This Week's Sponsor:

Direct Mail

Professional Email Marketing Built Just for Mac Users

Transporter: Your Own Private Cloud [Sponsor]

Transporter is your own private cloud for syncing, accessing, protecting, and sharing all your files across all your devices. A storage device that you control, Transporter starts at $99 with no monthly fees or other recurring costs and it doesn’t put your files on anyone else’s cloud.

Setting up a Transporter is easy: you create an account and create a folder on your Mac or PC to hold all the files you want to make available on multiple devices. Whether you choose the Transporter (in 500 GB, 1 TB, or 2 TB variations) or the Transporter Sync (turn any USB drive into a Transporter device), your files will always be securely stored in your own private cloud that you can access with desktop and mobile apps. On OS X, unlike other sharing services, you can select any folder and set it up for syncing and sharing.

Transporter is great for storing any kind of file, especially private photos and videos. With the iOS app, you can automatically upload new photos and videos to your Transporter device, which can hold hundreds of GBs worth of media and securely share them with your friends and family. Your data is always encrypted during transfers to protect it against snooping, and images are always saved at full resolution from the iOS camera roll.

Alternatively, you can use your Transporter for work purposes and keep important documents and projects in a cloud that’s under your control. Last week, Transporter launched versioning, a feature that lets you save revisions of files automatically and restore them at any time. Think of it like Time Machine for Transporter files: it doesn’t consume too much space thanks to incremental versioning, and you can rest assured that you’ll never lose changes to a file.

Transporter lets you access everything you want, right when you need it. Find out more here.

Our thanks to Transporter for sponsoring MacStories this week.

BBEdit Leaving the Mac App Store→

Jason Snell, reporting from Çingleton:

I’m in Montreal for the Cingleton conference. On Saturday Rich Siegel of Bare Bones Software gave a presentation in which he announced that the next version of BBEdit would not be sold in the Mac App Store. (The existing version will remain, and existing Mac App Store customers can upgrade to the next version directly with Bare Bones.)

Siegel’s talk was notable for its restraint and care. This was not a scorched-earth denouncement of the Mac App Store. In fact, at the end, he admitted that it’s not impossible that BBEdit might return to the store someday, if conditions change.

When the Mac App Store launched over three years ago, many of us thought that it would be a panacea for independent Mac software – designed after the success of the iOS App Store, it would provide a unified marketplace with all the benefits of Apple’s infrastructure.

For thousands of developers, that was absolutely the case. But, at this point, it’s clear that all the problems of Apple’s infrastructure couldn’t be sustainable for developers of apps that weren’t simple utilities or games. I noted this in 2012 after popular indie developers had already exited the Mac App Store. I wrote:

I am thus going back to my initial point: developers seem cautious about the future of the Mac App Store and the restrictions that Apple could, in theory, bring up again. The numbers and facts speak for themselves: developers are still using the Buying Direct option. And when the download numbers of the Mac App Store aren’t so great, who can blame them? And when you start adding Sandboxing, iCloud, and Top Charts dominated by Apple apps (and the operating system itself, listed under “Productivity”) to the list of complaints, who can blame an indie development company for their decision to sell software through the good ol’ Internet?

The departure of BBEdit from the Mac App Store is yet another example of the platform’s limitations and it’s sad, but it’s probably for the best and everything will be okay. The Mac App Store isn’t meant for apps like TextExpander or BBEdit, and Apple doesn’t seem to be willing to change its underlying nature.

It is disappointing to conclude that the Mac App Store can’t be the unified marketplace for everyone, but at least web browsers can still be used to buy software.

Permalink

View Source 2.0→

I first covered View Source, an action extension to view source code in Safari, soon after the launch of iOS 8:

With iOS 8 extensions, apps like View Source can be possible thanks to direct integration with Safari and access to the DOM. Once enabled in the browser’s share sheet, View Source will bring up a full-screen panel with source code you can read and copy. A share button lets you copy all text to the clipboard, send as email, or choose one from eight themes that include dark backgrounds and lighter styles. All these themes support syntax highlighting – a better visualization than my old scripts that didn’t support highlighting at all.

View Source has been updated with numerous improvements since its first release, and most notably yesterday with the release of version 2.0. View Source now has two Solarized themes, line wrapping is optional, and you can search and highlight any string of text within the extension. Even better, the extension now has a full DOM browser so you can view and navigate to linked assets without leaving Safari. You can also write custom JavaScript and have it executed in the Safari webpage you’re viewing after you dismiss the extension.

If you’re a web developer and work with iOS, View Source has turned into a must-have. It’s $0.99 on the App Store.

Permalink

It’s the Storage Space, Stupid→

And speaking of iOS 8 update issues, great points by John Gruber:

This is a serious problem for Apple, because all those 16 GB devices (let alone the 8 GB ones) aren’t going to suddenly gain more free storage space on their own. A lot of these devices might never get updated to iOS 8, but would if the OTA software worked. Unless they can rejigger the OTA software update to require less free space, iOS 8’s adoption rate might lag permanently.

It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: iOS 8’s (upcoming) iCloud Photo Library and new message deletion settings could alleviate storage issues, but upgrading to iOS 8 is still required to use those features.

(It’d be interesting to see Apple porting storage-saving features back to iOS 7.)

Permalink

iOS 8 and Normal Users→

I love this post idea by Karan Varindani:

It’s been reported that iOS 8’s adoption has stagnated just two and a half weeks after launch and I’ve been wondering why, so I reached out to a friend who’s pretty much the quintessential normal user and asked for unbiased feedback on iOS 8. To be precise: “What you thought before updating, how quickly you decided to update, what you’ve noticed since, the things you like and don’t like about it, etc.” Here’s the original transcript, followed by my notes.

Note that “normal” isn’t used pejoratively – it simply indicates the way that people who don’t obsess about apps and workflows actually use their devices on a daily basis.

This is a great perspective and Karan’s friend makes some excellent points. Read the transcript, because that’s how most people see iOS 8. No mention of extensions right away, but instead a rumor (Touch ID on a per-app basis); too much free storage required to upgrade; positive comments about the new Messages app; confusion about Recent Contacts and Recently Deleted photos being turned on by default.

I’ve been asked the “So what’s new in iOS 8?” question by friends dozens of times. Most of them couldn’t upgrade immediately due to storage issues and they all asked me about stability and bugs (“Is it like last year?”, they all ask). Some of them know about custom keyboards (“Yes, like the Samsung Galaxy”) and they think widgets are cool but they don’t have many third-party apps that offer them. They have no idea whatsoever about action extensions and Handoff. They all note that audio clips in the Messages app have been “copied” by WhatsApp but they won’t stop using WhatsApp because “it’s faster and works everywhere”.

Make no mistake – they aren’t wrong and they aren’t dumb. They use their iPhones and iPads every day like millions of other people do. iOS 8 is a fantastic upgrade for people who work on iPhones and iPads with lots of productivity apps, but Apple needs to pay attention to the perception most people have of their software.

Permalink

Connected: Squidges→

Stephen and Myke revisit the Twitter and Health apps, then discuss the current state of iOS 8, the Pebble’s future and Apple’s upcoming press event.

I couldn’t join Stephen and Myke for this episode, but I enjoyed their discussion about the post-launch state of iOS 8 and the future of Pebble watches. Get the episode here.

Sponsored by:

  • lynda.com: An easy and affordable way to help individuals and organizations learn. Free 7-day trial.
  • Hover: Simplified Domain Management. Use code ‘CLEANMYKE’ for 10% off your first purchase.
Permalink

Project LayUp for iPad→

Project LayUp is an upcoming iPad brainstorming app developed by Khoi Vinh in collaboration with Adobe that was announced at Adobe MAX earlier this week. Based on the information released so far, LayUp will let you sketch ideas and start your design process on an iPad with a combination of wireframes, graphical assets, and even real fonts loaded from Typekit. Then, LayUp will be able to export a live InDesign, Illustrator, or Photoshop file to continue working on your project in Adobe’s full-featured apps.

From the description:

Tablets are no longer just for browsing and playing games, they’ve become an integral part of the creative process. Project Layup is the brainchild of a customer and partner who used our just announced Creative SDK to reimagine on device prototyping, sketching, and ideation.

And from Vinh’s blog post:

So that’s what I proposed to Scott: a new iPad app that would turbo-charge the brainstorming phase of the design process, and that would play nicely with Adobe’s marquee apps. I called it “LayUp.” To my surprise, he took me up on the idea, and assigned a team at Adobe to start developing it. So for the better part of this year, I’ve been working with that team to bring LayUp to life.

You can watch Vinh’s presentation at Adobe MAX below, which features a preview of the interface and gestures used to assemble ideas and gather assets directly on the iPad.

I’m intrigued by LayUp’s use of gesture shortcuts: drawing lines and other shapes to drop blocks of text or images into the canvas is smart, and the implementation looks natural and intuitive. Alissa Walker, writing for Gizmodo, notes:

What I was most struck by while watching Vinh demo the app is how natural this felt: It was as if the iPad has been waiting all this time to be used to its full potential in this way. The resulting file is not a production-ready document, of course, but this is far better than anything else you could create with the tools that are out there. Adobe is very smart to bring on some of the top designers to play around with new ways to make their software even more relevant across more platforms.

I often need to sketch out ideas I want to send to our designer for MacStories, but I’m not good at sketching. I’m looking forward to trying LayUp.

Permalink

Apple to Live Stream October 16 Event

With an update on their website, Apple has confirmed that they will offer a live stream of the October 16 event, rumored to feature the introduction of new Macs and iPads.

Join us here at apple.com/live on October 16 at 10 a.m. PDT to watch our special event live.

In addition to new iPads, Apple is also expected to provide an official release date for Yosemite – the next major version of OS X. Last year, Apple surprised the tech press by releasing OS X Mavericks on the same day of its October event.

Last month, Apple offered a live stream of its iPhone 6 and Apple Watch event, which ran into a variety of technical issues due to the scale of Apple’s announcements. Apple also provided a live blog of the event with official photos and status updates.

The October 16 event will be streamed live at apple.com/live, with an Apple TV channel likely to be added a few hours ahead of the event.

iOS 8 Spotlight Search and App Discovery→

Hugh Kimura, writing about the new Spotlight search suggestions for App Store apps in iOS 8:

At this point, there doesn’t seem to be a way to optimize for Spotlight Search. Even searches for the most popular app names and keywords return inconsistent results.

It does help some well established apps. But we need to wait for Apple to refine the algorithm, in order for it to benefit more apps.

With ASO now being an important factor for developers to consider to properly market their apps, it’ll be interesting to see if and how search in Spotlight will evolve. I’m finding it to be much faster and intuitive than App Store search, but its results aren’t consistent.

Permalink