iPhone

This is how it should be: a Safari Extension I’ll use hourly

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Not only will I use it hourly but I want to use it hourly now. The quick news: 1Password will use Extensions so that within Safari, you can get it to enter your username and password.

The slightly less quick news with more detail and enthusiasm… In case you haven’t come across it yet, 1Password is one of those apps that stores your passwords for you. Fine. It also creates ones like Wel6cAct9iB9Bit (that really is one it created, I just got it to do that). It creates these strong passwords and then saves them for you so that you don’t have to remember. You just have to remember the one password you need to get into 1Password. It works on iPhone, iPad, Android, Mac, PC, Windows, all sorts.

The phone and tablet versions come with their own web browser too. So if I’m organised, I can go into my 1Password app, tap on the name of my bank and that browser will zoom off to their site. Goes to the site, enters my username and some of my security details, then it even presses return. Only with my bank do I stop there. With other things I log into like TheTrainLine.com, it does the lot. One tap takes me to the site and then into the site. Another single tap and 1Password has entered all my credit card details for me.

Except I’m often not that organised. Very often, I will go a site in the regular iPhone Safari web browser and after a lot of fiddling like picking train times, I will reach the login or credit card screen and wish I’d remembered to do this in 1Password. Usually, I nip over to the 1Password app, copy the detail I need and go paste it into Safari. But just occasionally, I’ve moved over to 1Password and redone the whole job just to save that schlepping about.

Not any more. Behind the scenes it’s going to be using Touch ID and Safari Extensions but no matter: in future, when I’ve gone to a site in the ordinary Safari browser, I will still be able to use 1Password to enter my details.

This is how it is on the Mac and PC: wherever I am, I can whack a login detail or an over-used credit card in with a tap or two. This is how it will be on iPhones and iPads.

The company isn’t saying when it will happen but there is a limited beta test going on now and it all requires the forthcoming iOS 8. So you can bet that when the next iPhones come out around September, so will the new 1Password. No idea yet whether it will be a paid upgrade or a freebie but whichever, I’m having it. (Though it must be said, as great as 1Password is in every other way I know, upgrading to a major new version is agony.)

Here’s where you can learn more of the latest official release of 1Password and here’s a shaky video of the beta in action:

Notification: will you marry me? (Y/N)

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Back in the olden days, like thousands and thousands of years ago, you’d propose enough times that someone said yes. And then you were off to the races, if the races were myriad wedding-planning problems.

Back in the not very olden days, like an hour ago, you’d be considered fancy if you had an actual wedding planner. A person. Films have been made about this.

But today, you need your smartphone and a whole category of apps made just for you:

Wedding apps have become increasingly popular in the last few years as millennials begin to wed. “We got Facebook in college, we got the first iPhones,” 27-year-old Ajay Kamat, who co-founded the photo-timeline app Wedding Party, told TIME. “We have an expectation that when we travel or shop or do anything, there are services and apps that will help make that experience better for us.”

These smart apps—which are trying to break in to the $53.3 billion wedding industry—help brides and grooms send invites, organize guests, hire local vendors, gather all the photos guests take, register for gifts and crowdsource money for honeymoon activities. Apps like Appy Couple, Carats & Cake and Wanderable are becoming favorites among savvy couples who want to streamline the logistics associated with events like bridal showers, bachelor and bachelorette parties, the rehearsal dinner, wedding and honeymoon.

With This App, I Thee Wed – Eliana Dockterman, Time magazine (12 June 2014)

Bet the iPhone apps are better than the Android ones.

The short history and long reach of iOS

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If I were going to contort this into a piece of advice about being productive, I'd be saying something about how small moves and tiny steps really add up. I think I'd also being saying that sometimes you need to say bollocks to everyone else and keep going. To know that it is better to take some criticism lumps now and really earn the praise later rather than try to please everybody each step of the way.

All that is true. I've just surprised myself. I was honestly thinking it was a contortion saying all that, that it was plainly a justification for just showing you something I enjoyed reading. But having written it down, I realise I mean it.

Still, I did just enjoy reading it. The Verge wrote about the development of iOS, the operating system that has underpinned every iPhone I've ever had:

In what is widely regarded as his greatest presentation ever, Apple's Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone to the world on January 9th, 2007. In the five-plus years since then, the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch have literally redefined the entire world of mobile computing. That world is moving so quickly that iOS is already amongst the older mobile operating systems in active development today. That certainly doesn't mean it's underpowered or underfeatured — quite the contrary. Through what can only be described as relentless and consistent improvement over the years, Apple has made iOS one of the most feature-rich and well-supported platforms on the market.

iOS 7, the system currently powering Apple's mobile devices, offers an easy-to-understand smartphone operating system to new users, a powerful platform for app developers, and a relatively un-fragmented experience across multiple devices. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about iOS is how similar the OS as it exists today is to the OS as it existed 2007, yet the number and breadth of features that Apple has baked in since then is mind boggling. Far from suffering from the “feature creep” that typically bogs down operating systems over time, iOS has managed to stay relatively snappy and is more internally consistent than anything else available today. And iOS 8 — launching on devices this fall — looks to evolve the story even further.

How did we get from a platform that began without third-party apps, multitasking, or even copy / paste support to where we are today? Read on to see exactly how Apple evolved its mobile platform over the years, in our history of iOS.

A Visual History of iOS – The Verge

HeySiri – so much for jailbreaking

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It was the one feature I liked on Android – though, as ever, that meant it was on one Android phone somewhere – and it was then the one thing that might make me jailbreak my iPhone.

OkSiri… makes Siri listen all the time. No pressing a button and waiting a mo before speaking to Siri, it is listening all the time. And specifically it is listening for a phrase such as “OK, Siri” that it then recognises as its cue to work.
This I Might Jailbreak For – William Gallagher (1 June 2014)

Glad I didn’t bother now. Maybe the one WWDC announcement that most grabbed me was HeySiri. (I don’t like that name any more than I do OkSiri, but.) It is exactly what that OkSiri is, except it’s official, it will work.

This I might jailbreak for: always-on Siri

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I’ve never jailbroken my iPhones: never worked around Apple’s software to get other, unsanctioned apps onto my phones. I look at the whole idea of hot-wiring your iPhone, of tweaking settings and having to exploit undocumented holes in the system and I just think to bollocks with it all.

If you want to get your hands that dirty just to install some game or something, go get yourself an Android phone.

Jailbreaking fans argue that it’s worth the effort because you get much better apps this way. You get all these fantastic apps that Apple won’t allow on iPhones for, you know, minor reasons like security.

Name one app that’s actually worth the trouble.

And while you do, let’s remember that this trouble is not a one-time deal. It is at least every time there is a new update to the iOS software – any update, not just the biggies like moving from iOS 7 to iOS 8. Anything. Get an update, go back to your screwdrivers. And hope that Apple hasn’t closed this particular loophole.

Except.

If I had to name one app that was worth it, I’d pick this. OkSiri brings an Android feature (not available everywhere, not a regular Android feature but available on at least one Android phone) that I would like to see on iPhone. It makes Siri listen all the time. No pressing a button and waiting a mo before speaking to Siri, it is listening all the time. And specifically it is listening for a phrase such as “OK, Siri” that it then recognises as its cue to work.

The website 9to5 Mac that reported on this also reports that it’s flaky and the execution isn’t as good as the idea. But that’s Android and that’s jailbreaking to me.

The best To Do apps for your phone

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I’ve said this from the start of The Blank Screen:

If you have a phone that can run a To Do app, get a To Do app

and

If you haven’t got a phone that can run a To Do app, get a phone that can

The reason is that you need your list with you everywhere and Post-It notes can’t cut it. It’s possible to lose them, it’s impossible not to end up with dozens of the wretched things.

Whereas a phone is part of you and moreover, any task you enter on that phone should then be everywhere. It depends on the app and the phone but, for instance, I’ll dictate a To Do task into my iPhone while I drive and know – know – that it is immediately on my office Mac and immediately on my iPad.

What I’ve been adding in lately is a list of specific recommendations. I can’t recommend phones, I know nothing about Android and if I said an iPhone 5something then you know the iPhone 6 would come out immediately.

But software, I can recommend.

Google any one of the following to find every possible detail plus oodles of reviews – plus in most cases, YouTube videos showing them in action.

For iPhone users

OmniFocus
Reminders (Apple’s own, you’ve already got this)
Appigo Todo
Clear
Wunderlist

For Android users

Any.do
Wunderlist
Todoist

Windows Phone

Sorry, I truly have no clue here and it is not for want of trying. You’ll be astonished how many Windows Phone articles there are about productivity apps which explicitly say they feature To Do software but then don’t. If you know a great Windows Phone To Do task manager, would you tip me off, please? I’m on wg@williamgallagher.com

Making more of small things – like iPhone tones

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My iPhone rings, I answer it. Other people, they turn it into art. This is the reason to tell you this today: a music producer named MetroGnome has released this:

He looks like he’s working an LCARS computer from Star Trek, but he also looks a bit talented. Nonetheless, I do prefer this slightly older piece by Mars Argo:

Why it’s worth grabbing free apps

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The rule is that Android users get free apps, iPhone users pay for them. I am an iPhone user and I am more than fine with paying for apps. The amount of use I get from them, the pitifully cheap prices, it’s not a debate. But I do get free iPhone apps and specifically I do often grab paid ones that are briefly on offer as freebies. I’ll do that in part because all those 69p purchases add up and I’ll do it mostly because I’m often poking around an area, looking for a type of app rather than a specific one. And then I also do it because there is a specific advantage:

Free is cheaper than paid.

Okay, there are two specific advantages:

Once you have an app, you have it forever

Actually, three:

Once you have an app, you typically get free upgrades

So if an app that I definitely want then I’ll just buy it. But if there’s one I fancy trying or that I think I will need at some point, I’ll grab it when it goes free – and I may even delete it immediately. Without opening it even once. Because I’ll open it when I need it and all I have to do now is download the thing. Actually, you don’t even have to do that: starting to download it is enough, as I found when I went through the Channel Tunnel part way.

Once you have officially bought the app, you can delete it and know that you are able to get it again whenever you want. For free. Even after the price goes back up, most of the time also after the app has been upgraded later. Some apps make their new versions completely new apps that you have to pay for again and there are apps that do vanish forever. You’re out of luck with those but otherwise, this all works. So, for instance, Lonely Planet made a lot of its travel guide apps free last year and I grabbed the lot, deleted the lot – and then brought back ones when I was actually going travelling.

Quick story? I once advised on an app that was so bad I gave the maker a list of 19 reasons it could not be released. They ignored me, submitted it to Apple, and Apple rejected it with 20 reasons. I still kick myself over the one I missed. But the maker sort-of addressed those 20, enough to get it on sale anyway, and I was required to have it on my iPhone. But it was so bad, I mean it was still so embarrassingly bad that I deleted it. Whenever I’d be in a meeting when I was asked a question about it, I’d just re-download it from the App Store, slog through trying to work out the answer, then delete it again. One day I was asked a question by one editor in the company and couldn’t get it back: another editor had approved it being removed from the App Store forever. I don’t know who that was, but he or she made me look bad in that meeting. And I applaud him or her for doing it. That’s how bad the app was.

But you want to know how to find when apps go free. Try an app way: download the Apps Gone Free