iPhone

Fantastical for iPhone

Fantastical for iPhone is available today. You’ll probably be hearing a lot about it, and the good words are merited. I’ve had it on my iPhone’s first Home screen for the past 6 weeks. Right now it’s $2 in the App Store, and I wholeheartedly recommend it.

There are two headline features: (a) The ability to create an event using natural language. This is the headline feature of the Mac version that won me over last spring. And (b) the DayTicker, which is a clever new way of displaying the upcoming days and events.

Creating an Event

Why does it always seem that I’m in a rush, or that someone is waiting on me when I’m trying to create a new event on my iPhone? Creating new events on the iPhone has never been a particularly easy or quick task.

  • The iPhone’s default Calendar app is okay at best when it comes to entering new events, but if you’re not creating an event for the very near future, it can take many taps to get the event created.
  • Agenda (a very fine 3rd-party calendar app) has done a good job at making it easier to input a new event, but it is still a somewhat tedious task that requires many taps.
  • Siri can be great, but I still find it awkward to use Siri in a public setting, and she doesn’t exactly have a great track record of being accurate and frustration free.
  • Fantastical is, in my opinion, the easiest way to create a new event thanks to the natural language parser. But for maximum ease and speed you really need both thumbs available since you’re typing a normal sentence — Skydiving lessons tomorrow at 9 am.

Moreover, if you don’t want to type out a sentence, Fantastical still gives you the ability to create an event exactly as you would in Apple’s default Calendar app.

Calendar Views, the DayTicker, and My Visual Thinking Mojo

Fantastical has something I’ve never seen before: the DayTicker.

The DayTicker in Fantastical for iPhone

Design-wise, the DayTicker is money.

However, as pretty as it may be, I’m still not fully sold on the DayTicker. The way the 5-day ticker slides left-to-right while the event list scrolls top-to-bottom is a little bit jarring. My eyes don’t know where exactly to focus with two lists scrolling in different directions at the same time, and so I often find myself looking back and forth between the two instead of focusing on one list while looking for a specific day or event.

And yet, that’s not to say I’m convinced the DayTicker view is flawed. For me, the jury is still out on this one. And the reason is because I’m a visual thinker. When I think about my calendar I don’t think in dates, I think of a traditional calendar view and the S-M-T-W-T-F-S layout. Sunday is on the left, Saturday is on the right, and Wednesday is in the middle. The DayTicker messes with my mojo by removing the visual boundaries of a traditional calendar view.

What redeems it for me is how quickly you can switch between the DayTicker and the month-view. Pull down on the DayTicker and the month-view calendar will take its place. Pull down again to switch back to the previous view.

Having a quick and easy way to transition between list view and month view is something I’ve always loved about Agenda, and it’s equally great in Fantastical.

Using it day in and day out as the calendar app on my first Home screen for the past six weeks, I’m not ready to say it’s the best calendar app bar none. It’s still a toss up with Agenda, the calendar app I’ve been using since it first came out nearly two summers ago.

Design

What I like most about Fantastical on the iPhone is the design.

There’s no denying that the design of Fantastical is top notch. I love the overall color scheme of deep red, whites, and blacks. The app feels balanced and unique. And there are several little design details that give Fantastical a fun and polished feel.

One of the most notable of the little design details is the magnification within DayTicker. As you slide the ticker left to right, the center-most day get’s “magnified”. This is a great touch.

Another detail: when creating a new event, the words you tap in animate in to the calendar view below. This gives you a visual cue that what your typing in is getting entered into your calendar, much like it is with Fantastical on the Mac.

It’s these little things in the design that make Fantastical feel professional and refined. This is easily the best-looking Calendar app on the iPhone and it’s a welcome addition to iOS.

Fantastical for iPhone

The iPhone is Here to Work

Noah was finally asleep. Sitting in the center seat, my wife was holding our 7-month-old son as he slept on her shoulder. The three of us were flying back home from a week in Colorado, and Noah had spent the first half of the flight fussing. Anna and I — as well as our fellow travelers — were relieved that he was finally resting.

Noah likes to be held but hates to cuddle. It’s such a rare occurrence for him to fall asleep in our arms that I had to document the rarity (and cuteness) of the moment.

The seats on a 737 are not exactly spacious. I reached into my pocket to retrieve my iPhone 5, and in the process the back edge of my phone had an encounter with the metal frame that held the seat’s arm rest in place. My iPhone was a couple weeks old, and the slate black body was, until that moment, still unscathed.

As if writing on a chalkboard, I could feel the frame of the phone shudder ever so slightly as it slid across that metal surface. Once out of my pocket I looked down at the back edge. Sure enough, part of the slate coloring had been scratched away revealing the silver-looking aluminum.

In that moment, while appraising my phone’s new scar, I was unexpectedly reminded of why the iPhone is special.

The iPhone is an uncanny amalgamation of beauty and utility — it’s a design and engineering marvel. Our western culture tells us that when you own something this nice, you protect it. Your sports car sits in the garage all winter; that painting belongs behind a sheet of glass; the silver flatware is kept in a box in a drawer; the mobile phone goes in a protective case.

The iPhone, however, prefers not to play by these rules. Though exquisite in design, it was not born as art to be put on display. It belongs in our pockets. It is a tool. A utility. A gadget of gadgets.

The iPhone is here to work.

It’s beautiful enough to be put on display. Simple enough to be used by your grandmother. Powerful enough to be used by CEOs. Popular enough to be made fun of on network television.

And this is why the iPhone is so incredible. Because it is equal parts niceness and usefulness.

This blows my mind. Here I have this gorgeous object of industrial innovation, and yet its proximity to my life is not due to my above average affinity for fine gadgets. No, the iPhone has earned its place by virtue of usefulness. The curiously-thin slab of glass and aluminum that I carry around in my pocket is my camera, my jukebox, my map, my newspaper, my phone, my email, my photo album, my schedule, my to-do list, my notebook, my Internet, and so much more.

“[Design is] not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” — Steve Jobs

* * *

After snapping a few photos of our sleeping boy, I turn the phone around so Anna can see the screen and browse the images I’ve just captured. I think to myself how it’s unfortunate my iPhone is no longer mint. And yet I wouldn’t trade that scrape for a case or a cover, and certainly not for a lesser device where scratches seem less intrusive.

The iPhone is Here to Work

Sweet App: Recall

I’m becoming fond of specialized, finely-tuned, someday-maybe-list-type apps such as the brand-new app, Recall. (cf. Checkmark.)

For one, I am (as are many of you, I suspect) a fan of apps that do one thing well. Secondly, the more my to-do list is filled with items not critical to my current projects or responsibilities then the more those non-critical items can dilute the importance of the truly critical ones. This is, of course why you should never set a due date for an item that’s not truly due that day. And it’s why you should at least separate your someday/maybe items from mingling in the list that reminds you to pay the mortgage and go buy groceries. But I digress.

Recall is an app for finding various types of media and saving them for later — such as movies, books, music, and apps. When you find a book you’d like to read one day or an album you’d like to listen to, then you simply add it to your running list. Recall shows you cover art, ratings, description, and a direct link to the iBookstore. And you can set reminders for each item. Recall can notify you when a movie comes to the big screen or when it comes to Blu-ray, or when an album becomes available to buy on iTunes.

I like that Recall combines the need for researching and finding something into the same step as saving it for later. The app is ultra fast, it looks gorgeous, and the whole experience of using it is very well polished. And it’s just a buck in the App Store.

Sweet App: Recall

Matthew Panzarino’s iPhone 5 Review  →

The first third of Matt’s review hits on something that I didn’t read in any other iPhone 5 review: the idea that an iOS device’s preeminent feature is its display:

Apple has been making small but important decisions here and there since the original iPhone to ensure that as little as possible comes between you and whatever you happen to be interacting with on the screen.

I agree completely, and I like how Matt also one-upped that sentiment with the fact that the weight and feel of the phone is of critical importance with making the device “disappear” in your hand. The iPhone 5 is the lightest iPhone yet while also sporting the largest and highest-quality screen yet.

At its heart, Apple is a software company. Their continual march towards shipping the best possible display is because it’s what’s lit up underneath that display that counts. The pixels are just a manifestation of what’s most important: the software.

Matthew Panzarino’s iPhone 5 Review

iOS 6 and Every-Day Life

Remember in 2010 when Apple held an iPhone 4 Press Conference as an answer to the “Antennagate” hubbub?

After his presentation, Steve Jobs was joined by Tim Cook and Bob Mansfield. They all sat on barstools at the front of the room and had a Q&A with the press in attendance. John Gruber asked if any of them were using cases on their iPhones. All 3 of them held up their iPhones to show no case. Steve even demonstrated how he uses his phone (by holding it using the infamous “death grip”) and that he has no reception issues.

What these guys also showed was that they’re using the same phones we are. Three of the top leaders at Apple sitting in a room full of writers and broadcasters, and everyone’s got the same phone in their pockets.

We like to think that Cook, Mansfield, Ive, Schiller, Forstall, and the rest of the gang are walking around with private versions of the 2014 iPhone and its corresponding (though surely buggy as all get out) version of iOS 8.

Everyone knows Apple is an extremely organized and forward thinking company that puts a lot of thought and energy into the planning and testing of its future products. But Apple is also riding on the cusp of its production and engineering capabilities.

After Apple announces and demoes the latest iOS at a WWDC event, most developers wait for the first few rounds of updates to ship before installing the iOS beta on their main devices. And it’s far more likely that the hardware prototypes for the next iPhones are locked away in some design vault, and the software roadmap for the far-future versions of iOS is still mostly on the white board. Meanwhile the folks at Apple are using the same daily driver iPhone and the same operating system you and I are.

Today, right now, we’re using the same mobile operating system with the same apps as the guys in Cupertino who dream this stuff up and make it happen.

And it seems to me that there are several things in iOS 6 which reveal just that. This version of iOS is not full of any one amazing new jaw-dropping feature that will have our minds spinning. Instead it’s filled with dozens of little things that will get used by real people ever day. And it will make our lives a little bit nicer and a little bit easier.

Things like Do Not Disturb mode, and the slide-up options you can act on when you get an incoming call, and VIP emailers, are all things that were thought up by guys who uses this device day in and day out and says to themselves, man, I’m tired of always declining phone calls when I’m in a meeting, texting the person back, and then forgetting to call them when I’m done with my meeting. (Or, perhaps, man, I am tired of getting text messages from my crazy uncle at 2 in the morning, but what if my mom calls and it’s an emergency?)

With that said, here are a few of things in iOS 6 that I am most glad about:

Open Browser Tab Syncing via iCloud

The browser tabs you have open on all your devices are now shared via iCloud. Had a website open on your Mac but then had to jet out the door, no problem. You can open it right back up from your iPhone or iPad.

If your Mac is running Mountain Lion, click the cloud icon in Safari and you’ll see the list of tabs open on your iPhone and iPad. And from your iPhone or iPad, tap the bookmarks icon in Mobile Safari and the drill down into the iCloud Tabs bookmarks folder.

Do Not Disturb

Another one of those features that is so simple and obvious, and yet has a significant impact on the day-to-day usability of our phones. You can activate Do Not Disturb mode from the Settings app.

You can turn it on and off manually (like Airplane mode), and you can set it to automatically start and stop at pre-defined times. (Not unlike Glassboard or Tweetbot allow you to set sleep options for when you do not want to get a push notification.)

To fine tune your Do Not Disturb schedule, and who you’re willing to allow to get through, drill down through the Settings App → Notifications → Do Not Disturb.

The Slide-Up Options on Incoming Calls

This has become my main “show off” feature.

When a friend asks me what’s cool about the new iPhone software I ask them to call me. Then I demo the slide-up menu for incoming calls and watch as they “get it” instantly. We’ve all been in that situation — whether it be a board meeting, dinner, a movie, or whatever — where we have to decline an incoming call from a friend or colleague. This is a feature that makes perfect sense and makes you scratch your head a bit about why it took so long to get here.

Pull to refresh in Mail

We were all doing it out of habit anyway. Now it actually accomplishes something.

Notifications for VIPs

I have worked in places were emails are sent like text messages. I often would get an email asking for me to come to a spontaneous meeting that was starting in 5 minutes.

Or how many times do you watch for that email from your boss or assistant or whomever? There are whole conferences centered around the idea of how checking your email every 5 minutes is a massive productivity killer (and it’s true). But that doesn’t mean the fact remains: a lot of workflows and company cultures are still very much dependent upon people being near-instantly-reachable by email.

VIP emails — and, more specifically, the way iOS (and OS X) are helping us to set them apart — are a great example of how iOS is becoming increasingly usable in real life.

High-Resolution Spinner on shutdown

I mean, finally, right?

Folders shown in Spotlight

After 4 years worth of App Store, some Home screens (including the one on the iPhone that’s sitting here on my desk) are getting unwieldy. There are apps I know I have, but I don’t know where they are. For those I have no choice but to use Spotlight to get to them, but say I want to move them to a more prominent spot?

Now when you use Spotlight to launch an app, if it’s in a folder Spotlight will tell you the name of that folder.

This is one more (of what feels like a) bandaid fix towards a better way to launch and mange apps.

Launching Apps using Siri

Siri is becoming the way of “ubiquitous capture” on the iPhone. It’s the quick-entry popup of OmniFocus on the Mac. Assuming Siri can connect to the servers, she is the fastest way to get sports scores, directions, set a timer, log a reminder, and now launch an app that’s not on your first Home screen.

* * *

The mobile phone industry has is no shortage of impressive, whizbang features which sound great and make fun ads but which rarely get used by real people in their day-to-day lives.

The niceties shipping as part if iOS 6 are great because they’re the sorts of little things that will play big, unsung roles in our everyday lives.

iOS 6 and Every-Day Life

Thoughts and Observations From Today’s Apple Event

There were some great announcements from Apple today. But at each turn I couldn’t help but think how nearly everything being announced was something we’ve seen already or expected.

This marks the second major hardware revision for the iPhone that Apple didn’t get to introduce to the world. Like we saw with Gizmodo and the lost iPhone 4 in 2010, the iPhone 5 looks just like the leaks and rumors said it would.

But that’s not all: the new dock connector — Lightning — and the new EarPods also look just like we’ve already seen. And though we didn’t have pictures of what they’d look like, we were told what to expect in the new iPod touch and also to expect new nanos today as well (not to mention the “Loop” accessory). Even iTunes 11 was leaked via Apple’s own website earlier this morning.

It was like the whole internet had the run sheet for today’s event.

Earlier this year Tim Cook said Apple was doubling down on secrecy, and yet virtually every single thing announced today was called by the rumor mill.

That is not to say that today’s event was a disappointment. Quite the contrary. The mystery and surprise of today’s announcements may have been diminished, but the quality of the products themselves was not. Knowing about the iPhone 5 before it was announced doesn’t make it any less a device had we not known anything at all.

  • The iPhone 5’s 4-inch screen: If the new iPhone screen is just as easy to use with one hand as all the previous models have been, a lot of iPhone owners are going to be very happy. And a lot of people are going to call us fanboys.

This image from Dustin Curtis is often referenced as a prime example of why the smaller-screen of the iPhone is superior to the ginormous screens of Android phones these days.

The onehandability of the iPhone has always been a great advantage. Especially for a guy like me who is 5’8″ and has somewhat small hands.

My biggest qualm with past Android phones I’ve tested or borrowed is how difficult they are to use one handedly. Jim Dalrymple reported that the iPhone 5 is, in fact, easy to use with one hand. My question, which would solicit a different answer from everyone because it’s unique to hand size is if the iPhone 5 is as easy to use one handed as the past iPhones have been.

On another note, with the extra vertical space there’s room for another row of icons. I’ve always kept my bottom row free from icons so now I can fit a 4th row without cluttering up my Home screen. Which is an interesting idea if you think about it. I can’t imagine how cluttered and random most peoples iPhone home screens are, and one of the solutions is “bigger physical screen”. I’m still standing on my soapbox that the iPhone Home screen needs a radical redesign.

  • LTE: The two things I am most excited about with the new iPhone is LTE and the better camera. My iPad has LTE from Verizon and it’s just wonderful. If I’m out somewhere and I’ve got my iPad nearby, I will often grab the iPad instead of my iPhone to look up directions, do a web search, or whatever it is. LTE is just so much faster than even AT&T’s HSPA+ network.

Having a significantly faster cellular connection means a significantly improved user experience (especially when battery life doesn’t take a hit). Because, at the end of the day, it really just boils down to less time waiting. And we all want that.

I wonder how many people are going to turn off wi-fi on their iPhones because LTE is faster than the internet in their home?

  • The iPhone 5’s camera: If I had to pick just one single hardware feature for Apple to continue improving upon year over year it would be the camera (which would be a very close toss up against cellular network speeds, but those are yoked to wireless carriers).

Data speeds are great but they aren’t something that I’ll look back on 40 years from now with my kids and grandkids to talk about. No, those will be the photos and videos that I shoot.

Not to get all mushy, but Apple’s investment into the quality of the iPhone camera is an investment into our future. The iPhone is the camera we have with us and it is the one we are using to capture our memories and the one we use to feed that habit of amateur photography we’re now all into.

  • iOS 6: Something new to me: iOS 6 will let you launch apps using Siri.

  • iTunes 11: 435 Million iTunes accounts. The new design, looks great. But I use Rdio for music, my Apple TV for movies, my iPad for books, and my iPhone for podcasts, so I spend hardly no time in iTunes. Nevertheless it’s a great update that was a long time coming.

  • iPod nano: Has any Apple device seen as many significant hardware changes as the nano? The nano is Apple’s hardware design playground.

Also, with the change in size of the nano, I think it’s clear that Apple’s is not planning on making it some sort of iPhone-satellite device. The device is designed as a stand-alone product.

As for the new design, I like it a lot. As John Siracusa said on Twitter, the new iPod nano looks like a tiny Lumia phone.

  • iPod touch: And speaking of good-looking iPods, the new touch is the best looking version of its breed yet. It’s just 6.1mm thin and has the exact same great display that’s in the iPhone. It now comes in all sorts of colors, and for the first time I find the design of the iPod touch more compelling than the iPhone.

I plan to pre-order a black 32GB AT&T iPhone on Friday morning. When upgrading from the 3GS to the 4 in 2010, and from the 4 to the 4S in 2011 I received a fully-subsidized pricing with the renewal of my contract. However, as of this writing, I’m not eligible for a subsidized upgrade from AT&T.

And it’s not just me. All of my regularly-upgrading friends and many of my Twitter followers are all reporting the same thing. We’ve been getting subsidized upgrades year-over-year but apparently not this time.

Perhaps that will change before iPhone pre-orders open up, or perhaps AT&T has ceased its good will and will not let us upgrade early. If I do have to pay a non-subsidized price for an iPhone, I may chose instead to cancel my AT&T contract and switch to Verizon since its nation wide LTE coverage is immensely superior to AT&T’s.

Thoughts and Observations From Today’s Apple Event

Thoughts and Impressions of the iPhone 3GS From Three Years Ago

A few days ago I came across the unordered list of notes below. These are the notes I took shortly after upgrading my original iPhone to an iPhone 3GS in June of 2009 (I skipped the iPhone 3G because I disliked the new look so much I refused to give up my original):

  • My first 3GS had a dead pixel; the Genius Bar replaced it. My second 3GS had some sort of massive screen line-fuzz issue when the screen was showing mostly dark colors; the Genius Bar replaced it as well. Now on my third one already.

  • I’ve gotten used to the bigger bezel around the side of the screen, but I wish I didn’t have to.

  • 3G is great. Frequently AT&T is faster than whatever random public wi-fi I’m connected to.

  • The camera is fantastic. Also: video!

  • Battery life is great; I rarely run out. In fact, I’ve only run the battery dead once so far. It was at Anna’s cousin’s wedding — I was shooting video and taking pictures all starting in the morning until evening.

  • I’ve been using the landscape keyboard more frequently, if for any reason but to get a break from the norm.

  • The curved back and plastic definitely feels more comfortable in the hand. Though it’s not as heavy and sturdy feeling, it does offer a better grip.

  • The seal between the glass edge and the chrome edge is not sealed very well.

  • I’m using no case or screen cover, which is as it should be.

  • I love the oleophobic screen. Compared to my original iPhone, this one seems to be constantly clean and smudge free.

  • Spotlight is my most-used iPhone OS 3.0 feature.

  • I haven’t yet needed tethering, though I have tried it. It was a bit difficult to get my MacBook and my iPhone paired, but once I got it working the internet connection wasn’t half bad.

  • The black plastic that makes up the back scratches much more easily than the aluminum on my original iPhone did.

  • The build quality of this phone doesn’t seem as good as my original. I’m not a fan of the more sunken lock button and am certainly not a fan of the plastic backing. Even my silent toggle switch is loose and it buzzes when the phone vibrates for an incoming call.

  • Love that new apps install on the 2nd Home screen.

Reading through that list is such a blast from the past — I forgot the first two iPhones didn’t have an oleophobic fingerprint-resistant screen — yet the 3GS is only a few years old. It’s still for sale, I still see people using it, and heck, it’s the 3rd-most popular camera phone on Flickr.

Apple has pushed the iPhone forward extremely fast over the past five years. They’ve taken care of nearly all the low-hanging fruit, and every version of the iPhone seems to be the best possible version. Yet here we are again. It’s Fall, a new iPhone is just a few weeks away, and this next one will probably be a doozy.

Thoughts and Impressions of the iPhone 3GS From Three Years Ago

Review: Tiny Tower

Rarely do I play games on my iPhone. Over the past four years I can think of only a handful that I’ve played for longer than a few minutes: Orbital, Frenzic, Horror Vacui, and Mage Gauntlet.1 Last week while vacationing in Colorado I decided to give Tiny Tower a try.

Tiny Tower came out over a year ago. It was picked by Apple as the 2011 iPhone Game of the Year, and it has a 4.5-star average rating based on 285,000 ratings. Needless to say, it’s incredibly popular. Chances are you’ve played it.

Anyone who has played Tiny Tower knows it requires no skill or strategy. So long as you check in on the game (or let its push notifications alert you) then you can’t help but progress. There is no goal other than to keep building. And there is very little strategy other than to give your Bitizens a place to work (preferably based on their skill sets).

More or less, Tiny Tower is a digital ant farm.

Anyone can build a gloriously tall tiny tower, it’s just a matter of how long it will take — because the only thing working against you in the game is time. The game requires you to wait a certain period of time between building a new level and opening it for business. You also have to wait for the inventory in your stores to be re-stocked. Even the elevator moves painfully slow if you’re delivering someone beyond the first few floors.

Time, however, can be “traded” for Tower Bux. Or, as we say in the real world, time is money. And the more time you spend in the game the more likely you are to earn a Tower Bux here or there.

  • Spend time manning the elevator and you’ll occasionally get tipped a Tower Bux.
  • Spend time helping a visitor find someone in the tower and they’ll give you a Tower Bux for your time.
  • After you’ve earned enough coins to build a new level you get a Tower Bux as a bonus.
  • If a store is completely stocked you sometimes get a Tower Bux bonus.

Tower Bux can be spent to speed along the game play. You can use your Tower Bux to:

  • speed up the re-stocking process;
  • buy a faster elevator;
  • advertise open apartments and get renters in sooner;
  • speed up construction of a new level; and/or
  • upgrade the amount of inventory a store can hold, allowing it to go longer before needing to be restocked.

The taller your tiny tower gets the longer new levels take to build. And though you’re earning coins faster due to a higher number of shops being open for business, Tower Bux are accumulated very slowly no matter how far you progress in the game. Thus, the longer you play, the more you feel the pain of time with no way of beating it… 2

Or you can cheat. You can use real-life money to load up on Tower Bux via an In App Purchase. $0.99 gets you 10 Tower Bux; $4.99 gets you 100; and $29.99 gets 1,000.

Early on I resolved not to buy any Tower Bux (it seemed like buying cheat codes). It took me two and a half days to organically earn 25 Tower Bux so I could buy a faster elevator. The next elevator upgrade cost 75 Tower Bux. At my current rate that’s at least a week away.

I can’t help but feel that the whole point of Tiny Tower is to bore me or frustrate me to the point of spending real dollars to buy Tower Bux in order to speed up the game play. As cute and clever as Tiny Tower may be, I prefer games with a strategy and a goal.

  1. Which one of these is not like the other? ↵
  2. There are 40 different missions you can complete in order to earn Tower Bux as a reward. However, after a week of play I’ve built a 17-level tower and yet I still only have the proper stores to complete 1 of the 40 missions. Since you cannot chose the actual stores that get built (only the category) the missions are at the mercy of the game itself. ↵
Review: Tiny Tower