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iPhone Settings Mind Map→

iPhone Settings Mind Map

Timotheus Wischniowski went through the effort of putting together a mind map of iPhone 5 settings on iOS 6.0.1. Using OmniOutliner and MindNode Pro, he collected every single menu of the iOS Settings app, with sub-menus, options, and switches.

I made an outline which contains all iPhone 5 iOS 6.0.1 settings from the iPhone itself and from the preinstalled apps. I did this with the iPhone setup with English as the OS language and German for time formats and so on. I tried to write everything down, but I couldn’t write down some things, like Japanese characters and such. So the mind-map competition should be about 98 % or more.

As I scrolled Timotheus’ image, I remembered this post by David Lanham from 2010 on redesigning Twitterrific, including its Settings:

The previous design ended up being overwhelming for normal users (and even some experienced ones) and became very confusing for people with multiple accounts since it was unclear which account was performing a search or looking at trending topics. There were also three different areas to set preferences and many of the options in the preferences were unnecessary and confusing to most users so they were avoided or left to defaults anyhow. So we took a leap and removed the preferences completely, only adding them back in when we found something that absolutely needed it.

I do have to admit sometimes I “get lost” in the iOS Settings app. I’m not sure there’s a need for a complete redesign – after all, there are options users have to set on an operating system – but I wonder if Apple could make browsing Settings easier, more “compact”, with less choices in the future.

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Instagram 3.2 Brings Better Camera→

Instagram 3.2 Brings Better Camera

Following the recent launch of web profiles, Instagram has today updated its iPhone app to version 3.2, bringing a new camera experience, a new filter, better tilt-shift, and various UI improvements for filter selection and photo browsing. The Verge has a nice overview of the changes; the Instagram blog has detailed release notes, which include an explanation of tilt-shift:

In the past, there had been vast differences in the effective strength of the blur between the preview screen and the output in your feed and camera roll. With this update the blur you see is now the blur you’ll get! We’ve also completely overhauled the blur algorithm to increase quality and accuracy. Tilt-shift now gives a vastly more realistic rendering of depth of field because of these improvements and subtle tweaks to how we render the image.

I’m particularly fond of the UI changes brought by Tim Van Damme: aside from cleaner photo grids and infinite scrolling on pages, Instagram 3.2 comes with a gorgeous Welcome screen and a refreshed camera view that puts the focus on a large shutter button, while also giving access – to iPhone 5 owners – to a “last photo taken” button. I wouldn’t underestimate how Instagram is taking advantage of the taller screen: on the iPhone 4S, tapping the last-image selector opens a standard iOS photo picker; on the iPhone 5, the app gently slides over to an embedded Camera Roll view reminiscent of Facebook’s Camera app. On the iPhone 5, you can swipe up to reveal more Camera Roll photos without leaving the Scale & Crop view – essential to make sure your existing photos will look good on Instagram.

Mostly though, I believe Instagram 3.2 feels more polished thanks to various details implemented by Van Damme, Ryan Gomba, and team: the aforementioned animation to switch from Camera to Scale & Crop; the opening/closing animation of the custom shutter; the blue highlight on selected photos; the custom, animated tap to focus that is incredibly fun to look at and try out. I also like the shortcut to quickly access the Camera Roll: anywhere in the app, tap & hold the camera button in the tab bar to open the Camera Roll.

Instagram 3.2 is now available on the App Store.

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Zite 2.0→

Zite 2.0

I’ve always liked Zite. A “personalized social magazine” like Flipboard, Zite has been focusing since the first version on building an algorithm to “understand” the topics you’re interested in, trying to provide better choices of articles and topics every day. From my review of version 1.0:

On the surface, Zite’s recommendation system seems pretty simple and clever. The design of the app encourages tapping around and discovering articles, giving a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” to certain types of articles, authors, or categories. Don’t like a post about Apple rumors? Give it a thumbs down. Like a post from Shawn? Choose to see more articles from Shawn Blanc within Zite. How about selecting iPad, iOS and App Store as recurring sections in your daily publication? You can do that, too, by adding new tags to Zite’s “Sections”.

Last week, Zite – owned by CNN – launched version 2.0 of the app, featuring a complete redesign and a wider range of topics to choose from. According to a company’s blog post, Zite now “knows” about 40,000 different topics, has a new option to enable Facebook integration in the Explore page, and should present more articles in the Top Stories view.

I like the new Zite, especially because of the new design and touch-based interactions in the app’s sections. The updated UI is very clean and minimal, putting the focus on text and images; there are nice animations for loading “blocks” of sections and images, and I like how you can now give a thumbs up/down by simply pulling up or down an article’s preview. On the iPad, Zite has new “widgets” to navigate “Top Stories” and “Headline News” directly from the main section, using arrow buttons to check out the articles in a gallery before opening them.

While Flipboard started as a social aggregator and later added an intelligent discovery feature called “Cover Stories”, Zite has always been focusing on algorithms and understanding a reader’s tastes both automatically and through a simple voting system. I’m looking forward to seeing how more and more data will allow CNN and Zite to provide even smarter algorithm as the one I imagined earlier this year.

Zite 2.0 is free on the App Store.

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OmniFocus Mail Drop Beta→

OmniFocus Mail Drop Beta

As noted by Sven Fechner, a post by The Omni Group on the company’s forums publicly describes a new feature of Omni Sync Server: Mail Drop. An enhancement to OmniFocus’ existing support for Mail.app, Mail Drop is a proper way to email tasks directly to your OmniFocus inbox.

We call this new feature the “OmniFocus Mail Drop”. Unlike previous mail-processing features, we wanted a method that wouldn’t require any of your devices to be present in order to add items to OmniFocus, we wanted to add the much-requested better attachment support, and we wanted to reduce the amount of extra work you had to do in order to get your items into OmniFocus as much as possible.

To this end, we implemented the feature as part of the Omni Sync Server. Accounts on the server can now have a special email address generated. Any message forwarded or sent to that address will be processed (including attachments) and added to your OmniFocus database right there on the server. (If a spammer gets ahold of your Mail Drop address, we give you a way to generate a new one.)

I have been testing Mail Drop for the past few days, and, indeed, it works as advertised. Once generated in your Omni Sync Server’s account page, you’ll get a unique email address you can send tasks to. Unlike previous solutions, this is a real “cloud capture” tool: you don’t need a Mac to be always running to turn emails into tasks, as everything will be processed server-side by Omni Sync Server.

Right now, Mail Drop doesn’t seem to support OmniFocus’ email syntax for adding tasks, but it’s really fast. In my tests, tasks sent via email using Mail Drop were added in seconds to my Omni Sync Server account.

Personally, I think this is the right path to follow. As our devices become increasingly interconnected and “always-on”, it doesn’t make sense anymore to make task management – arguably a fundamental part of many’s workflows – simply “local”. People have been asking for a real web-based OmniFocus for years, and Mail Drop is a good start. I have been running my own OmniFocus server using Drafts’ email actions to quickly add tasks, but I welcome the user-friendliness of Mail Drop as a promising indication of OmniFocus’ cloud future.

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Transloader: Download URLs On A Mac From iOS→

Transloader: Download URLs On A Mac From iOS

Nice new utility by Matthias Gansrigler (creator of Yoink and ScreenFloat, among other apps): Transloader is a $2.99 Mac app that can download URLs remotely. What this means is that, from an iPhone or iPad running the free companion app, you can send a URL to download on your Mac using iCloud.

Have you ever stumbled upon a Mac demo, a zip or dmg file, an image or a movie on your iPhone and wished you could download it to your Mac right away? Transloader uses your iCloud account to transfer URLs you enter on your iOS device to your Mac for download. Once you’re back on your Mac, your downloads will be ready for you.

The idea is interesting, and it reminds me of the old NoteTote app based on Simplenote. In my tests, Transloader has worked as advertised with .zip archives and PDFs, but I’d like to see an option to download webpages as .html files as well. iCloud took a couple of seconds to beam URLs from my iPhone to my Mac, but I have to mention iCloud has been far from reliable for me lately. Transloader’s concept is executed well in this version; I’d also like to have support for notifications for completed downloads and Preferences to set a specific destination folder; on iOS, it’d be nice to have automatic recognition of URLs already in the clipboard.

Transloader for Mac is available at $2.99 on the Mac App Store; the iOS app is free and Universal.

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Miro Video Converter 3.0→

Miro Video Converter 3.0

Nice update for Miro Video Converter:

Keeping with the original simplicity of Miro Video Converter that has made it popular with all of our users, the updated Miro Video Converter comes with a great new look. Just drag and drop or browse to your list of video files.

Free and open source, Miro Video Converter 3.0 notably introduces batch processing of videos (depending on the cores available on your computer), a new design, more devices and formats, thumbnail generation, and better control on aspect ratio and output sizes. It looks good; you can also add files to the queue while a conversion is in progress.

For MacStories, I usually take videos of iOS apps using Reflection Reflector and QuickTime on my Mac. In QuickTime, I export “for the web” (at broadband quality), and then use ffmpeg2theora to convert to Theora, so I can use two formats for the same HTML 5 video (it means both Chrome/Safari and Firefox users will get a native, Flash-free video player). The big downside of ffmpeg2theora is that you’ll need to run it from the command line: it doesn’t have a graphical user interface to go with. In that case, Miro is a good option, albeit slower: in my tests, a 49 MB .mov QuickTime file took 101 seconds to be converted to .ogv with ffmpeg2theora; it took 177 in Miro. The same file took 87 seconds to be converted to mp4 with Miro. Both tests were run on this MacBook Air.

If you need a GUI for video conversions that’s not the fastest option, but still should get the job done and it’s free, Miro is available here.

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Behind The Scenes Of Twitterrific 5→

Behind The Scenes Of Twitterrific 5

The Iconfactory’s Craig Hockenberry has published a “behind the scenes” look at their most recent release, Twitterrific 5. I recommend reading it, as it doesn’t involve too many technical aspects of the software, but instead puts the decisions made by The Iconfactory in more context:

We are well aware that people are going to complain about missing features: push notifications and streaming are obvious examples. But so are trends, and video support, and in-line photos, and… well none of that matters. We believe in building opinionated software.

Our Cody Fink, in his review of Twitterrific 5 posted last night:

It may be completely redesigned, but the core tenets that Twitterrific were founded upon remain in 5. Twitterrific has always been opinionated, decidedly simple, and never wanted to compete for your attention. And at its heart, Twitterrific 5 is still a Twitter app built with the same passion The Iconfactory builds into all of their apps. Twitterrific 5 is simply a better Twitterrific.

Here’s my take on Twitterrific: it is the result of a very specific vision. The Iconfactory doesn’t prioritize notifications, filters, third-party service integration, or custom image uploads as much as they strive to build an extremely polished Twitter client meant for reading.

I am what you may call a “Twitter power user”. There’s truth to that: I use filters, custom uploads, web services, and I spend most of my day on Twitter. Twitterrific isn’t meant for me. Thinking to rely on it as my go-to Twitter client will probably make me frustrated in the end, leading me to “hate” an app that’s actually made by nice people. I don’t want to do that.

So I have a simple suggestion. If you don’t think Twitterrific 5 can be your main client, it doesn’t have to be. No one is forcing you to buy the thing everyone is talking about. You’re probably not “missing out”. But I will also say this: if you have three bucks and you’re genuinely interested in trying something new – a fresh experience – go get Twitterrific 5 and try it. I’m not saying it’ll become your favorite app, but if you care about quality handcrafted software, maybe you’ll take away something from it.

I’m glad I did, because even if Twitterrific won’t be in my dock, as someone whose job is to write about software, now I know that other things are possible.

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Reverse Engineering Penultimate→

Reverse Engineering Penultimate

Fascinating analysis by Alex Caithness of CCL-Forensics about Penultimate (thanks, Clark), a digital note-taking app that was acquired by Evernote earlier this year. Penultimate allows users to draw on screen, simulating virtual ink with smooth lines and curves drawn upon a notebook-like background. That’s what CCL-Forensics tried to reverse-engineer.

Opening one of the “page” files we find another “NSKeyedArchiver” property list. After unravelling the structure of the file we find a top-level object containing further metadata (including a “blankDate” which appears to match the “created” timestamp reported in the “notebookList” and the dimensions of the note) along with a list of “layers”. Each of the “layer” objects (again represented by dictionaries) have keys for the layer’s colour (more on that later) the layer’s dimensions and a list of “layerRects” – sections of the layer where the user has drawn their notes; and that’s where we finally find the image itself.

Sort of.

The description of how Alex got around understanding how Penultimate stores information inside its library is highly technical, but easy to follow with screenshots and Alex’s clear explanation. Essentially, Alex ended up using Python and XML to retrieve the user’s drawings, stored as coordinates – not as “images of the ink”, as one would initially assume.

If anything, it’s a great reminder that our data can usually be retrieved in a variety of ways using forensic tools (and intuition).

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Disable Auto-Correct In Tweetbot for Mac→

Disable Auto-Correct In Tweetbot for Mac

I write in English, but I live in Italy. Some of my Twitter followers are Italian, too, and I like to talk to them in my native language. In the past weeks, I noticed an annoying bug: Tweetbot for Mac, my Twitter client of choice, couldn’t disable auto-correct (Edit > Spelling and Grammar > Correct Spelling Automatically) permanently. The option is there, but it appears it “doesn’t stick” after you enable it to send a tweet without auto-correct. This led to an increasing number of misspelled Italian tweets with English words mixed in (as per my Mac’s system language).

Fortunately, I’ve found the solution here. With a simple Terminal command, you can override Tweetbot’s default setting and disable auto-correct (but not spell checking) automatically.

This is exactly what I was looking for, so make sure to hit the source link to check out the full command.

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