Our CES coverage continues with Jeff Porten sharing the coolest devices and services from the Pepcom and ShowStoppers events. If you use or are thinking about switching to Backblaze, the service just got faster and more useful with the 6.0 update and B2 Storage integration. Do you rely on speech recognition? Nuance has discontinued Dragon Professional Individual for the Mac, and we have suggestions for what macOS speech recognition needs to provide a viable alternative. Finally, thanks to everyone who responded to our membership appeal last week—it made a huge difference! Notable Mac app releases this week include DEVONthink/DEVONnote 2.11.2, Pixelmator 3.8.1, KeyCue 9.2, Microsoft Office for Mac 16.21, DEVONagent 3.11.1, OmniFocus 3.2, and SEE Finance 2.0.8.
In an attempt to recover from the loss of 500 members, we sent an email appeal last week that resulted in over 500 people signing up for the TidBITS membership program and putting us back on firm footing. Thank you!
Backblaze has rolled out a major 6.0 update that improves performance, increases restore drive sizes, and offers options for permanent backup storage, among other things.
In the wake of Nuance discontinuing its Dragon Professional Individual speech-to-text software for the Mac, we shine a light on some ways that macOS’s built-in speech recognition needs to improve to provide a viable alternative.
As CES continues, our roving correspondent Jeff Porten covers the Pepcom Digital Experience, another of the breakout shows that offers a somewhat curated collection of gadgets, gizmos, and pie-in-the-sky services.
One company lights the world, another proposes to cook for you, and Apple teases Google over privacy while an open-source voice assistant ups the privacy ante.
Watchlist
Focuses on improving overall reliability for the information management apps. (All updates are free. DEVONthink Pro Office, $149.95 new; DEVONthink Professional, $79.95 new; DEVONthink Personal, $49.95 new; DEVONnote, $24.95 new)
Fixes several bugs in the original Pixelmator app. ($29.99 new, free update, 112 MB)
Improves calculation of emoji metrics and lets you add custom menu entries to specific submenus. (€19.99 new, free update, 4.0 MB)
Adds support to Word for the Continuity Camera feature in macOS 10.14 Mojave. ($149.99 new for one-time purchase, $99.99/$69.99 annual subscription options, free update)
Adds support for JSON RSS feeds and improves handling of RSS feeds in general. (Free/$4.95/$49.95, free updates)
Adds support for background notifications in macOS 10.14 Mojave. ($39.99 new, free update, 33.9 MB)
Maintenance update brings improved support for Dark mode and compatibility adjustments for macOS 10.14 Mojave. ($39.99 new, free update, 27 MB)
