Category: Free

I’ve received a lot of confirmation today on App.net that my iPhone wasn’t an anomaly: deleting your Touch ID fingerprints and re-adding them in 7.0.3 dramatically speeds up the system.

I had about a 50% success rate before 7.0.3 and now it is near 100% and works instantly. The difference is really dramatic.

I started using [Ulysses][1] back with version 2. I used it off and on, and I generally liked it, but didn’t love it. When Ulysses III came out, it was a brand new app and it only took me a day to fall in love with the app. If I am writing on my Mac, then I am writing in Ulysses III. All of my old posts are stored in an Archive folder in the app and it just handles everything I throw at it.

I really love Ulysses III, but sometimes it can be cumbersome to my workflow. If I start writing correspondence in Pages, then realize it is a longer item, and now I might want to compose in Ulysses — well I have to copy paste and copy paste. This can happen when I think I am writing a short business letter, but it becomes something more. For a while now The Soulmen have been teasing about version 1.1 of Ulysses III, and some of the features they are adding to the app.

One of the most interesting to me is the idea that there will be Ulysses style sheets for exporting. Meaning you can send text from Ulysses III to a pdf, formatted just how you want it. For writers this will be awesome, but I also think it is killer for anyone who needs to have documents with a consistent look (be it letterhead or anything else) in any part of their work or personal life.

The Soulmen were kind enough to send me a beta of 1.1 to try out, and after a bit of fiddling I love this app even more now. Allow me explain in one short sentence: Ulysses has just eliminated the need for me to create any new Pages or Word documents. Yep, instead of opening a new file in Pages (on company letterhead), I can write in Ulysses and just export to company letterhead with a click.

This is going to be great.

To be fair, I have yet to find a way to embed the logo in the ULSS style sheet, but as a work around I have the document export to PDFPen Pro as I want it, with a click. From there I grab my letterhead in the Media Library in PDFPen Pro and drag it onto the document. Boom, done.

So cool.

Did I mention: no Pages or Word. NO PAGES OR WORD.

There are other things in 1.1 that people have been begging for, such as:

– Global Search.
– Export to Word (much better support)
– Typewriter scrolling — a feature I dearly missed.
– Smart lists and auto-completing tags. This is really nice to have again.

There are a ton more additions, but those are my favorites.

This is a really great writing app — the best out there and I highly recommend it.

[Go get it][2].

[1]: http://www.ulyssesapp.com
[2]: https://itunes.apple.com/app/ulysses-iii/id623795237

[John Gruber has a very agreeable post ](http://daringfireball.net/2013/10/imessage_encryption) about iMessage security, but I was not sure of his side note:

> My understanding is that Apple does not permanently store iMessage message content on its servers. Even in encrypted form, iMessage data is only in Apple’s hands while in transit. Once delivered, it’s gone.

Gruber later updated to clarify the messages probably are held for a short time. I wasn’t sure I bought this idea, as I thought that the load more messages contradicted the idea. (If you scroll to the top of an iMessage thread you can load more messages.) If Gruber is correct all messages are on the device, but if he is not correct then Apple is keeping a copy for this feature to work — easy enough to test.

My unscientific testing seems to confirm what Gruber is saying. If you delete a thread off of your iPad, but it is still on your iPhone, then you create a new message to that contact on the iPad, there seems to be no way to load in old messages from the device that deleted the thread. This would seem to ‘prove’ that Gruber is likely correct.

(The best test would be to wipe a device and set it up as new. If any *old* iMessages are on the device, then Apple is keeping them on a server. That’s just a bit more testing than I want to do on a Sunday.) It would seem, though, that Gruber is correct and no old iMessages are stored on Apple servers. This is good news.

UPDATE: Based on many readers that tested this out, your iMessages don’t carry over if you wipe to your iOS device and don’t restore from a backup. Additionally, if you have a new device and send and receive iMessages, and then restore from backup, you will lose the new messages. Seems pretty conclusive that Apple isn’t storing messages for anything longer than “hours”.

This is simply an amazing bit of customer hate, as reported by [Matthew ‘The Panzer’ Panzarino at TechCrunch.][1] As I mentioned, Twitter is now rolling out the ability to DM people that don’t follow you. This, sounds like it is an unrelated problem, but proves my point that Twitter is *going* to have a DM Spam problem. What arose last night is a bunch of “hacked” accounts sending spam via DMs containing URLs.

Any smart service would have taken user reports and been all over this like white on delicious steamed sushi rice, but according to The Panzer, this is how it played out:

> What we’re hearing is that the rise in DM spam ended up garnering attention inside Twitter up to the point where an executive inside Twitter’s C-suite got DM spammed. Hence the abrupt ban on URLs inside DMs until the issue can be sorted out.

To many that seems reasonable. But here’s how I read this: Twitter wasn’t overly concerned about DM spam in the higher ups, until one of the higher ups received the spam. Then they squashed it by banning URLs in DMs. That’s not really a company working in the user best interest, but rather self-serving. It makes you wonder: if that executive hadn’t been spammed, would Twitter have done anything?

“Ok, Ben, but you are reaching here.”

Am I?

> The inconsistencies that we noticed with regards to the sending and receiving of URLs is due to the fact that Verified users and advertisers are exempted from the ban on sending links in DMs. This would impede, of course, the efforts of marketers using Twitter’s legitimate advertising platform to send DMs {…}

It makes sense to allow verified users to keep sending them, but advertisers? That’s just self-serving — advertisers (granted non-paying ones) were the ones sending the spam. Here’s what we have learned (or been reminded of):

1. Twitter addresses the problems that bug them first.
2. While “average” users will suffer from sweeping changes, verified “celebrities” and *braaaaands* won’t suffer, ever. EVAR.

Enjoy that.

[1]: http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/17/twitters-theoretically-temporary-url-messaging-ban-due-to-massive-wave-of-dm-spam/

[John Gruber, in an excellent article about Apple naysayers, points out][1]:

> The point is to show that Apple’s customers are demographically different. The Mac today has roughly 10 percent of the PC market, but it’s not just any randomly distributed 10 percent of the market. Quite the opposite — Apple’s 10 percent of the market is entirely comprised of the high end of the market. Mac users are discriminating, willing to pay more for a product they deem superior.

With Macs and iPads, I think Gruber is correct. However, with each passing quarter this is a harder argument to make for iPhone users. A large and loyal segment will always be willing to pay more, but as the market size of the iPhone grows the customer base will be more diluted and thus, become more “cheap” and less high-end.

That’s the shift I think we are seeing with app sales right now in the App Store. The largest group of potential buyers are cheap asses that don’t want, or won’t ever, pay for an app. The lure to iOS used to be “there’s an app for that”. Now I fear the lure being sold (not by Apple mind you) is “there’s a *free* app for that”.

The common refrain I hear when people are recommending apps to each other is: “Is it free?” “No. It’s $0.99.” “I bet I can find a free version.”

Judging by the crappy ad laden apps that sit in the top rankings of the App Store, it seems that consumers with iPhones are willing to endure these ads if that means no money out of pocket. And you know what company is better at making free, but ad-laden products? *Google*.

I highly doubt that iPhone users will jump ship en masse to Android, but you have to stay open to the possibility that sexy Android phones with a lot of free apps is potentially a far bigger draw to the general market than anything the iPhone can offer on any front.

Hell, it *might* even be better for the iPhone long-term to get these users over to Android.

[1]: http://daringfireball.net/2013/10/design_quality_as_a_sustainable_advantage?utm_medium=App.net&utm_source=PourOver

The bookkeeper at my company used to (she is now retired) have this routine — it was something like this:

• Sit down at her desk with coffee in hand.
• Grab a stack of recycled paper bits that are about 2/3 the size of a full page of paper — all unlined — held together with a binder clip.
• With her half-chewed Bic in hand she would then proceed to write down her todos for the day.

As the day progressed, anything that came up would be added below a horizontal line she would draw at the bottom of the page. As the week progressed she would repeat this routine every morning and would trash the list from yesterday.

As a devoted and devout OmniFocus user this has always amused and baffled me.

The thing is, my new bookkeeper does this too. In fact, most people in my office do something very similar to this. My wife uses the Apple ruled Notes app for crying out loud.

*** 
So when Kyle Rosenbluth contacted me a few short months ago to see if I wanted to help him out with a new app he was making — he got my attention.

Kyle’s idea was a todo list app that we would soon come to know as Begin.

Begin is made with everyone else in my office in mind.

(Disclaimer: I consulted with Kyle on the app — that’s a fancy way of saying I helped where and when I could, but don’t have ownership in the app. Yes to compensation though.)

Through the entire process of making Begin, I have been trying to guide an app that my wife and coworkers would love to use, and that I would be proud to encourage them to use (but that I wouldn’t have to teach them how to actually use).

Something simple. Something with almost zero learning curve. Something that worked the way their brains work.

And then, perhaps because I needed to constantly test the app, something else happened: I started using the app regularly.

That’s not to say I am done with OmniFocus, but I fell in love with Begin. (I am too biased so I will stop here…)

Begin is $0.99 and iOS 7 only. You don’t have to take my word for it, here is some of the press:

• Christine Chan at AppAdvice.
• Sid O’Neill at Crate of Penguins.
• A Very Nice Looking John Moltz.
• Patrick “Minimal Mac” Rhone.

If you do nothing else, do me a favor and check out the site for Begin before you move on to the millions of other new apps launched today.

[Brennan on the Mailpile blog][1]:

> Af[t]er 4 phone calls, the last of which I spoke to a supervisor, the understanding I have come to is, unless Mailpile provides PayPal with a detailed budgetary breakdown of how we plan to use the donations from our crowd funding campaign they will not release the block on my account for 1 year until we have shipped a 1.0 version of our product.

That’s some bullshit from PayPal. PayPal is one of the worst online banking solutions, but it is also the largest and most popular. They are holding about $45,000 of the Mailpile funds, but Mailpile is confirming they will still make the product happen — which is great.

Now, to shame PayPal into admitting the truth here. (I tend to think it may be governmental pressure on PayPal since Mailpile is a secure email service.)

Update: [PayPal has released the funds](http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/09/paypal-freezes-45000-of-mailpiles-crowdfunded-dollars/).

[1]: http://www.mailpile.is/blog/2013-09-05_PayPal_Freezes_Campaign_Funds.html

Elliott Kember [has a post up which details a security flaw in Google’s Chrome browser][1]. The flaw is that if you enter `chrome://settings/passwords` into Chrome you are taken to a screen which shows you the saved passwords in Chrome. Nothing crazy about that — you can do that for Mac OS X by opening Keychain Access. What’s crazy about Chrome, is that unlike Keychain Access you can click a button in Chrome to show your password in plain text, all without any additionally security (like asking for a password ala Keychain Access).

NO, *really* — you could literally password mine any Chrome user (assuming they use Chrome to manage the passwords) just by asking them if you could use their computer to check your email— you’d be done before they suspected a thing.

But that’s not the worst bit in my book.

Now Justin Schuh has reportedly (not sure if he is verified in any way there), the head of Chrome security, has [taken to Hacker News][2] to *defend* this approach *and* chastise Kember.

Schuh:

> It matters that you {Kember} don’t seem to understand the threat model here. You think your passwords are protected somehow in other applications, but they’re simply not. The fact is that they’re still trivially recoverable, and if the bad guy can read them at all than *[sic]* he already has access to fully compromise your entire OS user account.

That’s not the argument, Schuh, the argument is that Chrome is doing a shit job securing its passwords, not that all other apps are secure. But that deflates the argument…

And:
> So, you’re arguing that we take measures to make users think they’re safe when they’ve already surrendered any pretense of security. Effectively, you’re asking that we lull our users into a false sense of security.

Bullshit, Schuh, bull-*fucking*-shit. There’s a difference between passwords that are trivially recovered by a layperson and passwords that are trivially recovered by a developer. If you give a Mac developer 5 minutes on my Mac to recover as many passwords as possible the best route will be Chrome (again, if I used Chrome for password storage) — not looking through plists or application resources (among other things) to find passwords. In five minutes it is trivial for anyone aware of this “feature” of Chrome to password mine a huge amount of passwords.

While Schuh may be technically right about how insecure other password storage is, it is hardly an excuse for making password recovery *even easier* for jealous spouses, exes, roommates, etc. Just because Carpools don’t require TSA level screening, doesn’t mean that Airplanes would be fine without said screening.

I would highly recommend you delete all passwords in Chrome, buy 1Password, and switch to a browser that gives a shit about your security (i.e. not Chrome).

I’ve been using Chrome on my Mac for websites that require Flash, but I’m done — it’s deleted.

**UPDATE**: A few readers have emailed in to say that Firefox is just as bad… Which leaves you with Safari.

[1]: http://blog.elliottkember.com/chromes-insane-password-security-strategy
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6166886