Twitter is rolling out the ability to share 30-second video clips and hold private conversations with up to 20 people, the company announced in a blog post today.
Twitter Announces Video Sharing, Group DMs
Legacy TestFlight Service Shutting Down on February 26→
Apple has informed developers that the legacy TestFlightApp.com beta testing service will shut down on February 26:
The services offered at TestFlightApp.com will no longer be available after February 26, 2015. To prepare for the TestFlightapp.com closure, developers and team leaders are recommended to transfer their testers to the all-new TestFlight Beta Testing in iTunes Connect.
The legacy TestFlight website has continued working in spite of Apple’s acquisition of TestFlight last year and subsequent integration in iTunes Connect. Apple is providing developers with instructions to migrate existing testers to the new TestFlight service, with more details available here.
As I wrote last week, the new TestFlight is not perfect, but its native presence on iOS 8 offers a superior solution for testers and developers thanks to the reliance on Apple IDs. Notably, the legacy TestFlight website allowed developers to release betas for devices running older versions of iOS, whereas the new TestFlight is only available for iOS 8.
Twitterrific 5.9 Brings Media Improvements
In my in-depth look at Twitter clients for iOS from December 2014, I noted Twitterrific’s fantastic support for iOS 8 extensions and thoughtful design touches, but lamented the app’s lack of integration with modern Twitter media features. In particular, Twitterrific didn’t support multiple images in tweets and animated GIFs; compared to Tweetbot, Twitterrific didn’t have inline playback for popular third-party sharing services such as Vine and Instagram either.
With today’s 5.9 update, The Iconfactory has considerably improved their client’s media preview capabilities by bringing native integration with the aforementioned services and support for Twitter’s GIFs and multiple images. Furthermore, Twitterrific has gained minor but welcome changes such as the ability to save source tweets to Pocket and show a user’s mentions by long-tapping a profile picture.
From System 1.0 to OS X Yosemite→
From Steven Troughton-Smith’s fascinating (and successful) attempt to write a Mac app capable of running from System 1.0 all the way up to Yosemite:
The more I dug into it, the more I came to the conclusion that Carbon was probably one of the most important things Apple did in building OS X. Even today it provides source compatibility for a huge chunk of the classic Mac OS software base. It kept the big companies from ditching Apple outright when they were needed the most, and gave them a huge runway - 16 years to port perhaps millions of lines of code to OS X while still being able to iterate and improve without spending thousands of man-years upfront starting from scratch. Over time, of course, Carbon has improved a lot and you can mix/match Carbon & Cocoa views/code to the point where you can’t realistically tell which is which. I appreciate what a monumental effort Carbon was, from a technical standpoint. That Cocoa apps always felt ‘better’ is more to Cocoa’s credit than Carbon being a bad thing - it’s a lot easier to see that in hindsight.
Part of me wonders if, in 2039, someone will try to write an app that runs on iPhone OS 2 and whatever version Apple’s mobile (if “mobile” will still be a concept) OS will have reached. Let’s check back in two decades (hopefully?).
App Developers: Try TestFlight→
From the Supertop blog (makers of Castro and Unread):
Shortly after iOS 8 was released, Apple opened this new beta testing service to iOS developers. When compared to the previous testing process, it is a major improvement and I am grateful to the team behind it. It is a sign that Apple cares about third party developers and about helping us improve the quality of the software we provide.
In the past few months, I’ve been testing about 50 apps with TestFlight, and, as a user, I think the system is way better than the old days of beta testing with Hockey and the original TestFlight. I don’t need to give developers my device UDIDs; all my betas are in the TestFlight app; I get notifications for updates; and, I can easily unlock In-App Purchases in beta builds with my Apple ID. Apple has built the new TestFlight with simplicity in mind, and I appreciate the time it has saved me so far.
It’s not perfect. Developers have reported various issues with uploading builds and automatic crash reporting hasn’t been integrated yet. When TestFlight sends you an email for a beta update, the build’s changelog isn’t reported in the email, forcing you to open the TestFlight app (an extra step). You can’t view a beta’s version history (like you can on Hockey). And, as Supertop mentions, betas expire after 30 days, and that’s never fun.
Still, I think TestFlight is, from a user’s perspective, a great start from Apple. Developers need a solid, easy, and reliable way to let people test their upcoming apps. TestFlight already hits all the basic points of this process.
Connected: Total Dude, with His Surface Hub→
This week Federico and Myke talk about Windows 10, Windows Holographic and unsubscribing from web services. The boys also consider the effect that old browsers are having on the show.
I wouldn’t have thought I’d have fun discussing a Microsoft event, but I’m actually intrigued by their announcements this week (especially for gaming). You can listen to thr episode here.
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Virtual: Vip 24:7→
This week Federico and Myke talk about their 3DS purchases, the death of Club Nintendo, Mario becoming self aware and Nintendo’s rejection of Minecraft.
Make sure to check out the show notes for some great articles to read. You can listen to the episode here.
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The World of Indie App Developers
Here at MacStories we write about apps. A lot. Many of those we write about, perhaps even most, are created by individuals and small teams. And typically, those hard-working individuals remain unknown to the public who just know an app as something they use. Today we want to bring a bunch those indie developers to the forefront.
I wasn’t sure exactly where it would lead, but last month I asked on Twitter for independent developers to @ reply me and say hi. Amplified by retweets by Federico and many others, I got dozens and dozens of replies, ultimately totalling just under 200 responses.[1] That’s both a pretty huge number (trust me, it was a time consuming process documenting them all) and also incredibly tiny (there are around 250,000 active developers and over a million apps for sale).
It would be completely ridiculous to perform any kind of analysis on such a small sample size, but it was nonetheless great to have a relatively varied spread of developers from all over the world (illustrated in the above graphic). But more valuable was the list of developers and their Twitter accounts. So I’ve created a Twitter list that includes every developer that @ replied me. We’ve also included the full table of every developer we collated, links to their apps, location and Twitter account (see below). Please note that developers and apps shown in the full list does not mean they are endorsed by me, Federico or MacStories. If a developer met some very minimal criteria, they were included.
‘Letterpad’ Game to Feature Apple Watch Support→
Jared Nelson, writing at TouchArcade:
A couple of weeks ago, NimbleBit announced that they were looking for testers for their new upcoming game called Letterpad. It’s a word game that gives you a grid of 9 letters and tasks you with coming up with words from those letters that relate to a certain topic. Well, the game is just about complete at this point, and today NimbleBit have additionally announced that Letterpad will be playable on the forthcoming Apple Watch. Here you can see a mockup of what Letterpad will look like on the Apple Watch.
A couple of points to keep in mind: this will actually be based on a WatchKit extension embedded inside the iPhone app. You won’t be able to run Letterpad natively on the Apple Watch initially. And, because there doesn’t seem to be a way for developers to monetize extensions in iOS apps, the Watch “game” will likely come for free in the main iPhone app. Still, I think the idea of iPhone games extending to the Watch is pretty cool (imagine having remote inventory for RPGs or glanceable information for simulator games on your wrist) and I’m excited to see how others will take advantage of WatchKit for gaming.