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Pushpin 2.0: A Powerful Pinboard Client for iPhone

Pushpin 2.0

Pushpin 2.0

On the first episode of The Prompt podcast, I chose Pushpin 2.0 as my weekly pick, and I thought the app deserved a mention here on the site as well.

In January, when I first reviewed Pushpin, I noted how the app didn’t look as good as Pinbook, another Pinboard client that, back then, didn’t support some of the power-user functionalities that were available in Pushpin. Many Pinboard clients have come out in the past few months; as MacStories readers know, my choices have always been Pinbook, Pushpin, and Pinbrowser – while these three apps were all made for Pinboard, each one of them had a peculiar feature that made it stand out. With Pushpin 2.0, I feel like the difference is now marginal, as the app takes important steps towards becoming the only Pinboard client you’d ever need to add, manage, and browse Pinboard bookmarks. Read more

Markdown for the Blind→

Steven Aquino, writing for TidBITS:

Markdown has changed my life for the better. Not only is it easier to work with than graphical interfaces given the limitations of my vision, but it has caused me to embrace plain text for nearly all of my documents. No longer do I have to work in bloated word processors with toolbars galore, or worry about rich-text formatting. Discovering Markdown has been liberating in the truest sense of the word.

It’s amazing how the same markup we use to simply make our lives easier when writing for the web can be used to empower a writer who is legally blind.

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On App Pricing and Sustainability→

Ben Thompson, writing about Paper’s sustainability vs. success on the App Store:

By every visible measure, FiftyThree, the makers of Paper, are the definition of an app store success story, and this week they closed a Series A round of financing led by Andreessen Horowitz.

It’s easy to see this as a big endorsement of the App Store: startup creates a breakthrough product, gets noticed, gets funding, changes the world. And perhaps that’s the path FiftyThree is on.

But there’s another scenario that may be in play, and if I were Apple, this round of funding and FiftyThree’s plans going forward should be a yellow flag that the App Store may not be as strong as it could be.

Erica Ogg of GigaOm conversed with Impending’s Phill Ryu and FiftyThree’s CEO Georg Petschnigg earlier this week to talk about how developers are coping with App Store economics. The conversation takes us through Ryu’s thought process on deciding what’s fair to the customer while ensuring his company is able to continue developing Hatch, the soon-to-be-launched app his team has been working on for the past months. Petschnigg’s opinion on the matter is that one-time paid apps are limiting.

“In-app purchase is a tremendous opportunity to offer something (like how a) chef only puts what people want to eat on a menu, we see in-app purchase as a mechanism for paring down the feature set and offering up what people want to buy,” he told me. “It keeps the software footprint small and efficient. And from a design perspective it’s incredibly liberating.”

FiftyThree has been one of the most transparent high profile developers in the industry, often sharing what goes into the development of each of their new features on their blog. FiftyThree, starting with just five employees, has grown into a team of twenty two, becoming “a workshop for re-imagining common digital tools.” The company has made money by charging for tools through in-app purchases, but Ben points out that alone doesn’t appear to be sustainable given their quick growth. What Paper is now working on aren’t just new tools for Paper, but hardware and services that have the potential to bring in more revenue outside of the App Store.

Ben also highlights some of the core problems facing the App Store today, given customer’s expectations of value and price from a previous article on Adobe’s subscription model.

There is so much more Apple (and the other platform owners) could be doing to improve this situation; paid updates and app-store supported subscriptions (beyond Newsstand) would be great places to start.

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iOS 7 and Virtua Fighter→

Then one day, on a trip to my local arcade, I saw something completely new: Virtua Fighter. The first ever 3D fighting game sacrificed a lot of visual detail in order to achieve real depth rendered via multiple polygons on a projected z-axis.

When I first saw Virtua Fighter I was not impressed. The graphics were terrible compared to my favourite at the time, the also just released Mortal Kombat II, but it was the start of a new era that still continues today: the vast majority of new videogames are first or third-person perspective 3D.

James Russell has come up with an interesting analogy for Apple’s prioritization of depth in iOS 7 (and, as an old-time watcher of the Nintendo vs. Sega wars, one that I can understand and reminisce).

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Instagram Video→

Today, Instagram has officially introduced video. With a new camera interface, users can now take videos up to 15 seconds long, choose between 13 custom filters, and post quick videos alongside photos in the main Instagram feed. Videos can be viewed on the web and through the just-updated iPhone app; third-party apps with access to the Instagram API, like Tweetbot, will have to be updated to support inline video viewing.

Video on Instagram is obviously reminiscent of Vine, Twitter’s service for 6-second videos. While there was no explicit mention of Vine at Instagram’s press event, it was clear that founder Kevin Systrom was presenting a product aimed at doing mobile video sharing better than Vine – which has been growing but isn’t quite as mainstream as Instagram is. For the past couple of years, finding the “Instragram for video” has been a recurring theme on the Internet, and I find it curious that Instagram decided to tackle this just when Vine was starting to take off.

The 4.0 update to the iOS app is nicely built and put together. I like how video capture sits right next to the standard camera interface (you can tap a button or swipe to access it), and I also appreciate the options to delete clips (portions of a video) and choose a cover thumbnail – two features that I always wanted to see in Vine. Instagram is setting a minimum duration for videos, which is displayed through segments in the video interface’s progress bar.

I do wonder if, with the addition of video, some of Instagram’s immediacy has been lost. Three years ago, when I first reviewed Instagram for iPhone, I predicted how it would become a new paradigm for camera apps. While the Instagram team has tried to keep the new experience as simple as possible, there is an intrinsic complexity about video that will likely be frowned upon by Instagram purists – this is exemplified by Instagram’s approach to video editing, which only allows you to delete entire clips and not individual frames. And Instagram’s upload speed, a marquee tenet of photo sharing, will inevitably be affected by videos.

Overall, from what I’ve seen so far, I think Instagram for video is polished and nice – an obvious addition perhaps, but it’ll be popular in the short term. It’ll be interesting to see how much Instagram’s nature and community will change with videos.

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The Potential of iOS 7 Game Controllers

Chris Plante:

If Apple finds a way to standardize traditional controls, every iOS device will become a transportable console. In a year, both iPhones and iPads will approach the processing power of the current-generation devices. Companies will have the ability to port controller-based games for the mobile devices in millions of pockets — an install base far greater than they’ve ever had before.

Today, using Airplay and an Apple TV, players can stream their games from their iOS device to their high-definition television. With controller support, players will be able to play more traditional, non-touch games.

I agree with Chris’ take: the new game controller APIs for developers have great potential, but, ultimately, it’s up to Apple to believe in this opportunity. What’s indisputable is that later this year, when controllers will be released by third-parties, games supporting them will already work with the existing Apple TV’s AirPlay streaming features. It’ll be interesting to see if Apple will publicly acknowledge this new scenario for gamers and Apple TV owners (as Tim Cook often notes, Apple doesn’t advertise the Apple TV aside from a product page on Apple.com).

We’ve already discussed how the potential of dual-screen AirPlay gaming is largely untapped, and I suspect the addition of physical controllers will allow iOS game developers to explore even more possibilities. Essentially, controllers that will attach to iPhones will create a DS-like experience – with the “top screen” being the Apple TV.

Today’s hardware, as recent ports show, isn’t yet capable of handling the same amount of power and definition of modern console games. The App Store needs improvements (especially for curation and discovery), but Apple has the advantage of having a solid platform where free-to-play is an established model and where everyone can develop games (with great new game-related APIs coming in iOS 7) as long as they are registered developers. With 575 million iTunes Store accounts with credit cards on file, Apple also has the largest user base – customers already buying software from the App Store. And, let’s not forget the iPod touch, Apple’s cheapest way into App Store gaming, which recently received an even cheaper option.

On the other hand, in the current state of App Store economics, it’s difficult to imagine how Apple could lure major console publishers to release AAA titles under $30 and that aren’t low-res ports, companion apps, or dumbed-down versions of console/PC games. Does Apple care about having the next Destiny on iOS first? The new Call of Duty? Will future iOS hardware be capable of running those kinds of games? Or is Apple just fine with attacking the market from the low end, taking more time to see how game developers will react to new iOS software and hardware in the next five years?

Will Apple ever develop a culture and appreciation for gaming as a medium, not just an App Store category? While others (namely Microsoft) are trying to add more media and entertainment layers on top of existing game infrastructures, Apple is in the opposite situation – running the largest media store and selling devices that are increasingly used as gaming machines, but that still lack the catalog and support of dedicated home consoles.

As far as third-party developers are concerned, things have changed since 2008. Five years ago, imagining a console hit like Metal Gear Solid 4 on iOS would have been absurd; today, we have a port (albeit low-res) of XCOM eight months after the original release. Compare this example to Metal Gear Solid Touch, “based on” Metal Gear Solid 4 and released nine months after the original game, in 2009. What’s the App Store going to be like in 2018? Can we imagine, two or three years from now, simultaneous and equal releases of AAA games across consoles and iOS? And if so, how will the App Store’s numbers play to Apple’s advantage against Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, and Valve?

Apple is testing the waters (having to buy separate iOS devices, Apple TV, and third-party game controllers isn’t a simple message) and they seem extremely cautious with their Apple TV strategy, but it does look like some pieces of the gaming puzzle are slowly coming together. We’re seeing more full ports of console games nowadays, alongside, obviously, the brand new iOS gaming experiences that have shaped the modern industry. iOS 7 game controllers will likely make developers more comfortable with the idea of “serious” games on iOS (although Apple wants controllers to be optional…for now), and I’m curious to see which parts of Apple’s grand vision for TV will relate to games, the App Store, and iOS.