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Pages For iOS and Change Tracking→

Pages For iOS and Change Tracking

Yesterday, Apple released an update for iWork on iOS that added, among changes to Numbers and Keynote, support for change tracking in Pages. I’m not a frequent user of this particular feature, but it could have come in handy when we edited my Mountain Lion review earlier this year. However, last night I noted how the way Apple implemented Change Tracking on iOS felt outdated and convoluted.

Jeff Richardson does use Pages on a regular basis and posted his thoughts on the new version (via David Sparks):

Track changes support has long been the Holy Grail for many litigators using an iPad or iPhone. For the most part, I really like the way that Apple implemented this feature in the latest version of Pages. I wish that the update included a better way to review each edit, but for the most part I suspect that I’ll just scroll through a document and look at the redline edits in the context of the document as a whole so this omission is not critical for me. The lack of support for Comments will sometimes be a problem (depending upon how often you work with people who use that feature), but as long as you know about it and have an app like Documents to Go, Office2 or Quickoffice Pro, you can work around the Comments omission when it becomes an issue.

I can see how lack of Comments and Review mode can be an issue for some users. Mostly though, I believe that the interaction of Change Tracking needs to be redesigned entirely. On Pages for Mac, you can simply click on a change to review it and accept it from a sidebar on the left; in fact, if you click on the blue boxes in the sidebar you can see the blue line connecting the change to the actual text being highlighted in real time. It’s a subtle visual hint, but it’s there.

I’m not sure why Apple decided to go with this simpler interface rather than cooking up a completely new one, but I have a couple of theories. My first thought is that text rendering and manipulation on iOS still doesn’t allow for fairly complex on-screen drawings such as the aforementioned blue lines; a second reason may be scrolling performances, especially on older devices (Pages still supports the iPhone 3GS). But I think that, overall, Apple decided to use this approach because is consistent with the current iOS text selection and because a major new version of iWork for iOS (possibly requiring iOS 6 or later, not iOS 5.1) could be on track for next year.

Apple has long touted iOS devices as heralds of the post-PC era, but iWork has been far behind its desktop counterpart (originally launched in 2009) for months. I expect iWork 2.0 for iOS to level the field in every area.

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Improving The iOS Keyboard→

Improving The iOS Keyboard

Chris Bowler, writing about possible improvements for the iOS keyboard:

The negative with writing on the iPad is typing. It’s a bit of a mixed bag experience — the iOS autocorrection is (at times) brilliant and I can fly along with confidence, knowing the OS is going to correct my typos. But when mistakes are made and are either not autocorrected, or autocorrected incorrectly, then the iPad becomes a less comfortable environment.

Remember when, ahead of the original iPad’s announcement in January 2010, rumors tended to focus on what the “tablet keyboard” would be like? Here are a few examples. In spite of the iPhone having shown that Apple simply wanted a regular keyboard’s appearance translated to multitouch, several people wondered whether Apple should do something different for the bigger screen. The answer was that they simply designed a “full-screen” keyboard.

As Chris notes, over the years third-party developers have extended the iOS keyboard with additional bars. Look at Writing Kit, Pythonista, Textastic, and iA Writer for examples of these modifications.

I think the discussion on the iOS keyboard often mixes writing with editing. Personally, I believe the iOS keyboard is great for writing, because it’s just a normal keyboard, but iOS text selection is in serious need of an update, because it feels outdated. I’m not sure the average user cares about better text selection, but for the sake of the argument, I will say that a better solution should be explored.

If you read those old pre-2010 posts on the “iSlate keyboard”, you’ll notice a common thread: that Apple must build something revolutionary for text entry. I recall some people guessed a split keyboard could be a possible implementation, and, in fact, that one came true in 2011. But what about text selection? I don’t think keeping on adding bars above the keyboard is feasible. Especially on the landscape iPad, a single bar alone sensibly diminishes the space available for writing – space being one of the most commonly cited advantages of the iPad against 16:9 and 16:10 tablets. On the iPhone 5, it’s an acceptable solution thanks to the taller screen, but, then again, the bar is too narrow to be a meaningful improvement.

Rather, I would say entirely new ideas for text selection and manipulation are the future. It’s the reason everyone got excited for the Hooper Selection: once you saw it, it just made perfect sense. Too, I wouldn’t completely forget about features that Apple put on the shelf, as they tend to come back.

So here’s my hope for the future of iOS for writing: the same keyboard, but also new, fresh ideas for text selection and editing.

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Evernote Business and Related Notes→

Related Notes

Related Notes


Today Evernote officially introduced Evernote Business, its new platform that comes with dedicated features for teams and organizations to get the most out of Evernote. Announced earlier this year, Evernote Business builds on the existing foundation of Evernote for regular customers, but it adds more storage, an admin console, Business Notebooks, and the Business Library, a way for members of a team to get direct access to a collection of notebooks.

The Business Library is a collection of selected Business Notebooks that are accessible to the entire organization. At Evernote, our Business Library includes everything from important HR documents to design assets to product schedules to media mentions. All employees have the ability to publish some of their Business Notebooks into the Business Library. Administrators have full control over the Business Library, and can further elevate notebooks into a Recommended set that they feel are particularly valuable to employees.

With Business, Evernote has updated its platform for the new type of accounts that, however, can still merge Personal Notebooks (which are private) with Business Notebooks, which are shared with members of an organization. There’s an admin FAQ and user FAQ available, and the Evernote native and web apps have been updated for compatibility with Evernote Business. The service starts at $10 per user per month, and for now it is available in seven countries. More details (including a video with CEO Phil Libin) are available on Evernote’s blog post.

As I tweeted this morning, however, a big change for me is the addition of Related Notes for both business and normal Premium accounts. As Evernote explains:

This is where things start getting magical. In the latest version of Evernote for Mac (coming soon to other platforms), as you type a new note or view an existing one, Related Notes will appear at the bottom of the note area. The more you type, the more contextually relevant the notes will become.

Essentially, Related Notes is a section that lives underneath the note panel showing up to three related notes. In my opinion, it is a great way to rediscover notes that you may have forgotten about. That has certainly been a problem with the way I use Evernote, because I tend to clip a lot of material from the web, and it often gets lost unless I access it on a regular basis. From what I’ve seen so far, Related Notes works surprisingly well in capturing existing notes about the same subject; I’d be interested in knowing what kind of algorithm Evernote is using here – whether they simply look at keywords or also consider location, tags, time stamps, and other metadata.

Related Notes are available in Evernote 5.0.2, released today for non-Mac App Store users.

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iTunes 11 Interface Innovations→

iTunes 11 Interface Innovations

I don’t use iTunes as my default media player on a daily basis. However, since the release of iTunes 11, mainly out of curiosity and to see my wish granted, I’ve forced myself to listen to some music and do some movie watching with it. I was considering a separate article, but Adam C. Engst perfectly summed up the issues I find myself having with iTunes 11:

In the end, it’s good to see Apple trying to extend interface concepts with all these new approaches in iTunes 11 and some, like the use of color and the new approach to application typography are welcome. But there’s a distinct lack of consistency and attention to discoverability that renders the single-window model and multifarious button menus less successful than they might be. I cringe at the thought of trying to help someone use iTunes 11 over the phone — it will be nearly impossible to describe the screen successfully and to walk someone through different actions if you can’t do so in person.

Overall, I believe iTunes 11 is an improvement. I like the expanded album view, the new Store’s consistency with iOS, the device popovers, and the MiniPlayer. But at the same time, as a non-power user of iTunes 11, I found it to be extremely complicated and confusing in other areas: the Done button to dismiss the device window, the separation of sections, views, devices, and Store buttons across the entire window, and the non-native sharing of the iTunes Store. And yes, even other inconsistencies such as the inability to go back to Apps view, the lack of visual hints for songs added to UpNext using the “+” button in the popovers, and the standalone Downloads window that should have probably worked like Safari’s.

It’s not that I don’t like iTunes 11: in fact, I do – overall. It’s that, even from my perspective, there’s a surprising lack of minutiae in the design of iTunes 11.

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The Unarchiver AppleScript, iOS App, and Archive Browser

I have been using The Unarchiver for years now. It’s been listed in my Must-Have Mac Apps roundups, and I recommend it to every friend who, after switching from Windows to OS X, asks me about “WinRAR for Mac”. The Unarchiver is a powerful and simple extraction tool with support for multiple formats and a set of user preferences to configure in the Settings.

There have been some updates to The Unarchiver lately. The free Mac app, The Unarchiver, received initial AppleScript support with a dictionary that supports extraction and various options such as location of extracted files and originals. Whilst The Unarchiver is pretty straightforward in itself, AppleScript support means you’ll be able to put together automated workflows with loops, if conditions, and different settings than the app’s ones. More importantly, you’ll be able to extend The Unarchiver and make it communicate with other apps installed on your Mac (an example: automate downloads with Transmit and extract with The Unarchiver in AppleScript). Here’s a sample extraction script for the file currently selected in Finder:

tell application "Finder"
	set sel to the selection as text
	set the_file to POSIX path of sel
	
	tell application "The Unarchiver"
		if isRunningExtractions is false then
			unarchive the_file to Original with deleting Original
		end if
	end tell
end tell

Developer Dag Agren has also released a paid iOS app for The Unarchiver. Initially buggy, Dag has been busy improving it and making it more reliable on iOS 6. Called Archives, it is based on The Unarchiver, which means you’ll get support for a plethora of formats. The app lets you look inside archives and preview files before extracting them; you can open a file in other apps that support the format using Open In, you can save images to the Camera Roll, and check out advanced information for each file. I have found Archives to be particularly useful in previewing files from Mail or Safari. Archives is $1.99 on the App Store.

Last, inspired by Archives for iOS, Archive Browser for OS X is a paid version of The Unarchiver with support for browsing and previews before extraction. It supports Quick Look, and it’s $3.99 on the App Store.

Tips For Releasing and Marketing Your New App→

Tips For Releasing and Marketing Your New App

Good list of tips by Brett Terpstra that new developers should keep in mind for their app releases. I especially recommend the “What To Include” section:

Bloggers like links. It saves time when doing a quick mention and provides the material for deeper research if they decide it’s worth it. Include all of the most relevant links. Link to screenshots (don’t embed them) and your homepage or a press page.

A surprising amount of developers often forget to even mention their app’s name in emails we receive on a daily basis. Others mention it, but they don’t include a direct link to the App Store. Even worse, some developers send promo codes without mentioning their app’s name or direct link, so we can’t be sure what we’re being given, exactly.

From personal experience, I can say that having links to videos is also a huge plus. I’m not saying you should prepare dedicated videos for each blogger you’d like to try your app: I would suggest picking a few, and making screencasts with voiceover and picture-in-picture where you can explain the app, show how it works, and establish a different kind of indirect “eye contact” with the person on the other side of email. It takes time, but it’s worth the effort – especially if it’s the first time you’re promoting an app.

Read Brett’s excellent list of tips here.

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Apple Testing Carrier LTE Networks Before Allowing iPhone Access→

Apple Testing Carrier LTE Networks Before Allowing iPhone Access

According to Telecoms.com

, Apple has been running its own, independent, LTE tests before it allows carriers to offer the iPhone 5 as an LTE device. It’s somewhat of a reversal of how the carrier-handset maker relationship traditionally worked - where the carrier wouldn’t sell a device until the device was tested and met all the quality assurance requirements. Now Apple, infamous for their desire to control all ends of the user experience, is testing the carriers before it allows the iPhone access to their LTE networks.

Telecoms had initially heard of the tests in October but this week heard from an official Swisscom spokesperson that said “Apple only enables 4G access after testing their device on an operator’s live network”.

While extensive network testing of handsets has always been necessary, the focus has historically been on whether or not the handset functions on the network, with operators keen to protect their network assets and customer relationships against poor quality devices.

A handset vendor vetting networks on a technical basis before allowing its device to be used on them is a reversal of this situation, and one that Apple alone has the power to bring about.

Bengt Nordstrom, CEO of consultancy group NorthStream told Telecoms that he was “shocked” of hearing of the policy. Noting that it proved “who is running the industry” and that “Apple have put themselves in the driving seat; it’s really changing the game quite a lot.”

[via @BenedictEvans]

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iStat Menus 4→

iStat Menus 4

I often mention iStat Menus by Bjango here on MacStories: it is, in fact, one of my must-have apps for Mac. I have been using version 3.0 for years: iStat Menus 3 provided a complete, yet user-friendly and accessible way to keep an eye on your Mac’s hardware (CPU, fans, GPU, RAM, and so on) and other data (network, time zones, battery status) with a series of dropdown menubar windows.

Bjango has now come out with iStat Menus 4, and the new version has some interesting and, for me, welcome changes. Aside from the usual bug fixes, Retina support and better Mountain Lion compatibility, iStat Menus 4 introduces a refreshed look that brings consistency with Bjango’s other iStat app, iStat 2. iStat Menus now features the same style for graphs and charts as iStat 2, and, even better, it comes with the same History menu to view a component’s performance over time. For instance, you can mouse over the CPU’s main graph and check out a second menu with History for the past hour, 24 hours, and 7 days. There are more time-related view options available, and there’s more to customize in the app’s Preferences (which have also been redesigned, and it took me a while to get used to them at first). I appreciate the consistency with iStat 2, and I like History because it lets me easily check my network’s conditions over time.

There are several new features in iStat Menus 4, but I’d like to mention the ones I personally use. The Network widget has a new per-process section to quickly see which process is consuming bandwidth (think a mini version of Little Snitch); the Time widget still supports different time zones (I use this on a daily basis), but it’s now cleaner and it has support for calendar events to get a quick summary of what you need to do on a specific day. It’s no Fantastical, but it’s a nice and unobtrusive addition.

I’m sure there are more powerful ways to check on the status of a Mac’s hardware components and processes. But I just need to see “what’s going on”, and in that regard iStat Menus 4 fits perfectly with my needs. iStat Menus is $16 on Bjango’s website.

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PodGrasp, A Podcast App For OS X→

PodGrasp, A Podcast App For OS X

Jonathan Poritsky has posted a review of PodGrasp, a new podcatcher for OS X:

All of that said though, PodGrasp is currently the best option available on the Mac App Store for desktop podcast management. It will only get better and it truly is an incredible start, especially considering there is almost no competition for this right now. Go get it so Gary Hughes, PodGrasp’s developer, can make it even better. His FAQ says an iPhone app is planned as well, so it’s not like he’s gonna take your Washingtons and run.

The lack of good podcast apps for OS X has consistently surprised me. Just a few weeks ago I tweeted about the subject, and proposed a possible API to figure out the (trickier than Twitter timelines) problem of syncing podcasts across platforms and devices.

But things are changing. Aside from PodGrasp, which I’ll make sure to try out, Instacast’s developer Martin Hering announced this morning that he’s working on a Mac version of Instacast. I have been trying the new Instacast for iOS, and it’s a solid update with new functionalities that I like; furthermore, it has a custom sync architecture that – unsurprisingly – works much better than the former iCloud sync. I’m looking forward to his Mac app.

In the meantime, to make sure I can listen to podcasts with my Mac’s speakers while using a podcast app I like, I have been using AirPlay with Reflection to get the job done.

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