ShareKit
Overview
ShareKit is an open source framework that can be dropped into any iPhone or iPad app to instantly add full sharing capabilities.How It Works
Integration is super easy. A developer can take a url, image, piece of text, or file and just say “hey ShareKit, share this”. ShareKit will present the user with a list of services that support the content they are sharing, handle logging them into the service, prompt for any additional information such as a caption, and display an activity indicator while uploading. ShareKit makes it easy to access individual services as well. A developer can simply write something like: [SHKTwitter shareURL:@”http://getsharekit.com”]; ShareKit will shorten the URL, present a dialog to let a user write a message, and even hold onto to the message to send later if the user is offline.Features
The initial version of ShareKit already has support for Delicious, Email, Facebook, Google Reader, Pinboard, Read It Later, and Twitter. It supports four types of content: links, images, text, and files. ShareKit even works offline. Users can share items without an internet connection. ShareKit will hold onto the items until a connection is available. The UI is also completely customizable. It is very easy to make ShareKit match the look of your existing application.Developer Benefit
For developers, adding sharing features to an app is a source of dread. It takes a LOT of work for each service that you add. You have to learn each service’s API, probably learn OAuth, design and build UI to handle all the interactions of logging in and collecting information, and write code to make requests and handle all possible errors. You have to do this for every service and every service has a unique API. It makes it very difficult to add all of the services your users request. In the iOS SDK we have access to MFMailComposeViewController. This is an Apple provided view that lets apps present an email dialog to the user. You feed it some starting values like a subject line and body content and it pops over your existing application, lets the user do their thing and goes away when they are done. This is what I wanted in my apps. I wanted the same controller but for Twitter, Delicious, Evernote, and everything else. That’s what ShareKit is.User Benefit
As it exists today, the user experience for sharing is incredibly inconsistent across all apps. Because of the work that goes into adding each service, the services supported in an app are entirely dependent on what the developer has time to implement. Ideally a user should be able to use any app they want and be able to share with all of the services they use. By making sharing features a trivial development step, I’m hoping that we can see movement in a direction where we don’t have to pick our apps based on what services they support.Additional Services and Further Development
ShareKit is completely open source and anyone can contribute patches or additional sharing services. Modules for Evernote, Flickr, and Dropbox are already underway. When new services are added, they can simply be dropped into any existing ShareKit project. If you are a developer and would like to help contribute to ShareKit, a good place to start is the list of issues and feature requests.Apple’s iPad Video Walkthroughs
Apple has posted a number of videos that walk through each of the default apps for the iPad (via Macstories). They are worth a watch. Being able to see the iPad in action reveals a number of little details.
A nice touch in Safari, when you tap the location bar to start typing, a bookmark bar (like in desktop Safari) pulls down.
The Safari video also answers one question I had long wondered. It looks like you’ll be able to watch embedded videos inline without having it pop open the YouTube application. I’ve always found that flow on the iPhone really disorienting.
Watching the video on Keynote really makes it clear that using a keyboard and mouse to do any type of design work is going to feel incredibly antiquated in the very near future.
I cannot wait to get my hands on one Saturday.
Side note: The icon the iPad displays on screen when you lock the rotation (shown in the iBooks video) looks awfully familiar. I know, but it’s fun to pretend they did ;)
Apple Accepting iPad Apps Before We Have iPads
Of all the possible scenarios we (developers) considered for exactly how Apple planned to roll out iPad apps with the release of the iPad, this was the one I dreaded the most.
Apple is now accepting iPad applications to the review process. If you submit before March 27th, you may be included in the grand opening of the iPad App Store.
The only problem? No one has an iPad yet and won’t until April 3rd.
Anyone who has developed on the iPhone SDK knows that how an app runs on the SDK simulator can be night/day vs how it runs on the actual device. Even if it runs flawlessly on the simulator, I’ve never had an instance where the first time I ran a new app on the device it worked to my liking. There are bugs and crashes that didn’t occur on the simulator, there are slowdowns in areas that you thought were fast, and usability changes you didn’t expect.
So we are now faced with a risky decision: go for fame and fortune, submit an app and cross your fingers that it actually works or wait, miss the hoopla, and submit something you KNOW works.
iNeedAShorterName
I really wish someone (probably Apple) would standardize a way to describe iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad apps in one word. When you talk about apps for other devices you simply say: it’s an Android app, Blackberry app, Mac or Windows app. You do not have to specifically list all of the devices that the application works on. You could simply say ‘iPhone (OS) app’, but because this language is specific to a device, it can easily lead to confusion. The last thing a developer wants is for an iPad user to see there is an iPhone app available and not make the connection they can purchase it for their iPad. This arguably was less of an issue between the very similar iPhone and iPod Touch, but once the iPad drops into a whole new market, this will be even more confusing for the end user. This is why you see a lot of the lengthy ‘iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad’ strings when describing an iPhone OS app.
When trying to design a clean and concise layout, it’s simply too wordy, too ugly. For example, on Read It Later’s home page, I have links to all of the platforms that RIL is available on. You’ll see I have ‘Add to iPhone/iPod’. I’m not looking forward to squeezing in ‘iPad’. Same problem with the main navigation at the top where I list the major platforms: ‘Firefox, iPhone, Mobile, All Browsers’. When designing that I gave up on including iPod, but now that the iPad is imminent, I feel like it will need to be squeezed in there as well.
The iPad: It wasn’t created for us.
I’ve had some time to think about today’s release from Apple, the iPad. I’m finding that the more I think about it, the more disappointed I am. But I know why: The iPad was not created for us (and by us I mean the tech crowd).
Take a look at today’s release. Remove all of the changes to the software and the new iWork/iBook products. If you look solely at the hardware and the device itself, there is nothing revolutionary here. There are no revolutionary new input methods, no new integrated additions (like the compass was to the 3GS and the camera to the Nano) and nothing new in form factor (aside from size).
Now look at the software. While the default apps like Mail, Safari, Photos, and Calendar got a refresh, the OS itself is fundamentally the same. The home screen simply has more space in-between the icons and a background image. In fact, even though you have a bigger screen, you still have the same number of icons per page. There is no multitasking, no OS-wide gestures, and no major APIs opened to developers.
The problem is the tech community expected to see iPhone OS 4.0 today. We expected to see something we hadn’t seen before.
All Apple did today was release the same product they already have, only bigger.
And you know what? It’s going to work.
The iPad is targeted towards all of the users who simply need a device to browse the web, check email, watch videos, go on Facebook, and play a little Farmville. And as Apple knows, this market segment is a LOT bigger than the ‘I need multi-tasking and Minority Report style input’ crowd. I bet that for the majority of people in Yerba Buena Center today, the iPad will not be their mainstay machine. Most of them will buy it, play with it, or develop on it, but most of our computing will be done on laptops and desktops.
The iPhone and iPod Touch have been incredibly successful. If Apple released a new device today that required a steep learning curve with revolutionary input controls and a new OS unlike anything we’ve seen before, your mother would not care. Your non-tech-savvy friends would not use it. What Apple is doing is simply taking something that works very well and making it reach a little farther.
So what I’m really disappointed about is how much I got sucked into the hype cycle this round. I’m actually really excited to read, watch, play, and develop on this device. The iPad is a going to be a great device, it’s just not the technological savior we were looking for. Still, as I look back at all of the really amazing things we all hoped the iPad would be, I realize that these ideas are now out there. It may or may not come from Apple, but now it’s just a matter of time.
