Square - Making Payments Mobile

Square is a service I had been waiting anxiously to come out of vaporware-land and into reality since I found out about it in late 2009. Square allows you to take credit card payments from your iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, or Android 2.1 device — as long as you have a WiFi or 3G connection. 

I did a first look a while back and I have since received my Square Reader. It definitely works as advertised. Once you activate your reader with your account you can instantly take a payment. It is super easy. Launch the app, plug in your reader, enter your items, the price, and hit Payment, select Credit Card, and swipe the card.

Then you’ll hand your device over to the payer for them to sign and enter their email address for their receipt to be sent to them.

It is truly a simple system, and doesn’t require a merchant account, no monthly fees, and they even send you the reader for free. They do, however, take 15 cents off every credit card transaction, and additionally 2.75% for swiped card or 3.5% for keyed in card numbers. All in all, it’s a tiny fee considering the other savings from monthly fees. Also, 1 penny from every transaction fee goes to charity:water, which is completely awesome.

Now, there are some limitations that weren’t revealed until I was able to activate my reader. I’ll just go ahead and make a list:

• Card payments have hindering caps. As of this publication, card payments are limited to $100 per transaction, and $700 per week. This is lame. I shared some correspondence with Square’s friendly support team about this, and they initially said the first rollout of Square is purely intended for personal use. I told them that is how I intend to use it, and $100 per transaction is too low for even that. Heck, their first video shows a guy selling a couch for $300. Anyway, after pointing that out, Square agreed with me that the limit is too low, and they are planning to raise it after building out their underwriting infrastructure. 
• If you are intending to use it for business right off the bat, Square is not currently supporting EINs. Also, that aforementioned limit may be a hindrance. Square assured me EIN support is coming soon.
• They are disparities across the apps. Here I am talking about the iPhone (count iPod touch in there when I say iPhone) and iPad apps, as I haven’t played with the Android app. Mainly, the iPad supports sales tax and inventory, and the iPhone doesn’t. Here’s why these disparities are odd to me: they’re the exact same app, with different user interfaces. The Square app for Apple devices is universal, meaning it is one codebase that displays a different interface depending on which device it is on. So the code is there, but Square didn’t design a user interface element for something like sales tax on the iPhone. I also raised this question with Square, and they said these features are on the list. 
• Payer signing is a one shot pony. If your payer screws up their signature, there isn’t a clear button to try again. This is a problem, since payers sign using their finger. It is unfamiliar, and it should stand to reason that it might take a couple tries. The only recourse is to take a “signature” that looks nothing like the payers real signature, or to clear out the entire transaction and start from scratch. Unacceptable, and Square offered no comment on this.

I honestly chalk up all of these to start-up jitters. Square is an infant company trying to revolutionize the credit card payment industry. I have no doubt that the issues will be addressed in time. The question is will they be addressed sooner or later?

Overall, Square does allow for drop dead easy payments, and I’ll probably get a ton of use out of it once the limit is raised somewhere in the ballpark of $300 or $400. Let’s face it, I have some previously loved electronics to sell, like, an iPhone 3G on June 24th, when I get my iPhone 4.

If you have any other questions for me, sound off in the comments.

Examining Twitterrific's Flight Plan

Earlier today, the team at The Iconfactory filed a flight plan to its customers regarding the future of their popular Twitter client, Twitterrific. In order to cover an exhaustive amount of detail behind their thoughts for the future, the company split its ideas through the personal blogs of three of its staff, Gedeon Maheux, David Lanham, and Craig Hockenberry.

First, Gedeon’s post discusses the why and how behind the decision and gives the big picture. He focuses mainly on how the team made the mistake in the past to saying “yes” to too many feature requests. This approach led to so much feature creep that the user interface and settings became too difficult for most people to navigate. So when Steve Jobs held up the iPad for the world to see in late January, The Iconfactory decided to put Ollie on a diet and start fresh. The goal: simplify. Only include the absolute necessities for a wonderful Twitter experience. That resulted in Twitterrific for iPad. Iconfactory is beginning to think a lot like Apple, focusing on the 80% of users who just need the essentials, not everything and a bag of chips. 

David’s post then delves into the user interface changes and the decisions behind them. The goal here was to make Twitterrific fast and light, focusing on content and usability, rather than an expansive feature list. The timeline screen has been whittled down from seven buttons to four. My beloved action (looks like an asterisk) button is gone, and those actions have been separated into two main categories: actions that affect the timeline and actions that affect only you.

Settings have been moved from being within the app to Settings.app. And the team threw out many of the settings. Anything that possibly needs to be changed frequently, such as photo/video upload service, are located contextually in the explicit functions button. Judging from the below screen capture Lanham provided of Twitterrific 2’s settings versus Twitterrific 3’s settings, you can see why they started from scratch.

Finally, Craig’s post discusses how the iPad is ushering a new kind of user into a new era of computing. Twitterrific for iPad and the upcoming Twitterrific 3 for iPhone are focusing regular folks, not the Twitter power user. And for regular folks looking to read and write tweets among friends and folks that interest them less interface is more.

Craig boldly states:

“Simplicity is the name of the game in this new world order.” 

Features such as Instapaper support are there, and that particular feature is for a user who knows what Instapaper is. Enabling it is in Settings.app, and if you don’t set it up, you’ll never see anything about Instapaper in the app interface. Initially, I put off by this mentality of putting some settings in Settings.app, but the idea makes sense to me now. Especially since the only settings that end up outside the app are the “set it and forget it” settings. Everything else is in context where it is appropriate, and beyond that the interface altogether gets out of your way. We see this in the iPad now, and once again, you can see where The Iconfactory is following Apple’s footsteps, as Apple’s own apps do the best they can to get out of the way.

My Thoughts

There was a time when Twitterrific 1 for iPhone became stale and lacked features, and that time was with the advent of Tweetie. Then Twitterrific 2 came along chock full o’ features, and I have been happy with that. When the iPad version came out, I found it mildly refreshing not have such a busy interface, but I also noticed two of my favorite features were missing (text compression & marking tweets). But overall, the less is more attitude allows me to just read tweets, and easily compose.

The Iconfactory started from scratch when the iPad was announced, and I think it is paying off. It’s smart to base the iPad, iPhone, & Mac versions off the same code. It makes rolling out new features and fixing bugs easier. It simplifies. This new era of simple isn’t going to be for everyone. I can already tell you many of my iPhone-toting friends will not like this new super-simple Twitterrific for iPhone. Most of them are Twitter power users and already focus on everything-but-the-kitchen-sink apps like Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, and Tweetie Twitter for iPhone. Those folks will not see the value of simplicity. 

I’ll admit, I love Twitterrific, and have for nearly three years. But I’ll also say I had a moment when initially using Twitterrific for iPad that I sat back and was worried about losing some features in the next major iPhone revision. And guess what — I am. Hopefully some will return with enough user requests. Now, I do have Twitter for iPhone, (and I paid for its previous two incarnations, Tweetie 1 and 2), but that app has always been like trying to drink from a firehose for me, and I consider myself a power user at 20,830 tweets and counting. 

For the past few months I have been trying to simplify many things in my life. I even bought a lovely new simplistic desk to help myself along the way. So I can jibe with what The Iconfactory is trying to achieve, and I welcome it. Simpler is better.

I have confirmed first hand with Gedeon from The Iconfactory that Twitterrific 3 for iPhone is a paid upgrade for premium users. The premium app is going away, and the free version will be upgraded to the new app. Premium features (ad removal and multiple accounts) will be an in-app upgrade. Now, I paid $10 for Twitterrific Premium 1 on day one of the App Store, and I received version 2 for free. Version 2 was also when the price was dropped to $4. It is my understanding the premium feature unlock will remain at $4. 

I’m going to publicly state that I am fine with paying again. These folks produce some of the most beautiful apps on Apple devices. And I am a firm believer that great work should be rewarded. If you like Twitterrific 3, you should pay for it, and that’s my opinion. Future development is best encouraged with dollars. And if the price of a latté is too much for an app for you, well, there is the ad-supported part of Twitterrific, or there are other apps.

Look for Twitterrific 3 for iPhone in a few weeks, and Twitterrific 4 for Mac by June 30, the OAuth deadline for Twitter clients. 

First Look: Square

Square. It’s a shape. It’s a fundamental part of mathematics. It’s a tool of precision used by carpenters. Soon, I think, it will become synonymous with revolutionizing how regular folks pay each other. 

Square is a small company in San Francisco that is aiming to make payment via credit or debit card simply and easy for individuals and small businesses alike. Let’s face it, if you’ve owned a business and applied for a credit card terminal, it’s an expensive process, you’re bound to monthly fees, and everything is dependent upon your personal credit score.

Square does away with all of that hassle. Most of you already have the primary part of the terminal, too. Square is an app available for iPhones, iPod touches, iPads, and Android phones. Word on the street is apps for more platforms are on the way. You simply download the app, sign up for an account, and Square ships you a tiny plastic square with a slot for swiping cards and a headphone jack to connect to your mobile device. No monthly fees, no credit checks. What does Square get out of it? 15¢ per transaction plus a small percentage (2.75% for swiped cards, 3.5% for manually entered cards). Out of a $25 transaction, you keep $24.22. And a penny of that fee goes to a charity of your choice.

How does this all work? Well, Square has made two videos, one during their testing phase, and the other which appeared today with their official launch. 

One thing I like a lot about Square is the ability to give electronic receipts, and also help track your cash flow on their website. And the ability to tag those transactions with geolocation is very cool. And Square can also track cash transactions, and issue receipts for them, free of charge. Basically, your iPhone, iPod touch, iPad or Android device become your register. Square can also account for tax, tips, and track the frequency of repeat customers, perfect for having a reward program (think buy 9, get the 10th free).

I received a shipment notification this morning that my Square reader is on its way. I’ll report back with a hands on after I receive it.

If you’re interested in Square, go grab the app off iTunes or the Android marketplace and sign up for an account.

Apps Are the Name of the Game for Kindle

I remember on January 28, 2010, when Steve Jobs unveiled the long awaited iPad, I immediately looked at my month-old Amazon Kindle with a feeling of pity. It was soon to be obsolete. By far the best e-book reader in the world was going to be outshone. Sure, eInk is nice, but no one will deny that a color screen is truly captivating. 

And the greatest contrast is the capability of the hardware itself. The Kindle does one thing — read books. At least that’s the only thing it really does well. The iPad can become just about anything one can imagine. An eInk screen can’t stand up to that. And Amazon knows it. 

Have you taken a look at Amazon’s home page in the past few days? No? Here’s a screenc apture of the relevant part, which is front and center at the top of the page.

Amazon is really pushing the free Kindle reading apps across a whole lot of platforms including, you guessed it — the iPad. Even more interesting is the tiny image of the Kindle hardware at the bottom. It’s basically waving about screaming, “Look at me! I’m still relevant! Buy me instead of any of those!”

Come on. The Kindle hardware is likely going to be put out to pasture. My guess is that Amazon really cares about selling eBooks, and they seem more than happy to provide the software for any device you want to read those eBooks on. 

It's Officially Crazy Week

The iPad arrives int he hands of users in just a few short days, and it has officially become crazy week. Yes, I have tried to convince myself to run out and try to grab one on Saturday (for review purposes, natch), but honestly, I am waiting until the WiFi+3G version comes out. And I really want to try to hold out for the second generation. So, you won’t be seeing a review on this site until anywhere from a few weeks to a year. That said, I will try to get hands on one to play with for a bit, and give my impressions as soon as I can.

But users aren’t the only ones preparing for the iPad. Our favorite fruit company has been issuing software to us all left and right for days. Aperture was recently updated with iPad compatibility (along with many other fixes in general for the program), Mac OS X 10.6.3 was released, and today iPhoto was given compatibility along with the latest version of iTunes, version 9.1.

Now, I’ve been saying for at least a year now that iTunes needs to be rewritten from the ground up. It’s just been feeling like it is getting more and more bloated. I also think it could benefit from being rewritten into Cocoa from Carbon. OS X has many technologies now that only Cocoa apps can utilize. The Finder, in my opinion, saw a great boost in stability and speed by transitioning to Cocoa in Snow Leopard. Also, there has to be a metric ton of legacy code that is just cruft waiting to be discarded.

I still hope that the next major version of iTunes (iTunes X sounds like a good name, doesn’t it?) will see at minimum a rewrite into Cocoa, and on the more extreme end of the spectrum, a reimagining of the user interface.

But let’s get our heads out of the clouds and discuss the present — iTunes 9.1. Maybe it’s just me and my lofty hopes, but it feels — dare I say — snappier. It’s still definitely a Carbon app, but it seems faster at just about everything. And it throws in some new features such as iPad support, finer control of Genius Mixes, support for ePub books and books purchased from the iBookstore, and a handy checkbox to allow you to compress the music that goes into your iPod or iPhone to 128 kbps on the fly instead of loading the full 256 kbps songs that you get from the iTunes Store. 

All-in-all, iTunes 9.1 is a modest feature update, but performance seems to be enhanced, and to me that is an unsung hero of the feature list.

Yahoo! Search for iPhone has Inquisitor DNA

Back in the day before Snow Leopard, there was a lovely little search replacement for Safari called Inquisitor. Back in may of 2008, Yahoo! acquired the rights to Inquisitor, and ported the browser extension to Firefox and IE. Unfortunately, due to changes in the Snow Leopard version of Safari, Inquisitor no longer works in Apple’s browser.

About a year later, this handy little app was also made into an iPhone app, which was a quick and easy way to perform a search on the iPhone. Seriously, it was fast and didn’t seem to require as many taps to get things done. However, just as Inquisitor faded into obscurity on Snow Leopard equipped Macs, a change in iPhone OS 3.0 caused Inquisitor to type everything in the search bar in all caps. This didn’t appear to affect search results, but as Yahoo! never addressed the issue, it looked as if this app would be neglected. 

(I’ll admit that I am a stickler for perfection, and an annoying all caps bug was the equivalent of nails on a chalkboard for me. I quit using the app solely for this reason. Yes, I’m a snob)

It appears that Yahoo! has breathed new life into everything but the Inquisitor brand. On March 23, 2010, Yahoo! released Yahoo! Search, and you can definitely tell this app’s daddy is Inquisitor. The similarities are unmistakable. See for yourself.

Even the icon is similar, with only color changes being the obvious difference.

But differences are abundant between the two apps. The new Yahoo! Search can display maps as you search. Entering Starbucks as a search term yielded (ironically) a Google map (I assume using the built in iPhone Maps API) showing Starbucks stores nearly my current location. Enter a stock symbol such as AAPL and you’ll see the current stock price and whether it has gone up or down. Enter a movie title and see showtimes at theaters near you. 

Overall, it is refreshing to see the Inquisitor app live on in this new name. I do, however, find it odd that the original Inquisitor iPhone app is still available on the App Store. As for Inquisitor for web browsers, I haven’t kept up on the news of its support for Firefox and IE (as I don’t use those browsers) but I think it is safe to say that the Safari version has reached the end of its life. And that is truly a shame. 

 I honestly think it is too bad that Apple didn’t acquire the technology long ago. Hopefully Yahoo! can keep it alive.

Why Command-C When You Can Pastebot?

A while back I mentioned a fun little unit converter for the iPhone called Convertbot. The latest Tapbot to arrive is model 0003, a.k.a. Pastebot.

Pastebot’s purpose is to manage a clipboard of text and images that you copy from various content, whether that is the web, or twitter, or…well, anything that you can copy & paste on your iPhone. The things I love about Convertbot — the elegant, simple, yet fun interface and the mechanical sounds as you interact with the UI — are also found in Pastebot.

To use Pastebot, first, you need to copy something to your clipboard on your iPhone. Once an image or some text is copied, simply open Pastebot, and whatever is currently in the clipboard’s cache is imported. From there, you can apply filters to the content (such as black & white on an image, or convert to all lowercase on text), and/or send them in an email. Also, since Pastebot remembers the last 99 things imported, you can recopy something to the iPhone’s general clipboard to repost elsewhere at any time.

The most shining feature of Pastebot is Pastebot Sync, a Mac preference pane that acts as a wireless bridge between your Mac & iPhone. When your iPhone and Mac are on the same wifi network, and Pastebot is running on your iPhone, anything you copy on your Mac will magically be dropped into Pastebot. Likewise, tap and hold on something in Pastebot’s clipboard manager, and that image or text is pasted wherever your insertion cursor is currently on the Mac, whether that be the address bar, TextEdit, Pages, Keynote, or even an iChat window. You get the picture.

Pastebot sells for $2.99 in the App Store and Pastebot Sync is a free utility on Tapbot’s site. 

Quicken Essentials for Mac

Quicken has long been the standard of personal finance for the better part of the last 15 years. If you wanted to digitally keep track of your finances, Quicken was the first name you heard of. Quicken for Windows remains, from what I’ve heard, the gold standard. However, the Mac version had long been put out to pasture with the last version, Quicken 2007, having been released in the Summer of 2006.

 I’ve been using Quicken 2004 for Mac since, well, 2004, because the “upgrades” (read $70 bug fixes) just weren’t justifiable in the 2005, 2006, and 2007 versions. Then, in January 2008, there was the promise of Quicken Financial Life for Mac, with a ship date of Fall 2008. This was to be a rewrite of Quicken for Mac that sport a fresh user interface and finally bring Intel native code.

Sadly, that ship date kept being pushed back again and again. I even started to contemplate alternatives to Quicken, but ended up deciding to just stick with my decrepit 2004 version. Then in October 2009, Quicken bought Mint.com, and put Mint’s head honcho, Aaron Patzer, in charge of the Quicken team. He promptly ousted the much-delayed Quicken Financial Life and put his Mac-savvy Mint team on the job to compile the essentials of finance tracking in a built-from-the-ground up Cocoa version of Quicken for the Mac. And they did it in four months.

Today we realize the culmination of that fresh outlook on financing in Quicken Essentials for Mac. Now, it truly is just the essentials, but it’s the essentials done right. It lacks stock-lot accounting, bill pay, and TurboTax export, among a few other things, I’m sure. However, if all you need is to get a hold of your spending and create a budget then QEM should fit right in for you. 

I’ll admit, I was extremely skeptical about QEM for the past couple months when looking at the multitude of failures and delays of Quicken Financial Life. What really sold me was Aaron Patzer, formerly of Mint, now VP and general manager of Intuit’s personal finance group, getting out and talking to just about any major Mac site that would listen. Keep in mind that he came in to the fray in October 2009. Here’s an excerpt from Macworld:

“When I came in, I looked at the Mac product and said, ‘Holy crap, we haven’t put one of these out in three years,’” Patzer said. “It’s called ‘Mac Essentials’ because it’s got the essential features used by 80 percent of the users we’ve surveyed and talked to. So we had to decide, do we want to put a product out that serves 80 percent of the market and is a vast improvement in so many ways, or do we delay it again? And what I thought was, given the growing popularity of the Mac platform… it was better to get a product out that’s good for 80 percent of the market.”

 Also:

Patzer says that you’ll see more similarities to Mint.com in the desktop Quicken products. Patzer says he “personally specced out” Quicken for Windows 2011. “Over time, you’ll start to see features and functionality for all the platforms come together. It shouldn’t matter if you’re using Mac, PC, iPhone, Android, or online” when it comes to features and data availability. Apps should have a native appearance, he said, but the underlying data structures will be the same and it should be easy to go from using a desktop app to the online service and back again.

It’s obvious to me that Intuit, the maker of Quicken, saw that they were stagnant. When they bought Mint.com, I thought for sure they did so just to kill it off, as it competed with Quicken Online. Instead, the company tossed Quicken Online in the bin, and embraced Mint.com as its replacement. It sounds like they gave the Mint people carte blanche over all of Quicken. It also sounds like the fresh blood has a vision for the future, and it is that vision that persuaded me to embrace Quicken Essentials for Mac.

Whether or not you decide to adopt Quicken Essentials is primarily based on whether you are an 80 or a 20. Thankfully, I fall in the 80 percent of the user base. I leave my investments to my brokerage site, and I like the web interface that provides. So I didn’t feel the need to continue on with Quicken 2004 and wait for another year or two.

Thankfully, my grandpa has Quicken 2006 and I was able to use iChat’s Screen Sharing and my iDisk to convert my 2004 file. From there, QEM worked like a charm.

⌘ iMultitasking

Most of the people I know now have smartphones, and one thing many say to lampoon my iPhone is, “Well, it can’t multitask.” I often try to explain that it does indeed multitask, just not with third-party apps. For example: You can listen to music via the iPod app whilst playing a game or reading tweets, or you can talk on the phone while browsing the web or reading tweets. Did I mention reading tweets?

But what if multitasking isn’t quite the correct idea to seek? You see, the standard computer we know and love can multitask, but we cannot. We are unable to focus on writing an email and a blog post at the same time. Just like we can’t watch a movie and read our RSS feeds at the same time. Sure, you can have the movie playing, but when you switch your eyes from it to your feedreader, your eyes are now reading instead of watching. And yes, you can keep part of your consciousness on the movie by listening, but that is utilizing a completely different sense. 

When people say multitasking they really mean context switching. Louie Mantia has an amazing write-up of this idea.

The premise of context switching is great on modern computers. We can do this quickly and efficiently via clicking on an icon in the Dock or command-tabbing or using Exposé. (Or using the taskbar or Windows-tab, or Aero Peek, if you use Windows).

Humans don’t multitask, they context switch. Really quickly. Computers multitask, but only in the sense of running multiple processes at the same time. This is all presented to the user through context switching, though. Multitasking is something the user doesn’t necessarily see.

Now, let’s boil this down to smartphones. The iPhone multitasks processes in certain apps, allowing the user to listen to music or talk on the phone while simultaneous using a different sense to do something else (audio and visual). 

Another smartphone, such as the Palm Pre, can run any variant of multiple apps at once. This degrades performance and battery life. It’s a tradeoff. So yes, the Pre itself, as a tiny computer, is multitasking. But how is that presented to the user? One app at a time. Just like the iPhone.

Here is the big difference between so-called “multitasking” phones and the iPhone: the “multitaskers” context-switch faster. The iPhone is hindered by a middleman: the Homescreen. The hindrance is not so much by the act of closing one app and launching another, but rather getting from one app to the other. If the app I had been using is on Page 1 of the homescreen and the app I want to switch to is on Page 8, that’s a lot of swiping. 

Palm simplified this by the concept of cards. I’ve observed one of my friends with his Pre, and he doesn’t usually have too many apps running at once. Tends to be his top three or four. And he is able to context-switch quickly between those three or four apps via the card interface. The massive list of apps in the homescreen is cut out entirely when switching between a couple apps. The only time he needs to visit the home screen is to launch a new app.

I think the perfect middle-ground for Apple, which doesn’t want to impact performance and battery life by allowing any and all background processes, is to allow a gesture-based switching between certain “open” apps. What I mean by “open” is that when you use a gesture to switch apps, the app you were using is put in a suspended state and the other app you had “open” is brought out of a suspended state. This would maintain the illusion of multitasking without sacrificing resources. I think. I’m not an engineer. 

This solution, of course, doesn’t help the folks who want Pandora to supply stimulation to their audio senses while they engage their visual senses in another app. But we all know Apple isn’t willing to allow third-party background processes. But this solution would allow for faster and easier context switching of the visual sense.

(It should be noted that the only apps allowed background processing on the iPhone are a few of the pre-installed apps. Even the apps that Apple publishes via the App Store follow App Store rules and are not allowed background processing).

I think the real issues some people are having with the iPhone isn’t multitasking, but rather background-processing and more efficient context-switching. One of those Apple is unlikely to enact. The other is one I’d like to see. And I’d like to see it soon.

Google Extends Chrome for Mac

Google has had a rising star over the past year or so with its Chrome web browser. The browser was first available to Windows users, with Mac and Linux support promised. After what seemed like an eon, age, and an eternity, Google delivered those versions in Late 2009. However, they didn’t have feature parity with their older Windows brother.

Today Google closed that gap significantly with an update to Chrome for Mac (sorry, Linux) by adding support for extensions and bookmark syncing.

Extensions add extra functionality to the browser. I, for one, am anxious for 1Password to finish their Chrome extension, as I can’t truly give a browser a chance without 1Password being easily accessible. 

Bookmark syncing is a great feature for folks with multiple computers. I know my friend, Aaron, was excited to finally have his home and work versions of Chrome talking to each other.

You can get Chrome here or see what Google has to say about the enhancements to Chrome for Mac.

Safari will likely remain as my main browser, but I think Chrome has trumped Firefox as my secondary.