Magical Weather

I’m a bit of a weather nut, and I primarily get most of my forecast needs from the excellent My-Cast for iPhone. But sometimes I am using my iPad and want to check the hourly or daily forecast, yet the iPad doesn’t even come with a built-in weather app.

I’ve tried a few different apps, and my current favorite is the newly released Magical Weather by Sophiestication. Magical Weather is a gorgeous weather station providing the essentials for current weather at a glance. You can check weekly forecasts by sliding a panel up, and hourly by pulling that panels out from the side. There’s also beautiful animations that reflect the current conditions.

It’s a buck in the App Store for a limited time. Check it out.

Classic Color Meter

For reasons unknown to anyone outside Cupertino, Apple handicapped their previously wonderful Digital Color Meter utility in Lion. Many folks are probably unaware of its existence, but Digital Color Meter, which resides in the Utilities folder, was great for locking onto a pixel and getting the hex code or just about any other color syntax. I used this all the time.

But Lion's version removes nearly all of its usefulness. I was pretty peeved when I went to use it and it didn't work for my usage anymore.

Thankfully, there's an app for that. A developer named Ricci Adams made Classic Color Meter and put it on the Mac App Store for a buck. Let me tell you, that is a buck well spent.

Facebook Messenger

For a while now, I have been dogging Facebook's iOS app to my friends for being buggy, crazy, and generally slow. Honestly, the quality of the Facebook iOS app would lead one to think Facebook was a three person outfit handing development of the app to a volunteer intern. And ever since Facebook revamped their Messages infrastructure, the iOS app hasn't been playing as nicely with that particular area of the service.

Well, a while ago, Facebook acquired Beluga, which was an app for sending and receiving messages, pictures, and locations between two people or a small group. Say, that fits right in with Facebook's reimagination of Messages, doesn't it?

Yesterday saw the first fruits of Facebook's Beluga acquisition, as they released Messenger for iOS and Android. This new, separate app is pretty much a wholesale replacement for the current "inbox" area of the Facebook app, doing one thing and doing it very well.

In a couple conversations I've had using Messenger, it facilitates quick messaging very quickly and easily. One friend I was chatting with said it was a little crazy how it was sending duplicates of the messages to his email address and texting his phone in addition to notifying him via push notification for the app. I don't have this problem as I have disabled Facebook from sending me any emails or texts. I prefer to keep Facebook's communication within Facebook's own ecosystem. If I want to check Facebook, I'll go to Facebook.

Overall, the Messenger app is solid and performs well. It's much more stable than Google's competing Huddle feature within the Google+ app. If you're a Facebook on the go, I can't see why you wouldn't want to use Messenger over having Facebook always email you.

I can only hope that Facebook is letting the Beluga team rewrite their primary app accordingly.

Twitterrific 4.3 Syncs Timelines

When it comes to third-party Twitter clients, each one usually needs to find a way to set itself apart. Tweetbot recently added its own push notification service, even offering the ability to set a daily quiet time for when you are asleep.

My favorite twitter app, Twitterrific, has long held its niche with being minimal and offering a unified timeline, showing tweets, mentions, and direct messages all in one continuous timeline. Today, though, the Iconfactory unveiled a new feature to set the blue bird apart from the rest: Tweet Marker.

Tweet Marker works like pure magic. You read some tweets on Twitterrific for Mac, and decide you need to leave your desk for a bit. Simply close Twitterrific, and it sets the top-most tweet in view as the last read tweet. Next, open Twitterrific on your iPhone or iPad, and your timeline auto-scrolls to that marked tweet, signified by a purple bookmark. Read some more tweets, and exit the iOS version of Twitterrific, and then go back to your Mac, and pick up at the latest marked tweet.

This doesn't just work between Mac & iPhone or Mac & iPad, but it works between iPhone & iPad as well.

Twitterrific 4.3 also brings other features to the table, such as initial support for decoding t.co links. Picture services such as TwitPic, yfrog, img.ly, and Twitter's Photo service that have been hidden behind t.co links will now open in the photo viewer.

Be sure to read the full changelog (Mac, iOS) and, if you don't already use Twitterrific, pick it up for the Mac or iOS.

Byword 1.3

Byword is a fantastically simple typing interface for the Mac. I picked it up when version 1.2 came out, which introduced Markdown support. I held off on publishing my thoughts after having a brief discussion with the developers about Markdown support getting a lot better in 1.3. Well, Byword 1.3 made its way onto the Mac App Store today, and I thought I'd share my thoughts on what has become my go-to tool for writing on my Mac.

Syntax

When Byword 1.2 introduced Markdown support a while back, the furthest it reached was the ability to convert your markup into HTML and preview or export it. This was all well and good, but having come from using the abandonware of TextMate, I missed being able to see my Markdown syntax take effect while I wrote. Meaning that by surrounding a word with an asterisk on each side, it would italicize. Well, Byword 1.3 takes care of that. Emphasis and strong emphasis, headers, ordered and unordered lists, and more all render in real time, aiding in visualizing your final work at a glance.

The export options have even expanded to include PDF, RTF, Word, & LaTeX in addition to HTML.

Preferences

I have always enjoyed Byword's minimal preference pane, which offers a light or dark theme, text width choices of narrow, medium, or wide, and the font chooser. Thankfully, one crucial preference was added, and that is the ability to set a default text format of rich text, plain text, or Markdown. And the Markdown choice even uses the .md file extension.

Miscellaneous Niceties

When tapping out a list, whether ordered or unordered, tapping return once now adds the next row with the appropriate marking. Also, there is a new typewriter scrolling mode which keeps the current line centered vertically in the window, so you can watch one area while typing, instead of traveling down the length of your screen as your type.

Ready to Roar

Byword 1.3 also adds support for OS X Lion, which should be arriving any day now. Once running on Lion, Byword will trade its custom full-screen support for Lion's native Full-Screen App support, along with Auto-Save, Versions, and Resume.

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As someone who writes almost exclusively in Markdown anymore, Byword has grown to become the tool I reach for when I go to write. Today's enhancements to how Byword handles Markdown syntax has sealed it. In my book, Byword has become the tool that every serious writer using Markdown should use.

If you are looking for an app that is clean and simply gets out of your way so you can write, I can't recommend Byword enough.

Byword is available on the Mac App Store for $10.

Capture — An App That Does One Thing Well

I can't tell you how often I miss shooting a video of my boy doing something great because I have to do the following:

1. Unlock my iPhone.
2. Find the Camera app.
3. Wait for the Camera app to load.
4. Toggle the switch from still photo to video.
5. Tap record.

The above process can take anywhere from 5 to 30 seconds, which, by the time I am ready to record, I have missed the moment.

Apple is hoping to alleviate some of this by adding a camera button to the lock screen in iOS 5, but that still seems like it will be best suited for quick access to taking still photos (which is also welcome).

Enter Capture, a great little app that does one thing, and does it very well. Tap Capture's icon on the home screen, and it instantly begins recording video as it launches. Simply press the home button to stop recording, and the video is saved to your camera roll.

Capture is 99 cents well spent if you are also frustrated with the slow performance of the built-in camera app.

Marco Arment pretty much speaks for me on that front:

By the way, it's embarrassing that Camera is so slow to launch and be ready to capture videos or photos that apps like this are necessary.

I guess that is a good reason to have a third-party developer community.

Make sure to pick up Capture for 99 cents over at the App Store.

Reeder for Mac

Reeder is my favorite RSS reader for iOS, and it is finally out of beta for the Mac. I've been using the betas for months, and couldn't imagine a better experience across all my devices. The Mac version feels like a hybrid of iOS and OS X, and where that feels a bit out of place on Snow Leopard, I have a feeling it will be right at home on Lion next month.

It's $10, and featured over on the Mac App Store. I also recommend the iPhone/iPod touch version and iPad version.

Pixelmator 2 Sneak Preview

My favorite image editor, Pixelmator, debuted a sneak preview of their next major release, Pixelmator 2. There is a lot of amazing stuff happening in this release that brings it closer to a Photoshop replacement for many users. At the very least, I think Pixelmator 2 will certainly seal the deal on surpassing Photoshop Elements.

Pixelmator 2 adds a ton of new and improved brushes. The crown jewel among new features looks to be Content-Aware Fill, which is something that the world first saw in Photoshop CS5. Like I said, Pixelmator 2 will probably satisfy most people's need for Photoshop, at a fraction of the price.

Speaking of price, Pixelmator 2 will be a free upgrade for those who have purchased Pixelmator in the Mac App Store. If you owned Pixelmator previous from the pre-Mac App Store era, I would suggest moving over to the Mac App Store version now, as the price is $30 once again for a limited time to encourage folks to get on board with the Pixelmator team's decision to sell only via the Mac App Store. After a little while, the price will return to $60.

Also, if you don't currently have Pixelmator, but think you may want it, it'd be a good idea to pick it up now.

iWork Apps for iOS Go Universal

Apple updated its iOS version of the iWork suite with new file management and iPhone & iPod touch user interfaces across the board. I currently only have Pages, so I installed the newly universal app on my iPhone 4 to give it a whirl.

Let's just say it's bittersweet.

Pages on the iPhone looks very nice and operates well given the constraint on screen real estate. That said, I'm not going to write a novel on my iPhone. Heck, I'm not going to write a full page document on my iPhone unless the situation were critical.

This all being said, Pages will be handy for the occasional edit. And that's where I think this app fits on the iPhone. Creating very brief documents to send out on the go, or making quick edits and sending them out.

I like Pages on the ipad and find it very usable for brief document creation. The iPhone interface should be a nice companion.

I can't speak for Keynote or Numbers, but just from the screenshots, Keynote on the iPhone looks like it could be handy in the same capacity as Pages. The Numbers screenshots look downright atrocious on the iPhone.

For $10 each, the apps are a bargain, especially if you find you only need one or two of them.

Twitterrific 4.1 for iOS Shines with Polish

My favorite Twitter app, Twitterrific, has released a major feature update chock full of refinements on iOS, bringing it up to par with the Mac app.

The biggest new feature is username suggestions when composing a tweet. Simply type the @ symbol then start typing either the username or the corresponding listed real name, and a little slide bar with show up showing you users that match. Tap the user and the name is filled. Other apps do this, but Iconfactory's implementation is pretty slick.

Also, Twitterrific's tap gestures have been simplified and overhauled. I'm especially loving the Report Spammer button when long-tapping an avatar. That button has been long overdue.

These are just a couple of the many updates (and a ton of bug fixes) in Twitterrific 4.1. Be sure to check out the release notes and take the app for a spin.