Gmail for iOS Updated With New Sign Out Option, Integration with Google iOS Apps

Gmail

Gmail

An update to the official Gmail app for iOS released today brings a series of welcome improvements that users had been requesting since the (re)launch of the client last year.

The first notable addition is support for signing out of individual accounts. In older versions of the app, users were forced to sign out of all accounts at once, a tedious process that didn’t make much sense considering the app had a dedicated section for accounts that could use better sign out options. In today’s update, you can tap & hold an account’s avatar in the sidebar to bring up a Sign Out button in a popover at the bottom.

The new version of Gmail also works nicely with Google’s other apps for iOS: from the Settings, you can now specify whether YouTube, Google Maps, and web links should directly open in Google’s native app replacements or a mobile web view. These options are available in the Settings screen for each account, but they will be enabled for the entire app, not single accounts.

The last new feature, also shown in the app’s updated walkthrough, are search suggestions as you type. While Gmail has always been able to search across all your mail, today’s version brings suggestions that (based on initial tests) should match addresses and subject lines found in your account.

You can find Gmail for iOS on the App Store.

Messages.app Primer→

A useful collection of tips for Messages for Mac by Amit Jain. I’ve always thought there wasn’t a way to add new lines or switch between conversations, so I’m glad Amit put together this post.

Unfortunately, these tips don’t fix Messages’ problems with memory usage and out-of-sync conversations – which I have been experiencing since the app’s first release.

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Opening Day Photos and Video of Germany’s New Apple Retail Store in Berlin

Berlin Apple StoreApple’s New Retail Store in Berlin

Berlin Apple Store

BerlinSidewalk has a large collection of beautiful opening day photos of Apple’s latest retail store in Berlin, highlighting the launch event amongst cheering employees and long lines. Rumors of Berlin’s Apple Store can be dated back to 2005, and the ifoAppleStore has an early picture of the building before it underwent renovation in 2011.

Also at the store’s opening was Macerkopf, whom collected a series of photos and videos amongst a brief of the store’s opening hours and weekend schedule. Opening yesterday evening at 5:00pm to a crowd of thousands, 200 staffers at the 5000 square meter retail space handed out 4,500 commemorative shirts to the first visitors. The store is Germany’s biggest amongst the eleven stores, as well as the European region’s largest, featuring a conference room and an auditorium on the second floor to showcase film, music, and photography. The store also offers expeditions for children, who are encouraged to create and share creative projects to parents and teachers. The employees at the store can speak 12 languages between them as the store is expected to be a popular attraction and showcase for Apple in Europe.

Apple has a history of both repurposing and maintaining the structural integrity of historic sites for many of their retail locations, and this store is no different. The retail store sits along the Kurfürstendamm, known locally as Ku’damm, a long boulevard in West Berlin home to many luxury fashion boutiques and businesses. Open at Ku’damm 26, the Apple Retail Store is a renovation of the Union Palast, a historic theater that’s known as one of Berlin’s first, opening in 1913.

Mojang Sells 10 Million Copies of Minecraft - Pocket Edition→

Not only is Minecraft - Pocket Edition listed as one of Apple’s All-Time Top Paid Apps for both the iPhone and iPad on the App Store, Mojang has been announcing their own incredible milestones this month. Following an astounding 10 million copies of the PC edition sold at the beginning of April, Mojang wrote on their blog Monday that the company has sold 10 million copies of Minecraft - Pocket Edition across mobile platforms. “We are very thankful to all the support that we have gotten and people playing and talking about our game,” Daniel Kaplan wrote. “We have been working hard on restructuring the backend of a lot of things for Minecraft – Pocket Edition to make future updates smoother.”

Minecraft - Pocket Edition feels very much like Minecraft its beta days, giving players a choice between simpler creative and survival modes. Mojang plans to continue updating the mobile edition of the popular franchise, with the company preparing to release Minecraft Realms as a multiplayer component by the end of May. Realms is a cloud service that will let players easily create their own Minecraft servers for friends and family, giving small groups of players an easy way to play together. For Minecraft - Pocket Edition on iOS, Mojang plans on letting players rent server space through an IAP subscription, which only hosts will have to pay.

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Goalie for HockeyApp→

Goalie is a $9.99 app that developers can use to manage their HockeyApp accounts on the iPhone.

I’m not a developer, but I use HockeyApp on a daily basis to install betas of apps I’m trying, and I know how the service works. So I asked for a test account, and played around with Goalie. The feature set is solid: you can view all your apps, get stats on versions (such as installs and crashes), view crash groups and full crash logs, manage team members, and even access the feedback area where you can delete or reply to threads. If you’ve been looking for a way to manage HockeyApp on the go, I think Goalie deserves a look. Make sure to check out the app’s website for screenshots and details.

Goalie is $9.99 on the App Store.

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Tweet Library 2.3→

Nice update to one of my most-used iOS apps.

The new version adds compatibility with the new Twitter API, changes the calendar viewer to a thin bar that runs across the top of the timeline, and brings performance improvements alongside a clearer design.

I use Tweet Library on a daily basis to search my entire Twitter archive. The new calendar makes it easier to move between months/years, and the app is much faster when loading tweets.

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How Panic Is Using Status Board→

Fascinating look at the widgets and hardware Panic is using for their own Status Board setup.

This bit caught my attention:

Units have been especially interesting since they reveal so much about the economics of (our) iOS software, as this Graph panel shows. Although (our) iOS apps sell a respectable number of units, the revenue they bring in barely charts compared to our Mac stalwarts. So far! We’re working hard on improving our iOS apps, and trying new ideas, in order to crack the iOS market a little bit more.

Diet Coda, priced at $19.99, is a fantastic piece of iPad software, and yet it doesn’t bring in much revenue compared to Panic’s Mac apps.

Just yesterday, I was thinking that it’s strange how Apple still hasn’t brought the Developer Tools category of the Mac App Store over to the iOS App Store. There are excellent examples of developer-oriented software, especially on the iPad: Textastic, xScope Mirror, Codea, Pythonista, and the aforementioned Diet Coda come to mind – plus many more. Two years ago, I asked whether the iPad needed programming apps.

Times have changed. Today, I wonder: would a Developer Tools category in the App Store help apps like Diet Coda get more exposure? Wouldn’t it make sense to give these tools another category, more specific and focused than the crowded Productivity one?

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