Since Ask Different was originally conceived, the community consensus has been to not allow questions about Apple’s beta operating systems.

The times, however, they are a changing.

Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. Photo/Art: David Gahr/Handout from http://www.capitalberg.com/

I have just updated the answer that we normally update once Apple finalizes their next OS release and releases it to the general public. Are iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan questions OK? Basically, YES – just because a question is about beta iOS 9 builds or beta OS X builds, it isn’t automatically off-topic.

There are clearly both downsides and upsides to hosting questions about beta software. I fully expect the community to require these questions be of high quality with adequate detail so that users running non beta software won’t be confused by these posts.

The thread used to measure the consensus contains a majority of votes for “yes” make public betas on-topic:

Should beta OS questions be on-topic due to NDA changes + widening distribution by Apple

Please comment here or on Ask Different Meta if you have any concerns or compliments about this change. Should the consensus shift, we can revisit this change – in the mean time, fire up some Dylan and let Ask Different help you with answers to your beta Apple questions.

Introduction

I’ve been a longtime user of Sparrow for Mac. As a Gmail user and a fan of its Tweedie-inspired interface, it just felt like a much better fit for how I like to interact with my email than the stodgier Mail.app or Postbox, providing nearly all the benefits of the Gmail web interface in a beautiful native app. So I was very excited this morning to discover that, after months of waiting, Sparrow for iPhone has finally been released.

First Impressions

Sparrow for iPhone looks good, and it’s mostly consistent with Sparrow for Mac. This isn’t a great surprise, as Sparrow for Mac takes its design cues from the now-defunct Tweedie for iOS. The whole interface is very fluid and responsive as well, unlike the official Gmail app for iOS which can be laggy and slow. One thing that I like from the Mac client that I was pleased to see that they brought over to Sparrow for iPhone is showing the avatars of the senders next to their messages in my message list. more »

Zynga’s hit Hangman and Scrabble fusion ‘Hanging With Friends’ updated with a new feature! From their version 4.14 update notes:

Hanging With Friends now has Missions! Level your way through over 100 missions that test your Hanging skills, and rescue the Princess! On the way earn coins and unlock exclusive content.

No longer do you simply play an asynchronous game of Hangman, but now you can coerce your play habits into accomplishing missions at the same time! The princess won’t save herself, you know. All of this on the heels of the introduction of micro-transactions into Hanging With Friends, allowing you to buy virtual coins with real money in order to buy (drum roll please) character and balloon customizations, or hints for use during the word building and solving phases. We all know how much Zynga among numerous other companies like their virtual goods and currencies, and just how many horror stories come as a result of a young child playing this simple game and deciding that they need more coins to accomplish their objective; and what luck, all it takes is mommy and daddy’s password to do it!

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Making a photo editor for iPhone is a tricky thing. Attempts to make something like Photoshop or Pixelmator for iOS all fail terribly, simply because you can’t put that many features onto a tiny touchscreen and end up with an app that’s pleasant to use. One way to interpret this limitation is that any photo editor for iPhone must be very simple and basic. Another way to interpret it is that any photo editor for iPhone must think outside the box in order to provide powerful editing capabilities that are pleasant to use.
Snapseed does the latter.

Snapseed is a $5 app from Nik Software that allows you to do some rather advanced editing from your iPhone. Because of how the app is organized and how the edit process works, the app is easy to use and— dare I say it— even fun.

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