The news about the social networks Mastodon and Twitter does not stop. Recently, third-party apps like Tweetbot and Twitterific have had their cables cut to Twitter so they can no longer be used – with much anger and incomprehension for the relevant development teams. At the same time, however, new ways of calling up the decentralized Mastodon network are springing up like mushrooms. Just yesterday we reported on the new release Ivory from Tapbots, the team behind Tweetbot.
Now also with Ice Cubes (App Store-Link) another Mastodon client for iOS and iPadOS was launched a few days ago. The app can be downloaded for free on iPhones and iPads, is open source and, in addition to iOS/iPadOS 16.1 or newer, also requires around 73 MB of your storage space. Compared to the recently released app Ivory, there is already a German localization here.
Anyone who has previously shied away from a paid subscription for Ivory, which has to be paid for at least 17.99 euros/year, will perhaps be happy with Ice Cubes. Developer Thomas Ricouard offers his Mastodon client with no further in-app purchases, subscriptions or other restrictions and only asks for an optional donation to the coffee fund via in-app purchase. Especially practical: As a universal app, Ice Cubes can also be installed on the Mac in the format of the iPad app.
Ice Cubes also has many parallels to Ivory in terms of layout. Anyone who has already used Tweetbot from the same development team will surely discover and appreciate the similarities to Ice Cubes. Ice Cubes can create troughs including media that display local, federated, and home timelines, perform trough interactions like favs, boosts, and shares – and even quote troughs. The latter is not yet possible in many other Mastodon clients. Lists, filters, multi-account support and many customization options for themes, accent colors, font sizes and the app icon can also be found in Ice Cubes. Personally, I think the new release is really successful, but I’ll stick with Ivory for now. Anyone looking for a free client for Mastodon should definitely take a closer look at Ice Cubes.
Phil Schiller confirms move to Mastodon
In the course of Musk’s takeover of Twitter and the ensuing chaos at the short message service, Apple Fellow and former marketing chief at Apple, Phil Schiller, has now drawn the consequences and deleted his Twitter account. If you want to keep up to date, you can now follow Schiller on Mastodon.
Mastodon users have had their accounts in the past @pschiller@mstdn.social noticed, but for a long time it was unclear whether this was really the official account of the former Apple marketing director. Fortunately, there are bloggers with good connections to Apple: John Gruber was able to confirm that the above account is that of Phil Schiller. The Apple Magazine 9to5Mac also personally checked with Apple and received confirmation from Schiller himself.
Not much is known about the reasons why Phil Schiller deleted his Twitter account. According to 9to5Mac, this happened the same week Elon Musk criticized Apple for not wanting to advertise on Twitter anymore. Musk also accused Apple of hating free speech. Phil Schiller is now active at Mastodon and one of his first trumpets promoted Tapbots’ third-party app Ivory.
