Leap Motion and Better Touch Tool→

David Sparks writes about his experience with Leap Motion after pairing it with Better Touch Tool.

As you can tell. I already have a lot of affection for Better Touch Tool and Leap controller functionality is icing on the cake. So I’ve spent some time playing with this new feature and I’ve now got several gestures I can do in the air in front of my Mac. If I put one finger in the air and move it up, it closes the application, just like the gesture in iOS 7. If I put one finger in the air and pull it down, it closes the window just like my gestures I explained earlier on my trackpad. If I put two fingers in the air and swiped the left, I move right one space. Putting two fingers in the air and swiping to the right moves back one space to the left. All of this is a lot of fun. I’m only adding new gestures as I internalize the prior ones.

It’s great that people are at least finding some practical uses for this thing. I just think the Leap Motion is a solution in search of a problem.

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Dialogue: Handsfree Calling Through OS X

Dialogue

Dialogue

During my typical work day, my iPhone 5 is sitting on my desk next to my MacBook Air or iPad, usually locked as I’m focusing on writing or researching topics for MacStories. I don’t receive many phone calls, and when I do I don’t mind picking up my phone and using it for the task that phones were made for in the first place (remember when people used to buy phones to make phone calls?). Dialogue, a new Mac app released today on the Mac App Store, wants to remove the annoyance that some people have with switching devices when a phone call comes in; at $6.99, Dialogue uses Bluetooth to route phone calls through your Mac – employing an unobtrusive menubar popover to find contacts and manage connected devices. Read more

Apple’s Support Document On How To Report iMessage Spam→

A support document by Apple (last modified today, July 30) that I’ve never seen before details how users can report iMessage spam (unwanted messages) directly to Apple (via Beau Giles):

If you’re seeing unwanted iMessages (spam) in Messages app, you can report those to Apple.

To report unwanted iMessage messages to Apple, please send an email with the following details to: [email protected]

I’ve never been the target of iMessage spam, but it’s good to know that Apple has a basic reporting tool in place. Some users experienced iMessage “denial of service” spam messages earlier this year; in the support document, Apple doesn’t explain how they will act against reported spam.

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Byword For iOS Gets Improved URL Scheme→

In a minor update released today, Byword developers Metaclassy have brought an improved URL scheme (based on x-callback-url) to the app, enabling actions for creating, opening documents, and manipulating text. Documentation is available here.

The actions supported by the URL scheme are:

  • new
  • open
  • append
  • prepend
  • replace

With these actions, you can now send text to a specific file in Byword, choosing to either create/open an existing document, insert text at the top (prepend) or bottom (append), or replace the entire contents of a document with new text. When using the Byword URL scheme, you’ll need to percent-encode text, which can be easily done using Launch Center Pro’s encode actions or Drafts’ double curly brackets.

This improved URL scheme creates some new interesting possibilities for iOS automation with Byword. I imagine many will experiment with workflows to append or create text from Mr. Reader’s Services menu, take notes with Drafts, or prepend text from Safari or Chrome using a browser bookmarklet. However, I still think that the URL scheme could be expanded to include support for triggering Publishing actions automatically, optionally supporting x-success to go back to another app after a post has been sent to a service integrated in Byword. With Poster no longer receiving updates, I believe the folks at Metaclassy have a great opportunity to keep Byword the simple and elegant iOS text editor that many love, while also adding advanced functionality that power users will come to rely upon in their daily workflows.

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Why Are Apps Putting You On A Wait List?→

A good piece by Ellis Hamburger at The Verge, who explains why some recent iOS apps have been putting new users on a “wait list” before they can actually start using an app. This is due to the increasingly cloud-based complex scaling challenges that apps (which are downloaded locally) face when trying to work with online components (remotely) for thousands of users.

I understand the difficulties mentioned by Ellis and the developers he interviewed, but I also see part of Ben’s point when he argues that several of these “wait list apps” are free and don’t seek immediate revenue. Mailbox removed the reservation system after it had been acquired by Dropbox, meaning that Dropbox – a larger company – had the human and financial resources to “throw” at Mailbox’s problem. However, I think that resources aren’t a panacea for new apps that rely heavily on server-side features: if anything, the App Store makes it hard to ship apps that are only available to a subset of users, which is forcing developers to implement ideas such as the aforementioned waiting lists.

A better testing process for App Store developers isn’t a new topic, and I wonder if app testing tools made by Apple with support for thousands (instead of hundreds) of “beta” users would alleviate the issues covered by Ellis.

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Markdown for Keyboard Maestro 2→

One of my favorite tools for more efficient writing was recently updated to version 2, which is available for download on GitHub. As Andreas Zeitler explains, the main focus for version 2 was “speed optimization, interaction, accessibility for non-English speakers, and usability”. There’s also a screencast on YouTube showing the new features.

I use Markdown for Keyboard Maestro on a daily basis to speed up my writing in Sublime Text. In fact, many of the workflows that I’ll share when Editorial for iPad will come out have been inspired by Andreas’ work.

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Check Dev Center Status From iOS with Pythonista→

A great idea by reader Nicolas Hoibian, which uses BeautifulSoup to fetch the source code of Apple’s System Status page, parse it, and print it with custom fonts and colors in Pythonista’s console.

Here’s my modified version that uses Pythonista’s notification module to re-run the script every 6 hours by firing a local iOS notification on your iPhone or iPad (it assumes the script is named “DevCenter” in Pythonista).

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China Labor Watch Publishes Report With Mention Of New “Plastic iPhone”→

MacRumors’ Erik Slivka:

Earlier today, labor rights group China Labor Watch issued a report making claims of poor working conditions at Apple’s assembly partner Pegatron.

The report, available as a PDF here, contains mentions of a new “low-priced” plastic iPhone that will “soon” released by Apple:

Pegatron (Shanghai) Ltd Co. is part of the Pegatron Group, which was a subsidiary of Pegatron Group until 2010. Pegatron primarily assembles cell phones and tablet PCs for Apple. Its assembled products include iPhone 4, iPhone 4s, iPhone 5, and low-priced plastic iPhones. Some of Pegatron’s major equipment, such as micro-computer and detection hosts, is provided by Apple.

In the report, a worker details the actual process of pasting protective film on the back of this unreleased iPhone:

Today’s work is to paste protective film on the iPhone’s plastic back cover to prevent it from being scratched on assembly lines. This iPhone model with a plastic cover will soon be released on the market by Apple. The task is pretty easy, and I was able to work independently after a five-minute instruction from a veteran employee. It took around a minute to paste protective film on one rear cover. The new cell phone has not yet been put into mass production, so quantity is not as important. This makes our job more slow paced than in departments that have begun mass production schedules.

The report also contains photos and details of poor working conditions at Pegatron, to which Apple has responded with an official statement. We’ve already outlined why it’d make sense for Apple to release a low-priced iPhone, and, at this point, several signs seem to be pointing to such a device coming out later this year.

 

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Resolve Short URLs with Pythonista on iOS

Clean URLs

Clean URLs

I don’t like it when third-party apps or services force me to share links to articles or webpages using their own custom shortened links. I understand the appeal of personalized short domains – after all, we tweet mcstr.net links with the @macstoriesnet account – as they can provide analytics to track clicks, can save characters, and, at least in theory, they “look cool”. However, I’ve been long considering the idea of dropping our mcstr.net links, but I think the issue is worse (and more annoying) for apps and services that don’t tweet links to their own content (like we do) but that override others’ links with different domains. An example is Pocket, which gives you the clean, original URL when you choose the “Copy Link” action from the sharing menu, but that instead returns pocket.co links when sending text to Drafts (which I do often). I’ve grown tired of this practice (in Pocket and other services), and I’ve put together a workflow based on a Python script that allows me to easily resolve short links without having to open the browser and tap on multiple menus. Read more