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ExtraBITS for 4 November 2013

This week, we have quick reviews of the new Fantastical and Tweetbot updates for iOS 7 and podcast appearances from two TidBITS editors. Plus, over at Macworld, Chris Breen solves the mystery of broken video previews in OS X 10.9 Mavericks, and Joe Kissell kicks Gmail to the curb.

79-Word Review of Fantastical 2 for iPhone — Fantastical 2 brings a “flat” redesign to the lauded iPhone calendar app, while offering both light and dark themes. New in this version is the capability to create, edit, and view reminders. You can also expand snippets with TextExpander support, use typed or spoken natural language to add reminders and events, see maps of event locations, and scroll through upcoming events in the Day Ticker. Temporarily on sale for $2.99, it’s a fantastic alternative to Apple’s humdrum Calendar app.

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90-Word Review of Tweetbot 3 for iPhone — An iOS 7 redesign of the popular Twitter client for power users, Tweetbot 3 is an all-new app, currently on sale for $2.99. Functionally, it adds background refreshing, tweet drafts, inline notifications, muting, iCloud syncing of timeline position and direct message read status, and more. Visually, the new design ditches Tweetbot’s traditional robot theme in favor of trendy flatness and custom transitions. It’s fun, but sometimes difficult to navigate. Regardless, Tweetbot 3 remains the fastest and most reliable iPhone Twitter app, especially with @name lookups in the tweet
composer.

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Josh Centers Talks Apple Finances, Email, and Mavericks on Tech Night Owl — TidBITS Managing Editor Josh Centers joined host Gene Steinberg of the Tech Night Owl Live podcast to discuss Apple’s financial situation, the conflict between OS X 10.9 Mavericks Mail and Gmail, pros and cons of iOS 7 and 10.9 Mavericks, and why patents should be abolished.

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Pulling the String with Joe Kissell — TidBITS Senior Editor Joe Kissell joined host Benjamin Alexander on the Pulling the String podcast. The pair discuss Joe’s TidBITS origin story, hulking out on Mail in OS X 10.9 Mavericks, Nisus Writer Pro, and Joe’s latest book, “Take Control of Upgrading to Mavericks.”

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Why Your Videos Won’t Preview in OS X 10.9 Mavericks — You might have noticed that some of your videos no longer have a Finder preview in Mavericks. Macworld’s Chris Breen discovered that Apple has deprecated many of its older codecs in favor of the iOS-compatible H.264 and MPEG-4. To watch older video files, you must convert them with QuickTime X, install Apple’s professional codecs (if you bought Final Cut Pro, Motion, or Compressor), or use a more capable app like QuickTime 7 Pro or MPlayerX.

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Joe Kissell Says Sayonara to Gmail — After Joe’s frustrations with how Apple Mail in OS X 10.9 Mavericks interacts with Gmail’s bolted-on IMAP implementation, he found himself having to choose between the two, and decided to stick with Mail, despite its problems in Mavericks. In this article for Macworld, Joe details how he moved his email from Gmail to a more standards-compliant IMAP email provider.

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