I became a steady user of Scratch App (Review) on my iPhone for quickly creating notes. What won me over was the how quick it was to create a new note in Dropbox. By enabling the auto-title option, I can just drop into Scratch and enter a note. Two taps later, it’s saved to my “Notes” folder in Dropbox.
With iOS 6, this workflow has improved greatly. Now I can launch Scratch by voice and dictate the note.
Here’s a good tip about using VoiceOver to read email. After some trial and error, I found that this also works perfectly in WriteRoom1 for reading back notes out of Dropbox.
I setup triple-click to enable VoiceOver. Now I can quickly launch WriteRoom via Siri and navigate and read back notes with my phone in my pocket. This will be a finger saver during the Massachusetts' winters.
This does not work so well in Nebulous Notes, which separates each line into a text field.
MakeUseOf has a nice review of Whitelines notebooks and iOS apps. It’s similar to the latest Evernote and Moleskine collaboration.
The paper is subtly marked to allow the scanner app to auto orient and correct image layout and color. It’s a nice idea and I’m sure it works great. I’d still prefer a better sketching and handwritten notes app on iOS. I’d really love to see an industry standard that can be adopted by paper manufacturers.
I thank WeatherSnitch 2 for sponsoring this week’s Macdrifter feed. WeatherSnitch 2 is gorgeous and full featured. I’m a sucker for a good weather app, so while they are a sponsor, I spent my own money buying the app for myself and my family. Good stuff.
Finding the perfect weather app isn’t easy. Most apps rely on free information; providing the bare minimum and accuracy that leaves much to be desired.
OmniFocus for iPad 1.6 is out today with support for iOS 6 and SUPPORT FOR TEXTEXPANDER. Big day. I just cried a little.
Note: OmniFocus for iPhone was also updated with TextExpander support.
Here’s a nice little tool I made in Pythonista for iOS (review). This script is using Brett Terpstra’s awesome heckyesmarkdown web service, which is extremely useful and underrated.
To use this script, I copy a URL to the iOS clipboard and jump into Pythonista. I trigger this script to get the web page in Markdown encoded text.
This URL: http://www.macdrifter.com/2012/09/nfc-is-a-crutch.html
is turned into plain text and put back on the clipboard.
I have very little to say about the iPhone 5 announcement that has not already been said by a dozen other people. But I do have a strong opinion about the lack of NFC.
I’ll skip the rumor mongering that lead to the NFC speculations and get straight to it. I’m glad Apple is not using NFC in the new iPhone. My iPhone already has one of the best data transmission options available, a retina display and a high resolution camera.
Coincidentally, after raving about how much I like Pythonista (previous review) for my iPad on the Systematic podcast, they went and released a big update with new features and a transition to a universal app.
Pythonista 1.1 addresses two of my biggest complaints: lack of search and poor documentation. They also added a bunch of other awesome stuff I didn’t know I wanted but really like.
Without a doubt my favorite addition is the quick launch toolbar.
I’m a big fan of iThoughts HD for iPad.1 I use it everyday. It’s my third most used app behind OmniFocus and WriteRoom. This weekend, iThoughts received another significant update that included updates to the core product and an update to the In App Purchase bundle that has been designated as “Early Access”. The early access features2 now include:
Search Passcode Lock Doodles The doodle tool is a nice addition and the search is a must have.
Bastion is a great game and it’s available on iOS now.
