¶ July 11

July of 2008 was a busy and significant month for me. Most importantly, I celebrated my first wedding anniversary with my wife, and welcomed our son into the world.

But that month also holds other historical significance, one being recognized by a lot of geeks this week. On July 11, 2008, the App Store launched alongside iPhone OS 2.0, the iPhone 3G, and MobileMe. That morning I woke ridiculously early to drive an hour to my nearest Apple Store and wait in line. In retrospect, it was pretty silly of me to head an hour away from home when my wife was home 9 months pregnant and days away from the due date. I remember standing in line kind of afraid my Motorola RAZR would ring.

The next few hours went by uneventfully. AT&T's activation servers had turned into molten slag, so I was able to purchase my iPhone and head home, where I activated it through iTunes later that day.

Since the prior winter I had been using a first-generation iPod touch, which ran nothing but Apple's stock apps. So July 11 was pretty neat in that the App Store was opening up. My first purchase was Twitterrific, which is now in its fifth version and is still my twitter app of choice. In fact, it has held the same position on my home screen for five years through three different iPhone models I have owned.

The App Store really did unleash the true potential of the iPhone, and later the iPad. The iPhone is essentially my connection to the world at large. Sure, I have my local friends and community, but the advent of the iPhone and the apps people have made have connected me to new friendships across the globe (back int he day those were called pen pals ).

Heck, if it weren't for the booming success of the App Store and iPhone and iPad, I wouldn't be where I am today. I don't think my job would exist without the App Store.

So much has happened in the past five years. I am days from celebrating my sixth anniversary with my wife and my son's fifth birthday. I am coming up on a year of working at the company of my dreams, and Apple's future is shining bright as they prepare to radically re-invent what iOS will be for years to come.

I really can't wait to see where we'll be on July 11, 2018.

Go Get Day One [iTunes Link]→

One of my favorite iOS apps, Day One, is free this week as part of the App Store's 5 year anniversary promotion. The iOS app is normally $4.99 and really is one of the nicest apps I have ever used.

You can read my review of Day One, but at the price of free this week, you don't have much excuse not to grab it.

There are other apps in the promotion which you may like, and Tools & Toys has a lovely roundup.

Byword 2 | Review

I've been beta testing Byword 2 for OS X & iOS for a while, and I am really glad it's finally here. It has many little improvements I've been thirsting after for some time, and a great big feature I wish my host/CMS — Squarespace 6 — had an API to use with.

If you're not in-the-know already, Byword is a fantastic app focused on writing. It simply gets out of your way gives you a page to write on, with minimal fluff to deal with. The best part is that it is designed for web publishing as it is one of the best — no, wait, I'll just say the best — Markdown-centric apps I've used.

The grand marquee feature of Byword 2 is blog publishing. You can now publish your text directly to Wordpress, Tumblr, Blogger, Scriptogram, or Evernote. I've been dabbling a bit more into Evernote use, so maybe I will find a home for this feature via the big green elephant. I haven't used the publishing feature, to be completely honest, so I can say very little about it.

Byword 2 also sports improved conflict resolution, showing you each conflicting version in their entirety, so you can make an informed decision on which is the keeper. The update also includes better handing of new, edited, renamed, and deleted documents in Airplane Mode.

The remaining features are the removal of friction points that I have run into with previous versions. When viewing the Markdown preview, Byword 2 now keeps the scroll position intact. This is one of those things you subconsciously knew was annoying that is now fixed.

On iOS specifically, you can now move and duplicate documents. This is handy if you decide you'd rather have a document on Dropbox instead of iCloud, or vice-versa. Fonts on iOS are also much better. Rather than some obscure fonts you've never heard of, Byword 2 now uses Avenir Next (yay!), Helvetica Neue, Courier, and Georgia. I, for one, am in love with the Avenir font family, so I am really glad the developers added it (they were extremely gracious when I was being super-annoying about it during the beta).

If you regularly write for the web there are two things that will help make your life so much easier: learn Markdown, and use Byword.

Byword 2 is a free update for existing users and $10 (OS X)/$3(iOS) for new users. The publishing feature is an in-app purchase for $5 on each platform.

The next generation of Instapaper→

Marco Arment:

I’m happy to announce that I’ve sold a majority stake in Instapaper to Betaworks. We’ve structured the deal with Instapaper’s health and longevity as the top priority, with incentives to keep it going well into the future. I will continue advising the project indefinitely, while Betaworks will take over its operations, expand its staff, and develop it further.

I'll admit I was shocked to see this, but I can see why Marco took this path. Just from reading his blog about how much time it take to work on The Magazine, I couldn't imagine how he'd find time for Instapaper as well.

Instapaper is one of those apps I have had a long relationship with, and one I hope will have a continued and wonderful future. Congrats, Marco.

¶ Yummy Yummy Chat Heads

I have to admit, like my friend David Chartier, I am a rare breed of nerd who actually likes Facebook. David talked a lot about Facebook Home and its potential. I want to talk about the new iOS app, Facebook 6.0.

The 6.0 update to the Facebook app streamlines the interface for the better, and beefs up its messaging capabilities. One way it does this is through Stickers, which are fun little pictures you can sling around through private or group messages. They’re cute, because they were designed by the awesome David Lanham.

But the real news here is Chat Heads, which show the avatar of the friend(s) you are currently chatting with in a little circle off to the side of wherever you are inside Facebook’s app. You can simply tap the circle and a conversation expands as a layer on top of where you are at, you send a message, tap the circle again, and it collapses the conversation and you go right back to where you were.

It’s a really enjoyable and nice experience.

On Facebook Home for Android, Chat Heads can appear anywhere on your device, even when you are in another app. Right now, this only works within Facebook on iOS, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it stayed that way.

But here is why I like the concept of Chat Heads, and where I’d like to see them go as a concept.

I like that they are not too intrusive during a conversation when you are doing something else. And I think they’d be the perfect interface for iMessage. Right now on iOS, it is kind of jarring to have an active back and forth with a friend over iMessage when you are also trying to look at or do something else. You switch fully from what you are doing to the conversation, then have to switch fully back.

Let’s say I am writing up a post like this on my iPad. I would much rather an iMessage come up off to the side as a little icon and wait for me to tend to it. I simply tap the icon, a conversation popover appears, I fire off a sentence, and tap back to what I am doing. It is a much less distracting way of giving a few seconds for a reply. Why?

Because even though it is a context switch, it is a very good illusion of a partial context switch (which doesn’t exist). It feels like you are only giving away attention peripherally, instead of having to be ripped from your focus of one app and dumped into another. Because you feel like you only give away quick aside of context, and you can see the task at hand right behind the conversation popover, it is easier to return to what you are doing.

Facebook and Apple seem to have a nice relationship, what with the deep integration with iOS and OS X last year. I hope that relationship could start a collaboration where maybe Apple can use the Chat Heads concept for iMessage and SMS, if they also allow Facebook Messages to be a global deal through it. I think I’d be okay with that, especially if there were a toggle.

Quote of the Day: Bill Kunz→

In reference to the previous post, Bill Kunz, maker of App.net client Felix:

"Wonder if this movie's good." $10. "Try the new Burginator Deluxe!" $6. "Haven't heard of that beer before." $3-5. "New restaurant in town!" $30-$200

"Huh, an app. I really need a free trial." $0.99

A $5 app isn't expensive→

I’m neither an economist nor a psychologist, but it strikes me that too many iOS device owners fail to act in their own best interests—both in the immediate near term and in the long term—when they scoff at the thought of spending money in the App Store. Here’s how customers who spend lavishly on iOS hardware punish themselves by skimping on apps.

Lex Friedman makes the case for paying good money for your great apps. If you are one who balks at an app that costs more than a buck or two, you need to go read this.

Heck, read it anyway.

iOS 7 Settings→

Louie Mantia imagines what iOS 7 may look like from the Settings app. I love his use of Avenir, a font that I have absolutely fallen in love with. I use it in any app I can (e.g., Day One and Twitterrific 5).

Louie makes a lot of other smart decisions, and I think I would love it if iOS got a bit of a makeoverin this style.

Some related reading would be Chairman Gruber's little birdies.

So Panic Took a Hacksaw to a Lightning Digital AV Connector

…and found the tiniest little computer. Fascinating.

1Password 4.1 for iOS

My company recently shipped a huge update to our new iOS app, 1Password 4 for iOS, and among many bug fixes, new password fonts, and other things, we also added URL support.

My favorite of these is that if you are on a site in Safari, you can add op before the http and that address will open in 1Password's 1Browser.

Even better, Federico Viticci concocted a little bit of JavaScript that you can add as a bookmarklet to automate the process. Just simply add a bookmark somewhere, and then edit the address and replace it with this:

javascript:window.location='op'+(window.location.href);

Then name it something clever like Send to 1Password. I hope you enjoy this neat little feature.