Punish Website Last year, a Club member asked whether we knew of any Safari content blockers that operated based on a user-created blacklist, so it would only block ads on sites the user specified. To our surprise, there didn’t seem to be such an app. Existing content blockers worked like one of our...
Creating an RSS Feed for a Site That Doesn’t Have One
You can probably tell by this point that I’ve spent much of the first part of 2018 thinking about and experimenting with RSS feeds. If you rely on RSS as much as I do, it’s very frustrating to come across a site that doesn’t have a feed, especially one that doesn’t post new content...
Q&A
Question: As part of my workflow to structure new projects, I like to brainstorm key ideas and actions in MindNode. However, my to-do app of choice is Things (I recently moved from OmniFocus), and I would like to avoid the manual step of adding actions one by one. Is there a way to export a...
App Debuts
FedericoZones for Training Developed by the creators of FitPort, Zones is a companion utility for Apple’s Health and Activity that helps you visualize different heart rate zones from your workouts. By default, the app presents you with a clean list of past workouts and a chart at the top that uses colors to indicate...
AppStories, Episode 43 – How We Use RSS→
On this week’s episode of AppStories, we follow up our RSS app and service episode with a closer look at how each of us uses RSS for work and pleasure reading.
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- Elmedia Player - a free multi-format HD video player for the Mac
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Twitterrific Adds Multi-Account Features, Follower and Following Lists, and More
Hot on the heels of Twitter’s abandonment of its official Mac client last week, The Iconfactory announced new Twitterrific features and a price reduction.
One of the highlights of the update is enhancements to multi-account support. If you have more than one Twitter account set up in Twitterrific, right clicking on the reply, quote, retweet, or like buttons displays a popup window for choosing which account you want to use for each of those functions. Alternatively, if you are in the middle of composing a reply or quote-tweet, click on your avatar in the compose window to switch the account from which it will be sent.
The Iconfactory has added several other nice refinements too:
- Lists of a person’s followers and who they follow have been added to user profiles.
- Avatars now include verified and protected status badges, although this can be turned off in Twitterrific’s settings.
- There is a setting to turn off tweet streaming, so your timeline can only be refreshed manually.
- Georgia is a new font alternative in the app’s preferences.
Twitterrific for Mac has come a long way since the commencement of its crowdfunding campaign last winter, and many of the shortcomings of version 1.0 that I highlighted in my review last October have been addressed. It’s fantastic to see Twitterrific continue to grow and evolve, especially now that Twitter has walked away from its Mac app.
To celebrate the one year anniversary of Project Phoenix, the crowdsourced Kickstarter project that relaunched Twitterrific on macOS, the price of the app has been reduced from $19.99 to just $7.99. Twitterrific is available on the Mac App Store.
How We Use RSS
Remote for Mac: An iOS Remote Control for Your Mac [Sponsor]
Remote for Mac is an iOS app that lets you use your Mac from anywhere on your home network. Using just your iPhone or iPad as a trackpad and keyboard, you can launch apps or control system settings on your Mac.
Remote for Mac is perfect for controlling a Mac that serves as a media center. Instead of trying to balance a keyboard and trackpad in your lap while you sit on the couch or lie in bed, use Remote for Mac to navigate your Mac from your iPhone comfortably. You can also use Remote for Mac with AirPlay Mirroring on an Apple TV to browse your Mac on a big screen TV.
All you need to do is install a helper app on your Mac and use Remote for Mac on the same WiFi network to control system settings and apps and services like iTunes, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, YouTube, Plex, Kodi, SoundCloud, Spotify, and VLC.
Remote for Mac isn’t just for Mac media servers though. The uses are only limited by your imagination. You can just as easily use the app to browse the web or read email on a Mac connected to your TV. Using the app’s keyboard and virtual trackpad makes navigation a breeze. When you’re finished, Remote for Mac can put your Mac to sleep, turn off your display, or even shut down your Mac.
Remote for Mac has a special giveaway for MacStories readers. The first 30 readers who visit this link will get a free copy of the app.
Take control. Download Remote for Mac from the App Store today.
Our thanks to Remote for Mac for supporting MacStories this week.
Official Twitter Client for the Mac Abandoned
In the time honored tradition of releasing bad news at the close of business on a Friday, Twitter announced via its Twitter Support account that it was removing its Mac client from the the Mac App Store and discontinuing support for the app:
https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/964635740444360704
Twitter gained a native Mac client when it acquired Tweetie for Mac from Loren Brichter in 2010, but the company’s support for the app over the years has been half-hearted at best. As John Gruber explained on Daring Fireball:
Twitter dumped Tweetie’s codebase years ago, of course, and their Mac app has been garbage ever since they did. It’s all fine, really, so long as they continue to allow third-party clients like Tweetbot and Twitterrific to exist. But this “Mac users should just use the website” attitude is exactly what I was talking about here as an existential threat to the future of the Mac.
Twitter’s move is not surprising given the history of the app. Most Mac users I know moved on to third-party clients years ago. However, Gruber’s broader point is an important one. There has been an increasing trend away from native Mac apps and towards web apps and cross-platform apps based on technologies like Electron. Many of these non-native solutions are resource hogs, and even the best often fail to take advantage of OS-level features, which makes them feel out of place among native apps. Perhaps the rumored Project Marzipan is designed to reinvigorate Mac development, although it’s hard to see that working if companies like Twitter simply don’t care to provide the best experience on macOS.