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Looking for a good, native, Gmail app for iPhone? You might not have to wait much longer because MG Siegler reports that Google is “on the verge” of launching a native Gmail client for the iPhone…
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As of yesterday the popular Amazon Cloud music player ‘aMusic’ can no longer be found. This app is from the same developer of the popular Google Cloud music player ‘gMusic’, which is still on the App store…for now.
The develper said that aMusic will be back, but they are not sure when:
There are some legal issues with the music industry. The aMusic [app] is down temporarily. It will be back. Unfortunately I do not have a specific date when it will be back.
Also, Apple has been delaying my gMusic update. I submitted it 2 weeks ago. Every other update I have submitted within the 2 weeks has been approved in under 8 hours. So not sure what the deal is.
Source: Amazon Cloud Music Player Deleted from iTunes due to ‘Legal Issues’
As you may know, I have a speed-dial app called Favorites for iPhone, and when the first version was released three years ago I wrote an article about how I designed its UI. I’ve recently been designing version 2 of the app, and I thought it might be interesting to show some of my UI designs for it, including a series of interim mockups showing the evolution of its appearance.
All of the screenshots embedded below can be viewed as a set on Flickr, but it’s more fun if you follow along here first (you can also click any one to see the full Retina Display-sized version). To better understand the changes in Favorites 2, I’ll be including some screenshots from version 1 for comparison.
Easily one of the worst parts of Favorites 1, the first-launch help display. I cobbled this together at the last minute, and never got around to improving it. The always-available contextual help at the bottom of the screen somewhat removed the need for the additional blue call-out, but the screen looked very blank and intimidating without it. I wanted to address this in Favorites 2.
The first-launch help in Favorites 2. Version 2 uses an on-demand help system in the form of sticky notes, with the single exception of the first launch: help is immediately displayed, and is not a modal display; it’s literally stuck to the background with tape.
The screenshot also demonstrates about half of the visual theme for the new version; a sort of ‘electric steel’ kind of colour scheme, with etching and understated textures. I found the previous versions of Favorites horribly dark to look at these days, and resolved to brighten it up considerably.
Note that in this screenshot, as with most in this set, the page-control (bottom middle) would of course not actually be visible until you had more than one screenful of favorites – it’s there simply because I had to work on its appearance alongside the rest of the interface.
The main screen of Favorites 1. Favorites can be single-tapped to perform the “Default Action” (initially set to Call, but I’ve changed it to Text in this screenshot), or can be double-tapped to show the Overlay with further options. The ‘Edit’ button (top left) is analogous to tap-holding on an icon on the iPhone’s Home screen, allowing you to rearrange or delete favorites.
The ‘+’ button is disabled because version 1 deliberately imposed a maximum of 16 favorites, on a single screen. The cog button shows the app’s settings, and the info button shows the About screen with a link to the built-in tutorial.
The main screen of Favorites 2, with two favorites shown. Favorites can be tapped to display the Actions Tray, with further options. The ‘?’ button shows some brief context-sensitive help in a modal sticky note. The cog button allows access to settings, the About screen and the built-in tutorial. The ‘+’ button adds a new favorite.
An example of Favorites 2’s modal context-sensitive sticky-note help, which will arrive by falling directly onto the screen from (conceptually) in front of the phone. A moderate spotlight effect focuses the eye on the note. The handwritten font is genuine on-screen text, accessible to VoiceOver.
With a note visible, the question-mark button (which triggered the note) is disabled (not by the usual reduced-opacity “greying-out”, but by losing its blue visual energy). Tapping anywhere on screen removes the note.
The rearrange/delete mode, triggered (as on the Home screen) by tap-holding on any favorite. The position of the delete-button on each favorite differs from that on the Home screen, because their metrics are different – specifically, the frame of a favorite encompasses the entire icon + name area of a Home screen icon.
I’ve also (as in Favorites 1) omitted the “jitter” animation, because I strongly dislike it – I think it creates unhelpful emotional connotations, without conveying any useful information. The ‘Done’ button cancels this mode, as in Favorites 1 (since pressing the Home button would of course take the user to their own Home screen).
The Overlay, from Favorites 1. This was modelled on the during-call display on the iPhone, and provides access to calling, texting or emailing the chosen default numbers/addresses for those functions selected for this favorite. The additional row of buttons below the primary actions allow picking a different number or email address for the respective actions.
If a FaceTime ID had been chosen for this favorite, a FaceTime icon would be visible beside their photo (top right), and tapping either would initiate FaceTime. The ‘Options’ button goes to the editing screen for this favorite, and the Cancel button dismisses the Overlay.
The Actions Tray in Favorites 2, very clearly modelled on the folders UI from iOS 4+. I eschewed the awful “linen” background of actual folders, and opted instead (eventually) for some relatively quiet noise to give just a hint of texture. As with iOS folders, everything except the opened icon is defeated with a darkening layer and has its colour desaturated. I didn’t go so far as to apply a grain filter, as iOS does. I also keep the titlebar at normal appearance, to help the user understand that the help (‘?’) button is still available for use.
The labels of the action icons indicate which number or email address has been chosen for those actions, and the icons themselves are strongly modelled after iOS app icons and/or relevant branding, but with a distinct and unifying flavour which references the Favorites 1.x app icon. If additional numbers or email addresses are available for a given action (like the Mail action here), a popup arrow is shown to indicate that tap-holding anywhere on that icon or label will allow quickly picking a different number or address for the action.
I was very keen to capitalise on colour-recognition for the various functions, to ease target acquisition. There’s no particular colour for FaceTime except silvery grey, so I chose a strong purple colour which doesn’t overlap with any other actions. The identical green of the Call and Message buttons isn’t ideal, but is of course due to the similar situation with the Phone and Message apps.
As with folders, tapping the person’s photo once again will close the Tray. Tapping the Edit button will show the editing screen for this favorite. If no number or email address has been selected for a given action, and/or if the person’s contact-card in Contacts.app has no suitable field (e.g. for Twitter or Facebook), the corresponding action icon will not be present in the Tray.
The folders implementation would probably make a decent open source UI component to release independently.
The editing screen for a favorite, in Favorites 1. The topmost large button allows choosing a different contact to associate with this favorite, an ability I will remove in Favorites 2. It’s a somewhat bizarre option, and I think that most people would simply delete an unwanted favorite and create a new one instead.
It’s possible to choose to show labels/names for favorites (in the app’s settings), and you can choose which Label to use. A series of possible suggestions are automatically offered, including nicknames and assorted permutations of forenames, surnames and initials. You can also enter a custom label of your own.
The ‘badge’ is simply an optional small icon superimposed on a favorite: either Mobile, Home, or Work. It has no bearing on the numbers or email addresses used for calling etc, and is simply a visual cue.
The final four options allow choosing the default numbers or email addresses for calling, messaging, emailing and FaceTime. You can choose ‘None’ for any function to disable it.
The editing screen for a favorite, in Favorites 2. All of the “behind the scenes” UI in Favorites 2 (including this edit screen and all hierarchically-related screens, and the app’s About screen, Settings and Tutorial) use a similar visual cue to the Actions Tray – a recessed, gently textured dark background with interactive objects sitting on top, like an expensive set of tools in a padded case.
I removed the Favorites 1 ability to associate a different contact with a given favorite, and instead added the much-requested ability to customise a favourite’s photo independent of their contact photo in Contacts.app (which was always used in Favorites 1). The other options remain the same, with the addition of Twitter and Facebook options, if the appropriate fields have values in Contacts.app (Favorites 2 will be iOS 5+ only, and the iOS 5 Contacts application does indeed provide fields you can add for assorted social media services).
The screen can be scrolled upwards to reveal a single item below the fold: a red Delete button, allowing deletion of the favorite (with confirmation). Naturally, favorites can also be deleted from the main screen, when in rearrange/delete mode.
I wanted to have only the Delete button off-screen, and also to keep the contact photo relatively large without having a huge waste of space to its right, so I opted for a somewhat unconventional “contact card” arrangement for the photo, label and badge buttons/’rows’. Tapping any of the controls will of course push you off to the right onto a new screen with appropriate options, as is the usual navigational mode on the iPhone. I think that, whilst unusual, the UI will be obvious enough to the majority of iOS users, and immediately/harmlessly discoverable to the rest.
I’ve also done away with the explicit Save button at the top-right, instead again offering contextual help if required. I see no need for explicit saving since the user is really just toggling easily-modifiable options, so every choice will simply be saved immediately.
For the sake of interest, I decided to include a series of early mockups for Favorites 2, exported from Photoshop at various points during the design process, to show the progression towards the final appearance. Many of them are some combination of embarrassing, illogical and bizarre – but those are the most fun to see.
A very early mockup, showing a very conventional folder-like tray. Drop-shadows missing on the action icons! The grey of the Edit button was meant to correlate with the silver cogs of the Settings app, but just ended up looking disabled in this visual style.
Note also the ghostly “+” pseudo-favorite, which was to be the way to create a new favorite. This was a horrible idea, because it would always be moving ahead one slot whenever you did actually use it, and would be hanging around on screen like a bad smell, seeming to forever chastise you for not having made enough favorites already!
Thankfully, the linen is gone – and momentarily replaced with rubber studs! There are also some truly horrible temporary etched buttons, and a new but not-long-for-this-world purple highlight colour scheme. A good general rule is: if you’re using an outer glow, you’re doing it wrong. At least we managed to finally get drop-shadows on the icons in the Actions Tray.
(Oh, and the Edit button has gained a healthy pencil-like yellow/orange colour, making it easy to find at a glance.)
Thankfully both linen and rubber are now gone, and we have a pleasant soft gaussian noise (about 2%, monochrome) instead.
Beginning to take shape now. A bigger, etched title in the top bar (it’s still too light, though), and something approximating the final colour-scheme. We also have tabs at the bottom, albeit with a fairly nasty regular contour that seems to sag out at the bottom. The tabs are also inset, though not for long.
Etched title is now darker and much easier to read. The ‘Done’ button shows up for no logical reason other than to allow tweaking the colour scheme (it’s a bit too dark). We now have a better shape on the bottom tabs, but they’re lying flat against the background without any shadow, and their buttons look drab and a bit depressed (pun intended).
Bottom tab buttons are closer to their final look, though everything needs brightened quite a bit. We’re also shamefully lacking white highlights on the bottom edges of all the etched elements, and the tabs are still sitting flat.
Purple strikes again! It’s my favourite colour. Can’t blame me for trying.
Back to blue-ish (teal, really). Finally, the bottom tabs have some shadow behind them, making a bit more visual sense. For some reason, the Favorites 1 app icon has temporarily appeared in the Actions Tray.
The bottom tabs buttons have now brightened up to their final colour (still lacking edge-highlights, unfortunately). The two favorites now display both the appearance of badges (‘mobile’ in this case, on Lauren), and displayed labels/names (on Neil). Showing names is a global setting, of course, so you’d actually have them on either all favorites or none – but we’re just doing mockups, so it’s OK.
A cleaned-up version of the prior Tray mockup, without superfluous icon or the Done button.
A first pass, not meant entirely seriously, at the first-launch help redesign. The font was strictly temporary. I thought it was pretty adorable that the ‘+’ button would be sitting there, hoping desperately that someone would let it do its job. The thought-bubbles would have appeared from smallest to largest with an animation, of course.
Note that we’ve gained the ‘?’ icon for contextual help, but it’s at the top left instead of its final position at the top-right. I moved it later when I realised that having it at the top-left would preclude offering help in the hierarchy of favorite editing screens, since that position would be occupied by the usual iOS navigation controller ‘back’ button.
Essentially the final version of the first-launch help, created not half an hour after the thought-bubbles concept.
The contextual help for the main screen (when you do have some favorites). We still haven’t moved that help button.
Beginning to create the favorite-editing screen, still using the strange old Favorites 1.x-era ability to pick a different contact to associate with the favorite. That huge, empty metal button is horrible. I also really hate the annoying shoulder-strap clip that’s sticking up from Neil’s right shoulder; it drove me crazy during this mockup.
Playing with possible visual ways to indicate what’s a ‘label’ and what’s a ‘value’ for each setting. The inner shadow of the etching effect causes any bright solid colour to turn into dirty, fuzzy mush. The base colour of the “Label” and “Badge” labels is also pretty dark here.
Hallelujah – we finally have light highlights on the etching! Clarity is improved by a huge amount. I also cloned-out that shoulder-strap clasp that was sticking up from Neil’s shoulder; totally unnecessary for the mockup, but it was irritating me too much.
I tried a neutral treatment for both labels and values, and it works visually – but doesn’t really convey all the info that I want to get across to the user.
Neon disco! I refer you to my previous statement about outer glow meaning you’re doing it wrong.
I was having trouble finding a suitable ‘value’ highlight colour, so it was time to go back to basics: try white, and try black. There’s an in-built prejudice towards thinking of lighter colours as better highlights (particularly on darker backgrounds), and it’s just not always true – as demonstrated dramatically here. Clearly, black (or thereabouts) is a far, far more readable ‘highlight’ for values.
I tried toning down the black (or rather, toning it up into dark grey) to reduce the eye-slicing sharpness of the edges. It turns out that about 20% grey is ideal, as shown here – it’s still extremely contrasty, but is just a little kinder to the eyes.
Lastly, I applied a very subdued (i.e. “shallow”) etch to the value-text, keeping their dark grey shade. This is the final appearance of labels and values in the editing interface.
The almost-final editing screen. After this, I just reduced the sizes of some of the etched action icons for better visual balance.
And you’re done. I don’t have a release date for Favorites 2 yet, but I’ll keep you posted here on the blog. The original version is still available, and you can read more bite-sized chunks of software, UI and UX-related stuff by following me (@mattgemmell) on Twitter.
Footnote: Thanks to Neil Inglis, Chris Miller and Iain Simpson for continuous feedback during the design process.
In this Quick Look, we’re highlighting GooMinder Schedule Pro. The developer describes GooMinder Schedule Pro as the fastest and ONLY way to enter an event or reminder, and more importantly, up to five reminders in the form of SMS, email and/or pop-up to your Google Calendar. GooMinder Schedule Pro is your new bulletproof reminder system using the dependability of the Google Calendar.
Read on for more information and screenshots!
GooMinder Schedule Pro
Here are the top five features you can expect to see in the latest version:
Requirements: iOS (iPod/iPhone)
Price: $1.99
Developer: The App Cartel (Jon Bennett)
Would you like to see us write a full review of GooMinder Schedule Pro? Have your say in our poll:
Would you like to see GooMinder Schedule Pro reviewed in-depth on AppStorm?
Quick Look posts are paid submissions offering only a brief overview of an app. Vote in the poll if you think this app is worth an in-depth AppStorm review! If you’re a developer and would like to have your app profiled, you can submit it here.
Craigslist has now become so useful in today’s society that you probably wonder how we ever lived without it. Whether you’re looking for a new apartment or a new job, you want to unload your couch or car, or you’re in search of a Portuguese interpreter or clock maker, Craigslist is the place to go.
There are a number of apps now that allow you to take your Craigslist to go, whether you’re more of a poster, browser, or both, and here we look at eight of your options. Click through to see how they stack up.
Featuring bold and attractive newspaper-inspired graphics, this app includes a locked search bar and the ability to navigate from one listing to the next without returning to the previous list. If you find an ad that interests you, circling it with your finger will add it to your Favorites. Users can also take advantage of the smart location feature, as well as the ability to reply and post from within the app.
Price: $0.99
Developer: Lifelike Apps
Download: iTunes
With an engaging interface, very thorough search options (including the ability to search multiple cities at once and save and edit searches), smart location and sophisticated bookmarks, this app makes tending to all your Craigslist business a breeze. You can also access maps, call phone numbers, email listings and share ads via Twitter right from the app. The real draw here, though, is that you can set up numerous push notifications.
Price: $1.99
Developer: Escargot Studios
Download: iTunes
Another of Escargot’s many Craigslist-focused apps available on iTunes, Craigslist Mobile is free and offers limited features, but that’s not to say it’s any less effective. Perform multi-city searches, favorite ads with notes, use smart location to auto-select your Craigslist area, post (with photos) directly from your phone, save searches and set up alerts.
Price: Free
Developer: Escargot Studios
Download: iTunes
Despite displaying graphics that aren’t quite as visually cohesive as some of the other options on this list, YYH Creative’s app includes capabilities for posting with or without a Craigslist account, browsing, searching, emailing posts, saving posts and more. And like many of the other apps here, it includes a timestamp and brief preview for posts before you click through.
Price: $0.99
Developer: YYH Creative
Download: iTunes
Originally designed for browsing only, CraigsApp by SnapTap now makes posting to Craigslist possible, too. The overall aesthetic is very sleek and clean, with landscape support and beautiful display for images attached to ads — particularly useful when viewing postings quickly using Grid View. Users can also save searches, view ads you’ve marked as as favorites later offline, add notes to favorites, and more.
Price: $2.99
Developer: SnapTap
Download: iTunes
Available as of Sept. 29 (and one of the sleekest Craigslist apps we’ve seen to date), Craigslist! by iCandy Apps features gorgeous graphics, including its own set of homepage icons for the respective categories, plus smart location, advanced searching, sophisticated posting options, and use of email, phone numbers and maps straight from the app.
Price: $0.99
Developer: iCandy Apps
Download: iTunes
On the plus side, the app is very easy to use and displays images well. You can browse according to your neighborhood, as well as call phone numbers, open addresses on a map and add Craigslist URLs directly to an email from within the app. Unfortunately, this version doesn’t include a way to navigate the standard Craigslist subcategories other than doing a keyword search, but the developer asserts the navigation features will be updated next time around.
Price: $0.99
Developer: Bixby Apps
Download: iTunes
This app hasn’t been updated since December 2010, so it either works like a charm, or its developers have abandoned it. But if you live in one of the 20 supported cities, CribQ will making searching for a house or apartment a cinch. See housing options on a map or filter by price, number of bedrooms, keywords and more; plus, create favorites and call or email directly from the listing.
Price: Free
Developer: Hug Sandwich
Download: iTunes
If the visual is most important to you, I’d say Craigslist by Lifelike Apps and Craigslist! by iCandy Apps are the clear frontrunners, with their themed graphics and organized, uncluttered interfaces. But then, if you want to keep things super simple purely for the sake of browsing, CraigsApp by SnapTap or Craigslist+ by Bixby Apps might be the way to go. And of course, if you’re specifically looking for a new “crib,” the ultra-focused CribQ scores points.
For me, personally, and for others who like to narrow down a lot of the information on Craigslist quickly, Escargot Studios’ CraigsPro+ and the developer’s free version, Craigslist Mobile, are the way to go — maybe their layouts aren’t the most stunning in the bunch, but their sophisticated search and save features, plus alert notifications, make accessing specific information a quick process.
Ultimately, finding your perfect Craigslist app will depend on what’s important to you and what you want to use the app for. Tell us, which app do you use to conduct all your business on Craigslist, and which features are most important to you?
The iPhone 4S has been out on the market for a few weeks now, and even though it’s flying off the virtual shelves, not everyone is convinced if it’s a good purchase or not. What do you think?
Sure, we could make this complicated by bringing in contract info and all that, but let’s just make this plain and simple: Is it worth it? Forget about whether your contract is ready to expire. If all things were equal, is the iPhone 4S worth the purchase or does it just not hold enough allure for you to buy one? Let us know in the poll to the right.
The notification system on the iPhone has been made fun of for years now, and many people considered it broken because it wasn’t as cool as the alternatives. Admittedly, I fell into this camp myself, mostly because I was interrupted by a text message too many times while playing Infinity Blade, causing me to get cut in the neck and die. The system needed to change, and it did. Thankfully.
Of course, that hasn’t stopped people from continuing to complain, which puts us in the position we are today. Now we have “too many” options for our notifications, and some people are even finding them to be too confusing to work. In reality though, the new notification system in iOS 5 is a step above the previous model, it just takes a few tweaks to get things perfect. Want to find out what they are? I’ll tell you after the jump.
Before you can change your notifications, you’ve got to find out where they are. To start messing around with them, just go to Settings > Notifications and you’ll see a list of your apps that looks just like this:
Here are all of your settings in one convenient place.
This is where it all begins, and how you determine what apps appear in the Notification Center. For those that aren’t quite sure, the Notification Center is triggered when you swipe down from the top center area of your screen. By default, it displays a few different apps, Weather and Stocks, but there are additional options as well which we’ll get into next.
In my case, I like to use the Notification Center quite frequently just to check the weather, or see what kind of notices I have on tap. But from the factory, the Notification Center can get pretty cluttered with miscellaneous crap that you’ll either never use or don’t want to see on a regular basis. Cleaning it up is a matter of figuring out what you want to use the center for. In my case, I want it as free and uncluttered as possible, and only to keep things on task — no Angry Birds notices in here, no thanks.
My personal Notification Center
This is, of course, a personal preference, and you may prefer that your games are the only thing in your Notification Center, and that’s fine. Regardless, you’ve still got to clean things up before you can proceed forward.
The Notifications setting section shows you first what apps are in the center, and then what ones aren’t. To change that, you click on the app and then decide what you want to do.
OK, so you’ve picked an app and now you’re ready to setup how you want to be notified. You have a lot of options.
Before, you had too little choices. Now you have a lot.
Up top is a slider to determine if you want the app to even show up in the Notification Center in the first place. Again, I prefer to keep only my important things in there, but you may have different priorities. If you’re like me, just slide that slider to Off for Angry Birds, and On for OmniFocus.
Below that is an option to show how many items you want to show in the center. Again, you can keep it simple, or add as much as you want. Just remember that the notification center needs to be manually cleared every time, so don’t stack it up with things unless it’s necessary.
This is probably the most important part of the whole setup, and something you should consider pretty heavily for each app. Here’s how it breaks down:
The simplest setting of all. If you don’t want any kind of visual alert on your screen when something comes up, then select this option. This will allow you to use your phone without interruptions, but on the flip side, if you don’t want to be notified of something, you may just want to move that app out of the Notification Center in the first place.
This is my main setting on almost every application on my iPhone. It’s clean, the animation looks cool and it gives me a visual notice whenever something has changed, but it doesn’t require me to take any kind of action before I move on. This is my favorite feature of the system.
You know these as the same old alerts that you had on your iPhone before iOS 5 came along. These are the blocks that pop up in the middle of the screen and require you to accept or decline the notice before doing anything else. I personally don’t use these anymore, but if I had an app that was so important to me that I needed it to stop me from what I was previously doing, this is what I’d choose.
You know that little badge that pops up on your email and tells you how many messages you have? For me, that’s a great way to tell how many emails I need to address during the day. But with Foursquare, Twitter or Facebook, I just don’t care how many notifications I have, and prior to iOS 5, it would just clutter up my screen. Now, not so much.
To turn it off, just click the slider. Now you don’t have that badge on every app in your library, just the ones that are important to you. For me, that’s Mail, Phone and Messages, and that’s it. You can change yours however you like.
There are additional options as well, but they vary depending on the app. You can turn sounds on or off, see a preview or adjust how often the alert repeats. The last one though, is pretty consistent across the apps, and is one of the more popular options.
If you want to view a notification on your lock screen whenever you have an alert, then adjust the slider for View in Lock Screen. It looks like this:
The lock screen showing two notifications.
I love the lock screen option, but I find that the same apps I use with Banners are the same ones I use in the lock screen. And in case you didn’t know, you can slide one of those icons to unlock the iPhone and open that application, which is very handy indeed.
The new notification system might not be perfect, but it’s the best version of it that we have so far, and I’m a fan. I’m sure things will be tweaked in the coming versions of iOS, but until they do, you can maximize your iPhone’s usage with just a few tweaks.
Now all you have to do is figure out how you want to be notified.
It’s always fantastic to see a good app make a comeback, and iClip is one of those apps. Developer Steven Audette of Irridated Software acquired iClip from its original developers and has released version 5.0 nearly five years after the software had its last major upgrade, now officially supporting Snow Leopard and Lion.
iClip is a clipboard and scrapbook utility that allows the user to keep a copy of almost anything that’s sent to the clipboard, instead of the last item. iClip is hidden off the side of the Mac’s screen, so when the cursor is moved to the side of the screen, iClip pops out right away. It also utilizes hotkeys, drag and drop and 1-click shortcuts.
It’s now available on the Mac App Store for an introductory price of US$9.99, and a demo will be available through the developer’s site soon. We’ll be featuring it Tuesday as our Daily Mac App, so check out TUAW to see iClip in action and how it’s held up over the years.
iClip makes a comeback, now on the Mac App Store originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 31 Oct 2011 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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I’ve been diving into some rudimentary (very rudimentary, trust me) iOS coding lately, and as soon as I picked up an iPad, one of the first thoughts that occurred to me was the idea of having a version of Xcode (the IDE that Mac and iOS developers use to make their apps) available for the platform. There are plenty of text editors available, and even some designed to actually write code on Apple’s tablet. But I haven’t seen a way to actually run that code — until now, that is, with Codify.
To be clear, Codify isn’t a Cocoa development tool like Xcode, so you still can’t write and run iOS apps right on the device (though I have to believe Apple is indeed working on some sort of Xcode for iPad, somewhere in the bowels of Cupertino, right?). But it is a development environment for Lua, a lightweight and simple object-oriented programming language used in all sorts of places. You can basically write and run Lua right inside Codify, which gives you a very powerful tool for creating your own small apps, prototypes and games right there on the iPad.
There are a few advantages and drawbacks to this. The advantage here is that the iPad of course uses a touch interface, so Codify has really smartly invoked touch in a few different ways while you’re coding. To see coordinates or colors, for example, you can just drag your finger around on the screen. And you can scroll right through your code, your objects, or Lua’s documentation just like browsing through anything else on your iPad. While I’m not hugely familiar with Lua (yet), the whole experience seems really great, and should hopefully convince other app makers to start looking at using iPads in this way more.
The biggest drawback, however, is that as far as I can tell, there’s no real way to get your code out of the app, other than just cutting and pasting it off to email or somewhere else. There’s also no (official) way to get other files like sprites and sounds into the app, though the FAQ says that’s being worked on. These are more obviously issues with the iPad and iOS itself, of course, rather than the app, though it would be nice at least to see FTP or Dropbox integration.
But I do like the idea of using my iPad for actually writing code. That bigger touchscreen just seems to encourage creativity, and while most code writing in the past has been the domain of the desktop, why shouldn’t there be apps designed to bring code and app creation to more and more people with simpler and better tools? Codify is a great first step in that direction — it’s $7.99 on the App Store right now.
Daily iPad App: Codify originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 31 Oct 2011 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The Mac Pro is a strange outlier among Apple’s products. It’s insanely powerful, but it’s priced out of the reach of most mortals. It’s by far Apple’s most “traditional” computer; the Mac Pro is a tower you can crack open and customize quite easily, far different from its sealed-up cousins the iMac, Mac mini, and the MacBook line. The Mac Pro’s design is positively ancient by Apple’s standards, with only minor cosmetic alterations since its predecessor, the Power Mac G5, debuted in 2003. It’s also a neglected product, last updated in July of 2010, and currently the only Mac Apple sells which has no Thunderbolt connectivity.
All of this led us to ask awhile back whether the Mac Pro has much of a future left. According to AppleInsider, people at Apple itself are asking that very same question. Citing “people familiar with the matter,” AppleInsider says that back in May of 2011 management was “in limbo” on whether or not to discontinue the Mac Pro in the face of faltering sales.
Predicting what Apple will do with regards to its products is a dangerous game. We learned that the hard way when a source we trusted told us the iPod classic and iPod shuffle were getting the axe this year. Apple apparently decided both products were still profitable enough to keep around, and that’s really the bottom line for the future of any product in Apple’s pipeline: if it still makes money, Apple will keep making a product until it has something better to replace it. When a product doesn’t make Apple money, it’s unsentimental about dropping the guillotine.
There are arguments both for and against discontinuing the Mac Pro, and I’ve outlined a few of them below. Ultimately Apple’s going to do what’s in its own best interests, so bear that in mind as we wade through a puddle of speculation sauce.
Power: Although the iMac is an extremely powerful machine in its own right, the Mac Pro’s performance still kicks the iMac’s butt all the way up and down the block. Benchmark performance in Geekbench shows the 12-core 2.93 GHz Mac Pro coming in with an astounding score of 21,789. That’s nearly twice the 11,581 score earned by the most powerful iMac, a quad-core 3.4 GHz model.
Benchmarks only tell part of the story, however. A Mac Pro that’s been maxed-out on Apple’s online store with as much RAM and hard disk capacity as you can shove into it is a Godzilla of a machine:
The best you can do with an iMac via Apple’s configuration options?
The top-end iMac is an incredibly powerful machine by consumer and even professional standards, but a fully-upgraded Mac Pro is practically ostentatious in the amount of raw processing power it can wield. Professional consumers in areas like 3D rendering, video editing, and other extremely processor-intensive applications surely appreciate the much greater power the Mac Pro can afford them.
Customization:
The Mac Pro stomps the iMac in the customization department. Folding down the Mac Pro’s side door gives you easy and almost instant access to its innards, and virtually every component is simple to swap out. Hard drives in particular are extraordinarily easy to swap in the Mac Pro.
Contrast that with the iMac, where the RAM is essentially the only user-serviceable component. Swapping out the hard drive on an iMac is a harrowing procedure that requires removing the entire front display — not something you’re going to want to do more than once, if ever. You could argue that the iMac’s Thunderbolt capability vastly expands its customization options (and I will, later on), but it still doesn’t quite measure up to the amount of customization available to a Mac Pro.
Server applications:
Since the discontinuation of the Xserve, the Mac Pro is Apple’s only high-end server option. The Mac mini server simply doesn’t measure up to the performance you can get out of a Mac Pro server — it’s not even close. The Mac mini server is a decent choice for low- to medium-demand applications, but if you need powerful servers (and want to stick with OS X Server), the Mac Pro is the only game in town.
Bottom line:
While it hasn’t been updated in over a year, the Mac Pro is still by far Apple’s most powerful and most customizable Mac. Though the iMac’s performance and much lower price are driving the Mac Pro out of the consumer market and increasingly pigeonholing it into the “pro” niche, the fact remains that for some applications and some customers the Mac Pro is still the best choice.
The niche:
Outside of a very few specific applications, a vast number of customers who might have bought a Mac Pro now opt for an iMac instead. Many high-end media shops have decided the iMac affords them enough power for their needs and at a much more comfortable price than the Mac Pro. We’ve been told that even Apple’s own developers have largely moved to the iMac.
When it was first introduced, and for much of the last decade, the iMac was unquestionably a consumer-grade product. But recent advances have put it within throwing distance of the Mac Pro’s performance, and the most powerful iMacs afford users enough processing power that for many applications a Mac Pro is simply no longer necessary. In years past the iMac may not have been “enough machine” for professional photographers or other media types, but that’s no longer the case in all but an increasingly smaller set of circumstances.
With the rising power of the iMac and Apple’s portables, the list of applications where the Mac Pro is the optimal Mac for the job is getting shorter and shorter every year. It’s become a niche product compared to Apple’s other Macs, and Apple isn’t known for keeping niche products around forever. The ones Apple does keep around wind up being neglected, sometimes for years. Witness the Xserve, a product even more niche than the Mac Pro, now discontinued. The iPod classic is a niche product too, without even a minor update in more than two years and blogosphere calls of “dead iPod walking” every September.
Over the past decade Apple has increasingly focused on products with wider appeal while slowly paring away the “pro” market. Apple offers far fewer “pro” software applications now than it did in the past, and even the ones it’s kept around have been tweaked to give them broader appeal to the “prosumer” market — Final Cut Pro X is a good example of this, and it’s also a potential harbinger of Apple’s true disposition toward the “pro” market.
When I hear that even internally at Apple developers are moving to iMacs, I can’t help but hear an ominously tolling bell for the Mac Pro.
Thunderbolt:
Every Mac now offers Thunderbolt connectivity, even the MacBook Air — every Mac except the Mac Pro, that is. Thunderbolt offers extraordinary I/O capabilities and vastly expands the customization options for every Mac that supports it. An iMac may not offer much internal storage compared to what a Mac Pro can support, but once you plug in a RAID array via Thunderbolt that gap closes very quickly.
The power of Thunderbolt doesn’t stop at external storage; it can drive multiple external displays, provide fast connections to peripherals, and even connect to rigs that accept PCI cards, basically replicating many of the capabilities of the Mac Pro.
Thunderbolt doesn’t completely close the gap between an iMac and a Mac Pro, but it makes that gap less relevant for many consumers and drives the Mac Pro even farther into its niche status.
The money:
More than anything else, this is what’s going to determine the Mac Pro’s future. All the arguments for keeping the Mac Pro on the market simply melt away if Apple isn’t making any money on it.
The numbers are not especially encouraging. In Q4 2010, Apple sold 1.24 million desktop Macs for a total of US$1.68 billion in revenue. A year later, sales amounted to 1.28 million desktop Macs for $1.69 billion in revenue. The year-over-year change amounted to a scant 3 percent rise in unit sales and a 1 percent increase in revenue. Apple doesn’t break these sales down by model, but with the Mac Pro competing for sales with both the iMac and Mac mini, it’s unlikely that it amounts to a large proportion of Apple’s overall desktop sales.
In fact, with the Mac Pro an increasingly niche product and effectively stagnating (and unlikely to receive any upgrades until early 2012), it’s very likely that Mac Pro sales have steeply declined year-over-year, with increased sales of 2011-model iMacs and Mac minis just barely pushing the desktop lineup back into profitability.
If the Mac Pro is indeed losing money for Apple, you could make a strong argument that some of the blame falls on Apple itself. Since March of 2009, the Mac Pro has received only two major updates. During the same period, the iMac and Mac mini have both been updated four times. Some of the Mac Pro’s stagnation may be due to limited availability of pro-class processors — delays in Intel’s production of next-gen Sandy Bridge processors are reportedly one root cause behind the Mac Pro’s lack of updates.
No matter where the blame falls, it’s getting harder to recommend a Mac Pro to anyone at this point, even to professional customers who need the extra power the machine affords.
Bottom line:
Apple’s focus has clearly shifted away from the professional market that was once its bread and butter. Power Macs once made up the majority of Apple’s unit sales and profits, but that hasn’t been true for years. Take a look at the current numbers:
Keep in mind that those comparisons are for all Mac desktops, which includes the Mac mini, iMac, and the Mac Pro. If we want to be extremely generous and say the Mac Pro accounts for a full third of desktop sales, it still means Mac portables outsell it nine to one, iPhones by 39 to one, and iPads by 27 to one, with revenues from sales of the most expensive Mac making up perhaps three percent of Apple’s overall revenues (I gave the Mac Pro an extra percentage point since it’s that much more expensive than the iMac).
If Mac Pros account for much less than a third of desktop sales (and I don’t think anyone could convincingly argue otherwise), the Mac Pro’s future gets even grimmer. All of the arguments for the iMac’s unsuitability for high-end applications blow away like leaves in the wind if Apple isn’t making money selling the Mac Pro.
There are certainly arguments for keeping the Mac Pro around — despite over a year of neglect, it remains Apple’s most powerful Mac, and for certain applications Apple simply offers no substitute for the power it affords. At the same time, the arguments for keeping the Mac Pro around sound ominously similar to the arguments that sprang up around this time last year when news of the Xserve’s impending demise became public.
Obviously some consumers actually do need what the Mac Pro offers, but are there enough of them to justify keeping it on the market? Only Apple knows for sure, but the numbers aren’t looking good. Apple has already shown that it won’t hesitate to exit from market segments that don’t drive profitability, and if it turns out the Mac Pro isn’t contributing to Apple’s balance sheet, expect the axe to fall swiftly.
On the Mac Pro’s future originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 31 Oct 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The latest Flurry report has an interesting insight for app developers. Over the last few years, as apps have gained more and more attention and users, discovery has been one of the biggest issues developers face: Most devs spend a lot of their time post-release just trying to tell as many people as possible about their app, so they can actually find it in the store and buy it. But Flurry now says that because of the growing amount of tools out there for app discovery, the biggest problem faced by apps isn’t getting found anymore. It’s trying to get customers to stick around.
As you can see above, app user retention drops off sharply after the first month of usage, and only gets worse from there. Based on my own experience, I can agree with this assessment — while I probably use more apps than the average consumer, even my favorite apps really only hold my attention for a few weeks at the most before I find something else I really like and move on. That’s not a judgment on app quality — there are just so many apps out there and apps always coming out and dropping in price and going free that there’s always something shinier to move on to, no matter how great the app is.
Especially with models like freemium, app retention becomes more and more important for developers. Presumably, then, the next tools developers need should not only work towards discovery (things like Game Center and OpenFeint have helped immensely with this kind of thing), but also should be aimed towards keeping users interested in the apps they have. The new Notification Center may help with something like that, or maybe a “Recently Used” folder on your iOS device, that pushes you back to apps you’ve used lately. It’s fascinating to see that as the app ecosystem grows and ages, developers are facing new and different problems reaching users.
Report: iOS and Android apps fighting for retention, not discovery originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 31 Oct 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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A small survey of 25 education technology directors conducted by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster suggests the iPad may become a staple of the classroom in the next three years. Apple will be pleased as it’s the iPad and not Android tablets that are attracting the most attention. All the technology directors surveyed are testing or deploying iPads in their schools, but none of them are doing the same with Android.
Those that are using computers in the classroom have one computer for every ten students, but that ratio is expected to improve now that tablets are mainstream. According to those surveyed, 36% of these directors expect to have one tablet for every student and 44% expect to achieve this goal within three to five years. Overall, the ratio of students to tablets is expected to be 6:1 which is better than the 10:1 student to computer ratio school systems have today.
Tablets may be useful for schools, but there are significant administrative hurdles that must be overcome before they see widespread usage. The survey reveals that almost half (48%) of the directors believe a tablet is important as an information gathering tool, but 64% see device management as a significant hurdle to deploying these tablets in a school setting. Also a factor is cost, which is a smaller (20%), but still a significant hurdle schools need to overcome.
Despite these challenges, some schools are embracing the iPad as a valuable teaching tool. In a controversial program, kindergartners in Auburn, Maine are using the iPad in the classroom for learning their basic phonic and math skills. Similarly, the Webb School in Knoxville, Tennessee is requiring all incoming fourth to 12th grade students to have an iPad.
School tech directors expect iPads to increase originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 31 Oct 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Touch Arcade has some good and bad news for fans of classic PC RPGs out there. The bad news is that the expected Elite Collection (which was set to come out last week and round up some of old developer Elite Systems‘ best games on iOS, has been delayed due to some rights issues. One of the companies involved that had previously agreed to share its games decided instead to claim a trademark at the last minute, which will hold up the process for a while, perhaps only a week or two.
The good news, however, is that that extra time will allow the folks behind the apps to add in some extra titles, which TA presumes are some really amazing Interplay games, including The Bard’s Tale and the great RPG Wasteland. That would be awesome — almost all of Interplay’s old titles are classics, and it’d be great to get those up and running on iOS devices.
We’ll see — Elite is still working on getting everything together, but as I said, news should be out in the next couple of weeks. Here’s hoping iOS gamers get their hands on this great collection soon.
Classic Elite, Interplay titles coming to iOS originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 31 Oct 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Apple’s got incredible amounts of money in the bank, as you probably already know. According to recent financial filings, Apple is about to spend a good bit of it. The company will reportedly spend US$8 billion during the next financial year, which is more than twice what it spend during the last 12 months. A full $900 million of that will go straight to its retail stores. Last year, the company (only?) spent $614 million on retail, so that’s a nice improvement.
Other areas of spending are a little bit more about company infrastructure, presumably. Apple is moving forward on that brand new “mothership” campus, and presumably no expense will be spared there. The data center down in North Carolina is also set to receive a number of updates, including a rumored “solar farm” to power it. Apple’s been growing by leaps and bounds lately, and while money in the bank is always nice, it seems like this upcoming year is going to be one where the company in Cupertino invests a little bit more in itself rather than just cash.
Apple expenditures to grow on solar project, new campus originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 31 Oct 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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QR codes are a great way of instantly sharing information with a quick camera snap? QREncoder is app for your Mac that’ll let you quickly and easily generate them for printing, uploading and sharing.
You can encode almost any sort of text into a QR code: a URL, phone number, text message, email address, twitter handle — maybe even a haiku. QREncoder makes creating codes easy. Fire up the app, select the type of code you want, and bung your text in the box.
You’ve got a choice of size for your QR code, 5, 6, 9 and 12px and you can save it as a PNG for later use.
QREncoder is quick, easy to use and free from the Mac App Store, so is well worth checking out if you want to create quick response codes.
Daily Mac App: QREncoder originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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