Convert Twitter.com URLs to Tweetbot Links

I communicate with my team through iMessage. We’ve tried many “communication services” over the years, yet, since last Fall, we’ve always come back to Apple’s solution. It’s not perfect for us, its reliability is far from 100%, but it works.

As we keep using iMessage every day, there’s one category of “media” we’re constantly sharing: Twitter URLs. We find some cool piece of information or news on Twitter, we share it with the team. Linking back to tweets has, in a way, become our favorite type of commentary for fun, news-hunting, and everything in between.

Twitter.com URLs, though, aren’t the best way to jump back to a tweet, especially when you’re on a mobile device. When you’re on a Mac, clicking on a Twitter link will open a new browser tab, which doesn’t really bother us as we’re used to opening background tabs on our computers. But on the iPhone and iPad, it can become annoying: there’s a limit of 8 Safari tabs on the iPhone, you get yanked out of Messages, and, most of the time, mobile.twitter.com URLs just don’t work. In our team chat, we’ve speculated the “Not Found” errors we’ve seen may be related to how Tweetbot generates Twitter URLs when you hit “Copy Link to Tweet”: instead of using status in the URL slug, it uses statuses, which seems to be the reason behind erroneous redirecting on mobile devices.

We’ve come to the conclusion that we want to be able to easily copy twitter.com URLs and turn them into links based on Tweetbot’s URL scheme. Using a simple tweetbot:// URL, you can use Twitter’s status ID – the same you receive when you copy a link – to open a single tweet directly in Tweetbot. And the best part is, the same URL scheme works consistently across Tweetbot for iOS and Tweetbot for Mac. As everyone on the MacStories team is already using Tweetbot, the solution seemed obvious – plus: no more browser tabs.

The problem was finding a way to convert twitter.com URLs easily, without having to remember complex combinations of keystrokes and commands. Furthermore, as I promised my team I’d come up with a way, I had to figure out a solution to do text conversion directly on iOS.

As a result, I’ve come up with an AppleScript, a Keyboard Maestro macro, and a simple Python script to transform Twitter URLs into their Tweetbot counterparts. Read more

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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Send Selected OmniFocus Task to Plain Text File

I save a lot of stuff into OmniFocus: bits of text, URLs, emails. I used to save favorite tweets into it, too. The app’s Quick Entry panel is so easy to invoke and so well-integrated with core parts of OS X  that, most of the time, I find myself clipping information that shouldn’t be into OmniFocus at all. However, I also find the process of manually going through that information beneficial to my workflow: it allows me to mentally and practically separate actionable items (tasks) from things to read and things to write (Instapaper material and my future articles, essentially).

I have created a simple AppleScript to send the selected OmniFocus task to a text file. The script is meant for how I use OmniFocus; hopefully you’ll find it useful as well. Feel free to modify it.

Typically, when I decide to go through my OmniFocus inbox, I find a lot of tasks that are actually ideas of things I want to do or write. Ideas don’t go into OmniFocus. Until those ideas become actionable items, I send them to a text file so I can elaborate on them and see if they can evolve. Like I said, most of the time those ideas are for new articles.

I store all my notes in a single Apps/ directory on my Dropbox. Based off the same AppleScript, I have created a Keyboard Maestro macro to create a new text file for each processed task; this is for ideas I know will turn out to be single, standalone articles. For ideas I’m not so sure about, I prefer to append them as text to an Ideas.txt file I keep in Dropbox as an “everything bucket” for inspiration. Read more

Single Podcast Episodes, Huffduffer, and Podcast Apps

Last week I tweeted that developers of podcast apps should figure out a way to let users quickly add podcast episodes from anywhere. I am subscribed to less than 10 podcasts, and I listen to nearly each new episode of them. However, there’s been so much good stuff lately that I’ve found myself wanting to check out another podcast’s episode every once in a while. Maybe it’s an episode of a 5by5 show I’m not subscribed to, or an interview I’m interested in. How can I save these “single episodes” from any device?

Downcast, my podcast client of choice, comes with a “mark for streaming” functionality that lets you add a single episode to a temporary list you can go through later. But I wanted something more like Instapaper: I want to save an episode to a “for later” list I can access and listen to from any device, at any time. I want to be able to save an episode with the click of a button and forget about it – it has to be frictionless.

Huffduffer does just that. It is web service that lets you “Instapaper episodes”: it has a bookmarklet which lets you clip podcast pages and save them to a single list on your account, which, unfortunately, can’t be set to private (unless I’m not seeing a setting). It doesn’t bother me to have my profile public, but a private option is always welcome. You can tag episodes, browse other people’s profiles and tags, and check out popular episodes on the homepage.

The cool thing about Huffduffer is that your profile is, essentially, an RSS feed that you can add to any podcast app that supports RSS – which means basically every app nowadays. Adding your Huffduffer profile’s RSS feed as a podcast will enable you to listen to the episodes you’ve saved through the bookmarklet, as Huffduffer directly fetches the audio file of a webpage you save. In my tests, it worked perfectly with podcast pages from 5by5, 70Decibels, and Mule Radio.

To add an RSS feed in Downcast, simply choose Add Podcasts > Add Podcasts Manually; your Huffduffer feed will be added as a podcast with its own episodes. I’ve also found that refresh times are fast – as soon as you add an episode to Huffduffer, your RSS feed will be updated.

It is slightly more complicated with Apple’s Podcasts app. The app doesn’t have a visible “Add from RSS” button, but you can force it to add one by pasting the URL into the search field. The app will recognize the URL and ask you to subscribe.

Huffduffer is a niche tool that, for me, solves a recurring problem. I can now save episodes from any device without having to subscribe to an entire show if I’m just interested in a a single episode. If I had to nitpick, I’d say I’d like Huffduffer to offer higher-res (Retina-quality) artwork for its default image.

Check out Huffduffer here.

iCloud and Document Sharing→

iCloud and Document Sharing

Over at Macworld, Dan Moren writes about the poor state of iCloud document sharing between apps and users:

For example, if you’d like to take a text file created in TextEdit and stored in iCloud, and then edit it in some other program, there’s no easy way to do so. No other program can see that data, either on the Mac or the iPad. In fact, no iOS program at all can see the files stored in TextEdit, because there’s no equivalent Apple text editor on that platform.

And about collaboration:

Imagine being able to see other documents that friends or co-workers share with you, right in that same iCloud Open dialog box. You open a file and work on it, all of your changes are automatically saved and versioned so that when your collaborators edit it later, they’re sure to be working on the most up-to-date version.

Realistically, I imagine “simple collaboration” with other people (“send John a document”) would be the easiest for Apple to integrate in iCloud. Just like you can “find friends”, Apple could leverage the same infrastructure to “work with friends” – obviously making the necessary adjustments to switch from a location app to tools like Pages or Keynote.

It gets more complicated with stuff like real-time editing, sync, and tracking changes or differences. I believe there is plenty of room in the iCloud Document Library for a “Your Collaborators” tab that would show people working on a project with you or editing a document you are “subscribed” to. Imagine being able to receive “updates” for a document via iCloud email, or to assign to-dos of a document to a Reminders list. Imagine asking Siri “has John updated the presentation yet”? Once you start thinking about pulling all the iCloud strings together, the possibilities are endless.

Question remains as to whether it’s in Apple’s plans to tackle these requests in the short term. Which brings me to the issue with sharing files across iCloud-enabled apps. In my Mountain Lion review, I had a whole section dedicated to this subject. I concluded with:

I’d like an app’s visual Document Library — not just the Mobile Documents folder — to display files from other apps that can be opened and edited. It would enable me to use an elegant interface without giving up on the filesystem-oriented nature of the Mac, which, as much as it may be hidden by default in some areas, is still there and still part of my daily workflow.

On the flip side, I recognize how the majority of users don’t see this option as a must-have. The average user doesn’t fiddle with dozens of text editors, nor do they try 10 different PDF apps to see which one has the best support for annotations (I am guilty of this too). Still, I think there could be some edge cases in which those users would miss “shared iCloud documents” — for example, they could be using TextEdit on the desktop, but another text editor on iOS — so once again, I restate my hope that Apple will someday consider the possibility of making iCloud documents app-independent…as an option if nothing else.

After three months, I keep hoping that Apple is considering the possibility of real iCloud documents, not just app documents. Like Dan and I suggested, they could be the same files with an extra “shared” privilege; or – mine is a more futuristic alternative – iCloud could simply have its own “Documents” area that contains files any app can open and send updates to.

These things take time. As I said, though, I hope Apple isn’t simply dismissing the idea as a “power user request”. After talking to people who have upgraded to 10.8 for the past three months, I’m convinced file portability and inter-app access is something a lot of folks understand, not just nerds.

Read Dan’s full story here.

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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