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Posts in news

Sandboxing Difficulties Mean Coda 2.5 Will Not Be Released on the Mac App Store


Panic announced yesterday that they will be moving away from the Mac App Store for distribution of their popular and Apple Design Award winning Coda app. Panic has been working for a number of months on a significant 2.5 update for Coda but have been struggling to resolve issues with maintaining adherence to the sandboxing requirements of the Mac App Store. Instead, Panic has decided to revert back to distribution of Coda outside of the Mac App Store so they can release the update shortly.

As we continued to work on Coda 2.5—a significant update that we’re really excited about—we continued to discover new corners of the app that presented challenges under sandboxing. Coda, to be fair, is a very complex developer tool and is something of a sandboxing worst-case scenario.

Panic makes this move despite the fact that they had a notable degree of help from teams within Apple - but it seems that ultimately it just was not enough. They write that Apple “to their considerable credit, spent a lot of energy assisting us with ideas, workarounds, and temporary exemptions we might be able to use to get around some of the issues”. The move also comes more than a year after Panic successfully made the decision to change the way Coda worked in some ways so that it could be sold on the Mac App Store despite the, new at the time, sandboxing rules.

The new version, which will be available from Panic’s website upon release, will automatically detect if there is a Mac App Store version of Coda installed and unlock the app for use. As a consequence of moving away from the Mac App Store, it also means the Coda can no longer use iCloud Sync and as a result, Panic have developed their own sync service - Panic Sync. This new service will be free and work across Panic’s apps, including Coda and Diet Coda.

Panic write in their announcement that they will always “evaluate the possibility of sandboxing with each future release of Coda”, with the hope of one day returning to the Mac App Store. Finally, Daniel Jalkut made the point on Twitter that Coda will no longer be eligible for the award it won last year, the Apple Design Award, because it is leaving the Mac App Store.

Birdbrain Updated with New iOS 7 Design, Graphs for Twitter Stats

Birdbrain is one of the oldest Twitter apps I’ve been using on my iPhone, but it’s not a Twitter client in the traditional sense. Before Tweetie 2 and Tweetbot, Twitter for iPhone and Tweetbot 3, Birdbrain, originally released in July 2009, allowed me to keep an eye on my Twitter stats for follower counts, mentions, number of retweets, and more. Part ego-boosting tool and part utility to better understand why or how many people follow you, Birdbrain is back today with an iOS 7 update that brings a redesign and a couple of new features to monitor your Twitter account.

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Castro 1.1 Brings UI Tweaks, Sleep Timer

We first talked about Supertop’s Castro, a podcast client for iPhone, when it came out in December, noting how the app fit well with iOS 7’s aesthetic and implemented cool features such as fast search and a peculiar scrubber. Today, Supertop has released Castro 1.1, a major update that further refines the app’s design and introduces new functionalities for playback controls.

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Twitter Launches Mute Feature, Updates iPad App

Following screenshots first surfaced two weeks ago, Twitter officially started rolling out a mute feature today that will allow users to stop seeing tweets and retweets from other users in their timelines without unfollowing them. The feature, rolling out to Twitter for iPhone, Android, and web, will also be available to third-party Twitter developers through the service’s API.

From the Twitter blog:

In the same way you can turn on device notifications so you never miss a Tweet from your favorite users, you can now mute users you’d like to hear from less. Muting a user on Twitter means their Tweets and Retweets will no longer be visible in your home timeline, and you will no longer receive push or SMS notifications from that user. The muted user will still be able to fave, reply to, and retweet your Tweets; you just won’t see any of that activity in your timeline. The muted user will not know that you’ve muted them, and of course you can unmute at any time.

The mute feature can be accessed through a contextual menu available both on the web and iOS; muted users will be indicated by a red mute icon on their profile page, and they can be “unmuted” at any time.

Made popular by third-party clients such as Tweetbot and Twitterrific, muting has long been requested by users who wished to keep following somebody without necessarily seeing all their tweets in the timeline on a daily basis. Twitter’s implementation, however, doesn’t include the more advanced features found in Tapbots’ client for iPhone and iPad: in Twitter, muting is limited to users, while Tweetbot includes muting filters for hashtags and specific keywords. It’s unclear at this point whether third-party apps will switch to Twitter’s official mute feature soon, but it’s likely that developers will choose to keep their own custom solutions as options for advanced mute filters.

In today’s rollout, Twitter also updated their iOS app to version 6.5 to include changes to the iPad interface that mirror what the company brought to the iPhone months ago. Media from Vine as well as Twitter Photos are displayed in the timeline with inline previews, alongside buttons to quickly retweet, reply, mark as favorite, or follow other users. Navigation has been refreshed, search comes with tabs for Top and All tweets, and it’s now possible to apply filters to photos directly on the iPad.

Twitter 6.5 is rolling out on the App Store.

Symbolay Combines Unicode Symbols with Power User Features

Whether you want to add a little personality to your tweets or include special characters in your notes, there’s no easy way to copy Unicode symbols on iOS. While I’ve covered my fair share of iOS apps for the task in the past, Symbolay stands out for the amount of options it gives you when copying symbols and launching searches from other apps.

Symbolay’s main screen offers the usual section-based organization with categories for pictograms, arrows, shapes, alphabets, and more. There is a search bar to look for specific items by name, and the interface is clean and obvious on iOS 7. The app’s real strength lies in the output options: symbols can be copied directly in the clipboard, or you can copy them as Python code, HTML entities, or pure code names – these help if, for instance, you’re writing code on the iPad and don’t want to rely on an online converter to turn symbols into code using Safari. You can save favorites and browse your recently viewed symbols, collect them in a scratchpad, and, if you’re on a keyboard, use shortcuts to speed up the entire process.

Furthermore, the app supports a URL scheme that allows you to trigger searches from Launch Center Pro or Drafts; on the website, there’s even a workflow to integrate Symbolay with Editorial for text editing.

Symbolay is a nice reference tool for Unicode symbols with handy features aimed at power users and programmers. It’s Universal and $4.99 on the App Store.

Yahoo News Digest Goes International

Yahoo’s News Digest, an app that provides daily news summaries collected from multiple sources, has been updated today to include an International edition and better support for local time zones when sending daily reminders.

I’ve been keeping an eye on News Digest since our initial review:

Contrary to the previous example, Yahoo excels at disseminating information around people and locations. Summaries on politicians, celebrities, and athletes are rounded out with Wikipedia links, maps showing where the event took place, photos, and videos that consist of panels, analysis, or interviews from various news outlets. Where traditional news articles might have a single image and caption, Yahoo’s digest throws complete image galleries, videos, and a list of sources at the end of each summary.

In previous versions, I found News Digest to be a clever idea with an attractive interface, but the app was obviously US-centric and, after a few days, I had to uninstall it because I simply didn’t care about news that weren’t relevant to me. With the latest update, however, I’m already seeing a good diversification of global news for politics and entertainment, and I think I’m going to stick with the app this time around.

While News Digest launched to some criticism, I am a fan of the idea (unfortunately, I don’t have time to stay on top of in-depth news every day) and I believe the realization is solid. Yahoo is making nice apps for iOS 7, and News Digest is a good example of a focus on content with clean text, large photos, and pleasant transitions. I’ve already received a news digest for my time zone, and I enjoy the break that the app gives me from tech news. I like it, and I’m looking forward to an Italian version at some point.

Yahoo News Digest is free on the App Store.