Building Our MacStories Wiki with VoodooPad 5

In the past three years writing for MacStories, I have stumbled across several applications that I really wanted to try, but eventually put off because I didn’t have time to learn more about their functionalities and purposes.

VoodooPad by Flying Meat – Gus Mueller’s indie development shop, also behind my favorite OS X image editor, Acorn – has been one of those apps for the longest time. I’m all for supporting independent developers, and I believe that, at some point, I even purchased a VoodooPad 4.x license and the iOS version “because you never know”. I wanted to learn and use VoodooPad, but I kept reverting to Evernote, Dropbox, and you know what else. When I read about the improvements and new features coming in VoodooPad 5.0 and got invited by Gus to test the major release, I realized two things: that I needed to learn more about VoodooPad without further delays, and that version 5.0 revealed the fleeting purpose I had been missing from my quick skims through VoodooPad’s website.

Some apps are complex, but they are not complicated. The subtle difference between these mechanics is exemplified by VoodooPad, which is presented as a “personal wiki app”, but that, in reality, is so much more. In fact, starting with powerful wiki capabilities as the app’s foundation, VoodooPad can be used for just about anything as long as you can type or come up with ways to enter information into the app. All this while staying simple, intuitive, and powerful at the same time, hiding advanced functionalities under the hood alongside those little details connoisseur of great Mac software can recognize and appreciate.

If you’re looking for a list of features in VoodooPad 5.0, the website and documentation pages are the perfect place to read through. Flying Meat is well known among Mac veterans for its painstakingly accurate and in-depth docs (possibly only second to Bare Bones Software), so make sure to check them out if you want explanations and answers. In this post, I thought it’d be fun to briefly illustrate how we are using VoodooPad at MacStories, and how I think the app can make sense alongside other text-oriented syncing services like Dropbox editors and Evernote.

VoodooPad is a personal wiki-building application at its core, and we’re using it at MacStories exactly for that. Read more

Playing Devil’s Advocate, Arguing Apple Should Change Their IAP Policy

There’s been a lot of discussion in the past few days over Apple, its In-App Purchase (IAP) policy, and Dropbox after it rejected a few apps that employed Dropbox functionality because they offered links to the Dropbox website for signing up and logging in. At issue was that the option to buy a higher level of storage was also visible, and this contravened one of the App Store Review Guidelines. Some viewed this as Apple trying to kill (or at the very least, target) Dropbox – but as Federico explained, this was just Apple enforcing one of their existing policies.

After thinking about it for a while, I’ve come to the position that perhaps that policy isn’t the right one. So I decided to play the devil’s advocate, and try to argue the case for Apple adjusting their policy. Specifically my argument focuses on Apple’s policy going something like:

Apps may use external mechanisms for purchases or subscriptions to be used in an app, but only when those purchase mechanisms are undertaken in a web view within the app.

That could probably be further clarified in more simplistic language, but you get the general idea of what I’m proposing. The current policy prohibits any link to purchases or subscriptions that are undertaken through external mechanisms (ie. not IAP); I suggest that this should be allowed. So let’s quickly go through the benefits of the current policy and arguments for relaxing the policy. Read more

Reading Manga On The Retina iPad

Last month, I asked on Twitter if there was an easy and legal way to purchase manga digitally on the iPad. Unfortunately, while American comics are seeing a nice digital resurgence thanks to apps like Comixology, the situation is profoundly different and inherently worse with Japanese manga. There is no Comixology for manga – where by manga I basically mean Shonen Jump content – and the few services that do have some manga available (like VIZ) have terrible apps that don’t take advantage of the latest iOS technologies and come with risible offers on multi-volume purchases.

I have no idea why Shonen or its international publishers – like Panini Comics and Star Comics in Italy – aren’t realizing the huge potential for legal, convenient, digital editions of their manga on mobile devices. It is kind of ironic that, as of today, pirating manga you already own physically gets you better, higher quality results from some shady Internet forum than going the proper, legitimate way. Because that way doesn’t exist. It’s the same problem of old media all over again.

As I was listening to T.Rex on Spotify yesterday for my review of the app, I connected Marc Bolan’s song to Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys, and I felt the need of finding a solution to begin reading the series again. It turns out, provided you have scans for your manga ready to go (I prefer PDF and CBR, but there are several options out there), there are two interesting options right now on iOS.

Assuming you want to read manga on your iPad, Bookman is a $2.99 iPad app that’s been updated for the Retina display and that comes with fast caching of pages, great performance, and a good selection of browsing and optimization settings. Its rendering has been very good for my copies of 20th Century Boys, and I like how you can easily import content through a built-in FTP server (I transfer files with Transmit) or Dropbox. You can organize manga in bookshelves, and the app comes with various settings for tap areas, thumbnail previews, appearance, and zoom. It’s even got page resume and multiple page turning effects. $1.99 on the App Store gets you the separate iPhone app (I wish they were universal). Right now, I’m reading manga with Bookman.

The other option is Comic Zeal, which is universal, but that I haven’t tried yet as it doesn’t have support for the Retina iPad. Technically, the app displays manga in Retina resolution if higher-res images are available, but interface elements haven’t been updated for the new display. According to the developers, an update with new graphics and “other goodies” has been submitted to Apple. Comic Zeal is $4.99 on the App Store.

Here’s to hoping publishers will consider the market for digital manga someday.

iCloud and iOS Games→

iCloud and iOS Games

TouchArcade’s Brad Nicholson asked some indie iOS game developers about iCloud and support for syncing save states across devices:

It’s also obvious to us that iCloud and the implementation of it needs to be easier, and the service itself needs to be more reliable. Almost every studio we talked to had some trepidations or a horror story to share. Browse our message board, and you’ll find even more from users receiving the bad end of an iCloud problem.

That’s not to say iCloud isn’t awesome. It is. Games that use it, like Infinity Blade 2, are better for the implementation. iCloud could also be used for stuff beyond saves, so there’s promise of what’s to come. We simply want to see more of it.

In the case of smaller, independent developers of games for the iPhone and iPad, money is the main reason why iCloud often gets cut off from the list of features to implement at the last minute. For as much as we like to think of indie games as modern versions of DOS games programmed in a garage with virtually zero costs and lots of caffeine (and weird haircuts), the reality is that creating the latest $0.99 hit for iPhone is based off real business rules with real associated costs. As TouchArcade quoted a developer saying, “keep making games” is just as important as “making games”. The business side of things needs to be taken care of; when time is running out, iCloud typically gets sacrificed for the greater good – shipping the game.

I believe, however, that there is a deeper reason as to why developers are choosing to think about iCloud at the last minute. Why aren’t developers considering native iCloud integration from the get-go? And why is that only bigger, triple-A titles have been able to successfully use and ship with iCloud integration so far?

When I talked to developers about the first six months of iCloud, the reaction was the same: iCloud is great when it works, but there’s a need for better documentation and debugging tools. iCloud requires a lot of technical work to be implemented and customer support once it’s made available; not all developers are willing to go through this effort right now, and, unsurprisingly, only bigger development studios with consequently bigger budgets and support staff are pursuing iCloud sync for games.

With the WWDC approaching, here’s to hoping Apple will incentivize developers to consider iCloud integration as the foundation for apps and games. Third-party software is better with iCloud, iOS is better because of iCloud, but the platform for the next decade needs to find its early adopters in the people that will ultimately improve the platform going forward: iOS developers.

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Rare Video Of Steve Jobs as Franklin Delano Roosevelt Surfaces→

Rare Video Of Steve Jobs as Franklin Delano Roosevelt Surfaces

Network World (via MacRumors) managed to obtain a copy of an old internal inspirational video for Apple employees titled “1944”, starring Steve Jobs as U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Serving as an in-house alternate version of Apple’s iconic 1984 commercial, “1944” was allegedly aimed at rallying Apple’s sales troops against IBM.

Set as a World War II tale of good vs. IBM, it is a broadcast-quality production (said to have cost $50,000) that was designed to fire up Apple’s international sales force at a 1984 meeting in Hawaii. A copy of “1944” was provided to me by one-time Apple employee Craig Elliott, now CEO of Pertino Networks, a cloud-computing startup located two blocks from Apple in Cupertino.

Make sure to check out the full video, backstory, and transcript of the entire video at Network World.

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MacStories Interviews: Manton Reece

In our ongoing series of interviews with developers and creators in the Apple community, I recently had the chance to talk with Manton Reece, the founder of Riverfold Software and developer of Wii Transfer, Tweet Library, and Tweet Marker. When he’s not developing new features for his apps, Manton writes at manton.org. You can follow him on Twitter as @manton.

The interview below was conducted between January 18 and May 2, 2012.

MacStories: Hey Manton! Could you introduce yourself to the readers who haven’t heard about you or haven’t tried any of your apps before?

Manton Reece: Sure, my name is Manton Reece and I’m a Mac and iOS developer from Austin, Texas. I build e-textbook software for VitalSource and in 2006 I founded Riverfold Software with my first indie Mac app, Wii Transfer. My two main products are Clipstart, for managing videos on the Mac, and Tweet Library, an iOS app for archiving and collecting tweets. Most recently I launched Tweet Marker, a syncing web service for Twitter apps.

MCSTR: What are the circumstances that led you to start your own company? When, and how, did you decide you wanted to become an independent developer?

MR: It was almost an accident that I started Riverfold. I’ve always worked on side projects, though often it’s just to build something I need for myself, or a small tool released as freeware. But in 2006 the Nintendo Wii had just been released, and over a few weekends I built this app to make it easier to convert movies to a format that could play on the new console. At the last minute, I decided to charge for it, and I reused the domain name from a previous, unfinished web project of mine.

People bought the app, but the most surprising thing to me – and what really opened my eyes about the business of software development – is that sales were fairly consistent over those first few months. I could tell that the Mac had a very healthy software market for independent developers.

And there’s nothing like feedback from paying customers to get you excited about building and improving apps. I don’t think I would have been nearly as inspired to do anything after that if I hadn’t decided to make it a paid app at that initial release. Read more

QuickShot 2.0→

QuickShot 2.0

I don’t only store text in Dropbox. Sometimes, I like to quickly send photos or videos shot with my iPhone or iPad to my Dropbox account – either into the standard Photos directory, or to a folder I’m sharing with the MacStories team. Previously covered on MacStories, QuickShot recently got an upgrade to version 2.0, adding a number of new features and optimizations to improve the way the app uploads photos and videos to Dropbox as soon as they are shot.

QuickShot is a standalone camera app that uploads media to any Dropbox folder. In version 2.0, the developer added support for specifying your own Dropbox path from a built-in browser. Similarly, you can now set custom file names for files that get uploaded – with default shortcuts for timestamps – opening the door for some interesting automation possibilities (imagine mixing up filename recognition with Hazel, or custom folders with IFTTT to save, say, receipts into Evernote). Custom path and file names definitely help in personalizing QuickShot even more (the app already allowed you to set custom file sizes for faster uploads).

The most notable feature of version 2.0, however, is “Capture Profiles” – a way to switch between different output settings for multiple scenarios.

The second goal was to transform QuickShot from a single-purpose app to one that could be easily integrated into powerful workflows. A single new feature called “Capture Profiles” you to go from shooting HD video of your kids and sharing it with the world through a shared folder to capturing business receipts and sending to Evernote using if this then that without the need for changing a bunch of settings. The app ships with a few great profiles by default but its really easy to create and customize them to suit your needs.

I am using QuickShot for photos and videos that I want to end up on Dropbox instantly, and I like the improvements of version 2.0. The app is $1.99 on the App Store.

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Create Multiple Mail Signatures On Your iPhone with Signatures

When it comes to mail conversations, it’s often difficult to find the right signature for the mail you’re about to send. You obviously cannot send a mail to your grandma ending up with “Kindest Regards, Lukas Hermann – Staff writer for MacStories.net”. I mean, of course you can, but she may misconceive that a bit. To avoid uncomfortable answers or telephone calls from her, mail apps for the Mac most of the time offer the ability to create several signatures and add them to a mail with a single click. On the iPhone, you can only create one signature, it completely lacks of this ability although it’s Mac companion has this feature. Signatures from Crowded Road fills this gap of functionality with a great UI and many useful features. Read more

Spotify for iPad: A UI Analysis with A Rdio Perspective

Spotify for iPad, released this morning, is a beautiful app. It’s solid, providing fast and reliable access to Spotify’s huge catalogue of songs and artists, and it presents content inside a great-looking package that, as I’ve already written, reminds me of Reeder’s sepia tones.

What follows is a brief examination of the app’s interface and functionalities. I have been using Rdio to completely fill my music listening needs for the past six months, but I was looking forward to trying Spotify for iPad to give it a fair shot. Read more