Another podcast I was on was partly for work, mainly for awesome. Episode 2 of The 1Password Show was one for the record books, as my colleague Stu and I sat down with Merlin Mann to talk about security, the 1Password iOS app, awkward moments with Merlin, and Sodastreams (not an ad, silly).
You really don't want to miss this one.
Yours truly had the esteemed privilege of being a guest of the International Mac Podcast to talk about all the great stuff Apple announced at WWDC. I think we ended up running longer than the Keynote itself did, which means you should probably pack a lunch.
Toilet paper dispensers should have built-in iPhone chargers.
— Craig Hockenberry (@chockenberry) June 4, 2013
Genius.
The fine folks over at Realmac software put a little announcement out about LittleSnapper today. LittleSnapper is an app that helps you capture full web pages and other screenshots, organize them (for example, as reference for a certain project), and even mark them up. Over the past few years, LittleSnapper has been a great tool for me for various things.
Back in the day, LittleSnapper had a web service with it, too, called QuickSnapper, which was eventually rebranded as Ember. That service did go by the wayside, unfortunately.
But now the Ember brand is being rekindled (pardon the pun). LittleSnapper 2 will be coming out in July, but it will be called Ember. Honestly, I think it is a better name for the app, and it has one of the most adorable icons you could imagine for an app.
I've been privileged to be testing Ember for the past few months, and while I can't really say anything about it, I will say that you'll want to invest in this app.
I've been beta testing Byword 2 for OS X & iOS for a while, and I am really glad it's finally here. It has many little improvements I've been thirsting after for some time, and a great big feature I wish my host/CMS — Squarespace 6 — had an API to use with.
If you're not in-the-know already, Byword is a fantastic app focused on writing. It simply gets out of your way gives you a page to write on, with minimal fluff to deal with. The best part is that it is designed for web publishing as it is one of the best — no, wait, I'll just say the best — Markdown-centric apps I've used.
The grand marquee feature of Byword 2 is blog publishing. You can now publish your text directly to Wordpress, Tumblr, Blogger, Scriptogram, or Evernote. I've been dabbling a bit more into Evernote use, so maybe I will find a home for this feature via the big green elephant. I haven't used the publishing feature, to be completely honest, so I can say very little about it.
Byword 2 also sports improved conflict resolution, showing you each conflicting version in their entirety, so you can make an informed decision on which is the keeper. The update also includes better handing of new, edited, renamed, and deleted documents in Airplane Mode.
The remaining features are the removal of friction points that I have run into with previous versions. When viewing the Markdown preview, Byword 2 now keeps the scroll position intact. This is one of those things you subconsciously knew was annoying that is now fixed.
On iOS specifically, you can now move and duplicate documents. This is handy if you decide you'd rather have a document on Dropbox instead of iCloud, or vice-versa. Fonts on iOS are also much better. Rather than some obscure fonts you've never heard of, Byword 2 now uses Avenir Next (yay!), Helvetica Neue, Courier, and Georgia. I, for one, am in love with the Avenir font family, so I am really glad the developers added it (they were extremely gracious when I was being super-annoying about it during the beta).
If you regularly write for the web there are two things that will help make your life so much easier: learn Markdown, and use Byword.
Byword 2 is a free update for existing users and $10 (OS X)/$3(iOS) for new users. The publishing feature is an in-app purchase for $5 on each platform.
My day job is inviting a lucky few to test drive the next version of our Mac app, 1Password 4. Go sign up and see if you get to take the new shiny for a spin.
This is the best ad Apple has done in a little while. Photos are something everyone loves, as they capture moments of time that we can't get back, but we can always remember.
Speaking of being shocked, I thought this app was long dead. The last time it had received an update prior to today was June 1, 2011. That's right, OS X Snow Leopard reigned king when Twitter for Mac was last updated.
But, it appears Twitter is breathing new life into their desktop app. They added Twitter Photos support, Retina graphics, updated iconography, and a slew of languages. They've even put Ben Sandofsky in charge of it full time.
P.S. I'm taking a break from iOS to work on Twitter for Mac full time.
— Ben Sandofsky (@sandofsky) April 25, 2013
We'll see what happens, but personally, I am more excited that Iconfactory is working on Twitterrific 5 for Mac.
Marco Arment:
I’m happy to announce that I’ve sold a majority stake in Instapaper to Betaworks. We’ve structured the deal with Instapaper’s health and longevity as the top priority, with incentives to keep it going well into the future. I will continue advising the project indefinitely, while Betaworks will take over its operations, expand its staff, and develop it further.
I'll admit I was shocked to see this, but I can see why Marco took this path. Just from reading his blog about how much time it take to work on The Magazine, I couldn't imagine how he'd find time for Instapaper as well.
Instapaper is one of those apps I have had a long relationship with, and one I hope will have a continued and wonderful future. Congrats, Marco.
Daniel Jalkut:
Call it WWDC if you like, but it needs to take place 365 days a year instead of 4. It needs to serve 300,000 developers, not 5,000. And it needs to take place online, not within the cramped confines of a small convention center in San Francisco.
WWDC tickets went on sale and subsequently sold out within 2 minutes today. Two. Minutes. Probably less. It's plain to see that the demand for WWDC has outstripped the supply, and I think Daniel has cooked up the beginnings of a pretty good solution.
My good friend Andy is closing up shop and joining my team over at AgileBits. Be sure to send him a congrats!
I have to admit, like my friend David Chartier, I am a rare breed of nerd who actually likes Facebook. David talked a lot about Facebook Home and its potential. I want to talk about the new iOS app, Facebook 6.0.
The 6.0 update to the Facebook app streamlines the interface for the better, and beefs up its messaging capabilities. One way it does this is through Stickers, which are fun little pictures you can sling around through private or group messages. They’re cute, because they were designed by the awesome David Lanham.
But the real news here is Chat Heads, which show the avatar of the friend(s) you are currently chatting with in a little circle off to the side of wherever you are inside Facebook’s app. You can simply tap the circle and a conversation expands as a layer on top of where you are at, you send a message, tap the circle again, and it collapses the conversation and you go right back to where you were.
It’s a really enjoyable and nice experience.
On Facebook Home for Android, Chat Heads can appear anywhere on your device, even when you are in another app. Right now, this only works within Facebook on iOS, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it stayed that way.
But here is why I like the concept of Chat Heads, and where I’d like to see them go as a concept.
I like that they are not too intrusive during a conversation when you are doing something else. And I think they’d be the perfect interface for iMessage. Right now on iOS, it is kind of jarring to have an active back and forth with a friend over iMessage when you are also trying to look at or do something else. You switch fully from what you are doing to the conversation, then have to switch fully back.
Let’s say I am writing up a post like this on my iPad. I would much rather an iMessage come up off to the side as a little icon and wait for me to tend to it. I simply tap the icon, a conversation popover appears, I fire off a sentence, and tap back to what I am doing. It is a much less distracting way of giving a few seconds for a reply. Why?
Because even though it is a context switch, it is a very good illusion of a partial context switch (which doesn’t exist). It feels like you are only giving away attention peripherally, instead of having to be ripped from your focus of one app and dumped into another. Because you feel like you only give away quick aside of context, and you can see the task at hand right behind the conversation popover, it is easier to return to what you are doing.
Facebook and Apple seem to have a nice relationship, what with the deep integration with iOS and OS X last year. I hope that relationship could start a collaboration where maybe Apple can use the Chat Heads concept for iMessage and SMS, if they also allow Facebook Messages to be a global deal through it. I think I’d be okay with that, especially if there were a toggle.
Gotta love the hero shot of the kid with a blanket cape. I gotta say, I'm really excited for this take on the Man of Steel.
Marco on the pessimism that has been surrounding Apple for a couple years now:
A year later, when Apple did release a model named “iPhone 5” that was far better than the 4S and had an external redesign, the inertia of Apple pessimism was so strong and the press had become such petulant children about Apple products that they shat all over it even though it was a huge update that gave them everything they asked for, plus more.
Now, Apple pessimism is even stronger. No matter what they release and no matter how well it sells, they won’t win over the press, the pundits, the stock market, or the rhetoric. Not this year. They could release a revolutionary 60-inch 4K TV for $99 with built-in nanobots to assemble and dispense free smartwatches, and people would complain that it should cost $49 and the nanobots aren’t open enough.
Apple does indeed have a problem here. I still think they should have named what we now know as the iPhone 5 as simply "the new iPhone".
The guy who made Apple's retail stores soar wasn't able to do the same for a department store. So, he's out as CEO of JC Penney, and Apple still hasn't filled the Ron Johnson shaped hole in its retail division.
How long do you think it'll be before the puzzle piece finds his way back to the puzzle?
In reference to the previous post, Bill Kunz, maker of App.net client Felix:
"Wonder if this movie's good." $10. "Try the new Burginator Deluxe!" $6. "Haven't heard of that beer before." $3-5. "New restaurant in town!" $30-$200
"Huh, an app. I really need a free trial." $0.99
I’m neither an economist nor a psychologist, but it strikes me that too many iOS device owners fail to act in their own best interests—both in the immediate near term and in the long term—when they scoff at the thought of spending money in the App Store. Here’s how customers who spend lavishly on iOS hardware punish themselves by skimping on apps.
Lex Friedman makes the case for paying good money for your great apps. If you are one who balks at an app that costs more than a buck or two, you need to go read this.
Heck, read it anyway.
Just a fun little site that plays some coffee shop background noise. I let it run for half the day today. While I can't say it really increased my productivity or not, I did find it pleasing. Of course, one of my favorite things is to go get things done at a coffee shop, so it's not much of a stretch.
It is a little hard to imagine that in a short three years how much the iPad has changed the world. It almost feels like it has been around much longer than three years.
I remember not knowing exactly why I needed wanted an iPad, but venturing out to look at one anyway. Of course, I ended up buying one. And I remember finding that oversized iPhone to be magical.
In these past three years I have owned four — count ‘em, four — iPads. The original, the iPad 2, The New iPad (or iPad 3 in regular person speak), and the best of them all so far — the iPad mini.
I still think that not even Apple knew exactly what the iPad would become when they launched it. And the truth is, it becomes whatever app you are currently running. It can be a book, an instrument, a race car, a movie studio (or movie theater), or be the future of communication drawn into the present.
The truly great thing is the amount of creativity the iPad can unleash in a person as the barrier to interact with a computer is broken down to simply directly touching the thing you are creating.
With each iteration of the iPad, my favorite has been the concentration of it to the lighter, more portable iPad mini. And I can’t help but feel that if we have come this far in three short years, how much further will we be in three more?
Louie Mantia imagines what iOS 7 may look like from the Settings app. I love his use of Avenir, a font that I have absolutely fallen in love with. I use it in any app I can (e.g., Day One and Twitterrific 5).
Louie makes a lot of other smart decisions, and I think I would love it if iOS got a bit of a makeoverin this style.
Some related reading would be Chairman Gruber's little birdies.
Copyright © 2009-2012 Chris De Jabet
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