thermoCLine, the quick entry text field for Mac OS X , has been updated and is now known as Threshold. The new version now sports better integration with a lot of 3rd party applications, including Things, Coda, Yojimbo, Omnifocus, Textmate and many more.
As the developer writes “the goal is to be a universal quick entry text field for all your applications”. And with the latest update, Threshold is on the right path to do so.
He did it again. Steve Jobs, well known for replying to customer’s emails every once in a while, replied to an English iPad enthusiast telling him Apple won’t support Google’s Picasa albums and faces recognition. He further suggested to get iPhoto instead, which has much better features.
And yes, he’s still running iPhone OS 3.1.2.
If you followed the latest MacHeist nanoBundle 2 happenings, you should know that Loren Brichter (atebits) teamed up with the MacHeist team to a) include Tweetie for Mac in the bundle and b) offer the possibility to enter the beta of Tweetie 2 as soon as it will be out. This thing alone made the MacHeist double their sales in two days. As you can guess, Tweetie 2 for Mac is one of the most anticipated apps of 2010, and the user base is literally going crazy to put their hands on Loren’s newest creation. But on the other hand, there are many users who got tired of waiting months and months to have a Twitter client which supported - say - native retweets and lists, so they changed their default application from Tweetie to another one. And in most cases, the “another one” is Echofon for Mac.
I never tried Echofon before, but I decided to give it a spin after all this talking about the Mac version being good, stable and faster than Tweetie. Let’s see what the kid’s got.
That of Mozilla’s Firefox not supporting the de-facto standard H264 video format is a well known problem many people wrote about recently. I think John made the best analysis of the situation, depicting the absurd situation Mozilla is throwing itself into by supporting the .ogg format, together with Opera. From the post:
“So, even those using the latest version of Firefox will be treated like they’re using a legacy browser. Mozilla’s intransigence in the name of “openness” will result in Firefox users being served video using the closed Flash Player plugin, and behind the scenes the video is likely to be encoded using H.264 anyway.”
Whether Mozilla will finally understand that H264 is the format to support it’s unknown to us, but - technically speaking - there are some problems that Philip Hutchison over at Pipwerks tried to fix with a simple script. Indeed, Firefox does support the HTML5 <video> tag, but the linked video file should be encoded in .ogg rather than H264. As Philip writes:
“Firefox is essentially forcing people to offer two versions of each video: an Ogg version and an MP4 version. In my opinion — and the opinion of many others — this simply will not do. Providing two different video files is not realistic, Ogg’s quality is inferior to H.264, and many computers and mobile devices have direct hardware support for H.264 but not Ogg. Firefox’s HTML5 video is rendered useless.”
The problem is, Firefox 3.6 knows it can’t play an MP4 file but it loads the <video> element anyway, just because it’s a supported tag. This script will detect if HTML5 is supported, see if it’s Firefox who tries to open it and if so, the video element is deleted and the flash fallback stays there.
But all in all, if Mozilla really wants to stay in the market and keep a good slice of the market share, they need to accept standards and stop rambling about openness with unsupported, inferior formats. I think openness is when you support something widely accepted as a high quality standard, and not when you stick with license-free but unpopular or even closed formats.
Sophia Teutschler is unstoppable. Not only she’s just released her stunning new Wikipedia app for iPhone Articles (be sure to check out our review if you missed it. Then go buy the app.), but she’s already giving the last touches to a new app called “On this Day” which will be available as soon as Articles will have sold m0re than 10.000 copies. We received an early build of the new application and, guess what, it’s awesome.
You’ve probably heard that Apple is officially accepting submissions for iPad apps that will go into the iPad App Store; to be part of the “grand opening”, you’ll have to submit your app for review by March 27th. And unless specific conditions are met, I suggest you don’t do so.
It’s perfectly reasonable that developers want to jump on the wagon as soon as possible, submitting the app next week thus having it available when the iPad comes out and people will to spend money because they want new apps. Users will open the App Store knowing that they’re about to spend money because they need apps for their new toy, and we all know that a device is what apps make it. It’s a good thing that you (devs) are hurrying to have a stable version of your new app, and I understand that being among the first ones will be a terrific opportunity for you to get noticed, rise the charts and make money. But if you don’t pay attention now, that’s not gonna happen.
You don’t want to have an app that doesn’t work, just as you don’t want your inbox full of emails from users complaining about menus not working and crappy support for multitouch gestures. You won’t be able to test your new app on an actual iPad before the 27th, you’ll be submitting an application tested with a mouse and keyboard rather than hands and fingers. That’s insane. As much as the iPad simulator can work just fine, and as much as you think you’re good at Cocoa development, you’ll submit an incomplete software. Would you buy a car, knowing that its creators have never tested it on the road? I wouldn’t, honestly.
But spending bucks in the App Store is different from buying a new car. People will just fire up their credit cards and buy, buy, buy. So probably you’re playing this game, and you’re going to submit an incomplete and untested application because you know that people will buy it anyway. Now, let me ask you this: how long is that going to last, before people will start telling everyone that your app doesn’t work? Reviews will start appearing in the iTunes page and, eventually, you’ll be screwed. You’ll be the developer that thought he could make money just by selling crap on the first day. Are you sure you want to play this game?
I think that being a developer doesn’t only involve being good at Cocoa. You have a reputation, you’ve got an user base of customers that trust you, and you can’t betray them for an early gold rush. This is a different situation from the launch of the iPhone App Store: you had the chance to test your app on a real device back then, you knew how things were working, you knew how it would feel.
You have to remember that feeling an application is way more important than just having it available. And by submitting your incomplete application by March 27th, you’re putting the gold rush before the feel, and yourself.
It may sound like a joke, but it’s not: with a blog post Linebreak has announced the official release date of the long-awaited Cloud app, the Mac app that should revolutionize the way you share stuff on the web which we previously covered here.
Cloud app has gone under some major changes and improvements during these past months, the web app has been rewritten and the Mac client should sport some new Cocoa goodness as well. Also, the developers say they’ll open an API next week, so if you’re a developer and you’d like to integrate Cloud’s feature into your own app, now you can.
You should look forward to April 1st. It’s gonna be a great day for Mac users.
As you may have read in our huge Basecamp and Backpack article, we fell in love with these 37signals products, and I don’t see this love fading away anytime soon. Together with Backpack and Basecamp we decided to give a try to Campfire, the real time chat communication service for small and large teams, and we’re very satisfied. The web interface is simple and uncluttered, it’s fast and reliable and when combined with a Mac app like Propane, it’s a must have for any kind of team.
Guess what, I immediately went looking for a decent Campfire client for iPhone, and Ember seemed a pretty good choice. More than decent and pretty good actually, Ember by OverCommitted is the app you have to purchase if you’re a Campfire user.
Thanks everyone who entered the Eternity Time Log giveaway. Also, we’d like to thank the Komorian developers for the promo codes they gave to MacStories.
Here are the winners:
Tony
SebaSonido
Ellen
Rossella
Matthew
cjmegatron81
Arne
Mhaddy
AdamW
Philippe
You’ll receive the licenses in your inbox in a matter of a few hours. Stay tuned for other giveaways coming this week.
In the meantime, you can follow the official MacStories Twitter account as @macstoriesnet.
