Posts in Linked

The Skip→

Skipping has become an important part of how we listen to music. It is no surprise then, that ‘unlimited skipping’ is a feature used to entice people to upgrade to a premium paid account. And it may be one of the reasons why people would switch from a service that doesn’t offer unlimited skips even on their premium service to one that does.

Fascinating analysis of Spotify data by Paul Lamere. I would have expected the difference between mobile and desktop to be higher, especially because smartphones and tablets have playback controls available in the Lock screen.

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Owning Music vs. Acquiring Music→

Brad Hill, writing at RAIN News about the shift from owning music to acquiring it through Internet streaming services and the importance of “music ID” apps:

One growing catalyst of this trend is the music-identification app, a category dominated by Shazam and SoundHound. These apps, which identify music wherever in the world it is heard, bring the “celestial jukebox” down to earth where it is even more vast and connected to the user.

Increasingly, these apps function as pivot points between what you hear and how you acquire. They enable purchasing an identified song in iTunes, for those who still favor outright ownership. But more ominously for music-download merchants, Shazam and SoundHound can fling your song discoveries into some of the most popular on-demand services.

Years after the launch of Shazam and SoundHound, it still feels incredible to me that you can hold your phone up to a speaker to recognize any song in seconds. Apple has reportedly recognized the value of music ID software, and they may be planning to integrate Shazam into Siri for iOS 8.

I hope that, if true, this integration won’t be exclusive to Siri’s voice activation system, because one of the best things about Shazam is that you only need to tap the app icon to start listening. A voice-only command would ruin Shazam’s immediacy (not to mention that Siri would have issues understanding your voice command if loud music is playing). Ideally, it’d be great to simply activate Siri with a tap & hold of the Home button anywhere on iOS and let it listen to whatever’s playing with no voice input required.

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Much Ado About The iPad→

Riccardo Mori, in an excellent collection of thoughts about the iPad’s cyclical demise:

Also, it would be interesting to further investigate where those ‘unrealistic expectations’ come from. I’m aware it’s not a huge statistical sample, but considering the people I know, online and offline, who own an iPad, and considering the people I’ve helped with their iPad, virtually none of them has manifested dissatisfaction with the device in an ‘unmet expectations’ kind of way. Everyone I know seems to have been aware of the scope of the device when they purchased it. They knew or understood what they could and what they could not do with it. There has been the occasional nuisance, but nothing that can be considered a ‘deal breaker.’

It’s important to keep in mind that, despite all the things iOS could do better, we shouldn’t confuse the average iPad customer with tech bloggers trying to use WordPress on an iPad.

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Motion UI Design Principles→

Great collection of motion patterns in iPhone user interfaces by Grant Liddall (via iOS Dev Weekly and collected from Capptivate):

Steer clear of distracting or even confusing the user with too much animation, Subtlety is key. It should be used to maintain or help focus. Not take it away. Also don’t over elaborate aspects such as screen transitions. This becomes increasingly frustrating to the user over time. Or if they are simply left waiting for what seems like “forever”.

Since iOS 7 came out, I’ve seen developers who failed to acknowledge the new OS’ reliance on context through motion and, on the other end of the spectrum, those who implemented too many heavy-handed transitions and animations that always become gaudy and detrimental to the user experience after a few days. Even Apple is guilty of this with some of the animations throughout the OS.

As usual, it’s hard to balance the abundance of available tools with good design, but the best iOS 7 apps are the ones that meaningfully rely on motion when necessary, not just because it looks good or new.

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The Prompt: Is It Okay To Be Nervous?→

This week, with Myke at the Úll Conference, the Southern one and the Italian one discuss WebObjects, the recent MacBook Air update and OS X’s possible impending redesign before talking about what may be ailing the iPad as a product.

Our pre-WWDC discussion starts with concerns about a possible redesign of OS X, rumored to be on track for a June announcement.

Get the episode here.

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Twitter Experimenting With Mute Feature In iOS App→

Casey Newton, writing at The Verge:

One of the most-requested features for Twitter’s mobile apps may be on the cusp of arriving. Some users of the company’s iOS and Android clients are now seeing an option to mute accounts that they follow, preventing another user’s tweets and retweets from appearing in their timeline. The user remains muted until you manually unmute them. In essence, then, the mute feature works as a kind of stealth unfollow — you won’t be seeing another person’s tweets, but they won’t know that.

Alongside timeline sync and streaming, mute is one of the most popular features of third-party iOS clients such as Tweetbot and Twitterrific. Based on screenshots from people who can see the feature in their Twitter app, it looks like Twitter is experimenting with a simple account-based option; in Tweetbot, you can create complex mute filters for keywords and usernames.

While I don’t see myself moving away from Tweetbot 3 any time soon, I’d certainly welcome a mute button in Twitter for iOS (which I like to use when looking for news).

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One Year of Feed Wrangler→

Feed Wrangler launched a year ago today. David Smith’s RSS service is still my favorite one in the post-Reader era, and I’m glad I decided to support Smith and his vision last year.

Today, Smith has posted his thoughts on the past year and shared initial details on the Feed Wrangler roadmap. You can read them here.

The second year of Feed Wrangler is shaping up to be one with several substantial improvements. The first year necessitated a significant investment and focus in the backend and infrastructure components of the service. The second year should allow me to focus more heavily on the more user visible parts. I have a number of projects I’m actively working on to improve the overall experience of using the service.

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JavaScript Actions In Mr. Reader 3.1→

In an update released last week on the App Store, Mr. Reader has gained the ability to execute JavaScript actions based on individual scripts configurable in the app’s Settings. Developer Oliver Fürniß has documented the app’s new JavaScript integration here.

Mr. Reader already was a versatile and capable feed reader for iPad – notably, the app introduced a customizable Services menu that allowed users to set up their own sharing actions with URL schemes. The new JavaScript actions go a step beyond URL schemes as they enable Mr. Reader to store article information in a variety of new ways such as collections that can be copied to the clipboard.

I’m interested to see what Mr. Reader users will come up with to further extend the app. Mr. Reader has clearly taken the power-user approach for feed reading and management on the iPad, and the app remains a highly recommended purchase at $3.99. In the update, Mr. Reader also received native support for OneNote, Reminders, and improved search.

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