Squarespace Releases iPad App

Today Squarespace announced the release of their long awaited iPad app. Squarespace is, of course, the host and CMS of this fine site. Needless to say, I’ve been waiting for an iPad app from them for some time. Naturally, I am typing this post on my iPad.

Overall, the app is very good. I’ve encountered (and reported) a couple bugs, but that is to be expected. Overall, the app is a reflowed carbon copy of the iPhone app, which surprises me that it is a separate app instead of a universal app. The main difference is the editor on the iPad is far superior (read: usable).

The editor supports undo, redo, hyperlinking, bold, italics, underline, block quote, and excerpts. It also features a marked improvement to the interface that allows you to assign categories, tags, and the publish date.

I can definitely see using the iPad to publish a post in a pinch, but most of the time I think I’ll stick with composing on my Mac.

Squarespace for iPad is a free download from the iTunes Store.

Dropbox 1.0

The amazing syncing utility Dropbox has finally left beta and entered the land of 1.0! I’ve been a Dropbox user for some time now, and really do love it. Dropbox, to me, is what Apple’s iDisk should be. By far, one of my favorite uses of Dropbox is the ability for apps to sync their databases to it (like the very wonderful 1Password), which is great for apps that have both Mac & iOS versions.

If you want to become a Dropbox user, please follow my referral link. By doing so, you’ll get an extra 250 MB of storage, even on a free account, and I’ll get the same little bump in storage. Now, get to syncing!

Apple Opening Mac App Store on 6 January

In three short weeks Apple will be opening the Mac App Store for business. Part of me does wish it was opening before Christmas, so I could show it off to my folks, mother-in-law, and sister-in-law, since I will be seeing all of them over Christmas.

Word has it that developers who want to be included in the Mac App Store’s 6 January debut need to submit their apps by 31 December.

The Future of the Apple Design Award for Mac

In my previous post I casually mentioned that I thought Reeder for Mac would be a fantastic contender for an Apple Design Award. I then remembered that this year, Apple didn’t have an ADA for Mac apps — just iPhone/iPod touch and iPad apps.

Then a notion came upon me that I wanted to share: with the Mac App Store launching soon, what if Apple reinstates the ADA for Mac, but on the condition that it has to be an App Store app?

Makes sense to me.

First Look at Reeder for Mac

I first learned about RSS (Really Simple Syndication) when Apple added a built-in reader to the Safari web browser. I used that for a while, but Safari as an RSS reader was quite cumbersome. I wanted my feeds to be more centralized and, most importantly, easy to read. This was a couple years back, and one of the more popular Mac RSS readers was NewsFire.

NewsFire is an attractive reader, but is updated rarely, and lately, many of my favorite sites I subscribe to haven’t been updating properly in NewsFire. Also, with the advent of the iPad, I have found I do enjoy to casually read easily digestible bits of information, such as blog posts and news articles on it. (For long-form reading, such as a novel, I still enjoy my Kindle). There are a wealth of iPad RSS readers on the App Store, but I wanted to have one on my Mac, too, as I do enjoy casually flipping through my feeds and exploring links on my Mac, too.

I had long heard about Google Reader, but I honestly find many of Google’s web app user interfaces to be hideous and not the easiest to use. I had also thought of using a Google Reader client such as NetNewsWire, but I just didn’t care for the app. So I stuck with NewsFire.

A couple days ago, a popular iPhone and iPad Google Reader client, aptly named Reeder debuted a beta for the Mac (the developer refers to it as a Draft. Kinda classy). I have instantly fallen in love with the Mac version, even though it isn’t feature complete yet.

First off, let’s start with the icon. There are two different ways Reeder for Mac can visually notify you of new items: the first is a Mail-style badge, and the second (my preferred style) is to have the number of new items displayed as part of the icon itself. That’s just classy, right there.

Next, Reeder has an almost papyrus texture to the user interface, even in the UI chrome at the top and bottom of the window. The left sidebar is defaulted to show icons, but can be dragged wider to switch to text. I prefer the text, honestly.

If you click on a link in Reeder’s viewing pane, the left sidebar shifts out of view, and the viewer expands and becomes an in-app browser. It’s a nice touch.

Reeder also has a good deal of services available such as Instapaper (my favorite), ReadItLater, Pinboard, Delicious, Zootool, Twitter, and the ability to email a link or open the article in your favorite browser.

The first draft of Reeder is off to a great start. I’d love to see three-finger swipe gestures added to move forward and backward through your new articles, just like you can use to move among your messages in Mail. You can bet that I’ll be requesting that feature.

I can’t wait to see how Reeder develops, and I have to wonder if the developer is aiming to debut it in the Mac App Store. I think it would be worthy of an Apple Design Award.

Update on 2010-12-03 00:01 by Chris De Jabet

I found a keyboard shortcut cheatsheet for Reeder for Mac.

Find My iPhone Becomes Free Service

Find my iPhone is a feature of Apple MobileMe service. MobileMe is a $99 per year subscription service that provides syncing of your calendars, contacts, & bookmarks across your computers and iOS devices, along with an email account, iDisk server storage, photo galleries, and Find my Iphone (or iPod touch or iPad). When Find my iPhone was added as a feature of MobileMe, I thought (and still think) it is a great part of the service.

Say your iPhone slips out of your pocket while you’re sitting at a coffee shop. You leave, and a while later, you reach for your iPhone and have a near heart attack. Never fear, you can hop onto me.com or the Find my iPhone app from another device (say, your spouse’s or your friend’s) and locate your iPhone on a map. From there, you can passcode lock the screen, send a custom message with an alert sound that overrides the volume or mute switch, or, in extreme circumstances, remote wipe the device. This works for iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads.

(It should be noted that if you wipe the device, you won’t be able to track it again. Wiping resets everything to factory condition).

Well, today Apple updated the Find my iPhone app and is allowing any iPhone 4, 4th-Generation iPod touch, or iPad to use that portion of MobileMe for free. Download the app to sign up for an account.

There is a little trick here if you have an older device. Just register your Apple ID on someone else’s current generation device, then delete your info from their device. Once you have registered on a supported device, you can then activate Find my iPhone on any of your older devices.

I’d really like to see Apple open this up for all of their iOS device users, but I understand their desire to encourage folks toward newer devices. Apple is a business, after all.

I recommend that everyone take advantage of the Find my iPhone program. It could save you a lot of panic and headache if you were to ever lose your device.

Update on 2010-11-23 02:14 by Chris De Jabet

It appears MobileMe Gallery may also have become a free service today. Interesting.

Blast Off to Fun with Astronut!

The Iconfactory today released their long-awaited hyperjump back into iPhone gaming Astronut! You play Jacques the Astronut, leaping planet to planet through 24 levels across 6 sectors. Astronut is also Game Center compatible, sporting 40 achievements and leaderboards.

Needless to say, The Iconfactory has boldly gone into the super high resolution territory of the Retina Display, bringing graphics so sharp it’d make Buzz Lightyear jealous.

You get the first 4 levels for the steep price of free, and then an in-app purchase of $1.99 gets you the rest of the game. This is a great compromise for a sort of demo try-before-you-buy. If you like the first 4 levels, you’ll really love the rest.

I’ve had a hard time putting Astronut down today, and my twitter followers are probably tired of hearing about my achievements. I can’t recommend this game enough. Go get it.

P.S. Don’t forget to grab the gorgeous free wallpaper pack for Astronut.

P.P.S. Astronut’s arrival totally makes up for Apple’s yawn of an announcement regarding The Beatles earlier.

Instapaper Updated with Even More Awesome

Yesterday, Marco Arment’s excellent Instapaper app for iOS was updated with some thoughtful new features. Among these are combined length/progress indicators for saved articles à la Kindle, new sharing options, and a Light/Dark theme toggle within articles on the iPhone or iPod touch (this has been present on the iPad for a while).

Naturally, there’s one more thing.

Not only can small-screened iOS devices now toggle Light/Dark mode within an article, but Marco built an amazing location-aware feature that checks the sunset times for your locale and automatically switches to Dark mode at night and Light mode during the day. Marco describes this feature as “ridiculous.” I describe it as wonderful.

Instapaper is a great free service on the web, but I have found the iOS app well worth the $5 several times over. And each free update makes it even better. Needless to say, I love how many apps, including Twitterrific, have Instapaper support for sending links to read later.

If you aren’t using Instapaper, shame on you.

The Changing Tide of App Distribution

It won’t be long before the Mac App Store goes live on Snow Leopard Macs everywhere. For something that is arriving so quickly, we still know very little. We know there is an approval process, rules [PDF from Engadget], and a 70/30 split for developers (devs get the larger piece of the pie). Basically, it’s the same song and dance we’ve seen in the iOS App Store.

Inherent Growing Pains

Upgrades

Over the past couple years, we’ve become accustomed to app stores on our mobile devices. But on desktop class computers this is new territory. Many users expect if they buy version 1.0 of an app, they’ll get a discounted upgrade cost when version 2.0 is released. Not so in the current operation of the iOS App Store, and it looks bleak for the Mac App Store. Apple’s App Stores assume one of two scenarios: free upgrades for life; or release a completely new app for each major release (think Tweetie 2 or Twitterrific 3), charging all previous customers the full amount.

I don’t like that idea. It is inflexible because currently developers don’t have a way to notify customers of a separate app release except through word of mouth. I honestly don’t see why upgrades for major releases aren’t possible. Apple knows who has bought what apps. Also, when you update apps via iTunes, there is a price listing of Free and a dedicated button to Download All Free Updates. Also, if you recall when Apple released iTunes Plus songs, where DRM was finally stripped from the iTunes Music Store and song encoding quality was doubled, there was an upgrade fee. Obviously there is already a pillar of the iTunes Store architecture that can handle upgrading certain file types. Why not allow developers to give previous owners of one version of an app the ability to upgrade at a discounted price, while charging new customers the full price? This would alleviate what is likely the single greatest hesitation among developers.

Updates

Other roadblocks are the lengthy approval process. Right now, if a Mac app comes out and a major bug is discovered, developers can issue a patch as soon as it is ready. On the iOS App Store, and presumably the Mac App Store, review processes can take weeks — even for a small bug fix.

Version numbering for apps generally follows a certain hierarchy. For example, assume an app version number of 1.2.3. The 1 represents a major release — your 1.0 or 2.0 major milestone releases. The 2 represents minor feature releases throughout the journey between major releases. Finally, the 3 represents the level known as bug fixes.

I propose both of Apple’s App Stores adopt a policy of varying levels of approval scrutiny for the varying levels of version numbering. Major releases are looked over thoroughly. Minor releases are checked moderately, but would be generally acceptable as the app has obviously been approved before. And bug fix releases would be fast tracked to customers with the trust that a developer is indeed using the release as a bug or usability fix.

Now, what if a developer abuses any of these levels, trying to sneak major changes in a bug fix level update? Well, let there be repercussions. We saw something similar with the whole Camera+ fiasco. My point is that there should be a level of trust between Apple and Developers. I can speak as a customer that this would be beneficial, as it sucks waiting two to three weeks for a bug fix release to repair a crippling bug in an app.

Crossgrades

I have to wonder, and I’m sure many developers are wondering, if current customers on the “old model of business” will be able to transition to an App Store version of the same app. I hope so. I’d actually like to get most of my apps under the App Store roof to allow for easy updating.

Other Avenues

Now, the Mac App Store won’t be the only avenue for developers, as it is on iOS. Developers can continue to sell their apps the way the always have. However, it is my belief that the Mac App Store will soon suck the air out of the market. It will be highly visible, on every recent and new Mac, and easy. It won’t take long for the Mac App Store to be the preferred avenue for purchasing apps among users — especially new users.

Why the Mac App Store Will Be Great

Easy

I am the tech guy for the family. I don’t mean just my wife and son, I mean the whole family — grandparents, parents, in-laws, aunts & uncles, etc. I’m the guy they call. Granted, many are still trapped with Windows, but one by one, I’ve been working Macs into the family.

Most recently, my mother-in-law switched to the Mac, and it has been up to me and my wife to help show her the ropes. Want to know the single most difficult thing to explain? Installing an app.

Seriously, think about explaining a disk image to a person that is unfamiliar with the way computers generally work.

Now, imagine telling that person that they need to go to a website and figure out the checkout process, then download the app, properly install it, then input the registration details. And then you need to ensure they archive the registration details in case they ever need them again.

The Mac App Store will simplify and streamline the entire process. Tell a new user, “This is where you get apps.” Then, all they have to do is click buy and confirm their Apple ID and Password. Bam! The app begins downloading and installing, automatically being put in the Applications folder, ready to go.

Also, the Mac App Store will notify when there is an update available. Right now, a user can go months without knowing there is an update available for an app if they haven’t opened it.

Experience

I have long held to the notion that Apple’s focus is selling an experience. Think about how they package a MacBook. You lift the lid off the box and the first thing you are presented with is your new Mac on a tray. Key word: presented. Same goes for how the iPhone is packaged. And the iPods.

Imagine a new Mac user, just converting from Windows, and how they’ll ask about how they get apps on their new Mac. You just go to the App Store. (Another reason the Mac App Store will suck the air out of the market: new users won’t know any different).

Overall, the Mac App Store will provide a streamlined experience with easy purchasing and updating (and, let’s hope, upgrading to new versions).

One

When you launch an app on the iPhone or iPad, there is a transformative effect of the device becoming what the app is. Fraser Speirs sums it up best:

The thing is that, when you use an app on an iPad, the iPad becomes that thing. Maps makes the iPad a map. iBooks turns it into a book. Brushes turns it into a sketch pad.

The general gist of Apple’s “Back to the Mac” event was that the great ideas of iOS are coming back to the Mac. One of the major ideas discussed was full-screen apps.

In my opinion, the best way for an app on Mac OS X to scale to full screen is if it is designed to be a one-window app in the first place. In turn, Bjango states it best in their argument for a one-window iChat:

I’m finding more and more that the best way to design desktop apps is to imagine you’re building them for iOS.

I imagine Apple will refine their multi-window apps into one-window and encourage developers to do likewise. The iLife suite has long focused on using one window, and the new iPhoto ‘11 demonstrates a graceful move to a full-screen app.

Another example of consolidating apps with cluttered UI is the developer preview of Xcode 4. If you’ve ever used Xcode, you know that things can get carried away with multiple windows and palettes. Xcode 4 aims to reign that in with a single window interface. Imagine this (pay attention, developers): I bet Xcode 4 will ship its final version with Mac OS X Lion, and that one of the surprise kicks will be a full-screen coding environment.

Maybe this reduction to one-window apps is why we haven’t seen an update to the iWork suite alongside the new iLife. Perhaps this is also holding up development of a new Final Cut Studio?

The fact of the matter is that Mac apps should start preparing for one-window and full-screen interfaces, especially since Lion is going to train users that the green zoom button is meant for full-screen.