βοΈ Micro Social: A New Third-Party iOS App for Micro.blog
And Some Very Early Feedback
Greg Morris is someone whose blog I’ve followed for a while, but I didn’t know was a developer. But now he has released a third-party iOS client for Micro.blog!
As he’s mentioned, it happened “quite accidentally”, and it’s very early days. So this post is just me letting people know it exist, and providing some very early feedback.
To Greg:
Oooh, I love that you’re making this! I’m 100% in the target demographic for Micro Social. (Someone who uses, but doesn’t like, the default Micro.blog app β and is willing to pay for something better.)
I’ll try to provide some more useful feedback later, as I’ve used the app more, that you can use if you’d like. π
Here are some first-impressions:
(In general I like it! So these “negative” comments are meant to be constructive. π«Άπ»)
I’m currently running an iPhone 13 Mini β so the phone is probably both older and smaller than what you use. βΊοΈ
I had several crashes two updates ago, but it’s fine now. But I’ve noticed that avatars load slowly when I scroll (even if I scroll slowly). Maybe you can have the lazy loading start “earlier”?
I really like that you have avatars and names on a separate line, so you can use full-width content. (Instead of having weirdly large left-margins, that far too many apps has. I have strangely strong feelings about thisβ¦)
I also really like the “card look”:
However, on my Mini phone, I wish you were a bit more stingy with the padding, as the content gets too narrow. Especially on the timeline, due to the extra arrow on the right side. Is this needed?
The Paper Dev Should Give Their Take on a Tot-Like App
I recently wrote a review of Iconfactory’s great app, Tot.
I like it β but editing text in it does make me miss my favourite places to do this: Paper and Bike.
And this process made me realise that the Paper dev has all* the pieces in place to give their take on an app like this. And it makes sense from a business perspective!
The pieces
- A best-in-class text engine, that can jump between Markdown (plain-text) and Preview (rich text) Modes.
- This is also already great on both Mac, iOS, and iPadOS. (No Apple Watch, though.)
- The UI is made to be minimalistic, mimicking just a piece of paper.
- Paper ships with several beautiful accent colours, and great support for them in the UI.
- It also provides good export features. (Including for copy/paste.)
Here’s what I would do:
My suggestion for a name (also to make it easier to discuss here) is Slate.
A slate is a thin piece of hard flat material, historically slate stone, which is used as a medium for writing.
β Wikipedia
The next question is how much it’s OK to copy from others. Let’s pretend it’s fine to take all β¦
The best parts from Tot:
Fixed number of notes
I really like that Tot only supports 7 notes, that are all “internal” to the app.1 I also love how they’re distinguished from each other by colours.2
Having exactly 7 would a bit on-the-noseβ¦ But one of the reasons I liked the “Slate” name, is that you could one-up, rhyme, and go for 8!3
Perhaps the 8 notes could be regular, accessible Markdown files in the app’s iCloud folder, to simplify automation? But that you can’t create other notes with the app, and it can’t “find” other notes if you place them there.
The business model
Quick Recommendation #6: Arco (video game)
Original, Tactical, Recreational
Last year, Panic published a terrific indie game I’d like to recommend: Arco. I’ve only played the first two acts, but I like it a lot so far.
It has great pixel art, music, writing, and story.
It also has a genuinely innovative turn-based combat, and guilt system, which makes in-game choices interesting.
It’s available on PC, Mac, and Switch. I’m playing it on Mac, with a controller β and it works flawlessly. (If you want to get it for desktop, I recommend getting it through Epic, as the dev gets a larger piece of the pie.)
Click here to see all my quick recommendations!
App review: Tot
Yesterday, I wrote about Iconfactory’s newest app, Tapestry. Today, I want to do a little review of another great app of theirs, Tot.
“Your tiny text companion”
Tot is a scratchpad app, for fleeting notes. It was inspired by Tyke, which explains the need for this well:
I made Tyke because when I’m working I often need a little bit of scratch paper to jot something down.
Sometimes it’s because I need to paste it someplace or other times it’s because I just want to clear the formatting and edit it.
I used to use a new text editor window for that job. Now I don’t have to.
I use Tot for things like writing down everyone’s take-away orders. I also use it when I need to keep some text in a small Mac window that stays on top, or small pieces of info I might want to look up from time-to-time.1
The business model is also both clever and fair: It’s totally free on Mac, and then you pay once for iOS (β¬20) and Apple Watch (β¬2).
My favourite part of it, is that it allows you to store 7 notes. It’s more than 1, but still limited. You swipe between them, and they are beautifully colour coded.2 This makes it so you don’t fall into the trap of wanting to name your notes, or keep them forever. You’re supposed to move on.
These 7 notes are synced between Mac, iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, with great apps for each.
Purposeful limitations
βοΈ My Issues With the Tapestry Design
The 1.0 of Iconfactory’s latest app, Tapestry, just landed. Like the new Reeder, it’s a “unified timeline app”, that collects feeds from many different sources, like RSS, Reddit, YouTube, Mastodon, and more.
Some really like this idea (for instance for collecting Bluesky, Mastodon and Micro.blog in one place), while others don’t. I’m not yet sure where I stand.
I backed the Tapestry kickstarter way-back-when, so I’ve been able to beta test it. I like a lot of the ideas β and the way it handles feeds/connectors and default apps seems fascinating and robust. But due to some issues with the visual design, I’ve never been able to get into itβ¦ This post is my feedback letter to the devs, which might also be interesting to others.
Great designers
I spent β¬40 on the Kickstarter β but even if I’ll never get into the app, I won’t call it a complete waste. Because Iconfactory is a cool company, that I don’t mind supporting.
And they are excellent designers! So when I disagree with things about their work, I’m, of course, a bit nervous, heh.
Mini Gang, unite βπ»
I’m still rocking my trusty ol' iPhone 13 Mini. And I think part of my issues stem from me using a phone that’s probably smaller than what they’ve optimised for. I also get that it’s a 1.0, and that much of the work has gone into some really cool tech on the backend. So I hope it’s possible to see that this feedback comes from a place of love, and hope for the future!
And I get that many might like the things I don’t. So I think the answer is more customisation β like this settings screen from Mona:
Messy and cramped
I like colourful designs. And Tapestry has this neat idea, where it gives timeline entries different colours depending on the type.
It might not come across perfectly in screenshots, but with my Mini phone in hand, I find a combination of things here unpleasant.
Quick Recommendation #5: The Mad Max Video Game
It’s not often I finish video gamesβ¦ One of the reasons, is that I often play games you can’t finish β like Europa Universalis and The Bazaar ποΈ. But I actually just finished, an r/patientgamers favourite: the Mad Max game, from 2015.
And it’s actually at 80% off on GOG at the moment!
It’s not a fantastic game β but if you like Mad Max (like me), I can recommend it. I saw someone on Reddit call it “the perfect mid-budget game”, and I agree.
It’s an open-world game, with a world of great flavour. The car-combat is especially good and unique.
But one piece of advice, if you decide to check it out: Exploring the open world gets quite repetitive β so it’s not worth it to approach the game with a completionist’s mindset. Just treat it as a bite-sized little treat, and do the stuff you find fun and run through the story. If you buy it for like β¬4, just try to get that amount of money’s worth.
I played in through Steam, and on my Mac Mini. It says it’s not available for Mac, but installing it still works, for some reason. (Not 100% sure about the GOG version, though.)