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On Reviewing Apps

Over the past three years, some people have told me they don’t like the way I write software reviews. That I should just tell them whether ”they should buy the damn thing or not”. While I understand their point, with MacStories’ third anniversary quickly approaching I thought it would be appropriate to explain why I don’t do that.

An app is never ”just an app”. There are people behind the bits and buttons we use and touch every day. I have written about this before. When I am reviewing an app, I have to be honest to my reader and provide a careful and insightful analysis of the various features while taking into considerations other factors such as price, usability, and appearance. But at the same time, my writer’s instinct tells me that there’s more than just a checklist of features to mention. I want to tell *that* story.

There are a lot of sites that decide to focus their software reviews on enumerating features. That’s fine. Sometimes I believe, too, that simply telling our readers ”what’s new” in a specific piece of software is the only way we can cover a subject – otherwise we’d have to provide a disservice to our readers, by not covering it. This is especially true with software updates. And flashlight apps like Flashbot.

At MacStories, we carefully pick the things we want to talk about. We have been guilty of stupid rumors and speculation in the past, and we have learned a precious and invaluable lesson from that behavior: trust is important. Guess what, it’s about people again. You can only put so much of your soul on the Internet, and it can easily get lost somewhere along the line of rumors and linkbait. You’ll spread yourself too thin. You won’t tell a story. Some people excel at news reporting – which is an art by itself. Others, unfortunately, do it because they have to do it.

When I review an app, I want to find the story that needs to be told. I don’t want to be different just for the sake of originality – I genuinely believe that we’re witnessing a revolution of our digital era, and I don’t want to live it writing lists and inflammatory blog posts to drive our page views.

I want to tell this revolution. Or at least find a sweet spot where I, and my team, can contribute to providing a perspective that can make people think. Not just click.

Sometimes you’ll find an app that I love, while you think it’s terrible. That is fine, too. There’s no such thing as objectivity when you are reviewing something and expressing your opinions. There’s only honesty. Honesty and personality conflate in a number of ways, and when I write a review, my goal is to make sure the result is a balanced mix of facts, taste, and opinion. I try to tell the *why* and the *how* that are the sinew of my appreciation for fine software. Hopefully disagreements and constructive criticism will lead to a richer, variegate archive of software reviews in the future.

I have wondered if it was easier when our audience was in the order of hundreds, not millions. I ended up concluding that good traffic, besides allowing us to run this site, makes it all more exciting. It means we get to pick what we want to talk about, write it the way we want, and enjoy an intelligent discussion with more people because of it. And it’s getting better every day.

Perhaps we should just tell you whether you have to buy the damn thing or not. But that would take all the fun out of it.

That’s why we write what we write: because innovation never ceases to amaze us – and that’s a story worth telling.

iA Writer for iPhone Review

A few months ago, I decided that it was time for me to start a personal blog. I have been writing for MacStories for almost three years now, but I’ve never had “a place” to share my personal thoughts that wouldn’t fit in 140 characters or less. So as I was pondering the decision of trying to manage a separate, personal blog to share links and longer opinion pieces that I didn’t simply want to be short bursts on Twitter, I also decided that I would write such weblog exclusively from my iPad. The experiment has been a success so far, and that’s largely thanks to iA Writer, which starting today is also available on the iPhone.

Released as a universal update a few minutes ago on the App Store, I have been trying iA Writer for iPhone for the past few days, and I’m pleased to say Information Architects managed to squeeze (almost) everything that makes iA Writer great on the iPad and Mac (our coverage) into the iPhone’s smaller screen. Not only does iA Writer look great on the Retina display – it’s also functional and easy to use.

There isn’t much to say about iA Writer if you’re familiar with the iPad and Mac versions. It’s a minimalist take on plain text writing that focuses on letting you write without distractions with great typography, and only the essential features. There’s no cluttering interface with too many options. If most text editors and writing tools want you to feel connected with the web by adding social sharing functionalities, search look-ups, and various integrations with different services, iA Writer wants you to feel disconnected from the Internet’s noise to reconnect exclusively with what’s in front of you: text. Your words.

It’s called iA Writer for a reason – it’s about you, the writer, and the app, the digital writer. Everything else is secondary. That’s how I see this app.

This concept has been ported well to the iPhone. iA Writer can sync documents with iCloud and Dropbox across devices, and both are fairly reliable at keeping changes up to date and ready to be modified. Dropbox, as usual, can be slightly more “manual” in that iCloud is “invisible” in pushing and receiving changes automatically, all the time. Fortunately, iA Writer for iPhone has also a sync button, so if you’re not sure about the latest change fetched from the app, you can always hit Refresh and check that you’re getting the latest version of a document before you start writing. In my tests, iA Writer for iPhone was able to push changes to the same document already open on other devices, and I’m pretty satisfied with how iCloud sync turned out on iOS and OS X.

The core of iA Writer’s experience has been preserved in making the leap to the iPhone, but something’s got to give when you’re porting an app to the smaller screen. Either that, or iA simply didn’t have time to squeeze in more features – I don’t know, but as it stands now iA Writer for iPhone lacks Focus mode, and support for visual Markdown previews, which are both supported on the iPad and Mac. The iPhone app does, though, feature a custom keyboard with often-used keys placed in an extra row that also contains a drag handle to dismiss it (I love this aspect of the app), and arrows to navigate. The typing view of iA Writer 1.5 is now full-screen, which I think is incredibly better on iOS devices than being forced to always see window chrome. I do wish there was a gesture to quickly close a document without having to pull down the keyboard first, and I would like to see character count and reading time become available on the iPhone as well. I’m a big fan of the app’s separate storage for iCloud and Dropbox.

Ultimately, it comes down to the writing experience, and iA Writer excels at this because it is an app that wants you write more by seeing less. This first version of the iPhone app might not be as powerful as its Mac counterpart, but it sure is a pleasure to look at on the Retina display as what really matters, in the end, is that you’re looking at your own words, and nothing else.

iA Writer 1.5 is now available at $0.99 on the App Store.

Favs: The Mac App I Wanted For My Internet Favorites

Favs, a new app for Mac I initially wrote about when it was in beta in February, is now available on the Mac App Store. And I don’t say this very often, but Favs is exactly one of those things I was looking for, and needed, as I had wondered why no one on the Internet had come up with it yet. In my article, I explained the main concept of the app:

A few weeks ago, I tweeted I’d like to see some sort of Twitter client with its only focus being on Favorites — I keep Twitter open all day, and I save a lot of links. Prior to ending up in my Evernote or Pinboard accounts, the tweets I want to “save for later” are marked as favorites, which, I believe, provide an easy way to use a built-in Twitter functionality for general-purpose “bookmarks” that I may or may not consider for a post or more serious bookmarking in a second service. As you can see, I have a lot of favorites. The same is true for other services I use on a daily basis, such as Google Reader, Vimeo, YouTube, or Instagram: I like to be able to “star”, “like” and mark things as favorite so a) the service knows the stuff I’m interested in and perhaps will leverage this data sometimes in the future or b) perhaps other apps will. And while I’m still waiting for the ultimate app that looks at your Internet favorites and delivers content intelligently to you every day (albeit Zite is on the right path), it turns out someone has built a functional and nice-looking desktop aggregator called Favs.

The app is mostly unchanged from the latest public betas, but there are some notable additions here and there. For one, the updated list of supported sources now includes:

  • Delicious
  • Dribbble
  • Facebook
  • Flattr
  • Flickr
  • Github
  • Google Reader
  • Instagram
  • Instapaper
  • Pinboard
  • Readability
  • Read It Later
  • StackOverflow
  • Twitter
  • Vimeo
  • YouTube
  • Zootool

Coming from the beta, the sidebar icons also seem more polished, the animations a little faster. As you can see, Favs is yet another app that uses Tweetie’s old navigation concept for switching between sections; for as much as I can’t stand ideas being shared around between apps without considering an app’s unique nature, I think some elements do work across different software, and become standards.

Favs can be viewed in normal mode, with a web view for your Internet favorites on the right, or in compact mode. I particularly appreciate the latter, as you can then use Quick Look (hit the space bar or CMD + Y) to preview items in seconds. This works for articles, images, videos – anything you can mark as favorite online becomes an item in Favs.

Another nice feature of Favs is the tag cloud. If you save a lot of items online like I do, it’s likely that you’d be interested in a way to later search for a specific entry within all those articles and Instagrams. Whilst I use Greplin to do most of the heavy lifting for me, I like Favs’ basic tag and search features – Favs is capable of fetching a lot of items through APIs, and keeping a searchable list of old favorites is a welcome addition.

There are a few things I’d like to see in a future version of Favs. More keyboard shortcuts, for example, and a revamped sharing system that allows me to easily pass links to other services, like Reeder does. Right now, Favs’ sharing features are limited, but you can always rely on Copy Link and Services to automate the process of sharing links. Last, as I previously wrote, I think an iOS version of this would be fantastic, especially on the iPad.

Services like Instapaper and Pinboard empower you to “read later” and “bookmark” the things you like. Favs runs at a higher level, collecting favorites from other services that already enable you to save favorites. As I said, this kind of app is a web nerd’s dream come true for me, so I recommend you check out Favs at $4.99 on the Mac App Store.

Path 2.1

Released earlier today on the App Store following a media event where CEO Dave Morin gave out some interesting tidbits about the company, Path 2.1 is a substantial update to the social networking app that aims at build a beautiful journal of our daily lives. Sarah Lacy at PandoDaily has liveblogged the most interesting details: over 100 million moments have been shared on Path, with over 1 billion pieces of “feedback” on them (I assume these include comments and reactions); Path is announcing an API for third-party developers to integrate their services and apps with, and Nike is an initial partner (the API is private for now). The Verge is also reporting that Path has listened to the suggestion of hashing users’ data, and will do so in an upcoming 2.1.1 release.

What we have today is Path 2.1 – I have tried the new version, and it’s pretty good. I haven’t been able to test Nike integration as I’m not a user, but I’ve taken the new music recognition functionality for a spin. Similarly to how Shazam works, Path 2.1 lets you hold up your iPhone’s mic to a music source, and wait a few seconds for the app to contact an online service (in Path’s case, Gracenote) and return the title of the song alongside other information (album, artist, etc). Path’s implementation of this is unsurprisingly great-looking, but Gracenote’s database isn’t nearly as powerful as Shazam’s. For instance, the app recognized The Shins and Coldplay, but failed fetch The Uprising and Tell Me What It’s Worth. Overall, I like the interface of this new music feature; I hope more databases will be added in the future.

Path 2.1 also comes with improvements to existing lenses and a new one, called Pow. I have never liked Path’s approach to filters and custom lenses, but I’ll admit the ones in this new version look better. What I do like is the new control for exposure and focus, which, unlike many apps, makes it extremely clear what you are moving on screen.

Path 2.1 is a good update – here’s to hoping Path will stick around long enough to get more friends of mine to use it. You can get version 2.1 here.

The Essence of a Name

Following yesterday’s announcement of the new iPad, a debate has arisen as to whether Apple should have called the new iPad something along the lines of “iPad 3” or “iPad HD” so to give the device a unique name easily understandable by consumers. I think Macworld has the two smartest (and most balanced) takes on the subjects.

Dan Moren thinks going with “iPad” is a good move:

Constantly reinventing a nomenclature is unsustainable. Is every iPad between now and 2022 going to have a different number, letter, or some combination appended? Is Apple going to eventually reach the iPad 13GS+ Extreme? I’d argue that’s exactly what the company doesn’t want.

Lex Friedman disagrees:

I drive a Honda Accord. It’s a 2006 model. If Apple wants to keep the same names for its products each year like car companies do, adding a year to the product name seems like a fine approach. I always know which wipers to get for my 2006 Accord. I think the average consumer ought to know which case fits their iPad, too; making them instead rely on distinctions like third-generation—that aren’t in the official product names, or printed on the devices themselves—just makes things harder.

The first few seconds after Tim Cook was photographed on stage with a big “The new iPad” image behind him, I, too, was slightly confused and disappointed. Why would Apple want to go back to just iPad, after years of iPhone 4, iPad 2, and iPhone 4S? But then I, like Lex, thought about car companies. I am not driving a Polo 13. My mom doesn’t drive a Meriva 2S. Yet, in case of necessity, both my mom and I – the polar opposites on a scale from consumer to nerd – would know how to look up the company’s proper model name – the “version” – of the cars we drive. Mine’s a 2003 Polo. Not every car company does this, but it’s very common (and easy to understand).

I hear the concerns of people like Lex. Not having a unique name for each generation of device does make things harder when it comes to support, referencing a product in an article, or looking up information on Google. It means you have to do more work. It means you have to type a little more to find out – either in manuals or support docs or the Apple Store itself – what generation of device you are talking about. It’s about Apple not giving us a unique way to call the iPad – well, actually they do, it’s iPad, but that makes some people uncomfortable. It’s unsettling at first, because we were used to a different convention.

But here’s the thing: people are not stupid. Sure, some people are geekier than others, but as car companies prove, eventually people find a way to properly retrieve information about the products they use. Eventually, as in more work. Which could mean using Google, reading a manual, asking a friend, or driving to the nearest Apple Store. Apple has the best customer support around, and no tech company beats Apple’s online Support resources. No one ever died from looking up a model name. 1

But why? The trade-off is an increase in simplicity and elegance. Otherwise, we’d end up like Samsung and Square-Enix, naming our products with monickers like “Epic” or “XIV” (good luck telling a 10 year-old kid that’s 14, and not “xiv”).

More importantly, Apple’s new name puts the focus on the essence of the product, not the way it follows its predecessor year after year. It’s iPad, my friend Matthew was told by Apple. And I see the thinking behind such choice: by combining a more elegant name with new features, Apple will, yes, end up having to explain better its model numbers, but they will gain in user-friendliness and overall message. Because, again, our faith in humanity might falter every once in a while, but people know how to refer to a product. If anything, my dad would have a hard time differentiating between 3GS, 4S and 3G. But he sure knows how to say “that new iPad”.

It’s about context. People will understand, and will find a way to explain what they are talking about. And if they want to be precise, hey, Apple has a way for that too.

Peter Cohen writes:

I’d also like to point out that when the first iPad was introduced, its name was the subject of huge controversy in the blogosphere and among the tech punditry, many of whom considered the name silly or likened it to a feminine hygiene product.

I also like to see it this way: by going back to “iPad”, Apple reminds us that is the iPad that should have always been. The realization of a vision. The most advanced display ever seen in a mobile device, the fastest networking available, the most apps to choose from. It’s the new iPad, but it’s also the iPad that should have been here in the first place. Now we have the technology that makes it possible.

I thought the keynote’s theme would have been “the biggest leap since the original iPad”. Tim Cook said it better: “We have redefined, once again, the category that Apple created”.

  1. To those arguing that specific names and version numbers are necessary for support, especially in software: I agree, and indeed Apple has a complete name for the iPad on its site and online Store. I could also argue that it’s harder to describe software (bits) compared to a product (a physical object).↩︎

New iPad Keynote: Miscellaneous Tidbits & Information

Yesterday’s Apple event was packed with information and new product releases. From a new iPad to software updates and a new Apple TV, March 7th can easily go down in the company’s history as one of the biggest rollouts ever, perhaps only second to October 12th, 2011. In this post, we have collected some miscellaneous tidbits and pieces of information that we missed or only briefly mentioned in our coverage of the event.

The Verge suggests the new iPad has 1 GB of RAM, as previously rumored:

One piece of information that wasn’t mentioned, however, was RAM. Sources have informed us that Apple’s latest has indeed received an upgrade in that area as well, and will ship with 1GB of RAM — double that of its predecessor.

The new iPad is using Qualcomm’s MDM9x00 Baseband, according to AnandTech:

Now that the restore .ipsw images have been posted and are available for download, I took a peek inside and did a little bit of forensics. It turns out that Apple has gone with Qualcomm’s MDM9600, and has given the device codename Maverick (as opposed to Trek for MDM6610). This part still contains UE Category 3 LTE, CDMA2000 1x/EVDO Rev.A (and B), GSM/EDGE, and WCDMA/HSPA+ all the way through DC-HSPA+ 42 Mbps. It’s a 45nm 13x13mm part we’ve seen in numerous other 4G LTE devices thus far.

Stephen Hackett at 512 Pixels was first to report that OpenStreetMap has wrote a blog post claiming Apple is using OSM’s data with no credit, but not the tiles:

The OSM data that Apple is using is rather old (start of April 2010) so don’t expect to see your latest and greatest updates on there. It’s also missing the necessary credit to OpenStreetMap’s contributors; we look forward to working with Apple to get that on there.

It looks like iTunes 10.6 now lets you keep apps on a device, if you don’t want to sync them with a computer.

Also new in iTunes 10.6: automatic conversion of songs to more bit rates. Obviously, unless you want to save space or are converting from a lossless format, transcoding music isn’t generally a good idea.

iTunes 10.6 was released yesterday, and there’s one new feature which will, I think, please a number of the readers of this blog. As you may know, when you sync an iPod, you can have iTunes automatically convert your music files to a lower bit rate, so you can save space on a portable device. Previously, the only choice you had was 128 kbps. But iTunes 10.6 offers three choices: 128, 192 and 256 kbps.

Square’s Louie Mantia has created a nice iOS app icon template that also works with icons for the new iPad.

AirPlay Mirroring on the new iPad continues to be 720p, but AirPlay video streaming is 1080p to a 3rd gen Apple TV, 720p to a second-gen Apple TV. Video mirroring and video out support 1080p.

New iPad has a “Built-in 42.5-watt-hour rechargeable lithium-polymer battery”; iPad 2 has a “Built-in 25-watt-hour rechargeable lithium-polymer battery”.

Missing some movies from your new iTunes in the Cloud? CNET says Fox and NBC Universal will soon join other providers:

AllThingsD reported yesterday that Fox and NBC Universal are holdouts and that the reason has to do with exclusive licenses that those studios have with Time Warner’s HBO. This is the same contractual obligation that plagued the UltraViolet platform from signing some of the labels. HBO has exclusive licensing rights for electronic sales of films from NBC Universal, Warner Bros. and Fox. This is a minor holdup my film industry sources said.

As Shawn Blanc notes, the only way for Apple to give the idea of a Retina display is to make non-Retina screenshots look blurry and fuzzy.

As a sign of the times, the iPhoto for iOS app icon doesn’t contain a camera, but just a lens.

Apple published a support document on “Siri: Japanese language availability”, saying:

After updating to iOS 5.1, Japanese customers will be prompted to enable Siri. During the initial rollout, availability may be limited and Siri may not be immediately usable.

Apple is calling the new iPad in a variety of ways. On its website, the company uses “iPad”, “the new iPad”, “third-generation iPad” and “iPad (3rd generation)” depending on what section you are visiting. Apple PR says it’s simply called iPad.

Unless they are calling it “the new iPad”, Apple (as usual) prefers to call the device “iPad” – without “the” – in almost every sentence. Example:

Now for the first time, you can share the high-speed data connection on your iPad. If your carrier supports it, iPad can act as a personal hotspot for connecting up to five devices — such as a MacBook Air, an iPod touch, or another iPad — over Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or USB.

The new Apple TV has a single-core A5 chip.

Apple says there are over 200,000 apps for iPad, but the App Store (as of today) disagrees.

MacStories’ March 7th Coverage

In case you missed it, you can catch up on our iPad keynote coverage with these links:

- March 7 news hub

- This Is The New iPad: Our Complete Overview

- The Apple TV Gets A Refresh: New UI, 1080p Playback, Available on March 16 [Photos]

- New iPad & Tablet Comparison Chart

- Apple Releases iOS 5.1 [Direct Links, Screenshots]

- Apple Updates Most of Its iOS Apps for the new iPad

- iPhoto for iOS Review

- The New iPad Keynote Roundup

Rovio Officially Announces “Angry Birds Space” with New Trailer

The first new game by Rovio in over a year, Angry Birds Space is the next step in the company’s franchise, and it’s coming out on March 22. Previously teased online, Rovio has now updated the game’s webpage with an official trailer featuring a NASA engineer talking about the game and the new physics engine behind it. Based in a weightless environment, the basic gist of the game seems to be that in such conditions, trajectories are affected by gravity, and objects end up following curves, rather than straight lines. Using a “galactic slingshot” in footage shot on-location at the International Space Station, NASA’s Don Pettit explains how astronauts and scientists have to consider these changes in physics and gravity when they are in outer space; apparently, this mechanic will be brought to Angry Birds Space in a fairly accurate representation.

Angry Birds isn’t new to physics. In fact, we could say that the entire franchise has been so successful thanks to its user-friendly implementation of actual law of physics that take into account gravity, weight, trajectories, and speed through a multitouch interface. From what we can see in the trailer, surprisingly demoed on a Galaxy Note, the new Angry Birds will work as a crossover between the original game and Super Mario Galaxy – those who have played Nintendo’s Wii game might remember how planets affected Mario’s jumps and moves when floating in space. It looks like Angry Birds Space will somehow translate that gameplay in 2D scenes while mixing it with new birds, new pigs, and new actions with the ultimate goal of giving the franchise a new spin and an entirely new set of physics users will have to adapt to.

Angry Birds Space will be released on March 22 on iOS, Android, Mac, and PC. Check out the official video below.

Update: More screenshots and information directly from Rovio.

Features:

  • 60 interstellar levels!
  • Regular free updates!
  • Brand new birds!
  • Brand new superpowers!
  • Zero-gravity space adventures!
  • Trick shots using planets’ gravity!
  • New in-app purchases for iOS!
  • Hidden bonus levels!
  • Beautifully detailed backgrounds!

Description:

After a giant claw kidnaps their eggs, the Angry Birds chase it into a wormhole and find themselves floating in a strange new galaxy – surrounded by space pigs! Luckily the Angry Birds have super powers of their own…

Angry Birds Space features 60 interstellar levels on planets and in zero gravity, resulting in spectacular gameplay ranging from slow-motion puzzles to lightspeed destruction. With regular free updates, new in-app purchases, brand new birds, brand new superpowers, and a whole galaxy to explore, the sky is no longer the limit!

Screenshots


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