I agree with the Riposte devs—I’d love to see Apple add some convenient system-wide gestures like this in iOS 7.

Option 1

After you snap photos on your iOS devices and get those devices on WiFi for a short period, they’ll automatically sync all your photos up to iCloud. Connect your Mac to WiFi, run Apple’s iPhoto or Aperture (my personal favorite), and setup Photo Stream (either in the sidebar or preferences), and your photos are now automatically on your Mac.

Option 2

I’m picky about what goes into my main Photo Stream because I use it to share photos with family and friends on our Apple TV. I don’t want all the screenshots I take for writing or meme pics I save from the web in there, so I create a couple extra Photo Streams to organize those and keep them out of the main stream.

Adding photos to a custom Photo Stream is a lot faster than emailing them to yourself, and though your main Photo Stream is hardwired for WiFi, custom Photo Streams will sync even if you’re mobile. To create a custom Photo Stream:

• On your iOS device, open the Photos app and tap the Photo Stream tab. You may have to tap it a second time to get to your list of Photo Streams
• Tap the plus button in the upper left to create a new Photo Stream. Optionally you can share it with someone (I don’t), but name it something relevant like “Scrap” or “Scratchpad”. You can optionally also enable the public option which will give you a URL you can share with others. This is great for private group sharing or work environments so others can easily get your photos or screenshots

That’s it. Now you can select one or more photos, tap the Photo Stream sharing option, and add to your custom Photo Stream which forces an immediate sync, even on mobile. Fire up iPhoto or Aperture on your Mac and they’ll come back down.

New RSS Feeds

If you still follow any main Finer Things feeds in Google Reader, they should update automatically; I don’t think you have to lift a finger. However, I’m not sure how other readers handle feed redirects, so to make sure everyone can play along or if you simply want to resubscribe just to be sure, here are the main feeds for:

• Mac
• iOS
• PC
• Web
• News

Later today (Thursday, May 2, 2013) I’m going to make the switch for each of these feeds. Of course, you can subscribe to tag feeds for specific topics you’re interested in, and follow Finer Things on other services like Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook. Check out links and instructions on the follow page.

I’m sorry I’ve had to mess with these feeds so much, but this should be the last time for the foreseeable future. I’m using WordPress’ native feed system now, and URI.LV to transparently count subscribers.

A Layout Tweak

I also recently updated each major Finer Things in Tech section with new header so recent posts make a better splash.

I want to make it easier for you to read just the sections you care about—Mac, iOS, PC, Web, and anything I add in the future—so look for more improvements like this in the future.

When you share one or more photos, tap the gear icon at the top of the share menu to choose between sharing the original (unedited) “master” or the “version,” your edited masterpiece.

As of version 1.6, this only works for photos, not videos. Regardless, KitCam is the best money you can spend in the App Store on shooting, editing, and organizing photos and videos.

Apple recently added the option to stop Mail from automatically loading remote images when it opens a message. This is a good way to fight spam and, if you’re a heavy Mail user while mobile, even some of your bandwidth bill.

For context: some spam and phishing attempts use remote images in messages that are tied to unique identifier URLs. In short, once your mail client loads the image from the remote URL (just like a webpage), the scammer knows that your particular email address works, and that you check your mail. It’s like flagging yourself in the spam world to say “please, sir, I want some more.”

To help protect yourself from these schemes, you can disable remote images in Mail for iOS (and Mac), then load images on a per-message basis when you trust the sender:

• go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, & Calendars
• scroll to the Mail section and disable “Load Remote Images” (pictured)

Now, when you open a message that contains remote images, you’ll see blank boxes where said images should be. If you trust the sender, you can scroll to the bottom of the message and tap the “Load All Images” button (pictured). As of this writing, there’s no way to load individual images; it’s all or nothing.

[Thanks Colby Alley]

If you have a passcode on your iOS device, you can disable some of Apple’s core features from working on your lock screen. Go to Settings > General > Passcode Lock and you can stop Siri, Passbook, and the reply with message feature from working until you unlock.

Today Twitter released Twitter #music, a new free app for finding and following your favorite artists and discovering new music. Besides the music, though, it’s full of great animation and what feels like some clever UX experimentation, such as blurring the main content if you expand the info overlay of the currently playing song or tap the main nav at the top.

Twitter #music has a unique pull-to-refresh animation, and while playing music you can drag your finger around the spinning CD to fast forward and rewind (hat tip to Chris Herbert for that one).

Even swapping between the initial tutorial pages has a subtle animation that is just fun.