Monthly Archives: April 2011

Appsterdam

A great name to go along with “a big idea from Mike Lee”:http://mur.mu.rs/?p=1:

“If you’ve been to a conference, you’ve probably thought, as I have, how nice it would be if everyday life could be like that—being surrounded by peers, able to get help solving a hard problem, then get accolades for doing so. There is a gestalt to sitting face to face with a group you just don’t get over the wire. With Appsterdam, our community is not just a nice idea, but a nice place.”

I would love to visit Europe again. It’s been too long.

Tweetbot

After about a day of using Tweetbot, “I said”:https://twitter.com/manton/status/58723721728360448:

“Tweetbot gets nearly everything in the UI right. Love it. But.. it’s a basic client. I still think the future for third parties is features.”

I only got a few responses, most defending Tweetbot as something special. I agree, and there’s a lot to be inspired by from it. In an odd way, though, just being the best Twitter client isn’t enough.

“Marco Arment writes more”:http://www.marco.org/2011/04/18/ben-brooks-on-tweetbot (following a “post from Ben Brooks”:http://brooksreview.net/2011/04/appsuration/) about why Tweetbot isn’t for him despite being such a good client:

“A new Twitter client that essentially offers the Twitter app’s features, but in different places, isn’t enough of a difference for me to switch. If anything, it supports Twitter’s ‘don’t make full-featured apps’ position. Maybe they were right.”

The problem isn’t that third parties shouldn’t make full-featured clients; it’s that they shouldn’t make clients that have exactly the same features as every other client. If Twitter discourages all apps from being made just because many will fail, we’ll miss out on all the things Twitter will never add to their apps and platform.

I see three compelling reasons to use Tweetbot 1.0: the design, swipe for conversations, and related tweets. The last is actually in the Twitter API — I’ve been meaning to add it to Tweet Library — but it’s not yet documented outside of an email message to the dev mailing list. Congrats to Tapbots for being the first I’ve seen to add it as a high-profile feature.

Last September I wrote about “next-generation Twitter apps”:http://www.manton.org/2010/09/next_generation.html:

“I believe we’re about to see a third generation of clients that will go way beyond what the web site can do. There was worry when Twitter bought Tweetie that it would destroy the third-party Twitter market, and sure, some developers will fail or be discouraged from trying to compete against a free official product. But really what it does is raise the bar — that to succeed Twitter clients should be more than just a one-to-one mapping between UI and the Twitter API.”

I hadn’t announced Tweet Library yet when I wrote that. Now that I’ve shipped it, I believe even more strongly that we haven’t seen anything yet from Twitter apps. Tweetbot is a great 1.0 and my go-to app on the phone because it’s better in lots of small ways than anything else. But that it’s not for everyone is actually great news. I hope there are plenty of unique features still to come from a variety of other apps.

Consider this: Tweetie already “won” the market. No matter what we do as Twitter API developers, none of us can ever have the most popular Twitter app. This frees every app to focus on its core strength. For Twitterrific, that’s a unified timeline; for Echofon, that’s last-read sync; for Hibari, that’s keywords; for Kiwi, that’s themes; for my own Tweet Library, that’s curation.

What’s Tweetbot’s core strength? For now, overall user experience, not standout features. But I’ve been a Tapbots customer long enough that I’m excited to see where they take it.

For more Tweetbot discussion, check out “this collection of tweets I made”:http://tweetlibrary.com/manton/tweetbot1.0 about the launch.

Acorn 3

On a “recent Core Intuition”:http://www.coreint.org/2011/03/episode-38-the-impression-of-standing-still/, Daniel and I talked about version numbers and the message you send by going to 2.0 or 3.0. The version is as much about marketing as it is about technically tracking the release.

I can think of no better example of this than “Acorn 3”:http://flyingmeat.com/acorn/. The app started simply enough — first as just a new FlySketch, then as a simple image editor, then becoming more advanced with each iteration — but it has really hit its stride with 3.0. The landmark feature, layer styles, alone warrants the bump to 3.0.

Combine with the overall maturity of the app and you get a blockbuster release. Acorn made the top grossing list and was outselling all other non-Apple software. My Twitter stream lit up with good things about the app.

The version number is a part of that. This isn’t a 2.5. The 3.0 is saying: this is big news, and anyone who has maybe heard of Acorn but never tried it needs to give this version a shot.

I’m particularly happy for Gus because he’s earned this success over years. From the archives in 2005, “Gus’s post on being an indie”:http://gusmueller.com/blog/archives/2005/12/25.html:

“Just plan, set realistic goals, meet those goals, diversify, save up, add four cups of patience, and have fun. And most importantly- work your ass off. It’s not difficult, it’s just not easy. It takes time and patience and hard work.”

One of the first great blog posts about working for yourself writing Mac software.

First drafts on iPad

“Iain Broome”:http://writeforyourlife.net/writing-ipad-review on iPad writing, via “John Chandler”:http://byjohnchandler.com/:

“I can, and do, write regularly with my iPad. But, to be perfectly honest, I rarely use it to edit, because I find it kind of clumsy to move the cursor around the screen with my finger. However, the iPad is a marvellous first draft machine.”

Most of my blog posts start life on the iPad too. I write them in Simplenote, sync with the Mac to finish the post if it needs editing, then copy to MarsEdit to publish. It’s not completely smooth, but it’s a workflow that wasn’t even possible a year ago.