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Great article from Six Colors showing off the new Apple Maps update for downtown Boston. I’ve been blown away with the latest updates to maps. After seeing these and the amount of detail they bring, I really don’t know why everyone isn’t on Apple Maps at this point.

• A (not so) brief review of Apple Maps’s Boston landmarks

In iOS 16.4, it looks like Apple is adding device user guides to the tips apps. From MacRumors….

The Tips app now displays user guides for the ‌iPhone‌ and other devices that you might use with an ‌iPhone‌, including Apple Watch, AirPods, and HomePod. In previous versions of iOS, the Tips app only offered up the ‌iPhone‌ User Guide.

Good move, but I’d say it’s past time Apple goes a step further and add the Support App to the list of built in apps on devices. Such an amazing way to get support… if only people knew about it.

Other than that though, 16.4 is looking to be up to be a killer update.

I haven’t used Twitter in four days. 

On January 12th, third party Twitter clients stopped working. This came with no announcement from Twitter, or their leader, on whats going on. From the direction things have been going, and all the internal leaks, its almost impossible to say this wasn’t planned. I feel terrible for developers who have spent their time building these great apps and have just had their business wiped out right from under them. Calling it grotesque would be an understatement.

So I haven’t not been using Twitter by choice. Tweetbot has been my twitter app of choice since it came out in 2011. Everyday for almost 12 years I have used this software, and now it’s seemingly gone with no return in sight. This is something anyone could see coming. Twitter hasn’t been giving third party clients the latest APIs for years now, and with the direction the service has been going since Elon Musk purchased it, it was only a matter of time. Though, I don’t see why updating the third party APIs to include things like Ads, and even increasing the amount developers pay to use them couldn’t be a route they take. I pay for Tweetbot yearly and would have been fine paying a little more each year if it meant I got to keep using the app I loved. Hell, I would pay for Tweetbot and pay Twitter to get rid of the ads too. They blew it here.

However, one of the things I have loved about third party Twitter apps is the lack of the latest APIs. You don’t get ads, which was awesome. But you also don’t get all the terrible new stuff that they do as well. My timeline has always been in chronological order. I don’t want your algorithms. I don’t want your suggested tweets. I want a timeline of the people I follow. You know, what Twitter is.

It’s not just the timeline, though. Tweetbot is such a better app overall than the offical one. It’s fast, slick, great UI, themes, and gesture support. The offical app is a downgrade in every fashion. There was a period when the official client was good. Twitter bought Tweetie in 2010 and made it the offical app and changed the name to ‘Twitter for iPhone’. Twitter before this, did not have an offical app. Being a hardcore Tweetie user, this news was bittersweet. Okay, mostly bitter. It wasn’t longafter Twitter took over the app that the magic started to disappear. This is when I jumped on Tweetbot as soon as I could, and haven’t looked back since.

It sucks losing software you use everyday and love. If I had known the last time I used Tweetbot was going to be the last, I would have taken it all in differently.

Now, not long ago, I started using Mastodon. There are things I like about it, and things I don’t. It does have a ton of potential for a Twitter replacement, especially once Tweetbot creators tapbots put out their new client Ivory. However, the big hold up for me isn’t the software selection, it’s whose using the service. Most, if not all, of the more technical minded people have moved over and are now posting on Mastadon, but a lof of people I enjoy following haven’t. A majority, in fact. I’m sure this will get better over time, but it is my one big concern moving over to something new. Up until the third party app shutdown, I was looking at both services everyday to stay connected.

Twitter apps have been an amazing playground for iOS developers since the App Store launched. Pull to refresh started as a Tweetie feature and now it is everywhere. It really is a sad day for software.

If you grew up in the late 80s or early 90s, Kid Pix is one program you are sure to be familar with. It was MS Paint meets Nickelodeon, and it was awesome. From all the stamps, crazy sounds effects, undo button madness, and moving truck, this thing was tons of fun to play with. I can’t even tell you how many hours I spent as a kid in the computer lab creating and destroying Kid Pix art masterpieces; and then even more when we got Kid Pix Studio Deluxe at home. This web app brings it all back to it’s glory, and it’s just as amazing as you remember. 

Check out Kidpix.app

Over a decade ago, I fell in love with 1Password. It did what all great software does, what I needed it to do and then got out of the way. Not only that, it did it with style. The Mac app was slick, fast, and always integrated the latest technologies and APIs pretty much as soon as they were available. The iOS app was amazing as well. And as iOS opened up more system wide functions to third parties (extensions in iOS 8,first class password manager support for third parties in iOS 12), the app had everything it needed to really sing, and it did. The past year has really changed things though.

Last year, 1Password 8 was released. Where in the past I had always upgraded right away, there was hesitation this time around. As part of the new version, the company AgileBits changed from offering a one time license as an option, to only moving to a subscription based model. Now, I’m not against paying for software or apps. It’s actually the opposite. I happily paid for my 1Password license, and would again if I needed to to move to the new version. I’m not against subscription based apps either. I subscribe to many apps (overcast, weekcal, carrot weather). But this new situation gave me a chance to pause and think.

A yearly subscription to 1Password 8 is $60. That’s more than I paid for a one time license that lasted me years. Well, maybe the app has gotten a lot better and is worth it? If the app is really killer, paying for it is a no brainer. In this case, no. In fact, from everything I can see, this version is a pretty big step backwards. Version 8 was rebuilt and still seems to have a ton of bugs. Not to mention, local vaults are no longer a feature. Everything has been rearchitected to work with 1password.com, so if you only want to store your vault locally, you have no option. Given how things are going over at LastPass, only having a cloud option doesn’t seem like the place you want to be right now.

In the meantime while sitting on the sidelines, thinking about what I’m going to do, I started using iCloud Keychain. Slowly, but surely I started saving the passwords I entered in from sites using 1Password, into iCloud Keychain. It’s been fantastic, works very well, and made me question the value I was getting out of 1Password even more. Why am I using a third party app when the system service has everything I need? Especially now that you can add notes to passwords, and it even generates second factor codes and fills them in for you. I do store some other things in 1Password, like drivers license info, and any notes I wanted to keep safe. But those are just as easy stored in an encrypted note through Apple notes. So again, where is the value?

So I’m now in the sad position of saying goodbye. At some point, 1Password 7 will start breaking as we move into newer OS updates. It’s time to move on. Today, I removed 1Password from my Macs and iOS devices. It’s never easy to lose software you’ve used and enjoyed for years. We had a good run though.