Twitter is officially killing third-party apps, including Tweetbot, Twitterific, Aviary and more, with little to no explanation beyond a change in their API terms. The Digg v4-like suicide continues.
Meanwhile, the number of Mastodon apps, including clients, is growing quite a bit. Here’s the list of publicly-available Mastodon apps for several platforms, not to mention some other beta apps like Mammoth and Ivory.
One new app, Ice Cubes, was just approved on the iOS app store on January 23. Blogger John Gruber had previously criticized the hold-up in approval.
What I’ve noticed so far, comparing Ice Cubes to the Mammoth beta and other iOS clients:
- Ice Cubes may be the first full Mastodon app to have “quote-boosts” as a feature. It uses a workaround combining a screenshot, OP mention and link. Or at least it looks like a screenshot?
- Like the official Mastodon app, Ice Cubes scales media to span the width of the post, including under the avatar. I’m surprised that this doesn’t seem to be an option on other apps, even those in beta like Mammoth. However, Ice Cubes does not let you scale media to the width of text (while Mammoth does not allow for the size of the image to be adjusted to screen width).
- Like Mammoth, Ice Cubes also allows one to subscribe to remote instance feeds to show in the Home drop-down. This sets both apps apart from Mastodon official, Tooot, Tootoise and Mercury.
- Ice Cubes shows a list of most-used post hashtags (at least 9?) under each profile bio (each linking to hashtag searches), alongside a button to open a user’s “About” in a pop-up. That’s new.
- Opening the “Add/remove from lists” menu opens a pop-up menu for selecting multiple lists. Good, better than Mammoth’s current opening of the menu entirely within the drop-down.
- Ice Cubes uses the “posts/post and replies/media” tabs in profiles (like Mastodon official). Mammoth places “media” in the top-right drop-down. Tooot places “media” in a sliding menu between the bio and post index, at the end of which you click a button to show more media. Interesting how media on profiles is shown between client apps.
- Ice Cubes, like most clients, shows the CW button as a small button (and as of 1.1, places the CW drop-down button on the right while placing CW text on the left). Mastodon official shows this button as much larger and centered, with a blurb saying “tap anywhere to reveal” and a small eye icon on the right for closing the CW.
- Ice Cubes seems to use the iOS file player when opening an uploaded video in a popup, complete with visual playback scroll. Other clients use the regular Safari media player. I can see the point with Ice Cubes’ media playback (with the easy access to the share button).
- Ice Cubes is missing a means for editing Details and Links in one’s About page.
Those are just a few of the differences what I’ve noticed so far.
