Linked List: April 12, 2016

Tuesday, 12 April 2016

The Talk Show: ‘Option P’ 

Serenity Caldwell returns to the show. Topics include the new 9.7-inch iPad Pro, using an iPad for “work”, podcasting microphones, the damn Siri Remote for the new Apple TV, the Star Wars: Rogue One teaser, and more.

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Bez 1.0 

Wow. Bez is a new vector graphics editor for iPad by developer Mike Swanson of JuicyBits, with great support for the Smart Keyboard and Apple Pencil. I’m just blown away by how good this app is. It’s a serious, professional-quality design tool. Fascinating to me, too, as a long-time Mac UI nerd, at how “pro” style iOS apps are evolving.

It’s a free download with just about everything enabled, and a single $8 in-app purchase unlocks the rest. Just remarkable. I even love the name.

Glenn Fleishman on TextExpander 6 

Glenn Fleishman, writing at Macworld:

Scown says Smile stores snippets at rest in unencrypted form on database servers operated by Compose.io, an IBM company. The company evaluated using solutions in which data is always encrypted except during the moments items are needed for syncing or updating, and found the other security elements — such as how passwords were restricted — were lacking in its evaluation.

There’s a difference between unencrypted and insecure, and it’s not de facto unsafe that Smile has made this choice. An attacker has to defeat multiple lines of defense to obtain the raw data — like two-factor authentication — and the raw data in snippets isn’t likely to be as valuable (and thus it’s much less likely to be a target) as, say, information stored by a password-syncing company like AgileBits or LastPass. Data encrypted “at rest” is yet another bar an attacker has to pass, but it’s not insuperable, either.

However, I believe Smile’s approach is naive given the current security climate.

This is my primary concern about TextExpander 6. I see some amount of risk, and no benefit, with storing my text snippets on Smile’s servers.

Smile Adjusts TextExpander Pricing 

Greg Scown from Smile:

We will apply a lifetime discount of 50% off the Life Hacker pricing to customers of any past version of TextExpander. That amounts to just US $20 per year. In our initial rollout, we offered the discount for the first year only, and that was a mistake. We value our long-term customers, and it’s important for us to demonstrate that in our actions. Thanks for bearing with us as we sorted this out.

(To those who’ve already purchased an annual upgrade plan, we’ll apply two months of credit to make up the difference. Please give us a few days for this to be reflected in your account.)

Some people just don’t like subscription pricing, so no adjustment on the price will make everyone happy. But $20 per year feels much more in line with TextExpander’s scope. Kudos to Smile for addressing this — I’m sure it’s been a rough week for them.

We will continue to sell and support TextExpander 5 for OS X and TextExpander 3 + Custom Keyboard for iOS for those who need it. Some of you can only use Dropbox and/or iCloud at work. Some of you cannot or will not purchase subscription software. You’ve told us that it’s important to serve you in this way, and so we shall.

This seems untenable in the long run. How long are they going to keep developing TextExpander 5 in parallel with 6? It’s hard enough to keep one version of an app up to date, let alone two. And TextExpander 5 won’t be generating any revenue. Plus, these sorts of system-wide utility apps often need significant work when major new versions of MacOS ship.