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Hacking the Tweet Stream→

MG Siegler writes about one of the latest trends in changing the way longer messages are shared on Twitter:

More recently, there’s been a trend with a similar goal (to increase the 140-character limit), but immensely better execution and flow: appending screenshots of text to tweets.

In the age of Tweetstorms, I thought I would grow to hate this as well. But I actually quite like it. One big reason: it maintains the flow of the tweet stream. That is, it’s one tweet with a payload, so it both flows in and out of the stream just as quickly as a regular tweet. And, more importantly, it can be retweeted (another one of those early Twitter “hacks” that has since become part of the official canon) and replied to without breaking context.

I’ve seen this as well, and it’s becoming more frequent each week. Since the beginning of mobile Twitter clients, there’s always been a desire from some users to be able to share longer tweets. Twitter never caved in to the pressure and maintained the historic character limitation of tweets, but, as MG notes, screenshots and tweetstorms are clever in that they “hack” the Twitter stream natively through replies and inline previews. An interesting consequence of changing the timeline from a simple list of tweets to something different.

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A Safari View Controller→

Bryan Irace writes about web views in iOS and offers a great idea for the future: a Safari view controller.

But in-app browsers have some pretty massive downsides as well. They can’t access cookies stored by other in-app browsers, nor Safari, requiring the user to repeatedly log in to websites that they should already be authenticated with. iCloud Keychain is great for syncing credentials across devices, but while Safari has access to its data, in-app browsers don’t. This isn’t merely Apple being punitive – it’d be horribly negligent to give third-party applications access to this kind of information.

Essentially, developers would be able to implement a web view based on Safari that offers Safari features to other apps while also isolating code from third-party access. This would be good for security, for example, but also for consistency with extensions and iCloud features.

As I noted earlier this week, implementations of web views can be massively different from app to app. A native Safari view could offer more options than standard web views and secure user data from third-party apps (case in point). It could also provide a solution to this:

You can find Bryan’s suggestion on OpenRadar.

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Virtual: Weaponized Hashtags→

This week Myke and Federico catch up with the current progress in the new Pokemon games, before discussing No Man’s Sky, Zelda Wii U and a tonne of news and announcements from the Video Game awards and the PlayStation Experience Event.

News-packed show on Virtual this week. You can get the episode here.

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Connected: On Principle, I Shunned These Ideas→

This week, Federico, Myke and what’s left of Stephen discuss some Evernote follow-up, recent App Store drama and what’s going on with Twitter clients.

On this week’s Connected, we discuss recent App Store rejections (Transmit’s iCloud Drive feature has been reinstated) and the conclusion of my Twitter article. Get the episode here.

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iCloud Drive Sharing Restored in Transmit→

Earlier this week, Panic was forced to remove Transmit’s ability to send files to iCloud Drive following a request by Apple. Fortunately, Apple has reversed their decision (as it happened for the PCalc widget) and a new version of Transmit has been released on the App Store.

As I argued last night on Connected, there could be an issue within Apple that leads to confusion with apps that can be promoted and rejected at the same time. We don’t, however, know the extent of this probable issue, and I don’t think speculating about internal conflicts is worth much (as with most things Apple, speculation isn’t useful).

We can (and should continue to) point out unfair and unreasonable rejections, especially for apps that aren’t made by popular companies such as Panic. Hopefully this latest string of questionable rejections and reversals will allow Apple to improve their internal App Review processes and make sure these cases become less frequent in the future.

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HockeyApp Acquired by Microsoft→

With a blog post, mobile development testing and feedback service HockeyApp has announced they’ve been acquired by Microsoft.

From the HockeyApp blog:

Microsoft has been a HockeyApp customer with many apps since the early days back in 2011, so they were already familiar with the stability and quality of our service. Creating the best developer experience is key to both Microsoft and HockeyApp, this includes delivering industry leading tools for the major mobile platforms: iOS, Android and Windows. We saw the potential of the added abilities and resources of Microsoft to make our platform even better. It may sound cliché, but it really does feel like a match made in heaven.

We want to be very clear about the most important thing: we remain dedicated to our mission of making the best mobile app development feedback and testing distribution platform in the world. Your HockeyApp apps and accounts will continue to work and the team has not stopped working on advancing the platform. Throughout the next few months, we’ll reveal more about our plans with Microsoft.

In a separate blog post, Microsoft has also shared details of what to expect from the near future of HockeyApp:

In the coming months, we will introduce new iOS and Android SDKs for Application Insights based on the features of HockeyApp. Application Insights offers a 360-degree view of application usage, availability, and performance across both client and server/cloud application components. Integrating HockeyApp crash reports with Application Insights usage analytics will extend device support for Application Insights across all major mobile platforms and make application analytics an ambient part of the application development cycle with support for all tiers of a modern “mobile first, cloud first” solution.

It’s not surprising to see HockeyApp becoming part of Microsoft following TestFlight and Crashlytics joining Apple and Twitter, respectively. Mobile development testing has become essential to the app economy, and big companies want to control that part of the stack.

As a user, I always preferred HockeyApp to the original TestFlight. HockeyApp was fast, its Timeline view was excellent (see all beta builds from newest to oldest), and it was always more reliable than the old TestFlight. The new TestFlight, though, is much easier and integrated than third-party beta testing services: developers can add up to 1000 external testers using Apple IDs rather than device UDIDs. That alone has been a massively welcome change: I only need to give my email address to developers, and then I can download an app without going crazy with certificates and UDIDs.

Most of the betas I try for MacStories have switched to the new TestFlight. It’s just too convenient and integrated. I do think, however, that there’s still room for services like HockeyApp, which offers developers more insights, cross-platform support, and the ability to avoid Apple’s often problematic web services. It’ll be interesting to see where Microsoft takes HockeyApp.

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Virtual: Raichu’s Kind of a Bully→

This week Federico and Myke discuss music influenced by video games, revisit the Wii U as a viable platform, celebrate 20 years of PlayStation, give their first impressions of the new Pokemon games and bemoan what EA have done to Peggle.

Make sure to listen to the second Crying album I mentioned, and go check out USgamer’s retrospective on the original PlayStation. You can get the episode here.

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Professional App Pricing→

Rob Rhyne, in response to Allen Pike’s post about the lack of a great app to record podcasts, has a few ideas about pricing professional software:

Professionals use your software to make money. If you can find a way for them to do their job faster or better, they will pay nearly any price. Did you purchase the maximum spec for your last computer or did you buy the cheapest you could find? Professionals always trade money for productivity. The real trick is building a product that makes them faster and better. Solve that problem and you can name your price.

I completely agree with Rob. Even on iOS, developers should consider creating professional software that’s aimed at a specific audience willing to pay what is a considered a “premium” on the App Store. There are examples of developers that understand this well, such as Teleprompt+, Numerics, Omni’s apps, and TrialPad.

If you can build a customer base that needs your app to get work done faster, there’s a good chance they’d be willing to pay higher prices and reward you with commitment to the product, constant suggestions and bug reports, and no inclination to be curious about competing products, even if they’re cheaper. I believe that’s true on any platform and digital marketplace.

For more on this topic, check out Michael Jurewitz’s blog posts from last year.

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Connected: Spinning Down This Rolodex→

Stephen, Myke and Federico discuss accents, social networks, web browsers and the Today widget fiasco. Myke has a headache again.

Back from the Twitter discussion of last week, we talk about Apple’s confusing policies for Today widgets and our different setups for Safari and Chrome on iOS and OS X. You can get the episode here.

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