Day One for iPhone and iPad, the popular journaling app by Bloom Built, has been updated with the ability to export your journal entries as a PDF that can then be sent to iBooks, Dropbox, your printer, and more.

To create a PDF, you go to Settings > Export to PDF. You can then choose a date range and if you want to only include entries containing specific tags. The created PDF looks just like how your entries look in the app. To share to other apps, just tap the Share button in the upper right hand corner. Any apps with PDF support that you have installed will appear on the list, including print.

Some other new features of Day One include a new reminder sound, Sanchez as a font option, improved header and HTML styling, and historical weather has increased from 3 days to 30 days.

This update of Day One has also added a faster startup time, improved Dropbox sync for large journals, refactored and improved sound effects, and reorganized Settings.

In the update notes of Day One for iPhone and iPad, they have also promised to update the Mac version soon with location, weather, tags, and more.

If you're a Day One user, go grab the update now. Do you plan to use the new PDF export feature? What do you think of the other new features? Personally, I'm just excited for the Mac update -- been waiting for it forever!

• $4.99 - Download now

For years there's been angst over iOS' lack of Home screen widgets. Nokia/Symbian/Meego/etc. has had them for what's probably been decades. Android has had them for years. Even Apple had widgets on OS X going back to Dashboard in OS X Tiger in 2005. iOS on the other hand has eschewed them completely until 2010/2011, and even then restricted them to the fast app switcher, Notification Center and Siri. That Apple had Dashboard should show they, as a company, didn't have an aversion to widgets, they just avoided them on the iOS Home screen. And a post on the HTC Blog today by their head of design, Drew Bamford may give some context as to why:

During our research [into customer experience], a few consistent patterns emerged:

• Most people don’t differentiate between apps and widgets.
• Widgets aren’t widely used – weather, clock and music are the most used and after that, fewer than 10% of customers use any other widgets.
• Most of you don’t modify your home screens much. In fact, after the first month of use, approximately 80% of you don’t change your home screens any more.

Of those widely used widgets, iOS has a persistent clock on the status bar, a weather widget in Notification Center, and a music/media widget in the fast app switcher. In a nod to glance-ability, it also flips the dates on the Calendar icon, and adds counter badges to other icons.

In iOS, the Home screen feels deliberately left barren, with the intent to drive you into apps. It's a launcher in the most literal sense of the term.

Of course, there are stats showing a lack of web browsing, among other things, on the Android platform, so this could just be part-and-parcel with a large percentage of the user base using Android simply as another dumb phone, to make calls and maybe check Facebook. HTC doesn't really break down who the 10%ers are are relative to the rest.

For me, I remain of a mind that widgets are just old tech. Pull data. I'm too lazy to go to a Home screen (or a fast app switcher, for that matter) to try and find data. I've never used them on any of my Android devices, and I'm not interested in them on iOS. They're old. They're inefficient. I want data pushed to me where I am. Google Now gets some of that right, as do active notifications from webOS going back to 2009 and Android going back to 2012.

I've never understood why people wanted Apple to skate to where the widget puck was. I'd much rather they once again try to leap ahead and figure out more in-app (in-everywhere) data delivery methods.

HTC just realized something now, in 2013, that I think Dashboard has already learned Apple on by 2007. Widgets are what was. Now they all need to figure out what's next.

Source: HTC via Android Central