Shortly after Apple announced the availability of a public SDK for building iPhone apps, I got to work porting Black Ink, the beloved Mac-based crossword-solving app, to the phone. Here is the first source code commit comment from April, 2008:

changeset:   340:1c1230530532
user:        daniel
date:        Sun Apr 06 23:29:07 2008 +0000
summary:     Very first building blocks for touch based Black Ink.

I spent a good amount of time over the next month or two on the core functionality of the crossword grid, how it would zoom in or out to fit in the relatively tiny iPhone’s screen, etc. I was pretty confident I was going to release it within the year. I think at that time the App Store interface didn’t support completely removing an app from sale, so I just set the release date really far, like a year, into the future. Surely I’d wrap it up and ship before that.

I was walking through Brighton, England with my wife and young baby when I got a notification on my phone. I’d made a sale! Black Ink for iOS was listed for $10, and somebody had bought it. At some point I had put Black Ink on the back burner again and completely spaced out that the inevitable release date had arrived. Unfortunately the app was far from ready for public consumption. It had been approved, sure, but it wasn’t good yet. I scrambled to find a reliable internet source and then logged in as fast as I could to further delay the official release.

And that’s how I left things for about ten years.

Today I am happy to announce that Black Ink for iOS is available as a public beta release via TestFlight. It’s come a long way since 2008, but it’s still not quite ready to call complete. I’ve updated its version number to 2.0 because some of the features are, or will be, more in line with the 2.0 release of its Mac counterpart. Also, I burned the 1.0 version number on that mistaken release a decade ago.

Click here on an iOS device to join the TestFlight beta.

If you decide to give it a try, I welcome your feedback. I plan to tie up a few loose ends and (hopefully for real this time!) ship a public, for-sale release in the near future. I haven’d decided on a pricing structure yet, but in the mean time the beta version is, of course, free for anybody who wishes to test it out.

MarsEdit 4.4.13 is now available on the MarsEdit site and has been submitted to the Mac App Store.

This update features a grab bag of fixes to improve the reliability and utility of the app:

• Improve reliability of in-document anchor links in blog preview window
• Protect against a possible crash when inserting image from the Media Manager
• Fix a bug that prevented setting custom field values via AppleScript from working
• Fix full keyboard accesss navigation of the “New Blog” window
• The HTML editor now strips problematic 0x0B (vertical tab) and 0x0C (form feed) characters

If you enjoy MarsEdit, please consider writing a review or rating the app on the Mac App Store, spreading the word on Facebook or Twitter, and of course, writing about the app on your own blog! Thanks for your support.

Black Ink 2.1.4 is now available on the Black Ink site and on the Mac App Store.

This update refines the recently restored download capabilities for the New York Times puzzle. Solvers who are excited to download and solve the puzzle early (after 6:00PM Eastern on weekends, after 10:00PM Eastern on weekdays) can now count on Black Ink to download the puzzle when it’s ready.

This update also includes a fix for a bug that affected users who live in time zones east of GMT. These users would be prompted again to log in to their NYT account when checking for new puzzles at certains times of the day.

If you enjoy Black Ink, please consider writing a review or rating the app on the Mac App Store, and spreading the word on Facebook or Twitter! Thanks for your support.

Black Ink 2.1.3 is now available on the Black Ink site and on the Mac App Store.

This update restores authentication support for the New York Times Crossword, so subscribers can login in with their credentials to download premium puzzles directly from Black Ink.

The update also includes a number of other fixes:

• Restored support for logging in to download Premium NYT puzzles
• Fix visual glitches with puzzle source icons after switching between dark and light modes
• Fix a bug that could cause puzzle source icons to draw very large in the Open Web Puzzle menu
• Improvements to letter alignment within puzzle squares
• Fine-tune the placement of the focus ring when entering special answers
• If special entry is open while the window is resized the field now moves with the window
• Remove Chronicle of Higher Education, whose puzzles are no longer updated

If you enjoy Black Ink, please consider writing a review or rating the app on the Mac App Store, and spreading the word on Facebook or Twitter! Thanks for your support.