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Posts in iOS

Tweetbot Adds Support for New Twitter ‘Quote’ Feature

An update to Tweetbot released last Friday has introduced support for Twitter’s new ‘quote’ feature, which allows to add comments to tweets without wasting text and while still embedding the original message with a nice preview.

The feature, first launched by Twitter in its iPhone app last month, allows Tweetbot users to quote tweets by adding their comments before a twitter.com URL. When a tweet is sent in Quote mode, the comments will be displayed on top of the original tweet, which will be shown as an inline preview that carries the original user’s profile name, username, a truncated version of the tweet, and any included Twitter photo. This is closely modeled after Twitter’s own quote style, which also embeds tweets with text and images.

Version 3.6 of Tweetbot with the new quote feature is available on the App Store. Twitterrific, iOS’ other popular third-party Twitter client by The Iconfactory, hasn’t been updated with support for quoted tweets yet, but, considering the addition in Tweetbot, I hope it’ll follow soon with its own take on the functionality.

Unread 1.5 Adds iOS 8 Share Sheet, 1Password Support

Originally created by Jared Sinclair and later acquired by Supertop, Unread is one of the few reading apps that’s been unmistakably built for the age of multitouch. By abstracting traditional UI complexities from an RSS reader to achieve a purity of text and images, Unread features an excellent reading experience on the iPhone and iPad with comfortable gestures that make the app feel natural, fresh, and useful.

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djay Comes to Apple Watch, Mac App Gains Video Mixing

Popular DJ app djay (which I covered numerous times on MacStories in the past) has announced today an Apple Watch counterpart that will bring a slimmed down interface with controls and music selection to the wrist.

On Apple Watch, djay will allow users to import tracks stored in the iPhone’s Music app, automix songs from a connected Spotify account, and even apply effects and loops with a simplified UI and a subset of the controls available in the iPhone app.

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WhatsApp Adds iOS 8 Share Extension

With an update released today, WhatsApp has introduced free audio calling on iOS (previously launched on Android), improvements to how photos can be attached to conversations, and a new iOS 8 share extension to send content from other apps.

VoIP calling is still rolling out to users worldwide and I’m not a heavy user of media sharing through WhatsApp (I prefer iMessage’s higher quality settings), but I often share links and images downloaded from the web with WhatsApp, and I was curious to try the new extension.

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iOS 8.3 and Desktop File Managers

I missed this when reports first came out last week: with iOS 8.3, file managers such as iMazing and iExplorer can no longer access the document libraries of iOS apps over a USB connection.

Joe Rossignol writes:

Apple has changed security settings in iOS 8.3 that prevent file managers and transfer utilities such as iFunBox, iTools, iExplorer, iBackupBot and PhoneView from gaining access to app directories on an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. The change breaks current versions of transfer utilities for OS X and Windows, forcing many developers to release new versions of their software with workarounds that restore at least partial sandbox access.

If Apple’s argument is that the ability to access app files has been disabled for security concerns, I may understand that position. But that doesn’t change the fact that, while some apps can still pass along files over USB to the aforementioned file managers if they support iTunes File Sharing, other apps are now cut off from USB file transfers if they don’t support iTunes.

Or, if they can’t support iTunes File Sharing.

Case in point: Pythonista. Due to rules that prevent Python scripts from being manually copied with iTunes File Sharing from a computer to Pythonista (that’s a whole other topic worth arguing), Ole Zorn’s app doesn’t show up in iTunes. And because of other Apple rules (App Store Review Guidelines, 2.8), Pythonista can’t sync scripts with iCloud or other services across devices either.

Still, before iOS 8.3, I could transfer Python scripts from my Mac to my iPad (and vice versa) using iMazing; now I get this error:

I wanted to save a backup of scripts I created on my iPad over the weekend (as I always do), but I couldn’t access them over USB anymore due to iOS 8.3. Instead, I ended up having to copy and paste code as plain text, create text files in Dropbox, and sync everything back to my Mac.

I don’t know what would be better for Apple’s users – whether it’d be preferable to reinstate USB access to all app directories through third-party file managers, let users decide which kind of files they want to sync between devices, or open up iTunes File Sharing (even if Apple doesn’t recommend it anymore) to more file formats.

A basic question remains: if I program on an iPad and I want to access my script files within reasonable security measures, why shouldn’t I be able to?

Wikipedia for iOS Gets ‘Textshot’ Support with Visual Fact Sharing

The practice of sharing ‘textshots’ – screenshots of text, as they’re often referred to – has taken off among certain tech niches for two reasons. First, turning text into a static image is a primitive but effective workaround to circumvent Twitter’s 140-character limitations. But more importantly, humans have a natural tendency for convenience and visual feedback, and these two aspects are combined in the art of well crafted textshots: they save you a click, and they make shared passages of text more visually appealing. There are several reasons as to why textshots are working well for some Twitter users, but the underlying idea is extremely simple: images can add flair to a tweet in a way that plain text can’t.

Wikipedia is hoping that this concept will also apply to their app, which, following a rollout on Android, is getting the ability to share facts as ‘cards’ on iOS today. I tried a pre-release version of the app, and, while far from Instapaper’s surprisingly advanced textshot implementation, the Wikimedia Foundation has put some nice touches in this feature.

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