for a way to activate ChatGPT with Siri using voice commands? There's a shortcut for that.  Just ask Siri to run ChatGPT, ask your question using voice, get an answer, and store it as a note.  Install Smart Siri (Don't forget to place your API key in the right place 👇) Looking for a Smart Website Summarizer ? It's right here . The long version + how to configure I created this little shortcut (inspired by Fabian Heuwieser's post ) to connect Siri to ChatGPT so I can use it on the move with voice commands.  The shortcut does the following:  Prompts you to ask a question  Sends it to ChatGPT Reads the answer  Allows you to save the answer into a new Apple Note Perfect for using ChatGPT while on the move.  How to setup  First, copy your ChatGPT API key from  here .  Then download the shortcut  and add i...

Let's talk about  App Clips  for a minute, and forgive me Android readers, I know you had  Instant Apps  since 2018, but as product experts, entrepreneurs, or designers, surely you have to agree that Apple simply does it better with marketing, technology, developers, and users - all fall into the right part of the story. So watching iOS14 keynotes (and App Clips) got me thinking about the future of mobile apps. It also reminded me of the early days of our startup  Missbeez , and how we used to describe our product as a simple " magic button ". Whenever people asked us what does the product do, we used to say: "It's just a button. You click on it, and someone comes in and gives you a massage".  Unfortunately, the reality was not that simple: users had to download our button from the App Store (or Google Play),  go through a long onboarding process, provide their name, email, address, enter their credit card, and only then could they click...

It has been over a year since my post about mobile design trends to watch out for in 2019 .  Reading back this post from December 2018, it seems that not much has changed, and many of the trends are still happening: chromeless designs, gestures, gradients, deep flat, big bold fonts, and more, they are still here and will remain dominant during 2020.  Here’s a closer look at some new mobile trends that will continue to grow in 2020:  1. Dark mode  Yep, I know that's old news already, but you know what they say: "once apple decides to go black, no one can go back...". With the release of iOS13 , dark mode has become built-in in every mobile app running on Apple devices. This is, of course, not just an Apple thing, as Android and Windows also support this mode, but Apple has its' way of pushing such initiatives really fast, with devices that are almost immediately up-to-date with the latest OS version and a developers community that is very disc...

Mobile apps have been around for over a decade and even though it feels they are becoming a commodity - mobile products are still different than web or desktop products in many aspects.  In this post, I would like to share my thoughts about mobile design and development, based on over 15 years of experience in this field. This post will discuss the essence of designing a mobile user experience: UI, UX, and user scenes, which are all different for mobile when compared to desktop applications. Let's dive in:  1. Make graphic design a priority It’s a war zone out there, with millions of apps competing with each other for the attention of users. People have higher standards nowadays, especially iPhone and high-end Android owners. Your users treat their smartphones as a piece of jewelry with that gorgeous giant screen and slick edges , and they won’t let any app come-in and ruin that perfect look. Nobody cares about your tech. Make it lo...

  Product managers, startup founders and even software developers want to have maximum control on the products they build. Agile companies need to constantly change things and measure their impact, it's a pre-requisite to almost everything they build.  The problem with mobile apps Native mobile apps are quite different than web apps: while web apps are refreshing themselves automatically whenever there’s a new version of the product, mobile apps are installed locally on each device. Upgrades require new versions to be submitted to the different app stores for review. This process can take a few days and even when the app is approved - the upgrades are not performed immediately (and in some devices they never happen because the auto-upgrade is disabled). This is a cumbersome process and it makes it hard for companies to move fast and break things freely. As a B2C startup, aiming to move fast and make frequent changes, we suffer from this pr...

If there’s one thing I really don’t like about the UI of the Apple Watch, it’s the Control Center.  Unlike most of the Watch user interface, the Control Center looks unpolished: the buttons are too big, there’s too little whitespace, and the status icons on the top seem out of place.  I decided to try my luck and improve the UI a bit.  Knowing how long simple design tasks might take - I decided to challenge myself:  1. Only simple changes (no redesign)  2. Limit my time to 15 minutes max. Related:  This is why 3D Touch failed . The issues:  1. Status icons seem misplaced and feel a bit unrelated to the rest of the design.  2. The phone icon looks much bigger than the location service icon because it’s a long icon.  3. Toggles are too close to each other - there aren’t enough whitespaces. The changes:  As my goal was to finish the changes within 15 minutes. ...

Ahhh, the marvelous world of tech is so frenzied lately. Everything moves fast, so easy and so… unexpected. Today’s rising star is tomorrow’s abomination. What’s working well this week, might get you in trouble next week.   There’s no better way to begin the day than this: So much bold text and so many asterisks in one email - that can’t be good… Well... Especially when later that day this comes in: The crime: screen recording Here's the  original email coming from Apple , but believe me, it’s not very different than my interpretation above. The trigger was set a few days earlier with this  TechCrunch investigation  that found that many popular iPhone apps secretly record the phone screens without asking for permission. It didn’t take long for Apple to react . Which means we now had 24 hours to fix our app, get rid of any SDK that is in “egregious violation” of the guidelines, resubmit to the store and hope for a fa...

Hey iPhone users, how many times have you used 3D Touch this week? I use it every now and then, but most users I talk to rarely use it (or "never knew it existed” to quote some of them).  It has been a few years since Apple introduced ForceTouch with the Apple Watch (later called: 3D Touch for iPhones) and it seems like it has not been successfully adopted. With iPhone XR missing this capability, there are now solid rumors that Apple is going to phase it out soon. It’s easy to tell when a new OS feature is a big hit: - It quickly becomes popular  - Apps developers embrace it and implement incredible features with it - All other players copy it None of those things happened with 3D Touch.     Here’s why I think it failed:  It doesn’t feel natural The original iPhones were all about making things simple, elegant and delightful.  3D touch is e...