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Mr. Reader And The Services Menu for iOS

A “services menu for iOS” is a chimera advanced users and developers have long been trying to hunt down. It all started with a mockup Chris Clark posted in 2010, showing how third-party iPhone apps could offer their “services” – just like OS X apps – to the user through a contextual menu. The concept became popular fairly quickly, but, eventually, Apple did nothing.

Fast forward to 2013, iOS users are still asking for better integration of third-party apps with each other. Developers have resorted to using URL schemes, a rather simple way to directly launch other apps and pass information to them – usually bits of text. App Cubby’s Launch Center Pro has become the de-facto solution to create a “Home screen of app shortcuts”, offering a series of tools (such as automatic encoding and different keyboards) to make the process of customizing URL schemes as user-friendly as possible. Launch Center Pro is, in fact, the utility behind many of my favorite iOS tricks.

Pythonista has also become a big part of my iOS automation workflow. Combining the power of Python with the possibility of launching URL schemes, I have created a series of scripts that help me get work done on iOS on a daily basis. Further leveraging Greg Pierce’s x-callback-url, I have ensured these scripts can take a set of data, send it to other apps, process it, then go back to the original app. You can read more about Pythonista in my original article, and I’ve been following updates from developers who implemented URL schemes as well with a dedicated tag on the site.

I concluded my Pythonista article saying:

I believe that, going forward, Pythonista and other similar apps will show a new kind of “scripting” and task automation built around the core strenghts of iOS. As we’ve seen, x-callback-url is a standard that leverages a part of iOS – URL schemes – to achieve simple, user-friendly and URL-based inter-app communication that can be used in a variety of ways. Looking ahead, there’s a chance rumored features such as XPC will bring more Mac-like functionalities to iOS, but developers will still find new ways to make iOS more powerful without giving up on positive aspects such as increased security and the simplicity of the app model.

Mr. Reader – a Google Reader client that I’ve covered on MacStories in the past, and my favorite RSS app – has today been updated to version 1.11, which introduces a generic solution for launching URL schemes that shows how iOS automation is a growing trend, albeit substantially different from what we’re used to see on OS X. Read more

Kaleidoscope 2

Kaleidoscope 2, an advanced file comparison app by Black Pixel, is out today. It is a powerful piece of software to spot differences between text, images, or folders, and merge changes in seconds. If you’ve been looking for a file comparison tool that is equally gorgeous and powerful, I wouldn’t hesitate to go buy Kaleidoscope right now.

I’m not the best person to write an in-depth review of Kaleidoscope. The only images I deal with on a daily basis are screenshots, because the photos I take go straight to Dropbox and I never edit them; my backup consists of a full copy of my MacBook Air mirrored to a couple of external drives with SuperDuper; and, I primarily work with text, but I don’t have an editor that sends me revisions of my writing on a daily basis. If anything, I just read my articles over and over until I’m happy with them. Kaleidoscope is perfectly suited for people who don’t work like me: people who take photographs and edit them, who organize files and backups carefully with a precise folder structure, and who send bits of the same text back and forth with another person.

However, there have been a couple of occasions in which I’ve appreciated the features offered by Kaleidoscope, and I thought it’d be worth to mention them. Read more

MacStories Interviews: John Siracusa

In our ongoing series of interviews with developers and creators in the Apple community, I had the chance to talk with John Siracusa.

John is well known in the Apple community for his detailed OS X reviews and other articles published on Ars Technica. He co-hosted a podcast called Hypercritical for 100 (98) episodes with 5by5’s Dan Benjamin, and he also shares some of his thoughts on tech, games, and pasta on a blog with the same name. On Twitter, you can find John as @siracusa.

The interview below was conducted over email between January 3 and January 15, 2013.

Federico Viticci: Hey John, could you introduce yourself to the readers who haven’t heard about you before?

John Siracusa: Though I’ve spent my career as a web developer, I’m better known on the Internet for my articles at Ars Technica, especially my very long and detailed reviews of OS X going back 13 years, and for my podcast, Hypercritical, which just ended its two-year run. I’m also a regular guest on The Incomparable, a podcast about geeky books, movies, TV shows, comics, and video games. Read more

ReaddleDocs Relaunches As Documents

ReaddleDocs, Readdle’s file manager and document viewer for the iPad, has relaunched today as Documents, a free update for existing customers that introduces a refreshed interface and some new features.

In terms of functionalities, Documents basically shares the same capabilities of ReaddleDocs. The app can open the same file types, it can organize items in folders, sort them, and display them in icon view or list view. Unlike the OS X Finder, sub-folders in List view aren’t opened in the same column, but they’ll require you to open a different view that will display a Back button with the name of first level. As with ReaddleDocs, buttons to create a new folder, sort by name/date/size, and change views are displayed in a bar at the top that you can reveal by swiping down. A shortcut to create a new text file has been placed in a sidebar that you can reveal by hitting the Edit button.

To understand what Documents does, you can read our original review of ReaddleDocs 3 for the iPad. There are a series of web services supported by the app (including Dropbox) that you can access in the Network tab on the left. In the sidebar, the app also offers access to iCloud storage (which doesn’t come with List view), a built-in browser (to download webpages or part of them just like ReaddleDocs 3), and “Recents”. This last section provides quick access to the last five opened documents: as you re-open one, it will go to the top of the list again. Read more

Mute All iOS Notifications→

Mute All iOS Notifications

Lex Friedman, writing about an iOS feature (or lack thereof) that has annoyed me for months as well:

Thus, what I’d like to see is the ability to silence notifications permanently in specific apps. I can envision a few ways configuring such a setting might work: The mute switch could appear in Notification Center, perhaps only if—as on Mountain Lion—you scrolled up past the visible top of the list; if you’re in an app when you visit that switch, it could optionally be a setting limited only to the current app itself. Another option might be a listing of all your apps tucked away in the Notifications section of the Settings app; you could select the specific apps on that list in which you never want alerts to appear.

Whenever I play a game on my iPad – especially one of those that require attention and precision like Fruit Ninja – I always wish iOS had a simple setting to “mute all notifications”. Do Not Disturb has been a nice addition to iOS 6, but it hasn’t made silencing all notifications while a device isn’t locked any easier.

I see some pros and cons for wanting a) a setting that mutes all notifications at once or b) one to selectively mute notifications on app-by-app basis. The latter is admittedly more intriguing in its promise of granular control over the kind of apps that can display notifications (in my case, I’d mute notifications in Fruit Ninja, but I’d leave them while I’m in Google Chrome); however, we’ve already seen how the iOS Settings app is already complex enough. On the flip side, while being easier, the more general “mute all” option could become annoying over time (what if I forget to turn it off once I turned it on? Do I have to open the Settings app every time?).

It’s difficult to imagine how Apple can keep adding controls to the iOS Settings app without substantially altering its presentation, choices, or, perhaps more importantly, quick access. Better control over notifications is another aspect I’d add to my iOS 7 wish list.

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Poster 2.0

Tom Witkin’s Poster is my favorite WordPress blog editor for iOS. Poster comes with a clean interface, support for Markdown (the app can convert plain text Markdown to HTML before publishing), and full WordPress integration. The app’s excellent support for WordPress features like custom fields, drafts, slugs, and images means I don’t have to write on the iPad and later “adjust everything” on a Mac before publishing. Poster is, in fact, a core aspect of my iOS automation workflow.

Poster 2.0 is out today, and it’s another fantastic update that reassures me Tom is committed to making this app the best WordPress editor for iOS. The interface has been further refined, and it’s now easier on the eye with an even deeper focus on content rather than UI chrome. I don’t use these for MacStories, but Poster now supports WordPress custom post types and excerpts, alongside the “sticky” functionality that we use every once in a while to pin a post to the top of the site.

What I like about Poster 2.0 are the “minor” additions that make for a much better workflow. Custom fields can now be given a local label so that a friendlier name will be displayed in Poster instead of the actual name (e.g. “URLCustom_linked” becomes “Linked post”); the Markdown preview and HTML conversion now handles en and em dashes (something that annoyed me in the previous version of the app); if you edit a published post (as we usually do when we catch typos or make corrections), you can now save the edited draft locally before publishing. I also appreciate how the “Copy to Clipboard” action now only received a post’s URL (Poster 2.0 builds on the solid foundation of Poster 1.0 for post sharing), and the app is noticeably faster at syncing multiple posts at once.

There are two more changes I want to mention. You can now insert images at any point in the editor by tapping & holding and selecting the “Insert Image” option from the popup menu; I tend to do all my image insertion beforehand, but this is a welcome addition for those times when I may forget about an image. And last, Poster now supports Greg Pierce’s x-callback-url to return to a specific URL after completion. Poster already had support for a URL scheme that allowed post creation from other apps, but now you’ll also be able to create a post and return to another app.

Here’s a bookmarklet I made to grab a browser’s selection and use it as text in Poster, get a webpage’s title and use it as post title, open Poster, and return to the browser. This kind of URL callback enables a streamlined workflow for, say, discovering links in Safari, quickly posting them to WordPress, and going back to Safari again.

javascript:window.location='posterapp:///create?text='+encodeURIComponent(window.getSelection())+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title)+'&callback_url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href);

I also made a quick video showing the process in action. Unfortunately, getting the browser’s selection only works on the iPad.

Poster is a great app, and while not revolutionary, the 2.0 update refines several aspects of the previous version and adds more powerful functionality for WordPress users and iOS automation geeks. I highly recommend it.

Measuring iPhone 5 vs. iPhone 4S availability→

Measuring iPhone 5 vs. iPhone 4S availability

Horace Dediu of Asymco today wrote and shared data on the availability of the iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S by potential buyers - measured by the subscriber counts of the carriers that sell the iPhone. It’s an important and valuable extension of an article I wrote last week, discussing the international rollout of each generation of iPhone and iPad. That analysis had a weakness in that I treated all countries as equal which isn’t necessarily true (depending on why you’re looking at the data).

Announcing availability in Mauritius is not nearly as important as announcing Madagascar. A better measure would be to track the countries’ populations being added, or, better still, the populations which subscribe to operators who have a distribution contract with Apple.

So instead, Dediu looked at which carriers held the iPhone in each country and what their approximate subscriber count was. By calculating the availability this way, you can now see the potential number of iPhone buyers, as seen in Horace’s graph here.

That’s a handy measure: the iPhone 5 was 30% more available than the iPhone 4S. The big contribution was having China and Indonesia available during the fourth quarter rather than in January 2011.

Make sure to head over to Asymco to read the full article and all of Horace’s observations, it’s an interesting read. If you didn’t catch my article last week, it’s also available to read here. Just note that if you are trying to compare Dediu’s graph with the one in my article (shown here), Dediu went with actual dates whereas I went with relative time. This is because I wanted to look at the first 110 days of every iPhone, Dediu was specifically looking at the fourth quarter availability.

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