Shaun White’s Gold Medal Halfpipe Run  →

This isn’t the first time I’ve linked to this video, but I can’t post about skiing/snowboarding without bringing up Shaun White’s Double McTwist 1260 and his gold medal halfpipe run from the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

At this competition, each competitor was allowed 2 runs, and it was their best score of the two that counted. This was Shaun’s second run of the night, and he was the very last to go. His first run was already so good he was secured the gold medal. So, for this final run of the competition he didn’t need to play it safe — he could do whatever he wanted. And he did.

This is one of my personal all-time favorite Olympic moments. So electric.

Shaun White’s Gold Medal Halfpipe Run

Twitterrific 5

If you’re old school, Twitterrific for Mac was probably your first Twitter client.

Twitterrific for the Mac came out in January 2007. I joined Twitter in March. It was the first native Twitter app for the Mac, and I loved its small footprint, dark UI, and color-coded @replies. For a long time Twitterrific was Twitter for me.

It’s funny to look back at how I used Twitter over half a decade ago. I followed dozens of people and would often post Tweets through a Quicksilver plugin, treating my tweets as one-line “status updates” which lived on my site’s sidebar. Visitors to my blog circa 2006 and 2007 could see a “this is what the author is currently doing” message.

Obviously our usage of Twitter has changed drastically since then. Twitterrific for Mac shipped the same week Steve Jobs announced the original iPhone. Now, almost 6 years later, I primarily check and post to Twitter via my iPhone.

Six months after Twitterrific for the Mac shipped, the first proof of concept for “MobileTwitterrific” was announced in August of 2007. Twitterrific for iPhone launched on July 11, 2008, and was one of the first apps in the brand new App Store for iPhone. Before Twitterrific for iPhone, we were all using web-based Twitter apps. Remember Hahlo?

T5

Twitterrific 5

Today, Twitterrific is 5 years older and 5 versions mature. The app has gone through many design iterations over the years, but has always remained true to its roots. Additionally, Twitterrific has made many significant contributions to the Twitter ecosystem at large — it was the first native Twitter client on both Mac and on the iPhone, it was the first to coin the word “tweet”, and it was the first to implement a bird icon.

Graphics-wise, the newest version of Twitterrific is simply stunning. Without any hyperbole, I consider T5 to be the best-looking version of Twitterrific to date and one of the most attractive iPhone apps I’ve seen in a long time. Thanks in no small part to the great use of typography and color. Though this new version seems to me the furthest departure from the original design, it still has hints of familiarity and does not cast aside all design elements from past versions.

I haven’t used Twitterrific on my iPhone since 2008, which is when I switched to Tweetie. Then it was Tweetie 2, and then Tweetbot. All these aforementioned Twitter apps are not just great apps for Twitter, but they are (or were) great iPhone apps, period. The look and feel of Twitterrific 5 is, in my opinion, its greatest selling point — it has a UI design on the same caliber as what I consider to be some of the best iPhone apps ever built.

Twitterrific 5 strikes me as an exercise in simplicity with a focus on all the little details. When your UI doesn’t use gradients or drop shadows or boxes to hold itself together, all the loose elements have nowhere to hide. Any designer worth their salt will tell you that a “minimalistic” app like this is extremely difficult to pull off well. I say the Iconfactory hit a home run.

I asked David Lanham, designer at the Iconfactory, about the redesign. He said, “the focus of the redesign was to bring Twitterrific back to making reading tweets as enjoyable as possible while also applying what we’ve learned over the last few years for interface and interaction decisions to the usage of the app.”

Twitterrific’s most historic design detail is its liberal but clever use of color. Twitterrific has always used colors to signify the various types of tweets, and it’s no different in version 5:
– @replies directed to you use a yellow, orange, and red color scheme.
– Tweets which simply mention your @username use a brown and tan color scheme.
– Incoming direct messages are dark blue.
– Outgoing direct messages are teal, with an arrow pointing to the name of the user you sent the message to.
– A purple line underneath a Tweet signifies where the current tweet marker is (you can sync your timeline position via iCloud or the TweetMarker service).

Another historic design element is Twitterrific’s customizable themes. Just like in past versions of Twitterrific, T5 lets you choose between light or dark themes, adjust the font size to anything from teeny-tiny to ginormous, and more.

What’s new, however, is you now get a choice of the typeface itself. Custom fonts include Helvetica (of course), Proxima Nova, Museo Slab, Calluna, and Signika. Naturally I’m using Proxima Nova — it’s a gorgeous typeface which I think looks especially stunning on a Retina screen.

Also new: T5 can switch between light and dark themes automatically based on the time of day. Bright theme in the daytime, dark theme in the nighttime (a la Instapaper). This option is clever and fun; I had it turned on for a few days, but ended up turning it off because I like the dark theme too much.

Interestingly, popover notifications and slide-up selection buttons are not customized. So much of Twitterrific’s design is unique and customized, I was a bit surprised to see these default iPhone elements.

Direct Messages

Showing DMs right within the main timeline, as Twitterrific always has, always freaks me out. After a few days I’ve slowly acclimated to seeing a blue message and knowing blue means not publicly viewable.

There is, of course, a Messages tab, however, you cannot start a new DM thread from within it. You can view and reply to any current DM conversation you’re having with someone, but you cannot begin a new one with a new person.

The only way to start a new DM thread is to first navigate to a user’s profile, and if they follow you then you’ll see a small envelope icon. Tap that to start a new DM conversation with that person.

Alternatively, you could send a DM the old-fashioned way: “d @username Hey pal!”

A Few “Missing” Features

Being a hard and fast Tweetbot user for the past few years, there are 3 elements I instantly noticed were not features of Twitterrific 5:

  • No mobilizer view available in the in-app Safari web view.
  • No muting of keywords, tags, clients, users, etc.
  • No push notifications.

But this is something Craig Hockenberry (the man who had the idea for Twitterrific in the shower) addressed all the way back in 2008:

There will always be more than one way to solve a problem: a developer’s personal preferences will inevitably seep into the implementation. Having many choices for a Twitter client means that developers don’t need to create a “one size fits all” solution. In essence, users get to choose a developer whose preferences match their own. […]

For Twitterrific, our core function is reading.

The core function is not managing your Twitter account. Nor is it being a general purpose tool to exercise every nook and cranny of the API. It’s primary function is not to act as a surrogate for SMS messaging.

I asked the awesome gents at Iconfactory why they chose to not ship T5 with push notifications. It was a two-fold answer from both Craig Hockenberry and Gedeon Maheux.

“Twitterrific 5 is a clean slate. The visual design is obviously a fresh
start, but our code base is as well,” Craig said. Gedeon added that if they’d included push notifications as part of T5, it would have added another 3 – 4 months to the development cycle: “So much has changed in the Twitterverse this past year with Twitter introducing new guidelines and restrictions that we felt any further delay in getting version 5 out the door increased the risk of not being able to release it at all.”

But that’s not the only reason. “When everything is new and clean, you think carefully before adding new stuff,” Craig said. “The things in this initial version are things we, as a team, really wanted to have. I know a lot of people love push notifications, but as iOS matures I find myself actively disabling notifications in apps. There are just too many and they end up being a distraction.”

I am an advocate of Craig’s stance on disabling as many notifications as are reasonable. But for me, there are many peers and comrades that I connect with throughout my workday, and Twitter DM is one of the primary ways we go about doing that. Fortunately, push notifications are in Twitterrific 5’s roadmap, they’re just not here yet.

And alas, for me, some of the “missing” elements in Twitterrific are deal breakers. Despite how fast and gorgeous Twitterrific 5 is, I do not want to give up push notifications, mute filters, or the mobilizer web toggle. These 3 features of Tweetbot are so important to how I use Twitter that I won’t be switching to Twitterrific as my one and only Twitter client.1

For the past week, I’ve been bouncing between both apps — using Tweetbot for DMs and Twitterrific for the rest. I know it’s silly to use more than one Twitter app, but the look and feel of T5 is so splendid that I’m happy to be silly for the time being. Not to mention, if you have any appreciation at all for world-class app design,2 then Twitterrific 5 is worth checking out for that reason alone.

It’s a universal app and is currently $2.99 in the App Store.

  1. Going a week with a client that didn’t mute certain keywords or user agents did make me realize that perhaps I should just re-think who I follow on Twitter. No, no — of course I’m not talking about *you*. ↵
  2. If you don’t, then I question how you’ve survived as a regular reader on this website. Is it the coffee links? ↵
Twitterrific 5

The iPhone As Camera… Where To Now?  →

Bryan Jones, retinal neuroscientist and photographer (via James Duncan Davidson):

In short, we are rapidly approaching a point where Apple has many of the required tools in their workflow to redefine how photography works for professionals as well as consumers. There are some professional photographers that have embraced smart phones in their workflow and some like my friend Trent are even teaching classes in college on photography with smart phones. That said, while it is true that while the iPhone is being used professionally by some in limited capacities, right now the smart phone is nowhere near a replacement for SLR camera systems […]

The iPhone technology convergence is showing the world the way forward in terms of how to integrate technology into photography. It remains to be seen whether Apple will capitalize on this or how soon camera companies will begin to adopt strategies pioneered by the smart phone industry.

Bryan’s article is great. He hits on two themes: (a) just how empowering software can be to photography (both in terms of removing friction from someone’s workflow, and also to improving the quality of the image); and (b) how far and how fast will Apple push the quality of the iPhone camera’s hardware?

This is something I plan to write about more in my eventual review of the E-PL5, but one of the first things I thought after I had edited my first batch of images was, now what?

I posted them to my Flickr account of course, but that seems like not enough. I chose not to post them to Instagram because that’s cheating, but my Flickr account is a like ghost town when compared to the activity on Instagram (both in terms of the quantity of images posted by people I follow and the amount of feedback I get on the images I post).

Not only do I want to have a personal archive and album of my images (so far I’ve been putting all my favorites into iPhoto), but I also want to share images with friends and family. The iPhone makes archiving automatic and sharing extremely easy. I haven’t yet figured out just what I want to do with the images I’m taking with the Olympus, nor what my ideal workflow looks like.

Samsung has attempted to marry the quality of a dedicated camera with the apps and sharability of a smartphone in their Galaxy Camera, but based on The Verge’s review it’s overpriced for the quality and a bit frustrating to use due to the software.

The iPhone As Camera… Where To Now?

iOS Keyboard Has Room for Improvement  →

Agreed. Once you’ve spent any time at all typing with one of the custom keyboards found in apps like Writing Kit, iA Writer, and Byword the default keyboard begins to feel a bit antiquated. Heck, I’d love it if we just had left and right arrow buttons.

Speaking of which, in Writing Kit the left and right margins of the app are tap targets to move the cursor to the left or right, respectively. This is a feature that first appeared in the app, Writings. And it’s akin to Pull to Refresh, in that it instantly feels natural and once you’ve used it you notice that it’s missing in every other app.

iOS Keyboard Has Room for Improvement

Sponsor: Igloo Software, Wishing You a Happy Work From Home  →

Let’s face it, we’re heading into the worst time of year for getting work done. Everyone is getting ready for [insert holiday of choice here].

It seems like Janice is always out of the office. Bob’s coming in late every day. And if Kelly sings [insert holiday song of choice here] one more time, you’re going to go insane. But you can’t work from home — your shared drive is locked down and your VPN is just. so. slow.

This holiday season, ask your boss for a cloud-based collaboration platform. You’ll be able to securely work from home and your coworkers will love the built-in social tools. They can share updates about what they’re working on, and you can ignore the cat videos. Your boss will love your increased productivity.

‘Tis the season for an intranet you’ll actually like. Try Igloo.

* * *

My thanks to Igloo Software for sponsoring the RSS feed this week. Sponsorship by The Syndicate.

Sponsor: Igloo Software, Wishing You a Happy Work From Home

David Karp on the iPad mini  →

In a chat with Om Malik, David Karp, CEO of Tumblr, had this to say about the iPad mini:

I am over laptops and the posture that comes with them. I am coding a lot less, so I use my computers a lot less. I still want to simplify even further and carry just one device. So, I want to try the iPad Mini with cellular antenna as my only device and as a phone replacement, and use Skype and/or Google Voice instead.

It’s cool how simplifying can actually be liberating. I’d be interested to check back in 6 to 12 months and see if David is still rocking this setup, and if not, why.

David Karp on the iPad mini

“Retina Displays Aren’t Disruptive”  →

Dana Levine’s article, “Why everyone loves the iPad mini (even though the screen sucks)”, makes a point I hadn’t thought about: that the Retina display isn’t a disruptive technology:

… they are a nice-to-have, but not really disruptive to what we already have. When you look at disruptive technologies (as defined in The Innovator’s Dilemma), they typically enable use cases that their predecessors didn’t (such as allowing devices to be smaller or lighter). There isn’t actually any new use case that a retina display enables, other than being prettier. It’s not like visible pixels in any way diminish the functional experience.

I think Levine is right. As awesome as Retina displays are, they don’t fundamentally change the usability or use-case scenarios of the iPad. It’s crazy to think that a bitmapped screen displaying pixels at a density rivaling print, is, in a way, nothing more than an iterative step in the evolution of hardware.

“Retina Displays Aren’t Disruptive”