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The Converted: A Different Take On Unit Conversions

Unit converters are perfect as iOS apps: their feature set is limited, they can work with and without an Internet connection, and, because of their constraints and purpose-oriented nature, they allow developers to experiment with touch and UI interactions. They’re less celebrated than Twitter clients and weather apps, but they’re UI playgrounds too.

As such, I’m having a hard time settling with a specific unit converter because every week new interesting ones come out and I’m lucky enough to get to try them because trying apps is part of my job. I suppose that if converting units was a recurring task of my daily life I would be forced to pick one and stick with it, but, instead, I’m free to experiment and let my readers judge.

In the past year, I’ve taken a look at various unit and currency converters like Denominations, Convertible, Measures, and, recently, Amount. Each one of them solves a problem in a different way, either with a particular interface design or through advanced features. The Converted, developed by Ideon, is a $2.99 app that eschews manual input through a keypad to show you the relation betwen units in a unique presentation that I haven’t found in other iOS apps. Read more

Alien Blue Updates for iOS 7

Alien Blue, developed by Jason Morrissey, is the only Reddit client that I keep on my iPhone and iPad. The app has been constantly and thoughtfully updated throughout the years, with Jason adding support for new iOS and Reddit features while also maintaining a clear identity for his app.

For iOS 7, Alien Blue has been updated with some subtle design changes and improvements, but, overall, the app’s interface was already minimal enough to fit with iOS 7’s general aesthetic (unless set to the Forstallian wooden theme). Alien Blue doesn’t integrate with iOS 7’s Dynamic Type setting, so you’ll still have to adjust font size in the app’s Settings under Appearance.

In terms of features, the iPad app received some minor additions like a new gesture to toggle the iOS status bar, whereas the iPhone version, which is free with a $1.99 In-App Purchase, has been improved in several areas. Notably, there are now inbox notifications on iOS 7, GIFs and videos are supported in the Canvas view, and the Optimal browser view has been enhanced to work with more sites, large GIFs, and to completely declutter YouTube videos. Some previously Pro-only features like comment link previews and Retina thumbnails have been ported to the free version, and, overall, the Canvas view has become a fantastic replacement for the standard list view.

Alien Blue has been on my Home screen for years and it keeps getting better. There are some aspects that I’d still like to see improved (the sharing menu, for instance, it a bit archaic) and I don’t like the alternative themes, but Alien Blue remains my favorite Reddit client. The iPhone app is free with an In-App Purchase, and the iPad version is $3.99 on the App Store.

Joe Cieplinski On App Pricing and App Store Customers→

A different and refreshing take on the recent discussions on app pricing and In-App Purchases by Joe Cieplinski:

If we were to convert Teleprompt+ to the free with in-app purchase model, for instance, the three of us at Bombing Brain would be out of business in a couple of weeks.

Our customers are primarily prosumers and pros—people who wouldn’t trust their business to a “free” app. Our high price is a large part of what has made us successful in this market. (Along with years of cultivating a reputation for being better than our competition.) Converting this particular app to free with in-app purchase now would likely be an unmitigated disaster. We know, because there have been free alternatives that have crashed and burned. Hard.

While In-App Purchases may work for some apps, I agree that developers shouldn’t follow other developers’ advice blindly without carefully considering their userbase and customers. The Omni Group, for instance, charges a “premium” for apps that they know their customers will be happily paying for because they trust the company.

Joe continues:

Users looking to pay a premium price may be few and far between, but each one is ten times more valuable than the “average” iOS user to a developer like me.

Again, it depends on whether you’re after market share or a subset of App Store customers who can sustain your business by paying for higher-priced apps. It’s a great perspective, so read Joe’s post here.

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Dan Counsell On Sustainability and the Mac App Store→

The audience on the Mac App Store is not yet large enough to sustain low prices (like the iPhone can, sometimes) – it’s just not feasible. If companies keep selling software at bargain basement prices without a large enough market, it doesn’t end well – they go out of business and if that happens, the very people who love great apps lose too.

Realmac has gone through some changes for the pricing of Clear for iOS. On the Mac, they’re returning to pre-App Store days with higher prices and no discounts.

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Outliner Update for iOS 7→

CarbonFin Outliner isn’t the most frequently updated app on the App Store, but I still think it offers a superior outlining experience than any other outliner for the iPhone. On the iPad, I’m torn between Outliner and The Omni Group’s update to OmniOutliner (custom keyboard shortcuts? That’s business), but Outliner is capable of syncing with Dropbox and directly to an iPhone version, which makes it preferable to OmniOutliner and OmniPresence in some aspects.

Outliner was recently updated with iOS 7 support, which means interface changes that make the app’s chrome more subdued in favor of content. This is an overly used expression these days (by me as well), but it’s true, and, in Outliner’s case, I think it benefits the app. Outlines stand out and buttons are easily recognizable; the app retains the menus it always had to allow you to indent or outdent lines with ease.

The app didn’t get iOS 7 features, but, according to the developer, background sync is on the roadmap. Outliner is a good outlining tool, albeit rarely updated with major additions. On the iPhone, I don’t think other similar apps come close to Outliner’s simplicity and elegance yet. I’d recommend getting the Universal version for $4.99 while hoping for updates in the near future.

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How Nate Boateng Almost Lost Every Family Photo He Has→

This stuff isn’t for everyone. Catastrophes like this probably won’t happen to most people. But the thing is, you don’t have a problem until you have a problem. It’s the same cringe-worthy talk we’ve had a million times with our parents about backing up data. I’d argue that this is more dire. Databases can be very stable, but I’m no longer willing to keep life’s memories in something that can seemingly turn on me in an instant. I still don’t know what actually happened; it could even have been my own fault.

You need a good photo backup workflow, and you need it now. Especially if you’re a parent with thousands of photos of your kids. I’m still relying on the Hazel + Dropbox workflow that I originally shared here (and then here), but I wish CameraSync would get an update for iOS 7. In the meantime, following Bradley’s advice, I’ve started using Everpix too. I’m liking the Flashback feature a lot.

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Steve Cheney On How iBeacon Will Transform Local Commerce→

All this begs the question—does Apple have a local strategy? In my opinion, yes. And does this strategy have the capability to change the way merchants think about local? Yes. iOS7 and iBeacon create an ecosystem-wide network effect overnight, with standard technology, offered in an open development environment. It’s very clear that Apple is starting to put the pieces together to allow consumers to make offline transactions with their device—imagine being in a store and authorizing a payment with your fingerprint and never talking to a salesperson. All Apple has to do is open its payment APIs to get to this level, the rest of the stack is already being exposed.

Some interesting thoughts by Steve on iBeacon. I can’t wait to see practical implementations in Italy.

(I’ll probably have to wait years for that, considering how I still have to try Passbook in real life – where by “real life” I don’t mean taking screenshots of the app for MacStories.)

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iOS 7 and Mail Message URLs

A feature of iOS 7 that I quickly described in my article and that I haven’t seen mentioned in other places is the possibility to make Apple’s Mail app open individual messages through a new message:// URL scheme. As I wrote:

In iOS 7, if you have a message URL that corresponds to a message, the URL will correctly open it directly in Mail. There are two limitations: the message has to be already downloaded in the Mail app, and, of course, you have to know the URL. So far, I haven’t found a way to create URLs to reference Mail messages on iOS, but the ones you create on your Mac through AppleScript and Mail.app will continue to work on iOS 7 devices. Therefore, if you have scripts that generate these URLs to, say, attach them to OmniFocus or Evernote, you’ll be able to tap them and open the associated message on an iPhone or iPad. I look forward to seeing whether developers will figure out a way to generate message:// URLs on iOS.

That wasn’t the first time I covered message:// URLs on MacStories. In November 2012, I posted an AppleScript to quickly save a message’s URL in Evernote for Mac with a hotkey; and even then, I was referencing a 2007 post by John Gruber on the topic:

The structure of these URLs is fairly simple: (1) the “message:” scheme, followed by (2) the message-id of the message, enclosed in angle brackets (“<” and “>”). The message-id is specified in each message’s “Message-ID” header field, which is part of the Internet email standard. Every message-id should be universally unique, and every message should have a message-id. In my testing, the only messages I could find that didn’t have Message-ID headers were spam; such messages cannot be referred to by Mail’s “message:” URLs.

The message:// URLs that Apple introduced in Leopard have gone mostly unchanged in terms of OS X integration throughout the years, proving to be a nice solution to reference specific messages in todo apps, note-taking apps, and so forth. Rather than searching for a message in Mail, you can generate a URL via AppleScript, archive it somewhere, and launch it (either by pasting it in Safari or right-clicking it in a Cocoa app) to open the referenced message in a separate Mail window – no matter if the message has been archived, put in a folder, or left in the inbox. Read more

David Smith’s Pedometer++ Demos the iPhone 5s’ M7→

It hasn’t been said (or if it has been it’s been buried underneath a litany of other geeky details), but the M7 coprocessor in the iPhone 5s records your movement data whether you’re using apps or not. Without apps, the M7 keeps a basic log of data, determining whether your phone is in motion and how to decide if it’s an appropriate time to ping for network data. With apps such as Pedometer++, free on the App Store, it’ll pull off current data and a small history of what the M7 has already recorded. The best part about this is when you go to switch apps or use a different one, there will already be a solid baseline of data for apps to draw upon.

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