Posts in Linked

Norman Foster On The Design Of Apple’s Spaceship Campus→

Architectural Record (via MacRumors) has published an interview with architect Norman Foster, which includes two questions about Apple’s future spaceship campus:

So what made the form of a ring the logical choice for this building?

It’s interesting how it evolved. First of all, there was a smaller site. Then, as the project developed, and the Hewlett-Packard site became available, the scale of the project changed.

Meanwhile, the reference point for Steve [Jobs] was always the large space on the Stanford campus—the Main Quad—which Steve knew intimately. Also, he would reminisce about the time when he was young, and California was still the fruit bowl of the United States. It was still orchards.

Demolition of existing structures at the location of future Apple Campus 2 is well underway after the company received final approval from the Cupertino City Council in November.

Permalink

xsuc.es for Mobile Safari→

Joseph Schmitt, writing in response to Greg Pierce’s hack to simulate x-callback-url support in Chrome:

Wouldn’t it be great if Safari supported Chrome’s back button behavior? It sure would. However, Apple’s laissez faire attitude towards inter-app communication keeps me from holding my breath on this front. Therefore, I was truly excited when I saw this post by the father of x-callback-url himself, Greg Pierce, wherein he launches a simple HTML page in Safari and uses JavaScript to add x-success links to the page on his own. Woah, awesome!

However, Greg’s technique depends on loading a full-screen iframe on the page and overlaying a back button on top to trigger the x-success url. That gets the job done, but I really prefer how Chrome handles this: make the last page jump to the previous app. I brainstormed for a bit and figured I could probably replicate Chrome’s behavior’s using Greg’s idea, and I was right: xsuc.es was born.

To build actions with xsuc.es, see the URL parameters in Joseph’s blog post. The format is easy to understand if you’re already familiar with URL schemes; here’s a demo action to launch a Google search in Safari based on xsuc.es from Launch Center Pro.

xsuc.es is a nicer hack that takes over Safari’s Back button to go back to a previous app like Chrome does, albeit without the app’s name visible alongside the button. You can, however, tap & hold the back button to see the app you’re going back to. It would be nice to mix a success URL scheme with the address of the webpage you’re currently viewing, although I believe that’s beyond the limit of how much it’s possible to work around Safari’s JavaScript.

Permalink

Mimic Google Chrome’s x-callback-url Support In Mobile Safari→

Speaking of Greg Pierce, I’m intrigued by the workaround he found to mimic support for x-callback-url in Safari for iOS:

For those not familiar, it is possible to use x-callback-url support in Google Chrome on iOS to open a URL from another app, and have Chrome present a “Back” button to return to the app you opened the URL from. Safari does not offer this level of integration.

To mimic this feature in Safari, I have created an intermediate HTML page with a little javascript that can take a “url” and “x-success” parameter. If it gets these, it will load the “url” in an iframe that displays full screen, and present a “< Back” button in the top left of the screen, which when tapped will open the URL in the “x-success” parameter.

Here’s what I did: I downloaded Greg’s HTML file on my Mac, put it in my Public folder in Dropbox, and got the direct link that can be accessed by any web browser. With that, I edited the Drafts action Greg made and now I have a custom “callback page” that I can integrate with Safari and actions from Drafts, Launch Center Pro, Editorial, or Mr. Reader. I’m thinking of how I could take advantage of this solution in my workflows – the nice part: you can navigate across pages inside the frame – but I believe I will mostly use it to quickly check a webpage in Safari and go back to the previous app quickly.

It’s an interesting workaround, but still a hack. For instance, it’s not possible to dynamically generate a callback address from the address that’s currently loaded in the frame. Still, if you want to put together a basic alternative to Chrome’s excellent x-callback-URL support, check it out.

Permalink

Phraseology Adds “Show Spelling Issues” Option→

Cool new addition to the latest update to Phraseology by Greg Pierce:

This update adds a cool new “Show Spelling Issues” option in syntax highlighter. When used, possible spelling errors (based on the same spell checking used by auto-correct) will be highlighted in red. Tapping on one triggers the suggestion menu for replacements. The spelling issue highlighting cannot be used at the same time as part of speech highlighting, so will disable other highlights when turned on.

With version 2.0, Phraseology (which was already a great app) turned into a powerful solution for writers who want to enhance their writing workflow on iOS. Today’s update brings a minor but important addition: when I write in Editorial, I keep spelling turned off because I want to reduce distractions as much as possible. Phraseology is meant for highlighting words, so adding native spell checking to the app makes sense.

Phraseology is $2.99 on the App Store.

Permalink

Crashlytics Announces New Beta Distribution Tool→

Matthew Panzarino from TechCrunch highlights a new beta distribution tool from Crashlytics, which was acquired by Twitter last year.

The new distribution tool is cross-platform — meaning that it works on both Android and iOS. That puts it on rough parity with Hockey, the other major player in the beta distribution space, though Hockey also supports Windows Phone.

The new tool comes out of Crashlytics Labs, the experimental arm of the crash-reporting and analytics firm. It’s been in private beta for a bit but is now expanding into public beta …

Crashlytics has their own blog post about the new venture here, where you can sign up to try their new tool.

Permalink

My Finances Lets You View Your Income and Expenses at a Glance→

If you just want to keep tabs on your expenditures and income without the overhead of managing a budget, My Finances is a lightweight iPhone app that gives you a glance at how you’re spending your money and what your net worth is at any given time. Put expenditures into categories, track how you’re spending over time, and make quick decisions on whether you’re spending too much. To begin tracking, My Finances lets you enter a starting value in the settings to create a baseline. The app doesn’t connect to your bank to automatically track spending, but it does you mindful since you have to enter each transaction yourself. Setting up basic categories for gas, groceries, public transportation, and eating out can go a long way towards becoming aware of where your money is really going. The app is free to download, but an in-app purchase for $3.99 unlocks all of the features.

Permalink

The Effective Way To Ask For An App Review→

The developers at Supertop, makers of Castro for iPhone, write:

Castro 1.0.4 had received 10 App Store reviews in the first three days of its release. After three days 1.0.5 had 48.

We wondered if the dramatic increase was a coincidence so when 1.0.6 was released we left the request out. Three days later we had only 4 new reviews, after a week we had 8. It took three weeks to get 24 reviews, half of what we had after three days for the previous version.

It’s good to know that asking for something nicely on the Internet can still produce satisfying results. Castro’s audience is certainly used to reading release notes, so until Apple changes how App Store reviews are reset for each app update, this might just work as a viable alternative to review prompts.

Permalink

Understanding Apple’s New Deployment Programs→

Fraser Speirs explains the changes Apple introduced yesterday for deployment programs.

Yesterday Apple released two new deployment programs for iOS and Mac, and rolled out enhancements to another. I want to explain as best I can how they work together.

The Volume Purchase Program has been significantly enhanced and there are two new programs: Device Enrolment Program and AppleID for Students. Let’s look at each of these in turn.

I assume the topic will also be covered soon in Fraser’s podcast, Out of School.

Permalink