With today’s weekly App Store refresh, Apple has launched a new curated section highlighting the best app and game releases of April 2014, called “Best of April”. The new showcase, available on the iPhone and iPad App Store but absent from the Mac App Store, suggests Apple’s intention to start offering a monthly recap of the App Store’s best releases, handpicked and curated by the App Store’s editorial team.
Apple Highlights Best App Store Releases In “Best Of April” Section
Twitter Experimenting With Mute Feature In iOS App→
Casey Newton, writing at The Verge:
One of the most-requested features for Twitter’s mobile apps may be on the cusp of arriving. Some users of the company’s iOS and Android clients are now seeing an option to mute accounts that they follow, preventing another user’s tweets and retweets from appearing in their timeline. The user remains muted until you manually unmute them. In essence, then, the mute feature works as a kind of stealth unfollow — you won’t be seeing another person’s tweets, but they won’t know that.
Alongside timeline sync and streaming, mute is one of the most popular features of third-party iOS clients such as Tweetbot and Twitterrific. Based on screenshots from people who can see the feature in their Twitter app, it looks like Twitter is experimenting with a simple account-based option; in Tweetbot, you can create complex mute filters for keywords and usernames.
While I don’t see myself moving away from Tweetbot 3 any time soon, I’d certainly welcome a mute button in Twitter for iOS (which I like to use when looking for news).
With App Links, Facebook Aims At Bridging The Gap Between Mobile Apps
At its f8 developer conference in San Francisco, Facebook today announced App Links, an open-standard and open-source initiative to allow developers to link directly to specific content inside apps installed on mobile devices. App Links has been released today, with initial partners including Spotify, Dropbox, Pinterest, Quip, and Venmo, among others.
One Year of Feed Wrangler→
Feed Wrangler launched a year ago today. David Smith’s RSS service is still my favorite one in the post-Reader era, and I’m glad I decided to support Smith and his vision last year.
Today, Smith has posted his thoughts on the past year and shared initial details on the Feed Wrangler roadmap. You can read them here.
The second year of Feed Wrangler is shaping up to be one with several substantial improvements. The first year necessitated a significant investment and focus in the backend and infrastructure components of the service. The second year should allow me to focus more heavily on the more user visible parts. I have a number of projects I’m actively working on to improve the overall experience of using the service.
Mingle, An Action Launcher for Contacts
Developed by Samir Ghobril, Mingle for iPhone combines aspects of the iOS Contacts app and action launchers such as Drafts and Launch Center Pro to let you quickly launch actions for individual contacts through a swipe gesture.
Facebook Open-Sources Pop, The Animation Engine Behind Paper
Facebook has open-sourced Pop, the animation engine behind the company’s alternative client for iPhone, Paper. Used to power transitions and animations inspired by real-life physics and interactions, Pop has allowed Facebook to build Paper’s popular gestural controls, which have become one of the app’s marquee features. In Paper, many of Facebook’s functionalities are only available through gestures, as the app focuses on content and stories while removing chrome and other standard UI elements in its reimagination of the classic news feed.
Writing on the Facebook Engineering blog, Kimon Tsinteris (co-founder of Push Pop Press, which Facebook acquired in 2011) has explained the motivation behind Pop and the kind of animations it offers to developers willing to implement the framework in their apps:
When I co-founded Push Pop Press in 2010, our goal was to create a realistic, physics-everywhere experience. We wanted a solution that would allow us to evoke the same delightful experience of UIScrollView throughout the whole application. Pop is the latest manifestation of that vision, allowing us to keep the familiar and powerful programming model of Core Animation while also capturing a gesture’s velocity and better reflecting user intent. Paper has given us the opportunity to further refine both the vision and the animation engine behind it.
“Spring” and “decay” are dynamic animations that help bring Paper to life. “Spring” gives Paper elements their attractive bounce. “Decay” brings movement to an eventual slow halt. Both take velocity as an input and are good candidates for realistically responding to user gestures.
According to Tapity’s Jeremy Olson, Pop can be used to “revolutionize the way you think about animation in your app”; Olson has been testing Pop to create animations for Tapity’s upcoming iPhone app, Hours.
Two weeks ago, members of Facebook’s Paper team shared details on the making of Paper and some of the interface, framework, and user experience decisions behind the app in a developer event available on YouTube (embedded above). Facebook will also integrate Pop in Origami, the free design prototyping toolkit used by the Facebook design team to create interactive mockups without programming.
Pop is the latest entry in Facebook’s library of open-source projects, joining KVOController, Shimmer, and Tweaks. Pop is available now on GitHub.
JavaScript Actions In Mr. Reader 3.1→
In an update released last week on the App Store, Mr. Reader has gained the ability to execute JavaScript actions based on individual scripts configurable in the app’s Settings. Developer Oliver Fürniß has documented the app’s new JavaScript integration here.
Mr. Reader already was a versatile and capable feed reader for iPad – notably, the app introduced a customizable Services menu that allowed users to set up their own sharing actions with URL schemes. The new JavaScript actions go a step beyond URL schemes as they enable Mr. Reader to store article information in a variety of new ways such as collections that can be copied to the clipboard.
I’m interested to see what Mr. Reader users will come up with to further extend the app. Mr. Reader has clearly taken the power-user approach for feed reading and management on the iPad, and the app remains a highly recommended purchase at $3.99. In the update, Mr. Reader also received native support for OneNote, Reminders, and improved search.
Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi To Appear at Code Conference→
Kara Swisher, announcing the appearance of two Apple executives at Re/code’s conference in late May:
While we already have announced a stellar lineup for the first Code Conference — including General Motors CEO Mary Barra, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Hollywood mogul Ryan Seacrest — here’s another pair to add to the mix: Top Apple execs Craig Federighi and Eddy Cue.
And:
We are very excited to have both Cue and Federighi at the event to talk about a range of things about the company that remains at the center of the action, especially in the important mobile sector. From the shifting entertainment and communications landscape to the fast-moving wearables space to, well, everything digital, these two play a very important role.
As John Gruber notes, the timing won’t allow Federighi and Cue to share details on the company’s announcements for WWDC. However, interviews with Eddy Cue are rare, and it will be interesting to see the duo address questions by Mossberg, Swisher, and the audience on stage.
Jack for iTunes Connect→
New app by Christian Beer to compose and upload descriptions for iOS and OS X apps from your Mac to iTunes Connect.
Managing screenshots with drag & drop. Updating localizations without waiting for page loads. Add sale price intervals via a convenient date picker.
Jack uses the iTunes Connect Transporter tool to communicate with Apple’s backend, storing credentials securely in the OS X Keychain. If you’re a developer, Jack makes it easy to add and edit metadata for localization purposes, select pricing tiers, and manage screenshots with drag & drop from the Finder.
There are some limitations, but overall Jack looks like a handy utility to save time when managing app metadata in iTunes Connect. There’s a free trial (limited to 10 days and 2 uploads), and the app is 40% off until the end of April.