Getting App Prices with Editorial

Editorial workflow

Editorial workflow

When I write on my iPad mini, I often need to look up and reference price of apps that I already own. That’s a surprisingly hard thing to do on an iOS device, so I decided to remove the annoyance caused by this problem with an Editorial workflow. I call it “Get App Price”.

If you own an app, searching for it in the iOS 7 App Store won’t show you the price information alongside the app’s icon and description – you’ll only get an Open or Install button. Unlike the Mac App Store, there is no separate pricing field in the app information at the bottom of the screen, which usually forces me to go to a developer’s website to find out what the price of an app is.1 There wouldn’t be any problem if Apple allowed Safari to open iTunes web previews without redirecting them straight to the App Store, which is what they do on OS X. I have tried to force Safari to open web previews, and I even downloaded browsers that can set a modified user agent string to trick iOS into thinking they’re desktop web browsers worthy of a web preview – eventually, the App Store app always opened, displaying no price.

I set out to create a simple workflow to fetch an app’s title and price directly from iTunes with no clipboard import or other middleman. I later found out that you can tap on the “Related” tab in the App Store or gift an app to view its price, but I had already created a workflow that’s faster than opening the App Store and tapping a bunch of buttons just to get a price. I’m a free man, and I deserve my own App Store lookup solution.2

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Day One Updated for iOS 7 With New Design, Music Integration, Motion Activity

Day One

Day One

Day One, my favorite journaling app for iOS and OS X, has received an update today that brings a visual refresh for iOS 7, support for background fetch via Dropbox, and new data tracking sources.

Since its inception, Day One has been about adding context to your diary by using features of iOS and OS X that augment the classic journal in ways that paper never could. It was only last year, however, that Bloom Built’s vision could come to fruition with support for photos, weather data, and location information available right into your daily journal. Since then, Paul Mayne and his team have been hard at work to ensure that Day One could have feature consistency across platforms as well as take advantage of online data and Apple’s latest OSes and technologies.

Today’s new version for iOS is, again, all about data, sensors, and additional context for your journal entries, which are no longer limited to text and pictures but now span a bevy of tracking points such as date and time, tags, weather, location, activity tracking, and steps taken. Read more

MailMate Explorations→

We’ve seen great apps come and go. There are wonderful ideas that just are not financially viable without a bit of random luck. I don’t think $3 email clients are the way to move forward. MailMate is unapologetically $50. The developer is considerate enough to lay it all out. Unless there’s enough money to allow him to work on the project, it simply will not happen.

Gabe Weatherhead writes about some of the nerdy features of MailMate. While I don’t organize my email messages in a folder structure like Gabe does, I’m fascinated by his setup with smart folders (based on MailMate’s superior criteria). The crowdfunding campaign (which actually gives you an app license key) that was launched the other day is halfway there.

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Curator→

New app created by Daniel Nordh aimed at letting you organize notes visually. iPad-first, I’ve been trying Curator for the past week and it’s a nice version 1.0: sort of like Pinterest, but without social features and focused on collecting photos, text notes, and live websites that you can pin on your boards. Everything happens through drag & drop and the app looks good on iOS 7 and the Retina display.

If you want more, you can import images from Dropbox, Flickr, iOS photos, and more services using a built-in media picker based on Filepicker.io. Curator has essentially no learning curve, and I see it as the Vesper of Pinterest-like apps: it’s fast, easy to use, but it has no sync or advanced features for now. I’d recommend Curator to people who use an iPad as their primary computer and just need a simple app to organize the things they like without signing up for a web service or learning to use Evernote.

The business model is also interesting: the app is free, but there’s a $6.99 In-App Purchase if you want to create more than five boards.

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Reminders.app Tips and Tricks→

Reminders.app on OS X is somewhat limited and inconsistent, but for its simplicity offers a lot of possibilities. For many this is all they need to keep control of their tasks and reminders.

Sven Fechner has a nice list of tips, tricks, and links for the OS X Reminders app. I use Reminders every day through Fantastical 2 on my iPhone, but I have to rely on Apple’s apps on my iPad and MacBook Air. I would love to see better consistency between all platforms (just one example: clickable URLs in notes).

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Dropbox Teases iOS App Update with Business Integration→

From the Dropbox blog:

We thought about this from scratch and designed a solution we’re excited to share: connecting your personal Dropbox to your Dropbox for Business account. This’ll give you a personal Dropbox and a work Dropbox on all of your devices so you’ll never have to choose between them. It’ll be like having your house keys and your work keycard on the same keychain.

But this is about more than having two places for all your stuff. Take the mobile app — once you connect your Dropboxes, you’ll be able to get to both Dropbox folders from the same Files tab. Dropbox is also smart about making sure your stuff goes where it’s supposed to. For example, photos you add via Camera Upload will instantly show up in the Photos tab, but they’ll stay for your eyes only.

This is probably a smart choice considering that people tend to find a way to access their personal files on their work devices and vice versa, likely compromising the security standards required by IT departments in large businesses.

More interesting to me is the iOS 7 app update shown in the screenshots. I don’t know if Dropbox will manage to add the kind of functionality found in Boxie into the official client, but a new iOS 7 design and features (background fetch?) are needed.

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Monument Valley→

TechCrunch’s Natasha Lomas has a preview of ustwo’s next game for the iPad, Monument Valley. Inspired by the drawings of Dutch artist MC Escher and somewhat remiscent (based on the screenshots and announced mechanics) of Echochrome, the game is coming out in Q1 2014 and it’s going to be iPad-only at launch.

The work of M.C. Escher is great and popular because he found a way to describe geometric and spatial concepts through everyday elements like water, buildings and animals. I think what Monument Valley brings to the table is an exploration of how to bring an interactive, emotionally engaging experience to a wide audience through a set of simple mechanics and a world that feels at once familiar and fantastical,” Wong added.

Whale Trail by ustwo is one of the iPhone games I’ve spent the most time playing to date. I’m looking forward to Monument Valley.

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Retina iPad mini: First Impressions

After a surprising and unexpected launch, I made a reservation for a Retina iPad mini earlier today at my local Apple store, waited five hours, then drove to the store and bought it. I got a 32 GB, LTE, Silver iPad because, when I made the reservation, that model wasn’t available in Space Gray and, as an Apple store employee later told me, reservations cannot be modified after the fact (not that it really matters – the store didn’t have it in stock today). I don’t care about the color of my iPad, and I prioritized getting one as soon as possible over looks. I think that Silver looks great.

As I’ve already discussed, I’ve been working from my iPad mini for the past year, and I couldn’t wait to get an upgrade to enjoy the higher resolution of the Retina display. I was forced to get used to the old iPad mini’s display, but that doesn’t mean I liked it. The form factor was more important than the display in the end, but, this year, I can have both: the iPad mini’s lighter body and the Retina display. I was, to use an euphemism, “fairly” excited about the Retina iPad mini.

Don’t consider this post a “review”. Rather, this is a collection of my first impressions with the device after less than five hours spent working with it. I am posting this list of points primarily for myself, so I can solidify my thoughts by making them public and getting the opportunity to reference them later. Secondly, I am publishing this post for readers who asked me questions about device and still don’t know whether they should buy an iPad mini or an iPad Air. This is not a buyers recommendation guide, but I’ll try to my best to collect everything that I thought of in the past five hours. Read more

App Developers Can Now Generate 100 Promo Codes Per Release→

I saw some reports in my Twitter timeline this morning, and it does indeed look like Apple updated iTunes Connect to allow app developers to generate 100 promo codes for each release. Previously, the limit was set to 50 codes per app release; for years, developers have been asking (among other things) to see an increase in the amount of promo codes they can use to gift their apps to members of the press, friends, or other users.

The news hasn’t been confirmed on Apple’s Developer News website yet, but screenshots of the new promo code count have been posted by various developers. Based on my tests in iTunes Connect, the limit for book publishers is still set to 50.

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