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Holding iOS Back→

Bradley Chambers writes about the limitations of Safari for iOS:

When the iPhone was released in 2007 with a “desktop class” web browser, it was widely praised. You could view entire websites on a mobile device. Coming from the days of WAP optimized sites on my Motorola Q, this was incredible. If we fast forward to 2014, Mobile Safari has become the app that is holding the iPad back from becoming a fully featured laptop replacement for a lot of people. While Mobile Safari is fast and loads website reasonably well, it cannot upload and download files. It can upload pictures, but that is it. Mobile Safari needs a way to upload and download any type of file into iCloud Drive (a mirrored from the Mac downloads folder).

Safari is probably my favorite Apple app in iOS, but Bradley is right – it’s still lacking when compared to desktop browsers for simple tasks such as downloading and uploading files.

I was surprised to see features such as extensions in Mail and uploads in Safari being absent from iOS 8 when it launched – and it looks like iOS 8.1 won’t introduce them either. iOS users need these features, but I wonder if part of the reason Apple hasn’t added them yet may be security-related. In particular, I had a couple of readers suggest that lack of extension support in Mail could be an enterprise security requirement, and while that could make sense, it doesn’t sound like something that Apple can’t work around. Or maybe the problem is simpler: Apple didn’t have time to turn email messages and “Upload” buttons from webpages into attach points for document pickers and extensions, so the feature was nixed.

There’s also an argument to be made about storage. How quickly would those 5 GB of free iCloud storage fill up with a full download manager built into Safari for iOS and iCloud Drive? Macs come with plenty of local storage; iOS devices still start at 16 GB and 20 GB is a paid tier in iCloud Drive.

Hopefully Apple will keep extending iOS 8, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see these features delayed until next year.

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How “Complete My Bundle” Works→

With the release of Transmit iOS and Prompt 2, we excitedly added two Panic Pack bundles to the App Store. Bundles are a great chance to reward loyal customers a little bit of a discount on our software — something that was not possible to do on the App Store previously.

Even better, customers can “Complete My Bundle” — if they’ve bought any of our apps, they can pay the difference to receive additional missing apps at a discount.

But once our bundles hit the App Store, some curious “Complete My Bundle” questions began to roll in. Pricing seemed to be weird or inconsistent. So we did a little digging and got some good tips on Twitter.

Panic just solved the mystery of obscure Complete My Bundle pricing. It makes sense after reading their conclusion, and it confirms that bundles won’t always be the most convenient option.

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BeerTab for iPhone→

My good friends and longtime MacStories contributors Don Southard and Chris Herbert have released BeerTab today, an iPhone app to keep tabs on your favorite beers, rate them, and share them.

I’m not a huge beer fan, but Don and Chris were kind enough to let me test their app, and I think they’ve done a great job. The interface is polished, simple, and it’s got nice transitions (in addition to beer-inspired themes); you can add beers by taking a picture of their barcode and enter detailed descriptions and ratings for any beer you enjoyed. I like how you can publish a beer from your library as a webpage – that’s a clever way to share with friends and it’s nicely integrated with the app.

A lot of care and passion clearly went into making BeerTab, and it shows. It’s $1.99 on the App Store, and you can read Don’s background story here.

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Apple: iPhone 6 & iPhone 6 Plus Arrive in 36 More Countries and Territories This Month

Apple today issued a press release, noting that the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus will launch in another 36 countries this month. That will make the iPhone available in 69 countries by the end of the month, with 115 countries expected to get the new iPhones by the end of the year. According to Apple this will be the fastest iPhone rollout ever.

The countries getting the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus this month are as follows:

  • Friday, October 17: China, India and Monaco
  • Thursday, October 23: Israel
  • Friday, October 24: Czech Republic, French West Indies, Greenland, Malta, Poland, Reunion Island and South Africa
  • Thursday, October 30: Bahrain and Kuwait
  • Friday, October 31: Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, Estonia, Greece, Guam, Hungary, Iceland, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Macau, Macedonia, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia, South Korea, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine and Thailand

As you can see from the below chart, the claim that this is the “fastest iPhone rollout ever” depends on which point you judge it. As of today (day 34) it is not the fastest rollout, but by the end of this month (day 52) and end of this year, it is.

Diagonal lines indicate that exact launch rollouts are not known, but the general projection is known (ie. 115 countries by the end of the year)

Diagonal lines indicate that exact launch rollouts are not known, but the general projection is known (ie. 115 countries by the end of the year)

Transporter: Your Own Private Cloud [Sponsor]

Transporter is your own private cloud for syncing, accessing, protecting, and sharing all your files across all your devices. A storage device that you control, Transporter starts at $99 with no monthly fees or other recurring costs and it doesn’t put your files on anyone else’s cloud.

Setting up a Transporter is easy: you create an account and create a folder on your Mac or PC to hold all the files you want to make available on multiple devices. Whether you choose the Transporter (in 500 GB, 1 TB, or 2 TB variations) or the Transporter Sync (turn any USB drive into a Transporter device), your files will always be securely stored in your own private cloud that you can access with desktop and mobile apps. On OS X, unlike other sharing services, you can select any folder and set it up for syncing and sharing.

Transporter is great for storing any kind of file, especially private photos and videos. With the iOS app, you can automatically upload new photos and videos to your Transporter device, which can hold hundreds of GBs worth of media and securely share them with your friends and family. Your data is always encrypted during transfers to protect it against snooping, and images are always saved at full resolution from the iOS camera roll.

Alternatively, you can use your Transporter for work purposes and keep important documents and projects in a cloud that’s under your control. Last week, Transporter launched versioning, a feature that lets you save revisions of files automatically and restore them at any time. Think of it like Time Machine for Transporter files: it doesn’t consume too much space thanks to incremental versioning, and you can rest assured that you’ll never lose changes to a file.

Transporter lets you access everything you want, right when you need it. Find out more here.

Our thanks to Transporter for sponsoring MacStories this week.

BBEdit Leaving the Mac App Store→

Jason Snell, reporting from Çingleton:

I’m in Montreal for the Cingleton conference. On Saturday Rich Siegel of Bare Bones Software gave a presentation in which he announced that the next version of BBEdit would not be sold in the Mac App Store. (The existing version will remain, and existing Mac App Store customers can upgrade to the next version directly with Bare Bones.)

Siegel’s talk was notable for its restraint and care. This was not a scorched-earth denouncement of the Mac App Store. In fact, at the end, he admitted that it’s not impossible that BBEdit might return to the store someday, if conditions change.

When the Mac App Store launched over three years ago, many of us thought that it would be a panacea for independent Mac software – designed after the success of the iOS App Store, it would provide a unified marketplace with all the benefits of Apple’s infrastructure.

For thousands of developers, that was absolutely the case. But, at this point, it’s clear that all the problems of Apple’s infrastructure couldn’t be sustainable for developers of apps that weren’t simple utilities or games. I noted this in 2012 after popular indie developers had already exited the Mac App Store. I wrote:

I am thus going back to my initial point: developers seem cautious about the future of the Mac App Store and the restrictions that Apple could, in theory, bring up again. The numbers and facts speak for themselves: developers are still using the Buying Direct option. And when the download numbers of the Mac App Store aren’t so great, who can blame them? And when you start adding Sandboxing, iCloud, and Top Charts dominated by Apple apps (and the operating system itself, listed under “Productivity”) to the list of complaints, who can blame an indie development company for their decision to sell software through the good ol’ Internet?

The departure of BBEdit from the Mac App Store is yet another example of the platform’s limitations and it’s sad, but it’s probably for the best and everything will be okay. The Mac App Store isn’t meant for apps like TextExpander or BBEdit, and Apple doesn’t seem to be willing to change its underlying nature.

It is disappointing to conclude that the Mac App Store can’t be the unified marketplace for everyone, but at least web browsers can still be used to buy software.

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View Source 2.0→

I first covered View Source, an action extension to view source code in Safari, soon after the launch of iOS 8:

With iOS 8 extensions, apps like View Source can be possible thanks to direct integration with Safari and access to the DOM. Once enabled in the browser’s share sheet, View Source will bring up a full-screen panel with source code you can read and copy. A share button lets you copy all text to the clipboard, send as email, or choose one from eight themes that include dark backgrounds and lighter styles. All these themes support syntax highlighting – a better visualization than my old scripts that didn’t support highlighting at all.

View Source has been updated with numerous improvements since its first release, and most notably yesterday with the release of version 2.0. View Source now has two Solarized themes, line wrapping is optional, and you can search and highlight any string of text within the extension. Even better, the extension now has a full DOM browser so you can view and navigate to linked assets without leaving Safari. You can also write custom JavaScript and have it executed in the Safari webpage you’re viewing after you dismiss the extension.

If you’re a web developer and work with iOS, View Source has turned into a must-have. It’s $0.99 on the App Store.

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It’s the Storage Space, Stupid→

And speaking of iOS 8 update issues, great points by John Gruber:

This is a serious problem for Apple, because all those 16 GB devices (let alone the 8 GB ones) aren’t going to suddenly gain more free storage space on their own. A lot of these devices might never get updated to iOS 8, but would if the OTA software worked. Unless they can rejigger the OTA software update to require less free space, iOS 8’s adoption rate might lag permanently.

It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: iOS 8’s (upcoming) iCloud Photo Library and new message deletion settings could alleviate storage issues, but upgrading to iOS 8 is still required to use those features.

(It’d be interesting to see Apple porting storage-saving features back to iOS 7.)

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iOS 8 and Normal Users→

I love this post idea by Karan Varindani:

It’s been reported that iOS 8’s adoption has stagnated just two and a half weeks after launch and I’ve been wondering why, so I reached out to a friend who’s pretty much the quintessential normal user and asked for unbiased feedback on iOS 8. To be precise: “What you thought before updating, how quickly you decided to update, what you’ve noticed since, the things you like and don’t like about it, etc.” Here’s the original transcript, followed by my notes.

Note that “normal” isn’t used pejoratively – it simply indicates the way that people who don’t obsess about apps and workflows actually use their devices on a daily basis.

This is a great perspective and Karan’s friend makes some excellent points. Read the transcript, because that’s how most people see iOS 8. No mention of extensions right away, but instead a rumor (Touch ID on a per-app basis); too much free storage required to upgrade; positive comments about the new Messages app; confusion about Recent Contacts and Recently Deleted photos being turned on by default.

I’ve been asked the “So what’s new in iOS 8?” question by friends dozens of times. Most of them couldn’t upgrade immediately due to storage issues and they all asked me about stability and bugs (“Is it like last year?”, they all ask). Some of them know about custom keyboards (“Yes, like the Samsung Galaxy”) and they think widgets are cool but they don’t have many third-party apps that offer them. They have no idea whatsoever about action extensions and Handoff. They all note that audio clips in the Messages app have been “copied” by WhatsApp but they won’t stop using WhatsApp because “it’s faster and works everywhere”.

Make no mistake – they aren’t wrong and they aren’t dumb. They use their iPhones and iPads every day like millions of other people do. iOS 8 is a fantastic upgrade for people who work on iPhones and iPads with lots of productivity apps, but Apple needs to pay attention to the perception most people have of their software.

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