Posts in Linked

Apple Executives On The Mac At 30→

Macworld’s Jason Snell has an interview with Apple executives Phil Schiller, Craig Federighi, and Bud Tribble about the 30 years of the Mac (Tribble was part of the original Macintosh team). It’s a great interview, and this part about convergence of OS X and iOS stood out to me:

The reason OS X has a different interface than iOS isn’t because one came after the other or because this one’s old and this one’s new,” Federighi said. Instead, it’s because using a mouse and keyboard just isn’t the same as tapping with your finger. “This device,” Federighi said, pointing at a MacBook Air screen, “has been honed over 30 years to be optimal” for keyboards and mice. Schiller and Federighi both made clear that Apple believes that competitors who try to attach a touchscreen to a PC or a clamshell keyboard onto a tablet are barking up the wrong tree.

“It’s obvious and easy enough to slap a touchscreen on a piece of hardware, but is that a good experience?” Federighi said. “We believe, no.

Later in the article, Snell included other quotes by Federighi and Schiller about how each device in Apple’s lineup fills a specific role. The message is clear, but I’m sure that it still won’t convince analysts to better understand the company they’re covering.

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Workflow Requests #1→

Earlier today, I asked:

I had some free time, and decided to provide a solution to some of the requests I received. I don’t know if I will repeat this experiment in the future (although it’s likely, because I had fun), but if you have questions, feel free to ask. I don’t see why you shouldn’t speed up that tedious task you’ve been doing over and over on your iPad or iPhone with an action, workflow, or script.

The best part – you can download the actions below and skip this step entirely.


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Stockfish For Mac with Chess Analysis→

Developed by Daylen Yang, Stockfish is a free and open-source chess app for Mac based on the Stockfish chess engine.

The app does a couple of interesting things: it’s Retina-ready and it can go full-screen, so you’ll enjoy a chess game on your MacBook Pro’s display without distractions. It supports two-player games and it’s got exporting capabilities and keyboard shortcuts. But more importantly, it comes with advanced chess analysis that lets the computer tell you who’s winning and calculate the best move. I’m fascinated by the technological premise: the app can let you choose to optimize analysis for maximum performance so that more cores will be used to compute chess analyses; even the amount of memory to use can be adjusted. It should be pretty impressive on a new Mac Pro.

Stockfish is free on the Mac App Store and open-source. The Stockfish engine is available here.

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Keep Your iTunes Wishlist in Mentio for iPhone→

If you’re saving up for a that special movie, latest iTunes albums, or popular new app, keep track of it with Mentio. The wishlist app lets you add media by searching iTunes and the App Store, lets you share your wishes with friends, and has both light and dark themes for your viewing pleasure. Each item you add contains a small summary (like descriptions for movies), and the option to purchase the item once you’re ready to buy. Useful if you buy apps and media using iTunes gift cards. Download Mentio for a dollar on the App Store.

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The Evolution Of Simogo→

From Lee Bradley’s profile of Simogo at Eurogamer:

Go back a decade, however, and the art, design and audio half of Simogo wasn’t even interested in making games. In the early 2000s, while working as an animator on movies and commercials, Simon Flesser felt that games were in a pretty uninteresting place. Then, in 2004, the Nintendo DS arrived with its touch-sensitive screen and a new set of inputs. His imagination was lit.

I loved Year Walk last year, but I still haven’t played DEVICE 6. I remember how different Another Code felt to me when it came out in 2005, and Simogo’s games have the same effect – they are uniquely designed for a platform and a multitouch screen, rather than just tweaked for them.

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BugshotKit→

Marco Arment:

I’m starting the Overcast beta soon, and I wanted an easy way for my testers to report (non-crash) bugs and provide UI feedback. I also wanted a way to remind myself of UI or feature ideas easily, and I’ve occasionally needed to view the error console on the device when tracking down difficult bugs.

BugshotKit addresses all of these: it’s an embeddable Bugshot annotation interface and console logger, invoked anywhere in your app by an otherwise unused gesture (e.g. a two-finger swipe up, a three-finger double-tap, pulling out from the right screen edge, etc.), that lets you or your testers quickly email you with helpful details, screenshots, and diagnostic information.

I’ve tried BugshotKit in an app I’m testing, and it’s a fantastic idea: screenshot annotations and logging are available in a single screen that doesn’t require you to switch between apps, save screenshots, copy logs, and put everything together in Mail. If you’re a developer and you’re building an app, consider implementing BugshotKit to have happier, more efficient beta testers.

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