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iOS Apps Should Request Permission for Network Access

iOS Apps Should Request Permission for Network Access

iOS should ask permission for network access similar to how it asks permission to access contacts and photos. Unlike those permissions, however, this one should be optional to the app author. This permission is only important for a certain class of business apps that access potentially sensitive corporate data, but

iPad Multitasking

iPad Multitasking

There's a good chance that side-by-side multitasking[1] is coming to the iPad. There are lots of reasons to suspect this, including credible [http://9to5mac.com/2014/06/09/ios-8-code-shows-ipad-split-screen-maps-transit-in-the-works-health-interface-changed-late-in-development/] rumors [http://9to5mac.com/2014/05/13/apple-plans-to-match-microsoft-surface-with-split-screen-ipad-multitasking-in-ios-8/] and Apple's recent focus [http://finance.yahoo.com/

Apple's Embarrassing Apple Pay Infomercial

Apple's Embarrassing Apple Pay Infomercial

Ben Thompson has a great piece [http://stratechery.com/2014/apple-watch-asking-saying/] on Apple's failure to articulate "Why" when introducing the Apple Watch. On Twitter, someone else [http://twitter.com/natbro] pointed out that in the same press conference, they did articulate the "Why" for

What More Do You Want

You know what would suck? If Flickr just shut down one day, without warning, and suddenly you lost all your photos you had posted. You typed Flickr.com in your browser and what came up was a “Thanks for the good times!” message and an explanation that Flickr was no

A better podcast app

Apple just updated their podcasts app to a state that seems actually usable so I gave it another shot. After messing around with it a bit I ended up abandoning it and going back to Instacast, my podcast app of choice. The reason that I abandoned it wasn’t that

Finishing the iPhone

It’s more accurate to consider the iPhone a computer than a phone. Perhaps even more so for the iPad. Clearly Apple sees this as well, as the evolution of iOS makes clear. From its no apps, iTunes-required beginnings to the 700,000+ apps, no-iTunes-required current state iOS has been

Useless

Many software developers have a pet peeve about customers calling their software “useless” (see here [http://carpeaqua.com/2011/03/28/useless-is-a-loaded-word/] and here [http://www.marco.org/2011/03/30/here-is-a-tip-for-all-the-non-developers-out]). It’s absolutely true that it can be infuriating to have all of your work declared “useless” because

XPC

Loren Brichter on XPC, one of the new APIs in OS X and iOS: > I can’t fathom the extent of the innovation we’ll see, but even simple things that are impossible now like third-party apps sharing bits of themselves with other apps will be possible. I can

"When it disappears"

> Although they want to export the previous content, currently nothing from Digg’s 7-year history is accessible. Manton Reece has a pretty compelling example [http://www.manton.org/2012/08/when_it.html] relating to my post The Web Isn’t Forever [http://jacobonline.wordpress.com/2012/07/08/

Decisions All the Way Down

A common complaint about Apple is that they think they know what’s best. Here’s a (poorly titled) example [http://grenouillebouillie.wordpress.com/2012/03/01/apple-started-decaying-before-steve-jobs-death/] : > The general philosophy of [OS X Lion] seems to be “We know better”. A computer company that thinks it knows better

The Web Isn't Forever

It’s accepted wisdom that “the web doesn’t forget”. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), it isn’t true. Here’s just one small example. I saw Forrest Gump on TV last night. I often like to read reviews of movies I have seen as a kind of substitute for those

The Carriers are Winning

> If Verizon (or any carrier) wants to take this seriously, it’s very simple: let customers add unlimited devices to an existing data bucket for a reasonable monthly fee. $5, for instance. I could even understand $10, perhaps. But $40 for an extra smartphone? Chris Ziegler, The Verge [http:

The Mac App Store Needs Loyalty Pricing, not Paid Upgrades

The Mac App Store doesn’t support paid upgrades. Neither does the iOS App Store. This is a problem. [http://blog.wilshipley.com/2012/03/mac-app-store-needs-paid-upgrades.html] I’d certainly like to see paid upgrades in Apple’s app stores, but it would be even better if Apple took this

What we know about Coda 2 (and we know a lot)

> @katiekitay I'll say, uh, less than three months? And now that I said that, it'll be fourteen years. I really appreciate your enthusiasm! —C — Panic Inc (@panic) April 14, 2012 [https://twitter.com/panic/status/191027537143537666] Coda 2, the next major version of Panic’s

Goals 2012

Setting goals has always been something I enjoy. Achieving them is okay, but it’s more the setting. They’re kind of like working out some new way to organize the files on your desktop or some new workflow for handling to-dos. They make you feel like you’re getting

If a building has only two floors an...

> If a building has only two floors, an elevator only ever has one travel option (to the floor opposite the current one), so why even bring the numbers “1” and “2” into it? Not to mention that the “Close” button never responds, “Open” is pointless – ARGH! > In Alice’

What is vid.io?

http://twitter.com/#!/vidio/status/131350274378964992 Joshua Topolsky and the others that fled Engadget launched their new site today, The Verge [http://www.theverge.com]. I found one of the groups Topolsky thanked in his announcement post [http://www.theverge.com/2011/11/1/2528367/welcome-to-the-verge] particularly interesting: > vid.

iOS File Browser

Steve Jobs said that iCloud was the end of the road for document storage on iOS at WWDC in June. I don’t believe it. There are too many loose ends remaining. What about uploading files through the browser? What about attaching files to an email? What about organizing my

Mac OS X Lion 10.7 Deep Dive: Versions and Auto Save

The new, complementary functionality of auto save and versions is an interesting beast. It’s the type of feature that a few years from now you’ll be amazed you ever lived without, but right now feels kind of weird. In some ways it feels like a step backward until

Mac OS X Lion 10.7 Deep Dive: Mail

Mail has received perhaps the biggest update of any of the pre-installed applications in Lion, with a column-based layout, new search methods, improved conversation threads, updated icons, and better support for Exchange and Gmail. Column-based Layout Moving to a columnar layout has a surprising number of implications. You might not

Back to the Mac

My wife will tell you that I love interfaces. (She’ll roll her eyes while she says it, but she’ll say it). Given that it shouldn’t be surprising that I’ve been devouring media about OS X Lion since the beta release. I’m talking frequent Google searches

Things Only Twitter Can Do

Dave Winer proposes [http://scripting.com/stories/2011/04/06/ifIWereJack.html] (as he has before) that Twitter should focus around being a news service. I tend to agree, although I don’t know if “news” fully captures what the platform is capable of. Twitter is able to provide answers

Indisputable Proof that MobileMe Changes are Coming

Behold! I have indisputable proof that the web interface for MobileMe is going to change. ![Old MobileMe Account Dropdown](/content/images/2017/01/old-mobileme-account-dropdown.png)Account options UI for the Contacts, Gallery, and iDisk sections![New MobileMe Account Dropdown](/content/images/2017/01/new-mobileme-account-dropdown.png)Account options UI for the

On Gawker and Hashbangs

Gawker recently finished a transition of all their websites to a new design, and some of the technical decisions they made have upset web standardistas, the most prominent missive being this one [http://www.isolani.co.uk/blog/javascript/BreakingTheWebWithHashBangs] by Mike Isolani, a Yahoo employee (all quotes in this

Twitter Conversations Follow-Up

In a previous post [http://jacobonline.wordpress.com/2011/01/21/a-new-twitter-feature-to-facilitate-conversations/] I argued that Twitter clients should provide an easy way to see all the @ responses to a tweet, not just the ones that directly replied. I’ve since discovered at least one Twitter client that does what I