Twitterrific 5.6 Glides with Streaming

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I've had the privilege to be testing Twitterrific 5.6 for iOS for the past few weeks, and it is a fantastic update. This big feature with this release is support for Twitter's streaming API.

Once you've enabled streaming in the app's settings, tweets will come in as they are posted in real-time while you are on Wi-Fi. Twitterrific will intelligently switch back to manual refresh when you drop to a cellular connection.

Streaming is one of those features that has been a long time coming for Twitterific. Streaming makes the Twitterrific experience that much more frictionless and delightful. In my opinion, the lack of streaming was pretty much the final piece of friction left in Twitterrific, and now it really feels feature complete.

Another great feature, though one I admit I have not used often, is list management. For the extremely organized among us, this is a great addition.

You will love Twitterrific 5.6, which is available as a free update to existing users, and available to new folks for $2.99 99¢ on the App Store.

Update: Changed pricing to reflect limited time 99¢ sale.

(Pre-)Introducing Publish by Day One→

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I love Day One, and this new Publish tool that is coming soon to the iOS app looks awesome. It's rare that I want to share something that I have written in Day One, but for the handful of times I have wanted to do just that, I had wished there was something elegant, beautiful, and easy to do so.

I can't wait for this to go live.

¶ Humblebrag

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It's been quite a couple days for me and my team at the old day job. Yesterday, 1Password 4 for both iOS & Mac were honored with the prestigious Eddy Award (note: there's an autoplaying video at the top of the page). And today, we were honored by Apple to stand with many other amazing apps as one of the Mac App Store's Best Apps of 2013.

I can't express how happy I am to be a part of what 1Password has become, and of the fantastic folks I work with. It's been a great year, and I cannot wait for the coming one.

Paprika→

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My favorite recipe app for the iPhone and iPad, Paprika, got a huge update the other day, bringing an iOS 7 design, autocomplete for when you are adding recipes, AirDrop support, and much more.

Best thing is Paprika is on sale for the rest of November. I have it for iPhone, iPad, & Mac, and their custom sync engine is top notch. If you have any interest in having a digital recipe box, Paprika is hands-down the app to get.

The Sweet Setup→

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Whenever I need to know what the best in a certain class of hardware is, I turn to The Wirecutter and if I need some household goods I turn to their sister site, The Sweethome.

Now I have a place for where to find the best apps out there for Mac & iOS. The talented Shawn Blanc has essentially taken the concept of The Wirecutter and The Sweethome and applied it to software.

Today he launched The Sweet Setup. The goal is not to cover the newest apps, but the best apps.

Seeing picks like 1Password (yeah, yeah, I work for them), Byword, Check the Weather, and Dark Sky reassure me that I have good taste in apps, as all of those have resided on my devices for quite some time.

I really cannot wait to see how The Sweet Setup grows over time, and which amazing apps I should be using that I would never have known about otherwise.

Pencil→

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When I was younger, it was very hard to pull me away from my colored pencil set and a good sketch pad. Then college came around and my time was consumed with writing papers all the time, and sketching fell a bit by the wayside.

Now, my five-year-old son loves to draw and sketch and I am reminded of my youth. While pencil and paper is still the best way to sketch, in my opinion, the day & age of being able to do so digitally on an iPad is also so much fun.

While I still do not sketch often (I can keep blaming time constraints, right?), I do enjoy seeing what is possible on my iPad. Naturally, I reach for Paper, by FiftyThree.

I also use a Cosmonaut stylus on occasion, and I love it, it does have some inflexibilities. I love the weight, the feel, and just generally how it handles. The tip is a bit broad, though.

Today, FiftyThree announced the Pencil, a perfect complement to Paper. It looks superb, and looks to be very versatil, as it has a bluetooth connection instead of being a passive hunk of rubber-coated aluminum. The only thing that is a bit of a downer for me is it looks like it only works great with Paper, and not other apps. I may be wrong there.

However, I adore their video to introduce it. Some friends of mine did not enjoy the motion in it, but I think it is a clever, fun, and delightful amount of whimsy.

Squarespace's New Apps→

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When I launched techese, I had been yearning to get away from the likes of WordPress. I had settled on Squarespace back then and have been with it ever since. I still wholeheartedly recommend Squarespace to folks who ask me what they should use to create a site.

One thing I have always had issue with was their iOS app. It wasn't all that good back on Squarespace 5, and since Squarespace 6, it has been a bag of hurt.

Thankfully, Squarespace has released two new apps to handle the crowded functions of the previous app.

Blog handles the writing and posting part while Metrics handles all your stats. Both apps are gorgeous and work really well. These were worth the wait. I'm really happy that Markdown is a first-class citizen in the Blog app.

I have two issues which will hopefully be taken care of in updates. The first is that the Blog app is missing the social sharing toggles of the web interface. If it had those, I could truly do everything I wanted with posting from iOS, which would rock.

The second issue is that Metrics doesn't have an iPad UI, so it scales up in the ugly 2x mode.

Beyond those two omissions, the apps work great, are fast, and chock full of the feature set you would expect. I hope Squarespace treats these apps as first class, iterating often, instead of letting them languish as the previous app did for so long.

Knock. To Unlock.

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Knock knock.

Who's there? Your iPhone, that's who. Why? To unlock your Mac.

We all hate having to deal with security because security and convenience just don't always seem to play well together. Thankfully there are many things out there to help them get along. Things like 1Password (which has a smashing new version out for Mac, and is also a major contributor to my lack of writing here last month). Then there is the new kid on the block, Touch ID.

I've used the demo of Touch ID on an iPhone 5s at the Apple Store. It's pretty rad. I can't wait to have it next Fall (I skip the 's' generations), and I was hoping it would come to the new iPads announced a couple weeks ago. And someday I hope it comes to a portable Mac so I can stop typing in a password to login.

But until then we'll have to use creativity, and that is where Knock comes in. Knock is a pair of apps, one for your Mac, one for your iPhone. Together, they create a super duper secure link over Bluetooth 4 Low Energy.

When you wake up your Mac, it checks to see if the iPhone is close by. If it is, a green circle pusles around your avatar on the standard OS X login screen. Then, your just give your iPhone a quick knock-knock, like you're knocking on someone's door. Magically, your Mac unlocks.

The Mac app runs as a menubar utility, easily tucked away by my good friend Bartender. The iOS app just needs to hang out on your iPhone, and doesn't even need to be running. During setup you give it special permission to monitor Bluetooth and CoreLocation so it can detect the Mac and its proximity.

The best part is your iPhone doesn't even need to be unlocked. You can leave it in your pocket and give it a gentle double-tap to unlock the Mac.

I'm really impressed by Knock, and it will be indispensible not only at coffee shops, but around the house, too, as my Mac tends to fall lock down while I step away to AeroPress some coffee.

Knock is a $3.99 iOS app and the Mac app is free on their website.