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 Publishes Free iOS Development iBooks

/

If you have an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, and Apple’s free iBooks app, and a desire to learn about iOS programming, you may want to fire up the iBookstore and search for “Apple Developer Publications.”

The results should be six iBooks published by — you guessed it — Apple Developer Publications. The titles include:

  • Object-Oriented Programming with Objective-C
  • iOS Human Interface Guidelines
  • iOS Technology Overview
  • The Objective-C Programming Language
  • iOS Application Programming Guide
  • Cocoa Fundamentals Guide

Needless to say, these looks like great resources for a budding iOS developer, and they’re free.

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.

You Should Be Listening to Build & Analyze

/

If you are a developer, or even just interested in how development works (like me), you should be listening to Build & Analyze by the 5by5 Network. It’s hosted by Marco Arment of Instapaper fame and Dan Benjamin. The show is four episodes in and they generally last less than an hour, so it shouldn’t be too much trouble to catch up if you want to.

Dan is a fantastic host who keeps the discussion going, and Marco’s insight is grand, as usual.

Also, if you aren’t using Instapaper, shame on you.

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.

Happy Thanksgiving

/

Today, in the US, we are celebrating Thanksgiving. In a few short hours, I will be sitting down to a feast of a meal with my wife, son, and my parents. I hope that wherever you are (even internationally), that today you find thankfulness in your heart, and have someone to share that with.

So, I suggest you search your heart and thank someone today for their role in your life.

Have a happy thanksgiving, and may you find many blessings in your life.

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.

4.2

/

Apple released iOS 4.2.1 today for iPhone, iPod touch, & iPad (indeed, 4.2 itself never publicly graced an iOS device).

Apple, of course, has a nice page detailing all the features of the iOS 4.2 update.

For iPhone and iPod touch owners, the two keystone features are AirPrint and AirPlay. Other than that, there are many little tweaks and polish to iOS.

The real news surrounding the 4.2 update is the ipad. Back when the iPad was released, iOS 4 hadn’t been announced yet. Instead, the iPad received its own special branch of iOS 3 — 3.2 to be exact. So iOS 4.2 is the iPad’s first encounter with the features its smaller sized siblings have been enjoying for months. To name a few: multitasking, folders, Game Center, & Mail improvements. For the first time, the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad are on the same iOS.

iPad

Multitasking

Multitasking has been enjoyed by iPhone and iPod touch users for a while, and any of your universal apps that have multitasking support will work automatically with multitasking after the update. Standalone iPad apps will need updates to work with the new feature, and those have been trickling into the App Store steadily over the past week or so.

Multitasking works as advertised, just like on the iPhone and iPod touch. The only hindrance I can foresee being a problem for heavy multitaskers is running up against the iPad’s limited 256 MB of memory. It really hasn’t been much of a problem for me (I’ve had 4.2.1 since the weekend, so I’ve had time to play). It would be nice if the next iPad hardware had at least 512 MB of memory (1 GB would be even better).

Folders

Folders is the feature I’ve been wanting on the iPad since I bought my iPhone 4. I’ve easily consolidated my homescreen count from five to two, which is much nicer. Once again, if you’ve used folders on iOS 4 before, you’ve seen this already. It’s just nice to have congruency across my iPhone and iPad.

Game Center

Game Center is Apple’s built-in achievements, leader board, and multiplayer platform for iOS. Now it is on the iPad. Like some of the other iPad apps, Game Center has an expanded user interface to accommodate the larger screen size.

Mail

Hallelujah, Mail now has unified inbox and threaded messages! These features are things I’m amazed weren’t shipped with iOS 1.0, but it’s good to have them. I’ve loved them on the iPhone, and it’s great to have them on the iPad, especially since the iPad is a great experience for dealing with an unruly inbox.

iPhone and iPod touch

The changes that are new to the iPhone and iPod touch are less noticeable. There are new sounds for SMS/MMS alerts to choose from. They honestly sound as if Apple hired a composer from Looney Toons. There are new parental controls, including disabling some of Game Center and one I about did a backflip over — disbaling the deletion of apps. My son just loves to delete all the toddler games from his iPod touch on a long roadtrip. Trust me, I could high five the Apple employee that added this.

Also, the birthday calendar now sports a wrapped gift icon, helping to make someone’s special day stand out a little more against your busy schedule. Voice Memos got a new icon, somehow even uglier than before.

Another nice feature is font choices in the Notes app. Marker Felt is still there, but is now joined by Chalkboard and the ever-wonderful Helvetica.

AirPrint and AirPlay

AirPrint allows your iOS device to print wirelessly. When the feature was announced, it was revealed that it would work without additional setup with select HP printers, and then with a little extra work, your existing printer that is shared with your Mac or PC. Unfortunately, only the former found its way to the release. It is unknown if the latter is delayed temporarily or indefinitely.

AirPlay, on the other hand, is something I am extremely excited for. AirPlay allows you to stream audio, video, or photo content to your TV from an iOS device via Apple TV, or audio to AirPlay-compatible third-party speakers. It works today with the new Apple TV, and third party speakers, such as the iHome iW1, will be available around the holidays. I definitely plan on putting a couple iW1’s around the house.

That’s about all that is worth mentioning. If you find any other gems in the release, drop a note in the comments.