MacStories Weekly: Issue 64
In this issue: Textastic, Federico bridges Workflow and Zapier, Anders Borum’s Home screen, plus Workflow Corner requests, Q&A, Tip, Links, App Debuts, stickers, and a recap of MacStories articles.
MACSTORIES RECOMMENDS
Great apps, accessories, gear, and media recommended by the MacStories team.
Recommends
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Textastic is one of the geekier text editors available on iOS. The app is not a simple Markdown editor like iA Writer or Byword. Textastic has more in common with text editors designed for programmers like BBEdit and Textmate on the Mac. However, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t also appropriate for someone writing prose instead of code. In fact, Textastic plays a specific, but important role in the production of MacStories and Club MacStories articles.
One of the killer features of Textastic is the fact that it has syntax highlighting for over 80 different file types, including many programming languages like Objective-C, Perl, and Python, as well as support for HTML, CSS, and Markdown. If you use TextMate, on a Mac, you can even import any custom syntax definitions you use in that app.
Textastic has one of the most innovative selection schemes I’ve seen on the iPad. Placing two fingers on the screen opens a circular puck for moving the cursor and selecting text. The puck has a handle so it can be dragged around the screen and four directional arrows for moving the cursor. The center of the puck is divided into two sections for selecting text to the left and right of the cursor and can be used in combination with the arrow buttons to select text.
Textastic also has a unique extra row of keys above the keyboard. Instead of just one character per key like many apps have, Textastic has five. Tapping a key inserts the character in the middle of the key, but tapping and swiping in the direction of another character inserts it instead. The feature is a clever way to cram an unusual number of special characters onto the extra keyboard row without having to scroll horizontally. Textastic also has an extensive set of supported keyboard shortcuts and a URL scheme that supports document creation, opening, appending, and content replacement.
The feature that I think I like the most though, is the ability to open text files stored on GitHub using Working Copy and edit them in place without creating a duplicate version. iA Writer can do this too, but Textastic goes a step further by letting you create folders in the app’s sidebar that correspond to different GitHub repositories. Once saved in the sidebar, you no longer need to drill through a document picker to find what you want. Instead, I can view and edit any of the dozen or so documents that make up an issue of Club MacStories Weekly, moving quickly among each.
Textastic is also highly customizable with a vast array of settings to make it your own. If you have occasion to edit code on the go or would benefit from the versatility of features like Textastic’s Working Copy integration, this is a text editor worth trying. In addition, Textastic is available for the Mac.
MACSTORIES COLLECTIONS
Board Games for iOS, Vol. 1
Splendor
Splendor is the sort of game that’s easy to learn, but hard to master. It centers around the simple task of collecting colored gems which can then be used to purchase cards that earn you points; the first person to reach a certain number of points wins. There are a lot of strategic factors to consider, though, with each decision you make requiring thought and planning if you hope to do well. Splendor provides local and online multiplayer options, and also an interesting Challenges mode that resembles a Campaign in a videogame. The app is well-crafted and one of the best looking board game ports I’ve found.
Paperback
If you took a deck-building card game and combined it with Scrabble, Paperback would be the result. In a round of Paperback you draw a hand of cards from your deck, and each card contains one or more letters. Your task is to spell a word with those cards that earns you the most money; common letters earn little cash, while uncommon letters score more cash. That money is then used to buy more cards – either cards that will earn you greater amounts of money in the future, or that give you victory points. Games can be played solo, against AI opponents, or in local multiplayer across both iPhone and iPad.
Ticket to Ride
The most popular board game in this collection, if you’re familiar at all with modern day board games you’ve likely heard of Ticket to Ride. The Ticket to Ride app has been around since early 2012 and has received frequent updates since early 2014. It’s a fun, simple game where you’re tasked with placing trains along a map of the U.S. to fulfill the various routes you’ve been assigned. Maps for other parts of the world can be unlocked through In-App Purchases. The app’s developers have provided gameplay modes to fit every situation – on iPhone and iPad you can play Tutorial, Solo, Online, Local, and Pass & Play.
Castles of Mad King Ludwig
One of my wife and my favorite games, Castles of Mad King Ludwig places you in the role of a Master Builder who is tasked with creating a unique castle for Mad King Ludwig. In each game, Ludwig has a different set of preferences for what his dream castle should be like, which leads to some funny results. In every round there is an auction-type phase where players can each purchase a new room for the castle they’re building, then immediately place it on that castle. Players take turns setting the prices of rooms, and receive the payments for those rooms when it’s their turn. The game has a great Training mode to teach the rules, and can be played against local or computer opponents on iPhone and iPad.
Exploding Kittens
Exploding Kittens came into the world with a bang, as its physical version became the most-backed Kickstarter project of all time in February 2015. It’s a unique card game with a Russian roulette element to it, where the last person standing wins. Players must draw a card at the end of each turn, and if it’s an Exploding Kitten they immediately lose (unless they have a Defuse card in hand). Though this sounds tremendously simple, various cards add a lot of flavor and strategy to the mix. The game can be played online or locally against other people, but there’s no mode for playing Solo against the computer. Unfortunately there is also no iPad version currently available.
CLUB PERKS
As Club MacStories members, you'll occasionally have access to to giveaways, discounts, and free downloads.
Slopes
Slopes, the skiing and snowboard tracking app from Curtis Herbert, received a big update this week that allows users to search through their activity history. A one-week trip pass for Slopes normally costs $4.99, but we’ve got 30 trip pass promo codes exclusively for Club MacStories members who would like to hit the slopes with them this winter.
Simply enter your Club MacStories email address using the link below and we will randomly select 30 winners. Entries close 9 PM New York time on Saturday, January 28th. Winners will be contacted within 3 days.
Enter to win a free copy of Slopes*
*NOTE: This giveaway is limited to the first thirty (30) people who redeem a copy of Slopes.
TIPS
Tips and tricks to master your apps and be more productive.
Print to PDF on Devices without 3D Touch
One of the most long-running frustrations with iOS has been its inability to easily create a PDF out of things like webpages, emails, or notes. 3D Touch devices gained the ability in late 2015, but in a well-hidden way. When viewing a print preview, using 3D Touch on that preview creates a PDF version that you can then take action on using the share sheet.
Unknown to some, iPads and other devices without 3D Touch can also do this trick, but in a different way. When a print preview is loaded, rather than using 3D Touch, simply use pinch to zoom on the preview – bring two fingers together in touching the preview then spread them apart. A PDF version of your content is created, and you’re then able to use the share sheet to do something with that PDF in another app. This works with any content that can be printed, and it’s a trick I use all the time.
SHORTCUTS CORNER
Get help and suggestions for your iOS shortcuts and productivity apps.
Shortcuts Essentials
Bridging Workflow and Zapier Automation with Webhooks
I’ve talked before about how I like to be woken up in the morning by my girlfriend with a good cup of espresso. We’re on two slightly different schedules: I usually go to sleep a couple of hours after her, and she tends to wake up considerably earlier than I do. And because she wants to make sure that I get at least 7 hours of sleep every night, we needed a system that could let her know when to wake me up based on when I went to sleep.
(I know, I’m incredibly lucky to be with someone who puts up with me and my weird obsession to avoid the sound of alarm clocks.)
For almost a year now, I’ve been using a workflow that generates a timestamp and sends it as an email to Silvia. The workflow creates the timestamp by reformatting a date variable: it fetches the current date, then uses ‘Format Date’ to extract a time string to use in the ‘Send Email’ action. It’s all very basic, but it gets the job done and Silvia likes that she can look at her notifications after waking up and see when I stopped reading or playing videogames and went to sleep.
However, I also wanted a way to archive this sleep data (besides what is automatically captured by AutoSleep and Health) to visualize my habits and trends over time. I knew I wanted to involve Zapier and Google Sheets in this process, but I wasn’t sure how to send data from Workflow to Zapier without having to dig too deep into the Zapier API.
After some research, I realized that I could use Zapier’s own webhooks to make Workflow communicate with it and pass text data from the iOS app to the web service. The result is a bridge between two different kinds of automation that opens up amazing possibilities for mixed workflows to combine iOS and the web.
First, a clarification. Zapier’s support for webhooks allows you to POST data to a specific URL or catch data to trigger actions on Zapier. In our case, we’re going to use the second option: we want to be able to send data from Workflow to Zapier using a web request; that data will then be used as a trigger for other actions on Zapier. Effectively, instead of waiting for a condition to be met on a web service to trigger a zap, we’ll make Workflow activate one by POSTing data to a webhook manually (for more on web requests and APIs in Workflow, read my previous coverage here).
Setting up a webhook that listens for data on Zapier is fairly straightforward. Select the ‘Webhooks by Zapier’ action as a trigger, then choose ‘Catch Hook’; this will let Zapier wait for a POST or GET request to a specified URL before triggering something else. At the end of the setup process, Zapier will provide you with a URL for the webhook; copy this URL – you’ll have to paste it in Workflow later.
Triggering a webhook (and therefore a zap) from Workflow only requires two actions: ‘URL’, to define the webhook URL provided by Zapier, and ‘Get Contents of URL’, to perform a web request that will trigger the webhook.
For my sleep log, I needed to pass data from Workflow to Zapier, which meant I had to build a POST request to send data to the webhook. To do this, set the Method of ‘Get Contents of URL’ to POST, then assemble a JSON request body that includes the variables you want Zapier to see. If you’re familiar with web APIs and dictionaries in Workflow, this should be relatively easy to grasp: each key contains a value, which in our case are the day and the time when I went to sleep and ran the workflow.
You can create a request body that is a dictionary or, alternatively, add individual Text keys that contain variables or arbitrary strings of text.
The first time you set up a ‘catch’ webhook on Zapier, you’ll be asked to test it by waiting for data to be passed to it. To perform this configuration step, copy the webhook URL from Zapier, prepare the Workflow actions, and run the workflow with some test data; you just need Zapier to see that you can talk to the webhook, and you can finish setting up the data in Workflow later.
Once the test on Zapier is successful, you’ll get a confirmation screen where you can inspect the data sent to the webhook. As you can see in the screenshot above, Zapier will show you the key (with a bold font) and the value associated with it. If you have multiple keys, you’ll also end up with multiple values and, therefore, multiple fields to use in other Zapier actions.
At this point, the zap has been triggered and the webhook has fetched data that Zapier interprets as fields. Now, you can add as many steps as you want and use variables sent by Workflow to fill actions for web apps in Zapier. For my sleep log, I used two variables from Workflow to append a new row to an existing document in Google Sheets (pictured below), but you can use any other action supported by Zapier to do whatever you want with the fields parsed by the webhook.
By combining Workflow and Zapier with this system, you’ll unlock a deeper level of automation – a way to mix and match iOS workflows and apps with Zapier’s multiple chained actions and web API interactions. Once a webhook is set up, calling it from Workflow will only take a second and you won’t have to go through any other test screen, making it an ideal solution to quickly send bits of data off to Zapier before finishing with the local workflow on iOS.
The possibilities created by the combination of Zapier and Workflow are virtually endless; if you’re both into iOS automation and web services, there’s a chance you’ll consider using this method for a variety of workflows going forward. To get started and understand the basics of Zapier actions triggered by Workflow, you can get my Sleep Log workflow here.
SHORTCUTS CORNER
Get help and suggestions for your iOS shortcuts and productivity apps.
Member Requests
Question: I need a workflow to publish meeting notes that I’ve recorded in Apple’s Notes app as a Google document, placing the document in a specific shared folder on Google Drive. (Michael Welsh, @michaelwelsh)
There is no easy way to automate Notes and Google Docs with Workflow alone, but we can implement the Zapier webhook method I described in this week’s Workflow Essentials section to integrate Workflow with Zapier and let the latter communicate with Google Docs on the web.
To set this up, you’ll first need to create a new zap with a ‘Catch Hook’ trigger and paste the URL in the workflow, as described above. For this workflow, we’re going to send two separate pieces of data to the Zapier webhook: a file name for the document, and the contents of the note. The note’s contents will be fetched from the clipboard in the workflow, but you’ll have to type the file name manually in an ‘Ask for Input’ action.
On iOS, the workflow appears deceptively simple. All you need to do is copy text from Apple Notes, run the workflow, enter a file name, and wait a couple of seconds.
On Zapier’s side, things are more complex, but the service does a great job at abstracting what’s going on behind the scenes. Zapier will catch the webhook and the two variables sent by Workflow, which will become individual Name and Doc fields. At this point, you can use a a Google Docs action to create a new document: put the Name variable in the Document Name field, and the Doc variable in the Document Content field. Optionally, you can pick a destination folder on your Google Drive account by expanding the dropdown menu and navigating into your folders.
Once the zap is triggered, it’ll only take a few seconds for Zapier to transform text shared from Workflow on iOS to a Google document in the cloud. This is a good example of the possibilities created by bridging Workflow and Zapier through webhooks – particularly for apps that don’t expose automation features such as Apple Notes.
You can get the workflow here.
Question: In a recent newsletter, you had a Workflow Essential for saving emails from Airmail as tasks in Todoist. This is brilliant, except I don’t use Airmail and Todoist.
I was wondering if it can be adapted for Apple Mail and TaskPaper (with a text file that I sync with Dropbox). I’ve tried to adapt it, but I am failing thus far. Any advice? Can it be done with my preferred apps? (Jim Krenz, @Lecter)
Unfortunately, Jim, this workflow can’t be adapted to other email clients, let alone Apple Mail. The ability to create custom actions is unique to Airmail, which is even capable of generating message URLs and running custom workflows. Apple Mail doesn’t have any of these automation features and it doesn’t expose message links directly in the interface, nor does it have a scripting engine that can be automated.
Question: A number of email clients (e.g. Airmail, Dispatch) allow you to create an item in another app (such as a task in OmniFocus) and include a link back to the related email message. However, if you move the email afterwards – say, to archive it – the link is broken. This is a problem if you are processing your email and want to archive it once processing is complete. I wonder if there is a way to use Workflow to first archive the email, then get the link to the archived message, and finally to create the item containing the link to the archived email message in the other app? (Ben Jennings)
This shouldn’t be the case at all. The whole purpose of individual message URLs is to create a unique identifier that can reopen a message at any time independently from which mailbox it has been moved into. This has always been the case with Mail, Airmail, and other clients that support opening messages through URLs. All of the messages I save in Todoist with Airmail are archived and I can reopen them later. If this doesn’t work for you, I’d get in touch with the developers of the app and try to understand what is going on.
Question: I have a few cookbooks that I’ve purchased in the iBooks Store that I really like. However, when I’m actually cooking and shopping, I’d rather have the recipes in Paprika. The problem is that iBooks always likes to remind me that the material I’m copying is copyrighted, and surrounds it with quotes and some attribution. This is tedious to clean up in Paprika’s text fields. I’ve tried writing regular expressions, but I’m stymied by the many new lines that come with copying lists of ingredients and steps. Can you write a regex that will copy only what I highlighted to the clipboard? (David MacDonald, @davemacdo)
I’m not a big fan of the solution I came up with – whenever it comes to hardcoding plain text strings into regular expressions, I know something will break eventually. However, this will get the job done for now.
The trick was to isolate text with a multi-line regular expression that contains a hard stop for “Excerpt” in a second capturing group. This word is a constant in the text that iBooks appends to quoted text, and it allows us to separate what comes before (your copied text) and what’s after your selection (the junk Apple appends to the selected text, including a book’s name, URL, and copyright notice). With this workflow, you can select text in iBooks, copy it, run the workflow, and the cleaned up text will be pasted in the clipboard for you to place elsewhere.
There are obvious flaws with this workaround. For one, any passage that contains the word “Excerpt” will trigger the second capturing group and mess up the regular expression. Furthermore, this regular expression will only work for the English language, and if Apple ever changes the way iBooks adds cruft to copied text, the workflow will have to be updated.
However, between my dirty hack and what Apple does with copying text from iBooks, I think my solution is the lesser of two evils.
You can get the workflow here.
Question: While driving with CarPlay, I dictate notes to myself with Siri. However, I use Bear (thanks to MacStories), so I’d like to set up a workflow that automatically creates a new note in Bear whenever I tell Siri to create a note in Apple Notes – after which, I’d love for the note to be deleted from Apple Notes. (Darren Natoni, @darrennatoni)
Unfortunately, due to iOS limitations, it’s not possible for Workflow to monitor Apple Notes in the background and automatically delete notes inside the app. iOS is still behind macOS in terms of background execution of automated actions between apps. You could set up a ‘Dictate Text’ action in Workflow that sends the resulting text to Bear, but that would defeat the purpose of invoking Siri while driving.
WEEKLY Q&A
Your weekly correspondence with the MacStories team.
Question: Can you recommend a shopping list app? I intend to share a shopping list (not limited to groceries alone) with my family members too. (Anonymous)
If you’re looking for a dedicated shopping list app, I know AnyList is a solid solution for iOS and the web, with good sharing options and an elegant design.
In our household, however, we rely on a shared Todoist project to add items to a shopping list. The advantage of our system is that Todoist can be integrated with Alexa, so my girlfriend and I can talk to the Echo in the kitchen if we think of something we need to buy and add it directly to the shopping list.
Question: How do you record your iOS screen, for example, when you need to show how a workflow works? Currently I’m using QuickTime on my Mac, which natively supports recording an iOS screen, and put the video on YouTube. How do you do this without the help of other devices? (Philip Wang, @rfphilip)
Alas, it’s not possible to record the screen of an iOS device directly on iOS. There isn’t an official screen recording feature that iOS apps can use, and every time a developer manages to sneak a screen recording app into the App Store, it gets promptly removed by Apple. Whenever I need to record a video for an iOS app, I have to use QuickTime too.
Question: How do you manage notes in Trello for MacStories? (Manuel Olavarriaga, @1manuo)
We use Trello in a variety of ways. For MacStories itself, we have a board called Editorial Calendar where we keep a roadmap of future longform stories to be published each month, so we have an idea of the big projects coming throughout the year.
The most used Trello board, though, is the Club MacStories one, where we have set up lists for each section of the newsletter and where every week Zapier creates a new list for the next issue. Lists for each section (Links, Workflows, Q&A, etc.) are filled with cards that have either been created with Workflow or with Google Forms and Zapier. Every week, we prioritize cards, assign them to each other, and comment on them before dropping them on the current week’s list, which means they will be taken care of before Friday, when MacStories Weekly is due.
I haven’t used Trello for personal notes, but it’s an interesting idea that I would recommend exploring given the service’s plethora of integrations.
Question: I’ve been a convert of the iPad Pro lifestyle for a while now (it’s great for student life), but have only recently been getting into iOS automation. I’ve been focusing on Workflow (which truly is remarkable) but with the recent update to Editorial, I’m wondering if it’s worth implementing any workflows for that. I know Ticci doesn’t seem to use it as much anymore, but are there any use cases that are still interesting for it? (Zach Nielsen, @niels506)
I think Editorial’s automation features are still unparalleled when it comes to combining Markdown editing with Python scripting and visual actions. In Editorial, you can create workflows that reformat text in the editor without having to perform any manual selection or copy & paste. If you’re a student and want to automate note-taking, for instance, Editorial would be my top recommendation as it allows you to run workflows in-place. There is a bookmarks bar where you can pin workflows for quick access, and you can even set up snippets (similar to TextExpander) and assign keyboard shortcuts to workflows.
Editorial can also work with PDFs (a Markdown document can be converted to a PDF document with custom styling options based on HTML and CSS), it’s got an in-app tabbed browser, and, of course, a whole Python engine to write your own scripts. If you need to take your note-taking or research tasks to the next level, I would highly recommend taking a look at Editorial.
INTERESTING LINKS
Great reads and links from around the web.
The latest update to GarageBand for iOS has added the ability to import a project from Logic on the Mac. Robby Burns took the feature for a spin.
The HBO GO app has gained support for Single Sign-On on iOS and tvOS earlier this week, allowing for deeper integration with Apple’s TV app.
John Gruber on the likelihood of losing AirPods and why they might not be so “destined to be lost” after all.
If you use both Todoist and Google Inbox, you can now interact with richer email notifications that show you more information about tasks and projects.
Reacji Channeler is a new tool from Slack to automatically forward messages with specific emoji reactions to other channels.
Snowman, makers of Alto’s Adventure, have teamed up with game studio Agens to create Skate City, a skateboarding game coming to iOS and Android.
Box Notes, the service’s dedicated note-taking app, has a new design and desktop apps for Mac and PC.
Recode’s Kurt Wagner on how Instagram went into “building mode”, shipping features at a regular pace.
It can be hard to be an Alexa, Alex, or Alexis if there’s an Amazon Echo nearby. Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal talks to real-life Alexas and the trouble the Echo has caused them.
Marius Masalar has a nice breakdown of the strengths and weaknesses of Todoist and 2Do and which is best for different use cases.
The super-rich of Silicon Valley are hunkering down for doomsday. Evan Osnos of the New Yorker takes a look at their preoccupation with the apocalypse.
Stephen Hackett of 512Pixels.net sniffs a Mac. Then he smells a candle. Watch his video for his conclusions about Twelve South’s New Mac candle.
THE ALBUM
We love stickers in iMessage, and here we'll share some of our favorites.
Wolfy The Dog
Wolfy likes to have fun whether he’s listening to his boombox, having ice cream, or partying and works well when you want to send a quick reaction to something to a friend.
Pixel Presidents
Pixel Presidents features excellent black and white pixel portrait for every US president through former President Obama.
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Fun Fat Dog
Fun Fat Dog is exactly what the name suggests. He’s a cute round animated dog often accompanied by a little white kitten – cuteness overload.
Freaky The Cat
Freaky The Cat is a sticker pack with cats playing guitars, offering flowers, singing, and more. They’re a little odd, but entertaining.
Watermelon Willy
This sticker pack is a winner in my book thanks to a single sticker – the disgusted watermelon face with the side-eye. Willy is pretty fun overall, but I feel like we can all relate to that particular face.
A Thing a Day
Benjamin Swygart has launched a sticker pack that promises to add a new sticker every day – 7 illustrations a week realized in collaboration with different artists. The pack is already over 60 stickers, ranging from anthropomorphous food and body parts to creepy creatures and funny animals. There’s something for everyone in this pack.
APP DEBUTS
Noteworthy new app releases and updates, handpicked by the MacStories team.
Readder for Reddit
Readder is a new Reddit client that’s also available on the Apple TV and as an iMessage app. Readder supports multiple Reddit accounts, 3D Touch to preview links and images, gestures to navigate between links and images, and tons of other settings to tailor the Reddit experience to your needs. If you’re a heavy Reddit user, this free app (with In-App Purchases) is worth checking out.
Vantage Calendar
Featured by Apple this week, Vantage is a unique calendar app that takes a different approach for visualizing your agenda. Events are displayed on a tridimensional timeline where every day is a solid block containing events that can be marked up with custom fonts and stickers. Vantage is delightfully skeuomorphic in how it displays information, and it’s a nice change from the traditional way of viewing calendars and daily events.
Ingage
Whether you’re a business owner or want to present an idea to someone, Ingage wants to help you craft beautiful presentations that blend video, animations, and multitouch in a unique experience that can be shared online and synced across multiple devices. Ingage combines rich media with touch gestures to tell your story in a different way than the usual PowerPoint and pitch decks.
Streaks
We covered Streaks early last year. It’s since won an Apple Design Award and continued to add interesting features. Streaks is designed to help you pick a handful of activities and turn them into good habits that you don’t have to think about anymore. One of the keys to Streaks is lowering the barrier to logging the habits you are trying to create. The app already excels in this area, but the latest update adds a Today widget that you can access from anywhere in iOS eliminating even the friction of switching apps. The latest version of Streaks also adds a new activity that can be tracked – the Apple Watch Activity rings.
Currency
After almost three years since its last update, Currency is back with a big update. The currency conversion app has been refreshed with Retina graphics, a new settings screen, support for Plus-sized iPhones, haptic feedback, new country flags, updated animations, and other additions. The sum of the parts is a well-designed, easy to use currency converter that you can use with the currencies of over 180 countries.
Pikka
Pikka is a new color picker app for macOS. Created for designers and developers, Pikka, by QuotleApp, lets you pick a color and generate multiple shades of it. Color values in multiple formats are supported making Pikka a great choice for developers regardless of the type of programming they are doing. In addition, colors can be organized into and shared among folders to organize the palettes you create.
Handle
Handle brings together your email inbox, to-do management, and calendar into unified iOS and Mac apps. I personally prefer to keep each of these functions separate, but there is undeniably integration benefit to having each in one app. Emails can become tasks, reminders, or added to your calendar. When you open your calendar, your to-dos are right there along with your other obligations for the day. Handle also has a desktop app, Apple Watch app, and integrates with Gmail and G Suite. With a recent update, Handle added shared task lists, delegation of tasks to someone else on a shared list, and a focus mode that allows you to start a timer from a task.
HOME SCREENS
Friends of MacStories share their iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch Home screens.
Anders Borum
Twitter: @palmin. Creator of Working Copy, a powerful iOS Git client.
For me, the iPhone SE is the ideal pocket computer, fitting comfortably in my jeans. I do need folders on my Home screen to hold everything together, but Apple will need some kind of weird magic to make me switch from this iPhone model.
If you glance at my Home screen, the least used apps are at the top with more heavy usage as you move down. Almost everything at the top is built-in apps. Apple excels at solving the main use cases and making things work well between iOS and macOS.
My most used apps are Messages, Safari, Mail, and OmniFocus.
Mail is where I do technical support. About 80% of my support email is handled on the phone and being able to get this done in the off minutes during the day gives me more time to focus on hard programming tasks when back at my desk.
OmniFocus is my external memory. Emails that require additional work end up here along with links to articles. Ideas are dictated into OmniFocus and because I’m the only one seeing these tasks, it doesn’t matter much when dictation gets a word wrong.
There are some incredible tools on iOS for development that I collect in a separate folder.
Textastic is a very good general purpose editor and Prompt gives me terminal access to my Linux servers. Being able to connect from my phone gives me peace of mind and did save my bacon once.
I guess every Club MacStories member knows Pythonista, but it would be wrong not to mention it. The ability to create custom action extensions and Today widgets is so useful that I have been forced to learn Python, which for me is an iOS-only programming language.
Continuous is a very cool tool and incredible technical achievement that I haven’t used as much as I wanted to. It lets you write and run C# and F# programs where changes to the code appear immediately in the running program. I have been doing C# programming for years and F# has a lot in common with my favourite functional programming language Standard ML; I am not sure why I haven’t used Continuous more. Some kind of Today widget integration or action extension support would open up a bunch of use cases for me.
Half the apps in the Productivity folder could just as well have been in the Development folder, but Calca stands out as a great notebook/calculator that lets me write out equations and calculations and see the results as I change values. I use this when programming, when I do not have a good grasp of the task yet. Calca lets me explore the data and the calculations before coding and ends up being a good starting point for writing tests.
I really love Twitter and if I am not careful it consumes too much of my time. I switch between the official Twitter client and Tweetbot with no clear favourite. Sometimes polls force me to use the official app and sometimes I need more than a day of battery life that only Tweetbot can provide.
Both clients have been placed in the Reading folder to avoid excessive use. I have iBooks sitting where my Twitter client used to be, such that muscle memory should help me read books instead of fooling around on Twitter. That trick worked well for a few weeks.
I use Workflow for lots of small things and I like how easy it is to throw something together. It helps me add tasks to OmniFocus, clone repositories in Working Copy and it calculates how many hours I have spent on consulting gigs. Tomorrow it will do something else.
Working Copy is the Git client I make and since I use Git when developing the app, I’m able to carry around the source-code inside the app itself. I cannot do app development on the phone, but if I need to check how something is working I can jump in and look. The website for Working Copy is a Git repository as well, which I can edit, preview and deploy from my iPhone with the help of Transmit.
PREVIOUSLY, ON MACSTORIES
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