Linked List: October 9, 2015

Friday, 9 October 2015

Dan Provost:

With iOS 9, Apple introduced something called the Safari View Controller. It is, essentially, a plug-and-play web view that developers can use in lieu of building their own web viewer. The benefits of this are numerous: much less coding and maintenance for developers, a unified experience across apps for users, and the Safari View Controller can take advantage of the same privileges of Safari proper, such as saved passwords and content blockers.

The UI, however, has one serious flaw. It is a pain in the ass to dismiss.

I’m not sure I agree with his suggestion that all the browser chrome remain on screen while you scroll. Apple could fix this just by keeping the top chrome visible, with the “Done” button. But he’s right that it’s a problem that needs to be fixed.

Rick Tetzeli: ‘The Steve Jobs in Aaron Sorkin’s Movie Could Never Have Saved Apple’ ★

Rick Tetzeli:

Biopics should never have to adhere to a stringent re-enactment of the facts. But this is a movie about a man who’s been dead just four years, whose legacy is still being defined. Most moviegoers will look at the movie as biography — which is a pity, since the character portrait Sorkin hopes to create by distorting the truth is so much less interesting and nuanced than Jobs really was. […]

The Steve Jobs portrayed in Steve Jobs could never have saved Apple. In the perpetually changing technology industry, simple stubbornness is the kiss of death. Sorkin has created a caricature, an entertaining and modern take on the archetypal tortured business genius. It’s kind of fun, especially for people who don’t know much about how business gets done. But characters like the “Steve Jobs” of this movie don’t last long in business — they burn out, or they get thrown out.

Medium’s New API ★

MarsEdit developer Daniel Jalkut on Medium’s new API, and its support for Markdown:

Unfortunately, the Markdown support through the API seems to be a one-time conversion from Markdown to HTML, at the time of submission. This means users can write in Markdown for the initial composition of a post, but any further edits (through the web interface only, see above) will need to be done using Medium’s default rich WYSIWYG editor.

A more attractive long-term solution for Markdown fans would be to support storing Markdown text literally in Medium’s database, and converting it to HTML only for presentation on the web. This leaves the pristine Markdown available for perpetual edits either moments or years after the post is first published. This would require updating the web interface to support editing content as plain text, but would be a welcome change for anybody who favors editing in Markdown.

Overcast 2 ★

Lots of new features, headlined by a new streaming engine (you can start listening to un-downloaded episodes as soon as you hit Play). But more interesting to me is the new business model. Marco Arment:

Overcast 1.0 locked the best features behind an in-app purchase, which about 20% of customers bought. This made enough money, but it had a huge downside:

80% of my customers were using an inferior app. The limited, locked version of Overcast without the purchase sure wasn’t the version I used, it wasn’t a great experience, and it wasn’t my best work.

With Overcast 2.0, I’ve changed that by unlocking everything, for everyone, for free. I’d rather have you using Overcast for free than not using it at all, and I want everyone to be using the good version of Overcast.

If you can pay, I’m trying to make up the revenue difference by offering a simple $1 monthly patronage. It’s completely optional, it doesn’t get you any additional features, and it doesn’t even auto-renew — it’s just a direct way to support Overcast’s ongoing development and hosting without having to make the app terrible for 80% of its users.

Really curious to see how this works. $1/month for a great app that I use almost every day seems like a great deal.