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GAget for iPhone→

First released in October, GAget is my favorite Google Analytics app for iPhone because it makes it easy to look at stats for the current day and past 4 weeks with a clean design. Most Google Analytics clients tend to display as much information as possible at once, whereas GAget is a dashboard for your Analytics account – readable and with just the right amount of numbers and charts.

The latest 1.1 version adds support for traffic sources, platform data, and social stats that are displayed at the bottom of the screen with icons and percentages. Developer Zoltan Hosszu also makes GAget for Mac (which we covered in 2011), and the iPhone app is useful for quick overviews. GAget is $1.99 on the App Store.

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More On The AppleScript Improvements In Latest iWork Update→

With yesterday’s update of the iWork suite for OS X, Apple reintroduced several AppleScript functionalities that had been removed in October, and brought new scripting features to Pages, Numbers, and Keynote as well.

Ben Waldie published an overview of the changes at Macworld, noting that the AppleScript improvements aren’t only focused on additions: Apple is now using a consistent AppleScript dictionary that should allow scripts to be easily reused across all iWork apps.

What’s especially interesting is that these suites are consistent from app to app. In other words, since all the apps have certain features in common, the same exact AppleScript terminology is used to script those features. This is huge: It means that if you write a script that builds a table or chart in Numbers, you can change the app name in your code to Keynote and your script should “just work” in Keynote. Want to add an image, replace some text, change the volume of every movie in a document? The code you write is the same for any of these tasks, regardless of which app you’re targeting.

When Apple relaunched iWork last year, they stressed how the apps had been rebuilt with full 64-bit support and a new unified file format. The return of AppleScript in iWork seems to highlight – as Waldie notes – a collaboration between different teams at Apple to improve consistency between apps, data exchange, and scripting features.

It took six months, but AppleScript appears to be alive and well at Apple. It may not be a priority anymore, and there’s no denying that Apple put power users through a rough transition last year, but the new scripting capabilities of the iWork apps are fairly impressive and it sounds like there’s still room for improvement.

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Directional: Paper Manuals→

This week Federico and Myke discuss April fools customs around the world, a look back at the wonderful age of video game manuals, the Vita TV and Fez.

For the episode, we put together two Flickr galleries comparing old GameCube manuals to the current Wii U ones. We also continue the discussion on streaming and second screen experiences with the PS Vita TV. Get the episode here.

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Fantastical for iPad Review

Ever since Apple introduced Reminders in 2011, I’ve been looking for a truly great app capable of combining my todos and calendar events in a single, coherent interface. Fantastical for iPad, released today by Flexibits, is that app.

Based on the solid foundation of Fantastical 2 for iPhone, Fantastical for iPad expands the app’s functionality to take advantage of the larger screen while retaining intuitive features and powerful advanced options. I put Fantastical in my dock when I received the first beta in November, and I wouldn’t be able to go back to using Apple’s Calendar and Reminders apps on my iPad.

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TextExpander touch Updated for iOS 7 with Redesign, Group and Snippet Management Improvements

TextExpander touch

TextExpander touch

TextExpander touch, Smile’s snippet expansion utility for iOS, has been updated today to version 2.5, bringing a redesign for iOS 7 with new features and tweaks made possible by the new OS. TextExpander allows users to configure abbreviations that are expanded into longer, commonly-used strings of text in third-party apps that have added support for the TextExpander touch SDK; unlike Apple’s own abbreviation feature, TextExpander supports advanced options such as macros, clipboard integration, and fill-in snippets.

Aside from an expected visual update, TextExpander touch 2.5 makes several improvements to group and snippet management: groups can be reordered, and a new detail view combines group renaming with the ability to disable snippet expansion for an entire group of snippets. In groups, individual snippets can be moved to a different group with a dedicated Move button, which is available in the bottom toolbar alongside a new preview option to see what an expanded snippet will look like. Outdated snippet organization had long been one of the app’s popular shortcomings, and the improvements in version 2.5 make creating, moving, and sharing snippets faster and easier.

When sharing a snippet, TextExpander touch now uses iOS’ default share sheet with buttons to copy or share a snippet via configured services. Smile also added external keyboard shortcut support to adjust font size (the app integrates with iOS’ Dynamic Type now), create new snippets/groups/notes, and toggle between Notes and Groups in the main view.

In December, Smile was forced to change how TextExpander touch shared snippets with other iOS apps following a rejection from Apple; the company released an updated SDK and app that abandoned the Reminders-based snippet sharing solution in favor of a manual sharing process based on x-callback-url. Since then, third-party developers have been updating their TextExpander-compatible apps to the new SDK, which requires users to share and update snippets manually.

TextExpander touch 2.5 is available on the App Store.

iWork Automation→

New website launched today by Otto the Automator after the release of iWork updates that improved AppleScript support considerably:

The whole point of using a productivity suite is to be, well… productive. And the more time you invest in performing repetitive or complex processes, the less productive and creative you become. The reimagined iWork is designed to eliminate the drudgery, with elements, tools, and media libraries, shared by every application in the suite. And now there’s one more thing they have in common: automation with AppleScript.

The site already has a detailed explanation of the updated AppleScript dictionaries (Pages sections, for instance) for iWork, as well as scripts. Here’s one to transform data from Numbers in a vertical bar chart on a new slide in Keynote; this one will create and email encrypted PDF files generated from a Pages template.

Apple seems to have listened to the power user community and there’s lots of AppleScript goodness in the new iWork for OS X. I’m looking forward to knowing more about new features that were added to the dictionaries, and not just the ones that have been brought back.

Check out the iWork Automation website here.

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Safari 7.0.3 Brings New Notifications Preference, Support for Generic Top-Level Domains, Fixes

Following the rollout of updates to iWork for iOS, OS X, and iCloud.com, Apple released version 7.0.3 of its Safari browser today. The update, available in Software Update through the Mac App Store, brings a new preference in the app’s Notifications settings that allows users to turn off prompts for website notifications (Note: MacStories uses Safari push notifications). In previous versions of Safari, users could only allow or deny notifications after interacting with a prompt that asked for permissions to display push notifications; now, Safari can skip that prompt entirely if the preference is turned off.

Version 7.0.3 also adds support for new generic top-level domains (which include new entries such as .ceo, .sexy, and .shop) that are loaded as websites by Safari; previously, Safari couldn’t recognize the recently launched generic top-level domains, and redirected them to standard web searches.

In terms of bug fixes, Safari 7.0.3 improves credit card autofill, fixes a bug that could stop website notifications from being displayed, and resolves an address bar bug that loaded webpages or web searches before pressing the Return key.

Safari 7.0.3 is available in Software Update.

Day One for iPad Gets Publish Support→

Day One for iOS was updated to version 1.14 earlier today, which, alongside bug fixes and the ability to insert photos copied in the clipboard, adds support for the Publish service to the iPad app. Day One introduced Publish in March, allowing iPhone users to publish their journal entries on a public webpage directly from the app; on the iPad, Publish works in the same way, but the larger screen makes it easier to assemble longer entries spanning multiple paragraphs.

Day One 1.14 is available on the App Store.

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Apple Updates iWork Suite with Design Tweaks, New Features, Sharing Improvements

In a series of updates rolled out today across iCloud.com, the App Store, and the Mac App Store, Apple updated its iWork suite of apps with design changes in the document editor, new templates, improved Retina display support, and several individual enhancements to Pages, Numbers, and Keynote.

On iCloud.com, the three web apps (which were last updated in January) have all received improved Retina display support and the possibility of opening documents directly from links in iCloud Mail. The document editor’s design has been refreshed, and documents shared from iCloud.com can now be set to a view-only mode that won’t allow recipients to edit them; previously, shared documents could always be edited by multiple users with access to a document’s link.

Apple brought specific changes to each web app as well, such as improved popup menu support in Numbers and new templates, better text wrap, and the possibility to edit charts in imported documents in Pages. Read more