Review: Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover

As my readers may or may not know, I recently took a week-long trip to Disney World[1]. I just happened to be there the week before Stephen Hackett[2], who I work with over at Tools and Toys but haven’t yet had a chance to meet in person. We flew back maybe a day or two before he got there, which, talk about timing, right? I just hope he was able to locate all the “easter eggs” I’d strategically strewn about the various Disney parks for him.

Although I could have asked Shawn ahead of time to take off from my Tools and Toys duties, I figured I could just continue posting during downtime at the hotel each night. I mean, those posts aren’t required to be insanely long or anything, and I already had a few ideas lined up. Easy peasy right?

Wrong.

Something about the trip completely messed up my immune system, and each day seemed to bring a new “gift” in the form of severe allergies, migraines, a throat/lung infection (I’m still dealing with the cough from this one), fever sweats, and general exhaustion. It was taking all my energy to have any fun at the Disney parks, and that was with frequent rests and lots of water being consumed. So…much…water. By the time we got back to the hotel, I would almost immediately crash on the bed.

I managed to eke out one T&T post, then accidentally miss a day entirely, before I finally gave in and asked Shawn if I could just have the week off. He was totally cool with it, and I’m grateful for that. But since I didn’t know any of this was going to happen beforehand, the night before our flight, I stopped by my old Apple Store (where it turns out that I know almost none of the employees anymore) and picked up a Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover for my iPad.

I’ve never really needed one of these, maybe I don’t even need one now, but I figured a trip would be the perfect time to try it out. My typing speed is okay on the iOS soft keyboard, but it will probably never compete with what I’m capable of on a physical keyboard. It’s one of those things kids will someday think I’m old-fashioned for, which I’ve come to accept.

Since this was the night before the trip, I didn’t get a whole lot of time with the keyboard at home. As usual, I had waited until the last minute to get my packing done, and it was necessary to go to bed early, so I just let the keyboard do its initial full charge for a couple hours or so, and then stowed it away in a bag right before hitting the sack.

My first real chance to get it back out of the bag and toy around with it was the next morning, after we’d made it through airport security and gotten some much-needed coffee.

Over the next couple of hours, as we waited for our plane boarding time, I began putting the keyboard through its paces. First, I fired up Day One to begin journaling our trip experience, then began writing up the first-impressions about the keyboard that eventually led to this article. I also went through some trial-and-error to find out what the function (FN) keys on the top number row could do, which I’ll be discussing in a bit.

My first impressions were extremely positive. Suddenly, writing on the iPad felt like a breeze compared to when I was typing on-screen, and I enjoyed having so much more screen space to work with. Since returning from the trip, I’ve had a lot more time to spend with the keyboard. Now that I’ve given you my life story, I’d like to share my thoughts.

The Hardware

A concern of mine before buying the Ultrathin was that the keys might be too small. I’d seen lots of pictures of course, but never really had a chance to try the thing out. It’s not like they keep them out on display at the Apple Store. In my usage so far, I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find that the keys aren’t too tiny at all. Now, they are a bit cramped together, but this rarely hampers my typing ability. In fact it’s quite a comfortable experience, much more so than I expected.

The keys feel very responsive and give a satisfying click when pressed. I had worried they might feel cheap and plasticky, but they feel great to me, and it seems like they will hold up well over time.

The case itself is quite nice too. When the iPad is in-use, it rests in a magnetic slot that stretches the entire length of the keyboard. This magnet is stronger than you’d expect; I can pick up the iPad by its bezel while it’s sitting in the slot, and the keyboard will travel with it, rather than falling off. I feel secure knowing the iPad isn’t going to suddenly tip over backwards out of the slot.

The rear edge of the case has another strong magnet, but this one is in the form of a hinge. To “close” the case, you remove the iPad from the keyboard slot and — making sure the home button is on your right side rather than your left[4] — merely lower it onto the exposed magnet strip on the hinge. The hinge will typically lift up to meet the iPad, and from there you just lay the iPad face-down on the keyboard like a laptop screen.

While it’s closed, the case’s aluminum exterior almost makes it appear as if two iPads are facing each other screen-to-screen. It also feels quite durable, although I’m not crazy enough to try any drop tests with it. When the case is opened again, much like with Apple’s Smart Cover, the released magnets within the iPad alert the display to turn on automatically.

Whether it’s open or closed, the Ultrathin has a relatively small footprint. It was the absolute perfect size to fit on every airplane tray I tried it with, and it stows away in a bag just about as easily as a standalone iPad does.

One last thing with the hardware: I’ve found myself occasionally using the Ultrathin merely as a stand for reading ebooks, watching videos, and other media consumption. It doesn’t have to be used for writing at all times. The magnetic slot holds the iPad at the perfect angle for such things, and the keyboard is small enough to stay out of your way even when you’re not typing.

Shortcuts and Function Keys

Another surprise I’ve had with this keyboard (are you sensing a trend yet?) is the fact that it supports some of the keyboard shortcuts you would use on a Mac:

• CMD+C and CMD+V will copy and paste selected text, respectively
• CMD+Z will undo the previous action
• CMD+A will highlight the entire document
• Initially I was disappointed by the lack of Home and End buttons for skipping to the beginning or ending of a line, but after playing around with various key combinations, I discovered that CTRL+[any directional arrow] will skip the cursor around this way. Left and Right take care of the same functions that Home and End would, but you can also use Up and Down to skip to the top or bottom of the entire document. Very nifty.
• The ALT button will produce all kinds of interesting results in combination with the alpha and numeric characters. For example, ALT+P produces a pi (π) symbol.

In addition to that, the entire top row of number keys doubles as a set of useful functions in concert with the fn key. I’ll list them from left to right:

• The first button in the row acts as a home button, no fn key required.
• fn1 opens the iPad’s Spotlight search page.
• fn2 switches between any languages you’ve enabled. In my case, the only option that pops up, no matter how many times I press it, is English.
• fn3 summons or dismisses the on-screen soft keyboard.
• fn4 highlights the text to the left of the cursor’s current placement, adding one word with every press.
• fn5 does the same, but to the right of the cursor.
• fn6 cuts any selected text.
• fn7 copies any selected text.
• fn8 pastes any copied text.
• fn9 plays/pauses media.
• fn0 mutes the audio.
• fn- volume down.
• fn+ volume up.
• fn+delete acts as a sleep button.

And the ones I use most? fn4 and fn5 for selecting text[3], and the media keys: fn9 through fn+. The rest are nice but basically unnecessary to my workflow.

This is only tangentially related to shortcut keys, but I’ve been relieved to discover that all my TextExpander snippets work perfectly with this keyboard. I didn’t know what to expect in this regard but it hasn’t let me down yet.

The (Few) Bummers

With almost any review there is bound to be a list of cons. I don’t like dwelling on negatives if I can avoid it, but obviously it’s important to be honest. Thankfully, this list will be a short one.

• There is no way to check the current battery status. You basically either know that it’s got a decent remaining charge, or it’s about to die. From what I understand, the way it notifies you of a low battery is a blinking red light, but I have yet to see it for myself. They claim that the battery can last for six months on a charge if used for two hours each day, so the lack of a battery status isn’t an enormous deal but it would be nice to have it.
• There is no Caps Lock indicator light, so the only way to see if it’s enabled is trial-and-error.
• Holding the delete key doesn’t gradually speed up the backspacing process the way it does when using the iOS keyboard. You’ve got to use either the fn4/fn5 system or touch the screen to use the iOS text-selection loupe.

And that’s about it. I’ve tried my hardest to look for any other “flaws” but this is all I could come up with. The keyboard is just that good.

In Conclusion

The Logitech Ultrathin has completely changed the way I write on my iPad. The luxury of having an entire screen to work with, unhampered by an on-screen keyboard, along with the ability to type almost as quickly as I would on a full-sized keyboard, is a huge boon for me. Not to mention the awesome portability of the thing and its amazing battery life.

The overall feeling I've had during my experience with this keyboard is one of pleasant surprise. I went in with somewhat low expectations and came out feeling very positive vibes about my purchase. I don't know why I didn't give it a try sooner.

For me, there is no going back from this setup. Of course, I’ll always be able to use the on-screen keyboard if needed for quick jobs, but as long as I can help it, the Ultrathin will always be nearby. I think I’m in love.

---

1. From April 13th through the 20th, if you include the two Saturdays of flying.  ↩

2. His son Josiah was granted such a trip by the awesome Make-A-Wish foundation.  ↩

3. This almost makes up for not having a mouse/trackpad. Speaking of which, the way this thing makes the iPad feel like a laptop has sometimes fooled me into instinctively reaching for a trackpad that isn’t there. Completely user error, but I thought it was an interesting fact. Time will tell if this habit goes away completely.  ↩

4. The orientation matters because of where the magnets reside within the iPad.  ↩

Status Board for iPad

Three years and one month ago, the guys at Panic (one of my favorite Mac/iOS development studios) unveiled a cool project for their office: the Panic Status Board. It contained all kinds of useful and up-to-date info concerning:

• Ongoing projects (deadlines, who's working on what, etc).
• The number of support emails that are queued up for each of their apps.
• The office calendar.
• A revenue tracker.
• Even a local bus route schedule.

And what kinds of results did they see in the office after putting up the Status Board? Here's how they described it:

“Our support turnaround time is faster than it’s ever been. Just the simple act of “publicizing” those numbers — not in a cruel way, but a “where are we at as a group?” way — has kept the support process on-task and, I think, made it a bit more like a video game. (It helps that when all the boxes are at “zero”, a virtual bottle of champagne appears on-screen, and a physical one is likely removed from the fridge.)”

Fast-forward a few years to this past Monday, when Panic announced via Twitter that they would be releasing a brand-new app this week. They also added a cryptic little image to the row of iOS apps on their site.

I was excited enough just from the announcement alone, feeling anxious to try the new thing from these guys, but then later that night I received an unexpected email from Cabel Sasser, giving me early access to the release candidate! I've never been given beta access to something so high-profile before, so of course I had to check it out, right?

As you can probably guess by now, it's an iPad version of the Panic Status Board, and boy is it beautiful.

In his email, Cabel listed off several notable features about the app, but this one in particular caught my eye:

”Best of all, Status Board has one of the best setup assistants you'll ever see. I'm not joking.”

He wasn't too far off. When you first open the app, you're greeted with some quirky-but-friendly elevator music and a "manual" that guides you through a few pages of basic setup.

Allowing access to my location, calendars, and Twitter accounts was as easy as tapping 'OK' a few times, but I had to sign into an IMAP account rather than simply giving it access to my email accounts. Odd.

After completing the basic setup, I was taken to the actual Status Board screen, where a few default modules were already in use: time, weather, upcoming calendar events, etc. Here's what it looked like after I fiddled around a bit:

I'm particularly proud of the Twitter @reply calling me a moron at the lower left :)

Editing each panel is pretty simple. Just tap on the little gear icon at the upper left and then tap a module to edit it. Editing looks like this:

Any of those icons on the bottom dock can be dragged up into the grid and placed wherever you like, then resized to a certain extent by dragging on the little corner markers. Some nice touches are the little sounds and bouncing animations used when entering edit mode or tapping on the dock icons.

The first six "Instant" icons (Clock, Weather, Calendar, Email, Twitter, and News Feed) are simple to configure in various ways, while the last three "Pro" modules (Graph, Table, and DIY) require some external tinkering and a server to host CSV, JSON, or HTML files. These are where the most interesting and personalized graphs/charts can be created.

Some example uses for the Instant modules include: tracking how many emails you get each day, displaying follower counts for Twitter, listing upcoming events, scrolling through news stories from various sources (including any RSS feeds you add), etc.

Possibilities for the Pro modules are nigh endless. I imagine one popular use will be analytics for web traffic (Mint) or budgets/expenses (different Mint).

Note: Before moving anything into place , you should decide on a preferred iPad orientation; portrait or landscape (I chose portrait). Once you have everything in place, the panels dont really convert well upon turning the iPad over; they'll be all shifted around and spaced differently than how you set them.

Each module also seems to have its own specific parameters for how large or small it can become, which somewhat limits their flexibility in my mind, but this doesn't leave me with a negative impression or anything.

While in edit mode, you can tap the buttons at the top right to access other options:

• The monitor button toggles the External Display function. Your Status Board can be shown on an external monitor using AirPlay or a video cable. From what I understand, the ability to do so will require a separate in-app purchase, but details on pricing are unavailable at this point.
• The second button is a toggle between 'iPad' and 'HDTV' modes. HDTV mode just opens more space on your grid for extra modules. Since this causes modules to appear shrunken on your iPad screen, I'm guessing the title is literal and that this is meant to be used when outputting to a large external display.
• The last button allows you to share your Status Board via email (which shows a screenshot of your board gift-wrapped with a ribbon), or send some feedback directly to the guys at Panic.

To remove any modules, you can simply drag them off-screen and they'll disappear.

After playing with this for a couple days, I'm left with a few thoughts. For one thing, I just can't state enough how gorgeous and easy to use this app is. Nothing about the setup or UI has felt too difficult to deal with, and it's especially pretty on my Retina iPad.

That being said, I can't say this app has a clear, useful purpose in my life at the moment. Don't get me wrong, this could definitely be useful for small teams of people who collaborate on projects or share an office together. It's just not for a single individual like myself that isn't constantly looking at calendars or weather reports, and who doesn't own a business that needs to track sales trends.

If they could somehow get this information onto the iPad's lock screen, that would make it much more useful for me. But as a separate app, I probably won't spend much time in it except to ogle the pretty graphics from time to time.

Another way I could see myself getting more out of the app is if I can make better use of the "Pro" modules someday. As the app inevitably grows more popular, perhaps people will begin to share their custom code snippets for those modules. I can't wait to see what interesting things people come up with. Until then, I'm afraid I won't be able to utilize the app to its full potential, which seems quite vast really.

If this kind of thing interests you, then pick up Status Board for $10 on the App Store. Just because it doesn't yet fit into my life doesn't mean it can't work for you. If nothing else, buy it just to support a fantastic group of people who always do excellent work.

Mophie Juice Pack Air

MacStories recently featured a crazy-good-but-temporary deal: $15 for a refurbished Mophie Juice Pack Air for iPhone 4. If you're not familiar with the Air, it's a rechargable power case that allows you to essentially double your phone's battery life. Normally, these things go for at least $60 brand new, and we just happen to be going on a trip to Disney World in a couple weeks, so I couldn't pass this deal up.

In fact, I bought two of them; a white one for myself (I wanted a red one but they were sold out already), and a black one for my wife. They just arrived in the mail a couple days ago, and I wanted to share my thoughts so far.

This is the first time a case of any kind has touched my iPhone 4S in the year-and-a-half that I've owned it. I used to keep an Incase Slider on my old iPhone 3G, but the 4S is just too beautiful to cover up, in my opinion. I only mention this because the sudden additional heft and weight the Air adds to my iPhone makes it feel like a tank. Nerd alert: it's like Iron Man's Hulkbuster armor compared to the standard model.

It still fits in my pocket of course, but it creates a noticeable bulge (the jokes write themselves) and I constantly sense the phone's presence, unlike when it's sans-case and I forget it's even there. On top of that, while it's not an ugly case, it's definitely not beautiful either. I have a feeling I won't be keeping the Air on my phone all the time. More likely, it'll stay in my bag and only be brought out as needed.

I also don't much care for the fact that the sleep button becomes very recessed in this case, when it normally sticks out a bit at the top. A button that is normally quite easy to use becomes much more difficult to access because you have to curl your finger around the case's thick plastic and down into the recess.

I don't mean for this to be a negative review though. Aside from its quirks, the Air has a lot of nifty features:

• There's an on/off toggle for the battery component of the case. This means you can keep the phone in the case all the time without the phone constantly being charged. Somehow I'd never heard about this toggle, and merely assumed people just put the cases on as needed. Seems so obvious now that I've got one in my possession.
• Rather than drilling mic/speaker holes all the way through the bottom of the battery, they've opted to place a couple of ports on the front of the case to redirect audio toward you. Audio doesn't seem to be muffled in my early tests, but we'll see over time.
• On the bottom of the case resides a row of 4 status indicator LEDs and a button. Push the button, and the LEDs will light up to show you how much charge the battery is currently holding. While the case is being charged (which is done via a miniUSB > USB 2.0 cable), the lights will indicate how far along the charge is, as shown in this Vine video I made.
• When your iPhone is in the case and you've got the case plugged in, I believe both items will charge up simultaneously, and you can still sync your iPhone with iTunes if you want. Haven't tested this yet, though. Keep in mind that this is the iPhone 4 Juice Pack; I've heard that sync functionality has been removed on the newer Air models but I'm not entirely sure on that so do your research if you're going to buy a new one.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with my purchase so far. These cases won't be seeing a ton of use just yet, but when we go on our trip I expect to put them through their paces quite a bit.

Stephen Hackett Reviews the Pebble →

"It’s clunky, and made worse but the fact that when the Pebble and iPhone lose connection, the Pebble has to be re-setup.

This means turning off the iPhone, flipping it to Airplane Mode or simply leaving it on your desk when you go to lunch means your phone will forget what its supposed to do. Or leaving your watch inside when you mow the grass. Or leaving your phone in your bag when you workout. Or do anything a normal human does, really. It blows.”

Yikes. Glad I didn't hop on the Kickstarter bandwagon with this one.

'Conditions' Weather App

A lot of people have been talking about the latest simple weather app for the iPhone, Conditions. It's only a buck, so I decided to check it out for myself.

Right off the bat, I loved the interface. Very clean and minimal, which is exactly what I like in my weather apps. I don't require barometric pressure readings, nor do I need to have a list of various cities. Just give me a description of the current local weather and maybe show what the next few days will be like. That's exactly what Conditions does.

The typography is nice, the icons are charming, and there's even a nice little pull-to-refresh thermometer animation. Another nice touch is that you can simply tap the screen to dismiss or display the 5-day weather report. Very nice if you don't care about anything but the current temperature.

I think this will be my go-to weather app for a while.

App Store link

Riposte for App.net

I've been spending more and more time on App.net recently, for a few reasons:

• I like the slower-moving pace of my feed over there. If I don't check on it for a day or two, I can still catch up pretty easily.
• The quality of conversation is typically higher than what you'll find on Twitter. I think this is in part because...
• ...It allows you to write 256 characters per post rather than only 140.

The thing is, none of the 3rd-party ADN clients have looked all that great to me. I've been using Netbot since I'm familiar with the interface, being a Tweetbot user and all, but it gets old switching between two apps that look almost exactly the same.

Well, now there's a new client known cleverly as Riposte (pronounced like "repost") that people have been clamoring over for the past week or so. I decided to drop the $5 and check it out, and I'm glad I did.

The shortest way I can summarize Riposte would be to call it the Twitterrific 5 of App.net. That wouldn't quite be doing it justice though, so I want to talk about some of its specific features I really enjoy.

For one thing, it has a full-screen mode just like Twitterrific 5. This comes in handy since many people take advantage of the ability to write longer posts on ADN. With no bottom toolbar to get in the way, scrolling is much less of a pain.

This is a heavily gesture-driven app. Rather than wasting space with a 'Back' button, you simply swipe left-to-right to go back. Swipe up/down with two fingers to enable/disable dark mode, much like a night switch. Swipe right-to-left on a post in your timeline to view details and conversations.

The best gestures are used when editing text, though: swipe left or right with one finger to move the cursor one character at a time, swipe with two fingers to move by words, and swipe with three fingers to jump to the beginning or end of a line. These gestures are so useful, I wish Apple would implement them throughout all of iOS.

Another great feature is the ability to enable or disable "Hop-Ons," meaning that you can either show or hide replies from users in conversations when they don't @mention the main participants of the discussion. Anyone who uses ADN knows how long conversations can get as more people jump in, so this feature is a godsend.

Speaking of conversations, there's a neat feature that allows you to email a nicely-formatted copy of a given conversation to someone else.

There are lots of other little things I like, such as the overall speed of the app (even on cellular, everything feels very snappy) and the nice look of profile pages, but I'll leave it to you guys to find all the goodies yourselves.

I can say that there aren't too many negatives to speak of. I'll list the ones I've noticed thus far:

• In-app search only looks for usernames and profiles. You can't just look for posts that contain specific terms.
• No Droplr support even though it supports CloudApp.
• No landscape keyboard.
• Usernames don't auto-complete when composing a post; you have to tap the '@' icon first and then search for the name that way.
• The option to upload a photo doesn't include a 'Use Last Photo' choice, which would be nice.

And that's pretty much it. If you're looking for a new ADN client, this is the one I'd recommend at the moment.

Get it for $5 on the iOS App Store.

Day One Review

When it comes to New Year's resolutions, a certain group of people often say something to this effect:

"Why wait for the new year? There's never really a bad time to create a new habit. You shouldn't wait until some vague day in the future when you think the stars will align and all the conditions will be perfect, just start right now."

While this position is somewhat understandable, one can't ignore the simple power in the changing of years. We all know that it simply marks another revolution of the Earth around the Sun, and yet the psychological effect on society remains profound.

It evokes a sense of sweeping away the old and bringing in the new. It helps us compartmentalize our successes and failures, making them easier to track throughout our lives. For those of us procrastinators who have egregiously passed on earlier opportunities to better ourselves or form new habits, the start of a new year can be a wonderful catalyst.

I'm a perfect example of this. I've never been one to keep a journal, but as 2012 came to a close and I thought about what exciting things the future may have in store, I figured I should find a way to start tracking the little happenings in my life so that I can look back 20 years from now and see how the puzzle pieces fit together.

I also have a terrible memory that I expect to worsen with time, so it behooves me to document memories before I lose them.

This is where Day One for iPhone comes in. I'd always heard great things about this app, but like I said, I had never been the type to keep a journal. When the idea of recording memories finally sprang into my head, the first app that came to mind was Day One (that's the power of word-of-mouth advertising, I guess).

If anything would get me to get into this kind of habit, it would be having the app easily accessbile in my pocket at all times. After using it for a couple weeks now, I'm entirely in agreement with all the positive feedback people have been giving it.

This thing makes me want to journal. Creating an entry is super easy since the home screen provides two gigantic buttons for starting either a photo entry or one with only plain text. Once I've started up a new entry, before I've even typed anything, that entry is immediately useful due to the date, location, and weather being filled automatically.

Were I to write nothing at all, I could still look back to that day and remember exactly where I was, maybe also remembering how suddenly cold it was even though the day before had felt like spring. That alone could cause other memories to bubble up, and that's pretty powerful stuff.

When I do write, however, it's a sheer joy. Text is rendered beautifully in 16pt Avenir (or any of the other 9 typefaces available), I can write in Markdown syntax just as I've become accustomed to doing on Unretrofied, and I can even hide the top toolbar in order to create a more open and relaxed writing environment. You get a sense that the developers really wanted you to enjoy your time in the app.

The four "pages" of the keyboard toolbar.

And what a lovely app it is. Everything is rendered beautifully, right down to the icons used throughout. There's no unnecessary clutter, nor is it difficult to browse through your previous entries.

There are quite a number of ways to navigate around the timeline, whether it's through the powerful search feature, the tags you've created, entries you've starred, a visual calendar you can tap around, and even a gallery of all the photos you've ever uploaded.

Speaking of photos, I recommend adding one to as many entries as possible because it makes them feel even more polished and fun to peruse later.

I can't think of a single thing I dislike about Day One. They seem to have thought of everything. It's got Dropbox sync, Foursquare integration, an option to set a passcode for better privacy, an extensive built-in FAQ section that truly answered all my questions early on, and even the ability to have the app remind you to write a journal entry when you forget.

Day One has fully converted me the world of journaling, and there's no going back now.

Pick it up for $5 on the iOS App Store.

Review: Twitterrific 5 for iPhone

For quite a while now, I've been a dyed-in-the-wool Tweetbot user. I've tried just about every major Twitter client out there over the years, but for me, nothing ever really came close to the experience produced by the guys at Tapbots. Until recently, it had a permanent slot on my iPhone dock.

Well, nearly two weeks ago another contender entered the ring: Twitterrific 5. I took this as an opportunity to do an experiment. I've grown perhaps too comfortable with Tweetbot, so I decided to remove it from my phone entirely while I gave Twitterrific 5 a shot, thereby preventing me from succumbing to temptation and switching back at will.

Before I get to the review, I should briefly discuss the history of Twitterrific. The original Twitterrific was the first Twitter client to be released for the Mac. The later-released iPhone version was a landmark in app design, in fact the winner of an Apple Design award in 2008. It originated several Twitter conventions we now take for granted, including the use of birds in its imagery, the word 'tweet', and even the character counter displayed while composing tweets. You can view a timeline of the app's UI progression here, put together by the developers themselves.

Up to speed now? Good.

With Twitterrific 5, The Iconfactory has overhauled the entire design from the ground up, and it's beautiful. I usually don't enjoy dark themes in apps because they tend to make me recall some awful, awful Winamp themes from my teenage years, but Twitterrific 5 pulls off the dark look very nicely. The use of various pastel colors on a black background creates a pleasant Star Trek vibe.

Even if I hadn't enjoyed the dark theme, the developers have graciously included a light theme that switches the background from black to white. There's a setting to auto-switch to dark mode at night, if that's your thing. Other colors (i.e. text) are unfortunately not configurable, but the app is surprisingly theme-able otherwise. There are five typefaces to choose from: Helvetica, Proxima Nova (my current choice), Signika, Museo Slab (my 2nd favorite), and Calluna. You can also change font size, avatar size, and even line spacing.

Animations are fluid for the most part. One standout is the pull-to-refresh animation, which features an egg hatching into a bird that flaps its wings as the timeline loads, then teleports into nothingness when finished. Some people have expressed distaste for this animation, but I find that it supplements the app's charm.

What I can't get over is just how simple it feels to get around in the app. Switching between multiple accounts is a breeze (simply hold down on your avatar for a couple seconds and the list appears), your lists are only a tap away, and the main navigation buttons (Home, Mentions, Direct Messages, Compose) are prominently displayed at the top of the screen for easy access. Tap to highlight a tweet, and you'll be presented with several methods of interaction, like retweeting or even translating the tweet. Tweetbot-like gestures have also been included: swipe right on a tweet to reply, swipe left to view conversations/responses.

There are all sorts of other tips and tricks I won't go into here, but they're all listed under [Settings > Help] if you want to check them out.

Twitterrific finally handles blocking correctly, as opposed to other apps out there. With most Twitter clients, if you block someone it won't remove their previous tweets from your timeline, it will only prevent future ones from appearing. In Twitterrific 5, blocking someone immediately removes all of their tweets from your sight. Not a feature I use a lot, but it's nice to see it implemented correctly for once.

Of special note is the new icon, designed by The Iconfactory's own David Lanham. I've been a big fan of his work for years now, so it's a pleasure to have one of his designs sitting on my iPhone's dock.

As much as I love the app, there are a couple issues to mention. While they nailed the fluidity of animations within the app, it still takes an oddly long amount of time to refresh the timeline or other pages. Tweetbot always felt nearly instantaneous in this regard, so the extra several seconds it takes for Twitterrific to complete the same actions is mildly irritating. I'm spoiled, I suppose.

Another oddity is that my DMs tab hasn't once displayed anything since I purchased the app. It's just an empty black screen, no matter how many times I refresh. I re-downloaded Tweetbot just to make sure I'm not crazy, but my DMs are indeed showing up there. Hopefully Twitterrific fixes this in a future update.

One last thing I should talk about is how this is definitely not an app for power users the way Tweetbot is. According to the developers, it was specifically designed to be a casual Twitter experience and power users would do well to stick with Tweetbot or something similar, especially if they like to manage their lists.

Lists are viewable in Twitterrific 5, but you can't edit them, create new ones, or add users to existing lists, at least not that I'm aware of. There are also no push notifications or "streaming" features, two things I know are already keeping certain users away. Doesn't bother me personally, though.

In conclusion, I would highly recommend this app to anyone but the most hardcore power users. What started as an experiment of going without Tweetbot for a while has turned into having a new favorite Twitter client in its place. It's a breath of fresh air in an otherwise overcrowded marketplace.

As of this writing, they're still having a 50%-off launch sale, meaning the app is going for $3. It's universal app as well, so it's basically a steal at that price. Go check it out.

One Night, Two Major iOS Releases

First up, Google Maps.

I've been playing with this app for the last hour, and I have to say that it's pretty nice. Animations are smooth, most settings are easy to find, and the voice navigation works well. One really cool feature: when using Street View at a particular location, tap the little double-arrow icon at the bottom left, and you can move the phone around to pan the camera on-screen, augmented reality-style.

One setting I disabled immediately was the 'Shake to Send Feedback' option. I won't be sending feedback to Google about incorrect map data enough for this setting to be useful, and in fact might be a hindrance if triggered accidentally. Also, when I first opened the app, I had the option to uncheck a tiny box that sends data to Google automatically. It's got to be one of the most difficult checkboxes I've ever attempted to tap.

In the end, I don't have any real reason to switch back from Apple Maps, but very nice work by Google here. Also, it seems that this app is only available for iPhone, no iPad version yet? Odd.

Next, 1Password.

Developer Agile Bits has released an entirely new version of their popular password generator/storage app. Everything has been redesigned from the ground up, and it looks great. Kinda reminds me of a Tapbots app, really (which is a good thing). The new icon is especially lovely. Currently on sale for $8, over 50% off from the normal price.

If you're at all concerned about password security, or if you're the type to use the same password for everything, you should get this app. You'll wonder how you lived without it before.

If you want a super-detailed review, Macstories has you covered.

Kind of a crazy day, what with these two apps plus Flickr's wonderful update earlier.

New Flickr App for iPhone

This morning saw an update to Flickr's maligned and oft-ignored iPhone app. Until today, it was basically usable for browsing photos and maybe uploading here and there, but the experience wasn't all that great. With this new update though, Flickr has decided to bring their 'A' game.

Clearly the new UI has been inspired by Instagram, right down to the addition of photo filters. As popular as Instagram has become, I guess it was inevitable that Flickr would one day see them as a competitor.

While the old app was a big sluggish and weird, the new app is sleek, beautiful, and quick. Photos load nearly instantaneously, and scrolling through the gallery of recent uploads by my contacts has been a joy. The new photo filters aren't too bad either. This was my first test shot:

I only recently started getting back into Flickr after years of neglect, but it feels like I'm late to the party because I don't see as much activity going on around there as I used to. Of course, there are still a few remaining diehard fans who have poured years of their lives into the service, but the rest? Who knows.

Now, with this fantastic update, I can imagine lots of people returning to their Flickr roots and I'm honestly pretty excited about that. It's Yahoo's one killer service and I think it deserves a chance to stick around for a long time. It's certainly been the topic of discussion on my Twitter feed today, and I'm taking that as a good sign.

Either way, I'll certainly be spending even more time on the service.