Posts in news

The Numbers From Apple’s October 23 Event

As usual with every Apple product announcement, keynotes start with “state of the business” introduction that, through various numbers and facts, reveals how the company is doing in several areas such as retail, the App Store, and hardware sales. At today’s media event in San Jose, Apple CEO Tim Cook shared some interesting details on a variety of subjects.

  • iPhone 5 is off to a “tremendous start”. It’s been the fastest-selling opening weekend in the history of mobile phones.
  • Apple has already sold 3 million units of the new iPods (combined with the rest of the line-up).
  • 200 million devices have been updated to iOS 6.
  • 125 million documents have been stored in iCloud.
  • 300 billion iMessages have been sent to date.
  • 28,000 iMessages are sent every second.
  • 160 million Game Center accounts have been created.
  • 70 million photos have been shared with Photo Stream.
  • 700,000 iOS apps are available, 275,000 iPad apps.
  • Customers have now downloaded 35 billion apps from the App Store.
  • $6.5 billion have been paid to developers.
  • 1.5 million books are available on iTunes.
  • 400 million books have been downloaded since the launch of the Store.

For more coverage, check out our October 23 news hub and follow @macstoriesnet on Twitter.

Use Twitter for iOS with App.net→

Use Twitter for iOS with App.net

Developed by Steve Streza, Apparchy is a proxy server that lets you use the official Twitter apps for iOS with App.net. Built for the App.net hackathon that took place yesterday, Apparchy provides a functional API that lets the official Twitter clients work with App.net. As Streza explains on his personal blog:

Today I shipped the first alpha of Apparchy, which turns Twitter’s official iOS apps into App.net clients. You sign up for a free account on apparchy.net, add your app.net account, and then log into the Twitter app with your Apparchy username and password. Then, the Twitter app will start loading data from app.net through the Apparchy API. You can view your stream, your mentions, your profile, your followers, and your friends, as well as post, reply, star, and repost. It’s not entirely complete, and some parts of the app will have no data or return nothing, but the core experience is pretty good.

I have set up Apparchy with my App.net account, and it works just as advertised. Some Twitter-related features and UI elements aren’t obviously compatible with App.net, but for the most part, Apparchy is indeed reliable as a Twitter=App.net bridge. There are some bugs, so use caution if you already rely on Twitter for iOS for your Twitter accounts.

If you, like me, don’t use Twitter for iOS but have it on your device, delete your existing accounts and set up Apparchy. I don’t like Twitter for iOS, but this is a cool experiment nevertheless.

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Apple Decorates California Theatre for iPad Mini Event→

Apple Decorates California Theatre for iPad Mini Event

As reported by Techie Buzz, Apple has decorated the California Theatre in San Jose, CA – the location for its upcoming media event next Tuesday – with colorful banners. Using the same graphical approach of the media invitation, the banners show an Apple logo inside a “psychedelic” background that also forms an Apple logo. The theatre marquee simply read “Apple Special Event”.

As we noted when Apple sent the invitations for the event to the press, the graphics are somewhat reminiscent of the first iPad event’s invitation, as well as background images Apple has used for recent events in San Francisco. Continuing an unofficial trend that has members of the press constantly speculating, Apple this time chose to use a “We’ve got a little more to show you” tagline.

Apple is, in fact, rumored to be announcing a smaller version of the iPad next week. Rumored to be called “iPad Mini”, the device will likely feature a 7.85-inch display and a thinner, lighter form factor. However, recent rumors have claimed Apple will also announce iBooks 3.0, a 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, and new iMacs and Mac minis at next week’s event.

Check out the entire photo gallery at Techie Buzz.

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“App Collections” Promoted To App Store Categories Menu

Since the launch of iOS 6 on September 19th, we’ve been tracking Apple’s efforts to promote a new section of the App Store called “App Collections”. In late June 2012, Apple launched  ”Game Collections”, which highlighted all the previous game “bundles” Apple had featured on the App Store. For the past couple of years, in fact, Apple has been handpicking apps and games and featuring them in standalone sections often promoted on the front page or elsewhere throughout the Store. For games, such sections included “Big Name Games” and “Benchmark Games”.

However, Apple often launched new sections while forgetting to add new content to existing ones; furthermore, there wasn’t a unified place to browse all the sections launched by Apple through the years. But we’ve noticed a change in the past months: with a revamp of the Editor’s Choice and App of the Week initiatives, Apple also started paying more attention to the curation and discovery aspects of sections. They started by adding new content and launching Game Collections in June; with iOS 6, they created App Collections and featured it in the App Store’s rotating banners; and now, they’re featuring App Collections directly in the Categories menu.

Both on the iPhone and Mac, App Collections are available from the Categories menu of the App Store. On iTunes, they are listed as “iPhone App Collections” and “iPad App Collections”. Interestingly, the iPad’s Categories still hasn’t been updated with the new option.

Apple’s description of App Collections makes it clear they are featuring apps that have been “personally tested”:

With hundreds of thousands of apps on the App Store, how do you find the apps you’ll love using? You’re in the right place – we’ve gathered our favorites here. Every app in these collections is personally tested and recommended by our editors. Whatever you do with your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch – shopping, watching movies, editing photos, and beyond – you’ll find apps that work smartly and beautifully.

Right now, there are 20 sections inside App Collections:

This may appear like a minor change, but it is, in fact, a signal of a major shift that could soon happen to the App Store’s discovery dynamics. As the App Store grows bigger in terms of available content, it’ll become harder for users to find the app they’re looking for, just like Apple says. Search doesn’t help when you don’t know what you need yet, and there’s only so much space Apple can give to weekly “New and Noteworthy” apps on the Store’s front page.

An up-to-date, lovingly curated collection of app bundles may become the best way for users to discover new apps. More importantly, app collections will put the focus on what an app does, rather than how it performs in the charts. It is a profound change for developers and users.

In my iOS 6 review, I noted how categories had been given a more prominent spot in the App Store’s top toolbar. As I wrote:

The good news for developers is that, with iOS 6, browsing single categories (not their top charts) may now be more accessible and visible to the end user: whereas in iOS 5 some always ignored the Categories tab in the bottom bar, a button to access every category is now available directly from the front page

Essentially, Apple is now treating App Collections as a category that deserves a user’s attention just like “Games” or “Productivity”. It wouldn’t be a surprise, at this point, to see more options like filters coming soon to App Collections as Apple invests more in it.

Last, App Collections highlights the human aspect of apps that are tested and recommended by Apple editors. We’ve long debated the importance of human curation in the App Store, but I think The Iconfactory’s Craig Hockenberry summed it up best in our App Store overview from May: “A movie recommendation from Roger Ebert means a lot more to me than a computer generated ranking based on reviewer scores. Automated systems can help, but I think it’s the personal touch that’s missing”.

Tweetbot for Mac Review

When the first alpha of Tweetbot for Mac came out in July, I said I would take a look at the app again. Here we are, three months later, with the final version of Tweetbot for Mac available on the App Store.

I concluded my review of the public alpha version with:

Right now, Tweetbot for Mac is, in my opinion, already superior to any other client for OS X — and it still can be improved. More importantly, Tweetbot makes better use of Twitter features than Twitter’s own Mac app, and that says a lot about the importance of third-party clients in this ecosystem.

In calling the alpha version of Tweetbot a “superior” product, I took quite a stance. I had been using the alpha for weeks before the public release, and I had the perspective and context to make a conscious and reasonable decision about my statement. I knew I was going to like Tweetbot and use it on a daily basis. Three months later, that’s still the case.

I’ll get to the point right away. Tweetbot is, in my opinion, the best Twitter client for Mac. From my perspective, no other app gets closer to the amount of polish and functionality that Tapbots poured into their latest creation, making it the most powerful, fast, and elegant Twitter app I’ve seen on OS X to date. In hindsight, it’s also a superior product than Twitter for Mac, which, as you may recall, used to be my go-to client. Three months ago I reviewed an app that I knew was going to be great.

In thinking about how I should approach this new review, I came to the conclusion that you don’t need me to go through the backstory of Twitter clients on the Mac. Here’s what I wrote, again, for context:

Ever since Loren Brichter (creator of the original Tweetie, who sold his app to Twitter and went on to work there) left the company, Twitter for Mac — what I had deemed as the best Twitter client for OS X — fell into an unexplainable state of abandon and lack of updates. You would think it’s in Twitter’s best interest to keep a native client up to date with the latest features of the service; and yet, after a solid first version — which came after years of speculation on Tweetie 2 — Twitter started ignoring the app, failing to bring several of Twitter’s new features (such as inline media and updated search) to the desktop. It only got worse recently: after many updates to Lion, Twitter for Mac has started showing new bugs and glitches that haven’t been fixed by Twitter, alongside the ones that have always been there and were never corrected. And then with the release of the Retina MacBook Pro, Twitter’s lack of support for high-res text and graphics became the proverbial final nail in the coffin of what used to be a great app.

Twitter for Mac still hasn’t received an update since last year. Some say it’s no longer in development.

In my review of Tweetbot Alpha, I briefly touched upon features that were missing from the app:

For instance, there is limited support for keyboard shortcuts, there are some rough edges around the interface, and one of my favorite features of Twitter for Mac — being able to navigate and switch sections with gestures — isn’t yet available. Indeed, Tapbots say that features like better management of multiple windows will be coming in the future, and they confirmed in a blog post that they are planning “ on making everything as beautiful and pixel perfect” as they can. Don’t be surprised if, in this version, some pixels will look misaligned or out of place. Eventually, it will all be fixed.

It is with this standpoint that I want to look at Tweetbot again: you don’t need me to know what Tweetbot is or what it looks like. Between the Mac and iOS, we’ve covered Tweetbot extensively here at MacStories.

What follows is my review of Tweetbot 1.0 based on how I use the final version of the app. The little features and the details I’ve come to rely upon, and the overall functionality that makes Tweetbot the best Twitter client for Mac. Read more

SearchLink: Markdown Links Without The Browser

I don’t know how Brett Terpstra finds the time to do everything he does, but I do know I enjoy the results.

Brett’s latest effort is SearchLink, a system Service to generate Markdown links automatically for a variety of web services. In Brett’s words:

SearchLink is a System Service for OS X that handles searching multiple sources and automatically generating Markdown links for text. It allows you to just write, marking things to link as you go. When you’re done, you run it on the document and — if your queries were good — have your links generated automatically without ever opening a browser.

Essentially, SearchLink is a Ruby script that, in the background, generates valid Markdown for inline links inserted in plain text. These can be links pointing to a Google search, a Mac App Store or iTunes search, last.fm, Wikipedia, and more. Instead of having to switch to the browser when you’re writing, you can just write using SearchLink’s simple syntax. Once you’re done, run the Service, and SearchLink will contact web APIs to transform your text into the first/best result for your query, formatted in Markdown. Read more

Apple Confirms: Media Event on October 23

As first reported by The Loop’s Jim Dalrymple, Apple just sent out invitations to the press for a media event taking place on October 23 in San Jose. The invitations show an Apple logo with the tag line “We’ve got a little more to show you”.

Unlike other recent events that have been held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Apple will hold this event at the California Theatre in San Jose .

According to recent speculation, Apple will unveil a new, smaller 7.85-inch iPad at the event dubbed “iPad Mini”. The device has been long rumored to be a smaller version of the last-gen iPad 2, carrying the same 1024x768 non-Retina display in a thinner and lighter body with a smaller display. The core feature of the iPad Mini should be portability, as well as a reduced price for consumers.

Curiously enough, the invitation is somewhat reminiscent of the one sent for the original iPad event in January 2010.

As noted by Jason Snell, the last time Apple held an event in San Jose at California Theater was for the iPod photo announcement with a Bono/Edge live performance.

Based on more recent rumors, next week may also see the introduction of refreshed iMac, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini lines. Specifically, Apple is rumored to be planning a 13-inch version of the MacBook Pro with Retina display, a thinner iMac, and a new Mac mini model.

To get a sense of what a 7.85” (as opposed to 9.7”) iPad Mini would be like, check out our mockups from July.

Shortcat: Spotlight For The User Interface

In my daily workflow, I rely on Alfred for Mac to find files, folders, and apps for me. Since July 2012, I have used Alfred 4,326 times for an average of 46.5 times a day. I use Alfred for a variety of tasks which include (but are not limited to) accessing favorite folders, launching Google search, acting on multiple files through the Buffer, and executing AppleScripts. Alfred is one of my favorite pieces of Mac software, ever.

I like launchers. They simplify my workflow while allowing me to save time and be more efficient. This is why I’ll keep an eye on the development of Shortcat, a new Mac app – currently in public beta – that aims at becoming a launcher for interface elements.

The developers describe Shortcat as “Spotlight for the user interface”, and that’s a fairly accurate description. Essentially, Shortcat relies on support for Assistive Devices (an Accessibility feature of OS X) to be able to “see” the labels of buttons and menus and “click” on them. So, for instance, instead of moving your cursor on the trackpad, you’ll be typing “back” to make Shortcat click the Back button in Safari.

Shortcat works better with apps that leverage Accessibility features and have properly labeled buttons and interface elements. In the app’s Help menu there’s already a list of apps that don’t work properly with Shortcat as it’s unable to “read” (and thus let you find) their interface elements. I am no Accessibility expert, but my guess is that these apps don’t support VoiceOver either.

In my tests, Shortcat was a pleasant surprise. If you don’t know about Accessibility, the app will look like a fantastic trick – how can it click for me when I’m just typing? In actual usage, there are some things to be considered. When you invoke the app with a shortcut (it’s customizable from the Terminal in this version) and you start typing, it will highlight areas of an app that match the letters you typed. The best match is highlighted in green, other possible “destinations” for the mouse are yellow. You can click on a button or menu by typing its full name or an abbreviation, such as “Add Action” or “AD” for the toolbar button in OmniFocus.

You can also tell Shortcat to show “hidden” results. By preceding your query with a dot, you’ll be able to reach interface elements that, at first glance, don’t have a label. I tested this with several apps, and, for instance, I was able to type “.1p” to click on the unlabeled 1Password extension in Safari, or “.n” to open the compose box in Tweetbot. Speaking of Safari, you can also use Shortcat to click on website navigation elements such as buttons or text. “Clicking” on hyperlinks with Shortcat will, just like a regular click, open them in a new tab.

Shortcat is an interesting experiment, but it needs more work before being ready for primetime. Its text matching algorithm is good, but still not perfect: sometimes, it associates things like “SYNZ” to “sync”, which isn’t particularly nice to see. I would also like to see a more polished graphical representations of highlights and selected regions of the UI, as right now the highlighting process seems more a “hack” than a consumer product. Also, I’m still not completely sure how, in every day usage, Shortcat could come in handy. Is it a utility to navigate large documents without typing? Or is it an app navigator? In a world of buttons associated with keyboard shortcuts, are virtual clicks really that necessary? Shortcat makes for a cool demo, but it needs to find a stronger message to make people “get” what it’s all about.

You can check out the Shortcat beta for free here.

Marco Arment’s The Magazine: At The Intersection of Technology and Writing

When people ask me about my job, I usually reply: “I write about technology”.

Just a little over three years ago, I found myself unemployed, so I started MacStories. It wasn’t easy. Not because of WordPress, FTP, or getting black pixels to appear on a white background. I’ve never had a problem with putting words on a screen.

It wasn’t easy because where I live, a small town in Italy, writing about technology sounds a lot like “I spend my days at home looking at a computer while I drink coffee” . Which, to be fair, is a pretty accurate representation of my daily agenda. But how I do it, and why I do it, and understanding the whole idea of seeing technology as more than a bunch of cables – well, that was the not-so-easy part.

It still is. I know it will be for a long time. And yet I keep typing on this keyboard because I think it’s worth it. I do what I can by writing about my experiences.

Because, hopefully, thanks to technology, our kids will have a better future.

Because twenty years from now, people won’t “find out” they have cancer. They will know in advance, thanks to technology.

That’s quite a goal I, and others like me, are priding ourselves upon, you’d argue, when, effectively, what we do is reviewing apps and reflecting on the latest news. In practical terms, that’s what I do. But I see it as more than that.

Writing is about making connections.

In the past three years, I’ve seen how the great technology writers I look up to are able to make connections between topics and streams of thoughts: they look at the big picture.

On the flip side, technology writing, a scene that’s built on its very distinct and yet cohesive communities, has created connections between people. I wouldn’t have met the MacStories team if it weren’t for writing and following the same writers. I wouldn’t have gotten to know friends like Shawn, Stephen, Gabe, David, Matt, Matthew, Justin, Brett, and many more.

In fact, if it weren’t for this little writing thing of ours, I wouldn’t have met any of you.

Great writing creates connections inside and outside of text.

The Magazine

Marco Arment’s The Magazine falls exactly under this aspect of writing. It’s about people who love technology, delivered as a curated collection of articles from great writers. In a way, it’s the opposite of Instapaper: while Marco’s more popular app is what you make of it, The Magazine is Marco’s own vision. So, yes – you’ll have to trust him on this one.

I’ve never met Marco in real life. We’ve exchanged emails a couple of times and perhaps replied to each other on Twitter. The other day we talked about pears on App.net. But see, the great thing about the Internet is that I genuinely like this guy only because of his work and passion for technology.

I think The Magazine is a promising and notable initiative for a variety of reasons. Firstly, for as much as I praise the tech community, there are aspects of it that I’m not particularly fond of. I don’t like rumors and linkbaity headlines. Sometimes I think that it’s too much when a site tries to tell me everything about a topic with 20 articles. In the words of Marco, The Magazine will take a “a measured approach to the big picture” with “meaningful editorial and big-picture articles”. Or, as Guy English writes in “Fireballed” for the first issue, The Magazine is both old and new. It’s old in that it won’t share the same publication schedule of most blogs; it’s new, because it should encourage writers to create more, new “timeless pieces” based on a business model that their “Fireball Format” website wouldn’t probably allow. I suggest you read Guy’s article in the first issue (there is a free 7-day trial).

I’ve heard from several people who received copies of The Magazine in advance that, in hindsight, the idea is obvious. Get articles from great writers and make an app out of it with new content available periodically. To me, The Magazine seemed “obvious” more because of the technology it’s built with.

Earlier this week I wrote a post on how to hide Newsstand from iOS 6. The Magazine is entirely based on Newsstand, and, a year after the launch of iOS 5, it’s the first app that gives it a purpose, at least for me. Read more