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Marked 1.4: A Little Something for Everybody

What started out as a companion app aimed at tech bloggers writing articles in Markdown has become a multipurpose Swiss Army knife for previewing scripts, stories, and code for writers and programmers. While Marked has always fulfilled my needs for finalizing drafts, copying HTML output into a web editor, and checking to see if I’ve overused various positive adjectives, the latest version adds an abundance of new features that make previewing articles in realtime even more useful. It’s important to note that Marked 1.4 is compatible with Lion only — Snow Leopard and Leopard users won’t be able to take advantage of the latest features.

What’s useful to bloggers:

Three changes have a direct effect on my workflow: Scroll to first edit, which moves the document to the current edit point when changes are detected; HTML highlighting, which makes scanning HTML output easier than before; and popovers on external links, which will bring up options to copy and validate a link. The first two new features work splendidly, with Marked scrolling to the paragraph where I’ve added a link or changed a sentence once I’ve left the focus of TextEdit (my editor of choice) or save manually with ⌘S.

Unfortunately, link popovers don’t work as expected. Instead of hovering the mouse over a link, clicking on the link brings up a popover with the copy, validate, and open-in-Safari options. Link validation in particular is great as it provides a quick way to check a slew of links without having to leave the Marked preview (especially useful if you use [this]: style of link in Markdown). Once the link has been clicked on for the popover, clicking it a second time takes you to the website in your default browser. It seems whether the popover is shown depends on whether the URL has already been checked (document-wide).

A fourth new feature bloggers will love if they’ve written their own Marked styles to match the format of their websites will be per-document styles. Instead of changing the style through the GUI, you can include a brief piece of metadata at the beginning of your document by adding the following: “Marked Style: Your preferred style here” (without quotes). If you create new documents with shortcuts or triggers, you can further automate how it will look in Marked by adding a snippet of metadata — useful when you publish or want to see output for a specific blog. The metadata you add is excluded from the HTML output. HTML output, by the way, has a new toggle in the titlebar.

Lastly, for bloggers concerned about their HTML output, Marked now gives you the option to disable header ID creation. Unless you have a specific need for styling, there’s no reason to have Marked generate an ID per header. I’ve definitely enabled this one.

What’s useful to writers and screenwriters:

Scrivener 2.x projects and Leanpub files are now supported by Marked. Scrivener projects, like .md or .txt files, can simply be dragged into Marked and compiled to provide a live preview of your working content. Pressing ⌘E (open in editor) will take open .scriv files being previewed in Scrivener if you’re reviewing your script and need to make a live change. As you write and save your document, Marked will reflect the changes made.

Leanpub compatibility is a little bit harder to explain. What Marked will allow writers to do with their Leanpub files is merge and compile them so that the documents can be previewed and navigated via a table of contents. To take advantage of this feature, an Index.md file is created and requires that the first line be “frontmatter:” (again without quotes) signifying the Leanpub format. In the Index.md file, you’ll need to add your Leanpub files as sections using a special syntax that’s separated by Markdown headers to designate the book title, chapters, etc. This help page should give you a better handle on how to use Leanpub and multi-file documents with Marked.

Having commented on using table of contents, it’d be wrong of me not to mention its fantastic new search feature. After pressing ⌘T to show the table of contents (which basically groups all of the headers in a Markdown document into a list), you can tap the space bar to quickly type a chapter number or section title. Using the arrow or J/K keys, you can select the section before pressing escape to continue previewing your document. It’s a quick and keyboard friendly way to jump around an expansive document.

What’s useful to programmers:

Programmers get their own automatic syntax highlighting update for code blocks. I found that while it worked well with Marked’s default preview, syntax highlighting often had undesirable results when high contrast was enabled. Highlighting itself is taken care of thanks to highlight.js.

Programmers will also appreciate the ability to create fenced code blocks, which are delimited by tildes or backticks. Languages can be specified, but highlight.js will try to automatically detect one of its 41 supported languages on its own.

For those creating GitHub readmes, the GitHub style has been updated to reflect the most recent changes on the site. In the preferences, a new option has also been added to preserve line breaks in paragraphs, mimicking GitHub’s style if you choose to enable it.

Other changes:

Two new themes have been added to Marked: Amblin and Upstanding Citizen. Amblin, laid-back and traditional, is a polar opposite of Upstanding Citizen’s bold centered headers and condensed paragraphs. Amblin is great for writing cozily late into the night — it’s ousted Swiss for me as far as the default styles go.

The preferences panes are all brand new — options are easy to find and are nicely separated into convenient sections. If you plan on printing documents, you can force page breaks with a break snippet, by using horizontal rulers, or before H1 and H2 headers (this printing section should give you a quick primer on the options you have available).

No longer catering to just mainstream tech reporters, Marked has expanded its role from a nerdy Markdown utility to a polished, multipurpose tool that’s bent on making sure any craftsman of words can output a good looking document. More than just a preview app, Marked is feature rich without being complex, presenting files as you want them while providing numerous ways to do simple things from copying text to getting HTML output of your files. Support for Leanpub and Scrivener only adds usefulness for authors using Macs to produce upcoming books, and screenwriters can look forward to added compatibility with Fountain in the future.

Marked provides a lot in an accessible package, and for only $3.99 it’s a steal for anyone who works with Markdown files and its derivatives. You can check out Marked online and download it from the Mac App Store.

“Bartending” by Stephen Hackett Shows The Human Side of Apple Retail

In the past months, I’ve read a lot of books about Apple, and in particular about Steve Jobs. Bartending by Stephen Hackett, however, is the only one that struck me as being completely honest and real in the subject it covers: Apple’s retail stores as a genuine, living collection of stories and people. Not just a business.

Bartending: Memoirs of an Apple Genius, is short, direct, and entertaining. You can probably finish it in 40 minutes if you’re in the mood of reading about Apple’s retail employees and the stories of customers who happen to swing by the Genius Bar every day. And if you like a style that’s fun, cuts to the point, and isn’t ashamed of recollecting the real thoughts of an Apple Genius who sees all kinds of customers on a daily basis, I bet you will devour Bartending from cover to cover in less than an hour. It is a pleasure to read Stephen narrate how he helped a woman recover the precious photos of her children after her hard drive failed, or how the iPhone represented a major shift both in terms of audience, and at the Bar.

I like to think of Bartending as more than “a book about the Genius Bar”. Whether or not you are aware of how Apple’s retail behemoth works behind the scenes, Bartending provides a fun and enlightening look at the interactions that occur every day on both sides of the business. In front of and behind the Genius Bar. I think Stephen’s greatest accomplishment with this book is that he explains with a human, friendly tone that, in spite of the gadgets and dollars involved with the business, the people ultimately define the stories we remember. And if the rules can be bent a little for the good of the customer – to “surprise and delight” – even better. That’s what makes this book a story of its own that fits in the Apple Community so well.

Bartending is a must-read. Get it today at $8.99 on Amazon (iBooks-friendly ePub version also available here).

Drafts Review

In the past months, there’s been a surge of “launcher apps” – lightweight utilities that allow iOS users to perform common tasks such as calling someone or starting a FaceTime call without having to use Apple’s apps, and thus their entire interfaces. However, while the concept of launchers and shortcuts has been around for years in the App Store – especially on the quick dial side, apps like Favorites first explored the idea of turning contacts into shortcuts – several of the utilities we have recently reviewed have leveraged the simplicity of such concept to build more powerful solutions to help users save time. With a combination of clever interface designs, new APIs and URL handlers, apps like Launch Center, Buzz, and World Contacts+ are redefining the way users think of interoperability and customization on the iOS platform. App Cubby’s Launch Center has especially gained a well deserved spot in many’s iOS dock thanks to its extensive support for third-party apps and a polished UI.

For the past week, I have been able to use Agile Tortoise’s Drafts, a new iPhone app that’s like “Launch Center for text” – a utility that allows you to save short snippets of text – the drafts – and act on them by sharing them through a number of services or system actions.

Drafts is very simple. Surprisingly so, if you expected to find options to enter custom URL handlers for apps that are capable of accepting text inputs. In fact, my mention of Launch Center is only theoretical, as both utilities share the same underlying ideology – to aggregate a set of actions and supported apps for a specific input into a single interface – but the first version of Drafts doesn’t come with the same amount of customization and tweaks you can find in Launch Center. Still, when it comes to text, Drafts has proved to be an invaluable addition to my workflow that, like Launch Center, got its spot in my iPhone dock.

Drafts saves snippets of text. The app displays a word & character count for these snippets, which can be saved locally and accessed at any time by hitting the drafts icon in the app’s toolbar. Because Drafts 1.0 is iPhone-only, iCloud support hasn’t been added yet – your snippets won’t be synced across devices. You can search for any word across your drafts, and add new ones by simply pressing a + button. In the Settings, you can set the app’s Appearance, choosing between 13 fonts (American Typewriter, Baskerville, Cochin, Courier, Georgia, Gill Sans, Helvetica Neue, Hoefler Text, Marker Felt, Palatino, Times New Roman, Thonbury, and Verdana), three font sizes, and four themes. I chose Grayscale.

You can use Drafts as a notepad, a scratchpad of sorts, or a draft manager for your tweets, much like the defunct Birdhouse used to. Drafts sports a nice integration with Twitter, enabling you tweet natively using iOS’ support for Twitter, and letting you directly forward text to Tweetbot or the official Twitter app. If you choose to send text to these apps, the compose screen will open with the text already pasted, and you will just have to hit Send to publish a new tweet. I suspect support for more Twitter apps is coming in a future update.

Drafts isn’t just about Twitter, though. You can pick a draft, and email it to someone using the native iOS mail framework. You can copy a draft to the system clipboard, or, if you like to write in Markdown, preview the formatting, copy the Markdown to your clipboard, or email it. Being a huge fan of Markdown (which I use on a daily basis for my writing on MacStories), this is a nice addition.

Drafts is neither a text editor nor a minimal Twitter client. Drafts is a frictionless way to capture and save ideas that also happens to be integrated with system functions and applications you may be already using to elaborate on those ideas. Drafts can be used as an inspirational notepad to store the genius idea you have while you’re brewing coffee, or when you’re busy writing something else (just fire up Drafts, and quickly dictate your text if you have an iPhone 4S). I would like to see an even faster way to email text (like Captio or Note 2 Self do) as well as support for Evernote and more text-based iOS apps in a future update, so here’s to hoping the feedback on this initial version will be strong enough to encourage Greg Pierce, the developer of Drafts and Terminology (which the app also supports for definitions), to consider more functionalities and an iPad counterpart. In this first version, Drafts supports TextExpander touch, but there is no option to forward text to Apple’s Messages app.

Drafts 1.0 is a very good start, especially if you’ve been looking for a standalone draft manager for Twitter. You can get the app at $0.99 on the App Store.

Tweetbot Gets iCloud Sync for Timelines, DMs, and Mute Filters

Two months ago, I took a look at the state of iCloud-enabled apps for Mac and iOS, sharing somewhat unsurprising results that showed few applications successfully were using iCloud sync across devices (not to mention platforms), and that developers were frustrated for the lack of extensive documentation by Apple. In these past 60 days, very little has changed on Apple’s side – if anything, we’ve only seen more third-party developers trying to figure out ways to properly use iCloud and make it work in their apps. Tapbots, makers of Tweetbot (our reviews for iPhone and iPad versions of the app), are releasing today an update to their Twitter client, which brings iCloud sync for various Twitter functionalities to the iPhone and iPad.

I have been able to test iCloud sync in Tweetbot for a few weeks now, and whilst I was initially skeptical about the service, I am pleased to report that Tapbots has come up with a solid, clever system that might just convince you switch from Tweet Marker – the only third-party solution to sync Twitter timelines that’s been widely adopted to date – if you’re planning to use Tweetbot as your main client.

iCloud sync, unlike Tweet Marker, works exclusively inside Tweetbot across its iPhone and iPad versions. You won’t be able to start iCloud sync on Tweetbot for iPhone and, say, find your timeline synced on Twitterrific. If you’re still looking for a real cross-platform syncing solution for Twitter, Tweet Marker remains your best option. If you, however, are you using the two Tweetbots as your default Twitter apps anyway and happen to be intrigued by iCloud sync, you might want to consider giving this new option in version 2.2 a try. Once enabled in the Sync settings, iCloud integration will sync mute filters, timeline positions, and DM read status across all instances of Tweetbot. This means that, if you’re using iCloud on your iOS devices running Tweetbot, the app will keep your position in the Twitter timeline synced similarly to how Tweet Marker works, only it will also sync your direct messages’ read status (if you read a DM on your iPhone, it will also be automatically marked as read on the iPad) and mute filters set in the app’s Preferences. In my tests, both Tweet Marker and iCloud have worked reliably when syncing timelines, but I switched to iCloud full-time for the added convenience of syncing DMs and filters across Tweetbot, and because of the lack of Tweet Marker-enabled apps (that I like) on my desktop. In fact, at least for the time being, I’m still using Twitter’s official client on my Mac. With iCloud sync, I can keep more data synced across Tweetbot for iPhone and Tweetbot for iPad, which I use on a daily basis. Please note that, while iCloud is supposed to be “invisible” to the user, working all the time in the background, there may be a short delay of 10-15 seconds when syncing the timeline position across clients, although I have noticed this sporadically. I suggest you use Tweetbot as you normally would, switching from one client to another when you really need to, avoiding keeping both apps open at the same time just to see if iCloud is working.

Version 2.2 of Tweetbot also brings other improvements and bug fixes throughout the app; most notably, images can now be closed with a pinch gesture on the iPad (similarly to how you can close images in Photos) and both iTunes and YouTube links have gained thumbnail previews in the timeline.

For the past months, I have been increasingly using my iPad as my primary computer, and thus Tweetbot has become the Twitter client I spend the most time using on my iOS devices. This newest update increases the overall stability and performances of the app, but more importantly it brings a native, consistent way to sync data across platforms that, at this point, can only get better in the future – and it’s already working admirably now.

You can get Tweetbot 2.2 on the App Store today.

- Tweetbot for iPhone

- Tweetbot for iPad

Gum Max Review

With a 2.1A output and 10,400mAh capacity, the Gum Max is an external backup battery by Just Mobile that works with iOS devices. Anyone who has used iOS devices extensively – perhaps some of you even use the iPad as their primary computer – knows that, for as much as Apple has focused on making iOS devices extremely user-friendly from a battery life standpoint, the battery is going to run out eventually. And if you use a lot of high-speed 3G data, watch some videos, and play a game or two, that battery indicator up in the iOS status bar is going to run out faster.

Just a few days prior to receiving my Gum Max review unit, I waited in line at the Apple Store in Rome to buy the new iPad. There, I had the chance to experience how important it is to be able to rely on iOS devices without a source of power constantly available – sure, Apple employees allowed us to use the store’s MacBooks to charge our iPhones, but it just seemed rude to me to go there every few hours just to grab a USB port without doing anything else. Waiting in line for more than 20 hours, using a lot of 3G and taking several photos of videos with my iPhone 4S, I had to recharge my device multiple times – and when I didn’t want to use the USB ports kindly provided by Apple’s employees, I had to use my friends’ portable battery packs. There, I realized I really needed to get a backup battery for iOS devices for the future. Indeed, power and battery life seem to be two common concerns these days.

The Gum Max is not one of those battery packs that you can use as a case for the iPhone. The Gum Max actually looks (and weighs) like an external drive, only it can charge iOS devices through USB. The device has a green LED indicator to show how much juice it’s got left to power your iPhone or iPad, and input and output (to recharge the Gum Max, and recharge your iOS devices) are separate, but they both use USB (regular and micro) through cables that are provided in the box. As with many Just Mobile products, the Gum Max looks like something Apple would produce, with a clean and elegant design highlighted by a sturdy aluminum shell. I like the design of the Gum Max, but how it works is what matters in critical situations.

I ran a series of tests to see how the Gum Max would recharge my iPhone 4S, iPad 2, and new iPad. Overall, the Gum Max can easily recharge an iPhone 4S from 0% to 100% in two hours, get an iPad 2 from 0% to 90% with a single charge, and recharge half of the new iPad’s bigger battery with a single charge.

Gum Max Tests

iPhone 4S, started at 3:47 AM. From 0% to 37% in 30 minutes; up to 79% after 67 minutes.

iPhone 4S, started at 11:15 PM. From 0% to 68% in 60 minutes; up to 98% in 115 minutes.

iPad 3, started at 1:10 AM. Up to 28% in 100 minutes.

iPad 3, started at 2:09 PM. Device turned on at 2:17 PM. Up to 35% in 122 minutes; 42% in 145 minutes; 51% in 176 minutes; Gum Max turned off at 5:05 PM with device at 52%.

iPad 2, started at 10:14 PM. Device turned on at 10:23 PM, reached 44% at 11:44 PM, Gum Max turned off with iPad at 90%.

At $109, you have to consider whether getting 5 hours of a new iPad back will be worth the expense, assuming you’re getting the 10 hours of battery life promised by Apple, which I have indeed noticed with my iPad (it is a 4G model, and I don’t keep brightness at 100%). Is a full iPhone charge or an iPad going back to 50% going to a considerable improvement for your work, or the way you rely on iOS devices on the go? And is that improvement going to be worth $109 over time? Especially for iPhone users, I think having a full charge back in two hours can be critical in some scenarios (last year, I spent a night at the hospital to help a friend, my phone died at 3 AM, and I couldn’t reach my parents). For third-generation iPad users, the utility of a battery pack like this is more debatable, as the new iPad is slower at charging, and it’ll completely drain the Gum Max while remaining at only 50%. For previous iPad owners, 90% of charge from zero sounds like a good investment in my opinion.

With these differences in mind, the Gum Max is a fine accessory, it’s very portable, and it comes with an elegant black carrying pouch. You can get it here.

Slicy Reinvents Slicing Photoshop PSDs

“Save for Web” – not everyone’s favorite thing to do as a designer, but it’s part of the job. It’s monotonous but not a difficult task to do, it simply takes time. MacRabbit, who created Espresso, has released a new Mac app called Slicy. Its sole purpose is to turn PSD files into images for the web and applications. Slicy examines your .psd files for Layer Groups that are named like a file (.png, .jpg, .tif, .icns) and auto-exports them, no “Save for Web” dialog boxes necessary. “Name layer groups like the files you want to create, and Slicy will extract them individually. Enjoy complete freedom to move, obscure and even hide these named layer groups without affecting the extracted images.”

I can admit that my layers and layer groups are not always properly named; I think all designers can attest to this, so Slicy will also help you do a better job with naming objects within your PSD files. Once your naming is done and file is saved, drag the .psd into the apps’s window and Slicy will do the work for you. If you make changes to the .psd after you run Slicy, the app has an option to auto-export the images when they are re-saved. Delicious! If you want to repeat a job you already did, Slicy saves your previous exports under the “clockwise” icon in the upper right. Slicy, however, cannot guarantee a perfect replica for every .psd – the CMYK color space and some advanced filters are not supported.

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Second Apple Store in Rome To Open On April 21

(The location of the Apple Store at Porta di Roma. Image via Macity)

According to iSpazio [Google Translation], Apple will open its second retail store in Rome, Italy, on Saturday, April 21. Currently, Apple only has one retail store in Rome. The new one, located at the Porta di Roma shopping mall, should open on the same day Rome celebrates its birthday, commemorating the city’s founding in 753 BC. iSpazio managed to take some exclusive shots of the progress being made with the store’s construction, supposedly showing the usual layout of retail stores located inside Italian malls. iSpazio says the opening date has been confirmed by an “inside source”.

Italian website Macity reported back in January that Apple had started working on the new store, sharing photos of the old Co.Import location under construction. Opening in between Benetton and Bershka retail stores (Benetton is an Italian fashion firm, Bershka is a retailer part of the Spanish Inditex group), the Apple Store will be located on the same floor of heavily trafficked H&M and Media World. The Porta di Roma shopping mall, easily reachable by bus or by car from the GRA, has long been rumored to be a favorite location for Apple to open a retail store, albeit speculation has also suggested the company would like to have a third retail store in downtown Rome.

Recently, Apple has also been rumored to be considering making its new retail store in Turin its “most important” Italian one. Apple was also on the verge of launching a new flagship store in Milan, but the company didn’t manage to get permissions from the city. Currently, Apple has 9 retail stores in Italy.