Last July, Apple’s annual iTunes Festival for 2011 rocked London with top-notch performances by bands like Linkin Park, Coldplay, and Foo Fighters — this year’s follow-up slated for September will bring Jack White, Norah Jones, Usher and more to the Roundhouse in London. The festival schedule for this year’s iTunes Festival isn’t complete, but you’ll find this year’s must-see headliners already scheduled for the following dates:
Live concerts will be streamed to viewers worldwide through iTunes or the iTunes Festival app for iOS devices. Last year, the iTunes Festival app made available the schedule, live concert streams, photo galleries, concert replays, and performance highlights (availability depending on the band and when you saw them). From your iPhone or iPad, you’ll also have the option to stream the concert to your television through the Apple TV. Shortly after a performance, you can typically find live highlights through EPs released through the iTunes Store.
If you live in the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands, France, or Germany, you have a chance to win a pair of tickets to see your favorite artist. The rest of the world can tune in to watch the live streams online or through Apple’s application. Throughout September, Apple will be streaming live, must see performances of your favorites artists. You can sign up for updates through the iTunes Festival page on iTunes or follow @itunesfestival on Twitter.
[via MacRumors]
“The App Store is a grand slam, with a staggering 10 million applications downloaded in just three days”. That’s how Apple co-founder and late CEO Steve Jobs saluted the launch of the company’s new storefront for iOS (née iPhone OS) applications on July 14, 2008. Almost four years and over 25 billion downloads later, the App Store has evolved into a brand that spans two platforms (iOS and OS X), three different iOS devices (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad), a variety of Macs, and that hosts over 600,000 apps from more than 200,000 registered developers. Albeit minimal in terms of revenue for a company that makes billions off iPhones and iPads, the App Store created a new economy that nurtures an ecosystem ultimately aimed at selling more devices, as well as showing consumers that, nowadays, software is revolutionizing the way they approach work, entertainment, and other personal tasks. In spite of its tremendous growth, however, little has been done to improve a basic premise of the App Store: finding new apps.
“Discovery and search has been a huge concern of mine for a long time”, said Craig Hockenberry, Principal at design and development studio The Iconfactory. Hockenberry and his team were among the first developers to support the App Store in 2008 with Twitterrific, a Twitter client for iPhone that has expanded to the iPad and Mac, with different versions available on the App Store and Mac App Store. In 2009, a year after the App Store launched, Hockenberry offered a series of suggestions to Apple in order to improve certain aspects of the App Store — namely, following early discussions with developers that decided to sell software on the “iTunes App Store”, he noted how there was “still much room for improvement” to turn the App Store into a viable and reliable business platform for developers who weren’t simply interested in experimenting with it.
Hockenberry’s “Year two” post still rings true today, in spite of the functionalities that Apple fixed, improved, or brought to the App Store in the past four years. For instance, Apple created a “New and Noteworthy” section on the homepage of the App Store that is refreshed on a weekly basis to showcase apps Apple deems worthy of attention; promotional codes, which Hockenberry listed as one of the tools that had helped them sell more products, were made available internationally in late 2010; either on print, its website, or YouTube, Apple has kept pushing ad campaigns to educate iOS and Mac users on the importance and convenience of the App Store.
The very motto that started the app revolution, however, didn’t meet an equal amount of attention by Apple in terms of improvements for the infrastructure behind it. As Hockenberry wrote in 2009, “it’s incredibly hard to find the “that” in “there’s an app for that.” Between keyword spamming and the sheer volume of choices in each category, customers can’t find what they want”.
According to latest data from Apple, there are now over 600,000 apps available on the App Store, 200,000 of which designed specifically for the iPad. On July 21, 2008, the App Store had 900 apps available for download; a year later, it had 65,000; on May 3, 2010, Apple announced 200,000 apps were available on the App Store (with 5,000 for iPad), and on October 4, 2011 (the day the iPhone 4S was officially unveiled), the company formalized the impressive milestone of half a million apps available on the iOS App Store. Today, Apple says over 600,000 apps are available for iOS devices, with website AppShopper reporting 616,196 as “total available apps”.
To better visualize the App Store’s growth over the past 46 months, we have created two charts based exclusively on official numbers Apple released publicly at earnings calls and product keynotes (numbers via Apple’s PR library, Seeking Alpha’s transcripts, and Apple Events).
(iOS apps available on the App Store from July 2008 to April 2012. Data from Apple. Click for full size.)
(iPhone and iPad apps available on the App Store every quarter after launch. Data from Apple. Click for full size.)
Wikipedia recently plotted the growth of available apps versus the total number of app downloads (in March 2012, Apple announced the 25 billionth app download), and Horace Dediu at Asymco visualized download rates for apps, music, and books.
Hidden in Apple’s past press releases and product announcements, there are other interesting tidbits about the App Store economy that may easily get lost in the “sheer volume of apps”. While Apple doesn’t specifically mention how many games are available among apps on the App Store, on September 1, 2010, the company announced that of 200,000 apps available for download, 65,000 of them were “games and entertainment titles”. By October 4, 2011, those “games and entertainment titles” had become 100,000. The most recent addition to the App Store’s family, the Mac App Store, hasn’t been given officially updated figures in a while, with Apple simply calling it the “fastest growing PC software store in the world” on the verge of 100 million apps downloaded in less than a year. According to AppShopper, “only” 10,000 apps are available on the Mac App Store.
At an average rate of 13,000 new apps approved every month since launch, finding the right piece of software on the App Store has become, for many, a task on its own, with a variety of services, including the aforementioned AppShopper (a staff favorite here at MacStories), promising to offer new and possibly better interfaces to navigate the vastness of App Store categories and charts. But aside from third-party services, the exceptional and ongoing growth of the App Store has exacerbated a number of underlying issues that, in different ways, Apple has ignored or only partially improved in the past four years.
Of over 600,000 available apps (and that’s just the iOS App Store), it is safe to assume a good part of them haven’t been updated or maintained by their developers in a while. The so-called “abandonware” has become a common problem on the App Store — let alone the fact that the 600,000 figure also has to account for “double versions” (“lite” or “free” vs. “pro” or “paid”) of apps that developers release to make up for the lack of trials and demoes on the App Store, thousands of applications still available for sale haven’t been updated in months, seemingly forgotten by their original creators. Either for a lack of resources (according to a recent study, only a few developers find the App Store economy sustainable in the long term) or because some developers see the App Store as an opportunity for “quick hits” to “sell once and never support again”, Apple users have to cope on a daily basis with apps that have compatibility issues with the latest versions of iOS, haven’t been updated for the new Retina displays, or simply haven’t shown any kind of interest by their developers.
While professional app finders and reviewers have come up with their own tips and methods to discern quality software from abandonware, the “average iOS user” relies on Apple to provide the tools to buy and install apps, and after four years of relentless releases and growth, finding the right app inevitably suffers from the persistence of software that isn’t always on par with Apple’s latest advancements.
“I do think Apple could do a lot to improve the search and filtering facilities in the App Store”, said Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software. “Especially with the large number of apps and, let’s face it, the large number of uninspiring apps.”
Benjamin Mayo, a young iOS developer who recently released Bingo Machine for iOS, noted how abandonware has an effect on search and rankings on the App Store. “The ranking algorithm could do with an update”, Mayo said. “For instance, in my observations, it puts downloads above ratings. As the App Store has matured, this means that older apps tend to rank higher, as they have been on the store for longer. However, these apps are also more likely to crash and be neglected, as their developer lost interest over time and not updated for new OS compatibility. Therefore, in many cases, the rankings tend to put the incumbent (but not necessarily better) apps above new entrants.”
Alongside abandonware, another phenomenon has affected the App Store’s accuracy of search results and charts: developers gaming Apple’s algorithms with third-party systems that, in exchange for money, generate fake user reviews and downloads, forcing the App Store to “think” an app is particularly popular or valued among users when, in fact, those users are automated bots aimed exclusively at playing with the numbers and algorithms behind search. Unfortunately, the majority of developers resorting to these methods are also doing so to promote clones and rip-offs of other popular apps and games, which means not only they are violating Apple’s own Guidelines (sections 2.20 and 3.10), but they are also effectively manipulating the App Store with fake rankings, fake reviews, and, ultimately, bad software. Apple has been fairly quick and responsive in pulling apps from such developers from sale, but the system isn’t automated, and too many users and developers of quality apps get caught in the schemes of “scammers”.
As The Iconfactory’s Hockenberry told MacStories, “a majority of iOS users don’t scour the web for recommendations. Instead, they open the App Store and tap around until they find something they like. As the catfight for the Top 100 shows, developers have figured this out and will resort to any means necessary to get there. You have no idea how much it pains a quality developer to see scammers rewarded by gaming the system”. Paul Kafasis, developer and CEO at Rogue Amoeba, noted how this issue goes back to basic searching: “If I type in “Angry Birds” or “Tiny Wings”, do I get the app I know I’m looking for? In general, yes. However, there are all kinds of hangers-on: “Tiny Wings Parody” or “Guide for Tiny Wings”. In the cases of smaller apps, these clones/rip-offs/not-what-you-wants wind up higher in the search results than the correct result. This is especially prevalent on iOS”.
On the other hand, because of Apple’s heavy reliance on algorithms based, among other factors, on app keywords and descriptions, upgrading the system overnight would pose a serious threat for legitimate developers who have learned to play by Apple’s rules to survive. “The thing is, if they made a drastic change all at once, it could have disastrous effects for some developers”, said David Barnard, developer at App Cubby and creator of utilities such as Gas Cubby and Launch Center. “Apple doesn’t provide developers with any kind of analytics, but I assume that much of my day-to-day business comes from people searching the App Store. A drastic change could double my business overnight, or it could cut it in half”.
Daniel Jalkut went into greater detail to explain how the search algorithm also based on keywords affects his business. “A major issue I’ve run into myself is shortcomings in the way that keywords in search terms are matched up against keywords, app titles, and descriptions of items in the store”. According to Jalkut, some trademarked terms are treated “specially” so that they explicitly will not match terms even in the keywords list of an app, and this has turned out to be a problem to solve when marketing its blogging tools MarsEdit on the Mac App Store. “I recently decided to change MarsEdit’s title to “MarsEdit – the blog editor for WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger and more,” because I had no other choice if I wanted to match the search terms for “WordPress” and “Blogger” which are apparently configured by Apple (perhaps at the trademark owners’ request) to not match in keywords. This is a disservice not only to developers like myself trying to reach customers, but to customers who put their faith in Apple to bring up pertinent apps”.
Developer Lucius Kwok of Felt Tip Inc. echoed a similar experience: “I haven’t found chart position that big of a difference for my apps, but it might be because I’ve never been high enough to be on the front page of the App Store”, he told MacStories. “Instead, I rely on good reviews, good screenshots, and, foremost, good keywords to help people find me. I recently had to remove some keywords for one of my apps, along with some changes to the content and branding of the app, and the result was that sales of the app dropped by about 75%. All because I couldn’t use a few keywords due to a trademark issue. The reviews and the screenshots remained the same, but the change in keywords meant a big drop in sales.”
“I specifically tune my app name and keywords to optimize search. And it seems to be working for me”, Barnard added. “My apps come up at or near the top of most searches for related terms. Though I’m not particularly proud of some of the methods I use to make that happen “Gas Cubby – Fuel Economy (MPG, Mileage) Calculator and Car Maintenance & Service Log”. The thing is, I’ve got a business to run and kids to feed. If a long app title increases business 20%+ (and I think it can), it’s really hard for me to not do it, especially when all competing apps do”.
Other times, relying on search terms and keywords doesn’t bring to the user’s attention apps that, by popularity and number of downloads or even features by Apple on the App Store’s homepage, should deserve a spot in the top results. “For example, if you search “password” in the App Store, 1Password appears a ways down the list behind a bunch of apps, many of which have long crufty names that manage to cram “password” in somewhere”, said David Chartier of AgileBits, makers of popular password and secure data management app 1Password for Mac and iOS. “It seems like Apple could do a lot more to infuse its search results with better insight to help the right apps bubble up to the top”.
“I’d also like to see Apple separate games and apps in the store, a separate App Store and Game Store would be great. Right now I think serious apps get lost in charts due to the sheer volume of games available”, said Dan Counsell, founder of Realmac Software. To date, Realmac has released four of their OS X apps on the Mac App Store (Courier, Analog, RapidWeaver, and LittleSnapper), and partnered with Impending to bring Clear to the App Store. Counsell, like others, has noted the App Store’s growing presence as a game platform, and Apple’s tendency to position the App Store (and iOS devices) as “serious” gaming ecosystems.
According to a March 2012 study by App Store monitoring company Distimo, “Games is the single most important type of application (50% of all top paid applications are Games)” in the iPad App Store. In the new “All-Time Top Apps” list revealed by Apple in March, 17 apps from Top Paid for iPhone chart were from the Games category; 10 apps from Top Free for iPhone chart were from the Games category; 13 apps from Top Paid for iPad chart were from the Games category; and 6 apps from Top Free for iPad chart were, you guessed it, marketed as Games.
At the moment of writing this, 16 out of 25 titles in the Top Paid chart for iPhone were games; on the iPad, the situation was slightly different with 12 out of 25 titles being games, and more Productivity and Business apps showing up in the Top Charts. Another study by Distimo from May 2012 shows how, indeed, Games and Entertainment are the most popular categories to hit the Top Charts on the App Store; the popularity of games has rapidly expanded to the Top Free Charts as well, as recent data from NPD shows that “freemium” games with paid in-app purchases have become a considerable source of profits for developers. The Top Grossing chart for iPhone, for instance, is dominated by free games with upgradeable in-app purchases.
Apple, too, has noticed the discrepancy between apps and games, and has been taking some moderate measures to differentiate these different kinds of software on the App Store.
As shown in the “Great Apps for the new iPad” section on the App Store, Apple divides apps from games that have been updated for the Retina display. In the “Quick Links” widget that is presented in a sidebar on iTunes, there are separate Apps Starter and Games Starter kits. On the other hand, the “App Store Essentials: Hall of Fame” section mixes games and apps within the same list, but “Games of the week” and “Apps of the week” have always been separate, with previous entries linked on the App Store’s homepage.
For years now, Apple has been refreshing the App Store on a weekly basis to include custom “sections” showcasing hand-picked apps and games. These sections typically come with rotating banners and smaller “mini-banners” on the App Store’s homepage, and are later grouped into an “App Store Essentials” macro-section that includes several of past sections and recommendations. The Essentials section, visible here for iPhone software, separates once again apps from games, and apps from “education apps” as well. While “apps” have been associated with 32 custom sections, the Games category alone has 22 sections available in a sidebar on the right. This is only for iPhone, and doesn’t even account for other Games sections that Apple isn’t including, for some reason, in the aforementioned sidebar, like “Blockbuster Games” and “Hollywood Hits” (linked elsewhere on the App Store). Custom sections provide a decent solution to browse titles Apple has previously “curated”; however, these sections aren’t usually updated as often as they are created — N.O.V.A. 3, a new shooter game by Gameloft, still isn’t listed under Benchmark Games: Stunning Graphics, whilst the majority of reviewers and publications have outlined the game’s remarkable graphic capabilities.
Overall, the App Store’s focus on games and “entertainment tiles” speaks for the minds of consumers who aren’t always using their devices as business and productivity machines. “In the end, Apple has to prioritise customer satisfaction, over developers”, said Mayo. “This means they almost have to focus on the big, wide appeal, titles. Showing niche apps simply to give developers more exposure would not be serving the interests of most users”.
Still, a better separation of apps and games with constantly updated features and sections would only improve on the existing layout and navigation experience of the App Store. Francisco Cantu, independent developer at MacRecon, thinks “Apple actually does a pretty good job in curating the App Store homepage”, but he adds that “having the ability to separate apps from games, from both the homepage and top charts, is a good idea that I’ve heard far too often that it’s a shame it has not been implemented yet”.
“The real problem lies within the layout and categories of the store”, said Realmac’s Counsell. Since 2008, Apple has relied on categories to let users “easily” sift through different kinds of apps and games, with a basic interface that, through the use of dropdown menus on iTunes and a dedicated webpage on Apple.com (alongside other links on Apple’s product webpages), has organized software in categories, much like music is organized in genres. The problem with this system, as Hockenberry noted way back in 2009, is that apps aren’t songs: music doesn’t receive updates, and two different songs don’t “solve the same problem”. As a music listener, I might want to download both Oasis and Blur from iTunes, but as an app user, it’s likely that I will have to choose between Things and OmniFocus to manage my tasks and projects.
“For example, I want a “To Do” app, say, or a notepad app”, Rogue Amoeba’s Kafasis explained. “In this regard, the App Stores are nearly useless. I don’t find the iOS App Store at all conducive to browsing, nor the Mac App Store. I simply never poke around to see what I can find – the only thing I use in the App Store is the Search functionality”.
“Ignoring the fact that I’m a developer and looking at things purely from an iPhone user’s point of view”, said tap tap tap’s John Casasanta, “I’m always disappointed when I’m browsing the App Store. One of the biggest issues is that for the few non-chart areas that exist (New, What’s Hot, etc), all too often, the same apps are featured. And with several hundred thousand apps in the App Store, this makes little sense”.
As of today, there are 22 categories on the iOS App Store, and 21 on the Mac App Store. The layout of the stores is different — the Mac App Store comes as a separate “app” outside of iTunes — but with an increasing number of new apps becoming available every day, the problem is the same: categories have become too broad, encompassing a variety of different functionalities and purposes for apps collected under the same, only slightly descriptive monicker. In 2008, it made sense for Apple to create a “Utilities” category for iPhone, listing apps such as note managers and birthday reminders in a category that was easy and almost fun to navigate. But in 2012, over 16,000 apps are being listed in the “Paid Utilities for iPhone” category alone, and those apps include hundreds of download managers, thousands of flashlight apps, and possibly even more currency converters. How is the average iOS user supposed to find the best app when there are too many possible choices, organized through a category system that is practically unchanged since four years ago?
Online retailers like eBay and Amazon have been using categories and sub-categories for years, allowing customers to navigate various kinds of products with specifics that go beyond simple descriptions like “electronics” or “automotive”. Apple, on the other hand, enabled sub-categories for games (which can be browsed by Role Playing, Simulation, Sports, and more) and Newsstand, but avoided other common and possible denominations such as “Dictionary Apps”, “Getting Things Done”, or “Calendar Apps” for software. In 2008, it made sense for the company to put the focus on its own built-in apps to educate new customers on the features of an iPhone, such as Mail and Calendar; as recent app approvals have shown, however, Apple has clearly relaxed its previous rules on apps that “duplicate system functionality”, going as far as featuring third-party calendar utilities or browsers in the New & Noteworthy and Staff Favorites sections. The Categories pages have been “enhanced” on the desktop with the addition of “New”, “What’s Hot” sections, a basic filtering system, and a visual overhaul (here’s what they looked like when New & Noteworthy was launched in 2010), but they can’t keep up with the variegate, and yet so overly populated in some areas, nature of the App Store anymore. What does “Social Networking” even mean nowadays?
It is safe to assume that, these days, a great portion of iOS users discover and download new apps directly on their iPhones, iPods, and iPads without using a desktop computer to search and organize apps. The evolution of iOS devices from “mobile companions” to “primary computers” was one of the reasons Apple made “PC-free” one of the hallmark features of iOS 5 last year, shifting its strategy from a digital hub based on iTunes on desktop computers to an iCloud-centric ecosystem where Macs and PCs are just “devices”. Millions of users rely on iOS devices as their only devices, and they needed a properly independent iTunes experience free of the constraints of USB sync and file transfers. Apple launched iTunes in the Cloud to let users easily re-download any previously purchased application free of charge, but the overall App Store experience on iOS is severely lacking in terms of browsing and sorting options.
“The top charts don’t change very much, so putting so much emphasis on them makes it hard to find good, new apps”, said John Casasanta. “New apps are fairly easy to find since you can sort the apps in each category by release date… but given that there’s so much crap released daily, this is fairly useless. There needs to be a way to find apps that aren’t just new, but are new and made with quality”.
Indeed, the App Store interface on iOS devices doesn’t make it easy for customers to visualize the Top Charts — admittedly, one of the most common ways people discover new apps worth of attention — with criteria other than “Top Free”, “Top Paid”, or “Top Grossing”. On the iPhone and iPod touch, a single option to load “twenty five more” apps is given at the end of a top chart view; unlike iTunes, there are no buttons to sort a top chart by bestsellers, name, or release date.
As developer Benjamin Mayo noted, the Google Play Store has “Top New Free” and “Top New Paid” charts, displaying apps that are increasing in popularity rapidly, but that are not necessarily selling in high enough quantities to get on the normal “Top Free” and “Top Paid” charts. Aside from a release date sorting option on iTunes (which is limited to 200 apps), iPhone and iPad users can’t sort a top chart by only viewing new apps.
The situation is slightly different on the iPad App Store, where Apple enables users to view single-category top charts (e.g. Top Paid iPad Apps in Productivity) directly from the Top Charts tab, with a “Categories” menu in the upper left corner. On the iPhone App Store, Top Free, Top Paid, and Release Date buttons for single categories aren’t available in the “Top 25″ tab (which is called “Top Charts” on iPad) — users have to select a category first, then choose between various sorting options. By default, “Top Paid” is selected for a single category on the iPhone.
On the iPad App Store, tapping on a single category from the Categories tab opens a completely different view with no sorting options, and two “New” and “What’s Hot” sections listed under “Popular”. A second “release date” tab at the top allows users to view all the latest apps released in a specific category. When browsing a category by Release Date, there are three more sorting options on the iPad: you can sort Release Date by actual “release date”, “name”, or “most popular”. It is unclear which criteria Apple is using to determine “New”, “What’s Hot” and “Most Popular” (or if they’re any different from the algorithms used to lay out Top Charts), but at least the iPad interface resembles iTunes’ category pages in this aspect. With an obvious twist: while similar in appearance, iTunes has different sorting options, and separates free apps from paid ones. The iPad App Store doesn’t, and these options are nowhere to be found on the iPhone App Store.
As a side note, some sections of iTunes and even the App Store’s Top Charts can be viewed from any browser on the web. Here’s Apple listing “Popular Productivity Apps”, and a Top Paid Chart, seemingly for iPhone, with 65 apps available.
(2008 image via)
(2010 image via)
Over the past months, improvements Apple made to the iPad App Store have turned the device’s store interface into a more usable, faster experience in spite of its many flaws. Because of the device’s larger display, Apple managed to fit six tabs, instead of five, in the App Store’s bottom toolbar, giving the Purchased area a dedicated section outside of the “Updates” tab (that’s where previous purchases are located on the iPhone App Store). Besides filters for search (which were implemented on the iPad in February 2011), Apple also made the iPad App Store’s navigation more intuitive by allowing users to swipe horizontally to move between lists of apps, rather than forcing them to tap and wait for lists to load.
Markus Müller, developer of iOS and OS X mind-mapping app MindNode, thinks that the iPad App Store’s interface is superior to its iPhone and desktop counterpart. “When looking at the App Store interface it’s really hard to generalize. While the interface on the iPad is actually really good, the iPhone, iTunes and Mac App Store UIs are missing out. One good example is the ability to filter search results on the iPad. It would be very helpful if Apple made this advanced search interface available on all platforms”.
MindNode is available both on the iOS and Mac App Store, which gave Müller a unique perspective in understanding the differences in terms of exposure and sales that different App Store designs can bring. Albeit similar in overall layout and structure, the Mac App Store is a fundamentally different shopping experience than the iPhone and iPad App Store. For one, the Mac App Store hosts considerably fewer apps and games than the iOS App Store; the front page of the Store prominently highlights “featured” apps and sections with rotating banners, and links to New & Noteworthy, What’s Hot, and Staff Favorites areas (with sorting options available). “Top Charts Categories” are available, and Apple even redesigned the standard category layout to include big, beautiful app icons at the top, and related custom sections in a widget on the right. Surprisingly, the Mac App Store still doesn’t have a Wish List functionality to enable users to quickly save apps they discover for later; and overall, because of the less crowded nature of the Store, the Mac App Store homepage feels more spacious, “clean” than the iOS App Store, especially the one on iTunes.
Müller added: “The App Store, especially the Mac App Store, changed a lot for my application. I was very lucky and the free version of MindNode was one of the few applications on the front page of the MAS on launch day. We had a half a million downloads in the first few days. Ever since, Apple was very kind and featured MindNode Pro on the top of the store page, we received a custom header and background on the MindNode Pro product page and we are part of several featured categories – currently we are included in Apps for Designers, Macs In Class, Apps Enhanced for OS X Lion, and Get Stuff Done. Being featured like this really helps to be discovered by users”.
However, for as much as the Mac App Store might seem like a bigger opportunity to get featured by Apple among the few “big” releases that happen every week, developers caution against betting too much on a front page feature by Apple. “Naturally, the Mac App Store has a “featured” section, and any featured products benefit from that attention”, said Bare Bones Software’s Rich Siegel. “But that’s largely incidental, since developers have no direct input into what products get featured. We believe that each developer must engage in their own marketing operations in order to effectively reach their intended audience”.
“I don’t think improving the current search mechanism is the way to solve the problem. There’s too little context to improve the results”, said Hockenberry. “Google works so well because they rank content based on what other sites think about that content. There’s no equivalent for the App Stores since they’re closed systems”.
When it comes to finding apps, there is no doubt that regular search is the primary interface people rely on to restrict App Store results to their needs. Finding apps is only instrumental in the broader goal of discovering new apps, but as many’s most used method to identify specific titles across 600,000 different ones, developers have expressed their frustration and concerns for a system that, after four years, could use an update.
According to MacRecon’s Francisco Cantu, “there could be an advanced search feature, such as only including apps that meet certain criteria or categories, all while maintaining the quick, general search feature”. Rogue Amoeba’s Kafasis re-iterated what Hockenberry wrote back in 2009: music and software are different, and Apple’s search mechanism should account for the differences between looking for a song, and looking for apps. “It’s obvious that the current search interface is badly limited. Even in the App Store apps (and not just in iTunes), search is very much based on the way the iTunes Store works. For a song title, or an artist, that search works pretty well. For apps, however, it falls far short. Searching for a specific app title works well enough, but searching more broadly for a type of app is nearly impossible”.
Others, like Realmac’s Dan Counsell, think that, generally, “App Store search works just fine”. “I don’t think it’s fundamentally broken or anything”, Counsell added — “the real problem lies within the layout and categories of the store”.
Despite being millions of users’ best way to look for an app, search is just one of the tools offered by the App Store to find apps. Currently, the App Store’s search may lead you to good results if you’re searching for the Facebook app — a specific query — but it doesn’t fare quite well in surfacing, say, apps to “get stuff done” — a common expression to identify a sub-section of productivity apps that Apple even made a custom section on the App Store. What are the chances a new iPhone user looking for apps to “get things done” will find award-winning software like Things and OmniFocus through search? These are the chances.
Apple likes to end its press releases saying that they “reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store”. After four years, here’s how developers think Apple could reinvent the App Store.
In February, Apple acquired App Store search engine Chomp in what appeared as a move to focus on improved App Store discovery and search. Chomp, originally released in 2010, allowed users to find apps by “topic”, rather than app names: for instance, a user could fire up Chomp and look for “shopping lists” or “car racing games”, rather than just “ListBook” or “Real Racing”. As AppAdvice wrote in August 2010, “Chomp’s search engine matches the topic query against a range of factors including app title, description, user reviews and ratings to deliver meaningful results”.
In a demo video embedded below, Chomp CEO and co-founder Ben Keighran illustrated some of Chomp’s discovery, search, and sharing features, including topics, built-in Facebook and Twitter sharing (which the iOS App Stores are still lacking), and result ranking (here’s more in an interview with Robert Scoble).
Looking at Chomp’s past efforts, it is not difficult to see why Apple was interested in acquiring the technology and talent behind the engine. Chomp allowed users to create profiles, and rate the apps they liked. The developers built a website to simplify the process of browsing apps, and built an “app score” system not too dissimilar from what third-party App Store search service Appsfire has recently announced. Overall, Chomp managed to fit within a single iPhone app a plethora of “enhanced” App Store search features, a more intuitive (and gesture-based) browsing experience, social functionalities, and personalized recommendations. With Chomp CTO Cathy Edwards now working as Senior iTunes Engineer and Apple allegedly considering a major iTunes Store revamp for later this year, how could the technology behind Chomp be integrated into the App Store for a better app discovery system?
“It’s really hard to ask people to build an all-new social graph for every new service”, said AgileBits’ David Chartier. “I bet most people would much rather plug their Twitter and Facebook accounts into the App Store and discover apps through the friends and lists they’ve already built. I really hope Apple recognizes this value and gets over whatever hangup it has with Facebook, but I won’t be surprised if it doesn’t happen”. Chartier agrees that Apple’s “acquisition earlier this year of app discovery service Chomp means it is thinking about this problem”, but he adds “I’m just worried about Apple not going far enough. Apple’s never done well in social, and Ping is a good example”.
Right now, it’s unclear if and how Apple plans to integrate Chomp with iTunes, but when discussing a possible social and user-based recommendation system for apps, the mind inevitably runs to Ping Apple’s attempt at bringing social functionalities to iTunes with a network of artists and music listeners. Launched with iTunes 10, Ping has failed to catch on with users in terms of traction and popularity, but it has showed some interesting ideas that could be applied to a possible “Ping for Apps” (as we previously tried to describe Explor) — an expansion of Ping aimed at letting users follow their friends to discover more apps, and get better personalized recommendations (other than Genius, which is virtually unchanged since its original launch).
“Given the success of Ping for iTunes, I can’t imagine that would do anything at all for Apps”, said Paul Kafasis. Dan Counsell, on the other hand, was more optimistic in regards to a Ping-like social system for apps. “Wouldn’t it be great if you could see what Apps, Music, Films, and Books your friends are buying? Apple has this data, they need to build a social network around all of it. Sure they have Game Center for games and Ping for music, both these networks are fairly good in and of themselves but users shouldn’t have to manage multiple accounts. Personally I want one Apple ID-based social network that covers everything I do and buy in iTunes”.
Kwok and Müller don’t think that, given Apple’s track record with social features, simply adapting Ping to apps would be a good solution. Rather, Kwok suggested “having the same charts and the same featured apps for all customers in a country’s store” as a way to contrast the “filter bubble effect” where you see only the apps you and your friends like; Müller, on the other hand, believes that “an improvement to the Genius recommendations would be something that would definitely help” with discovering new apps, and, more importantly, quality ones. App Cubby’s Barnard doesn’t think “Ping for Apps” would be much better than regular Ping for Music either, but he offered a middle-ground proposal to incorporate a social component into app purchasing decisions. “Knowing what friends are buying might encourage people to buy more apps, and even higher quality/priced apps, but ultimately what I really want to know is what apps do people actually use”, said Barnard. “I wish Apple would incorporate internal usage metrics into app discovery. I may buy 20 little apps before finding the one I use every day. Knowing that I bought each of those 20 isn’t very helpful, but knowing that I use one of them every day is very, very interesting.”
When Apple launched Ping in 2010, for the a few hours the company allowed iTunes users to look up Facebook friends who were using Ping in order to simplify the process of building another network of friends on a new service. As The New York Times recollects this week, however, the functionality was quickly disabled, and Steve Jobs told a reporter that Facebook “demanded onerous terms that we could not agree to”. As of today, Ping only allows users to find people via email, Address Book, or Twitter, and comes with a web-based sharing option to share what a user is listening to simply through Facebook.com.
By asking “What kind of app are you looking for?”, Chomp took the opposite direction of Apple’s App Store in letting users login with Twitter and Facebook (the former option even supports Twitter integration in iOS 5) to share ratings as “hearts” or optional reviews on the two popular social networks. At the same time, by combining easier sharing options with a radically different approach in showcasing “app types” instead of “app names”, Chomp still stands out from the crowd of third-party App Store search engines because of its navigation and focus on functionalities, rather than keywords.
The Chomp app for iPhone — which in spite of the acquisition by Apple is still available and functioning — starts with an elegantly laid out mosaic of “app categories” to check out, such as “all time greats”, “on sale” or “top twitter apps”. Unlike the App Store, Chomp’s front page is dynamic, constantly bringing new “tiles” of app categories into attention, such as “photo album” or “calendar”. In fact, Chomp even goes as far as calling its refresh mechanism “suggesting new searches”, rather than “suggesting new apps”. With over 600,000 apps (621,000 as tracked by Chomp today), suggesting app names makes little sense; automatically recommending “smart groups” of good, user-valued apps, though, is a different story, and quite possibly a much bigger business for Apple and third-party developers at this point.
Chomp did more than a couple of things right. The app’s unified search tool, for instance, allows users to always filter down results by price, type (“all”, “games only”, and “no games”), and four sorting options. When browsing an automatically-recommended “lyrics” search, Chromp returned relevant results for lyric-fetching utilities like SoundHound and Shazam; in the same search, however, Chomp also embedded a scrollable list of other search suggestions, such as “youtube” and “facebook video”, both linked to today’s process of finding music and lyrics on the web.
“The running joke we have going is that the people running the App Store keep featuring the same apps mainly because they have as hard a time discovering good apps as users do”, said John Casasanta, whose Camera+ app for iPhone was downloaded more than 7 million times. “As the developer of Camera+, it’d be very hard for us to be disappointed with app discoverability in the App Store. But even though it’s worked-out incredibly well for us, I strongly feel that the whole thing is in need of some dramatic improvements”. Whilst Chomp does undoubtedly a good job at aggregating similar apps from iTunes, there’s one thing Chomp couldn’t access as a third-party app: a user’s entire App Store purchase history.
When it comes to discussing possible improvements for the App Store’s browsing experience, “discovery” and “personalized recommendations” often overlap. “Yes, discovery inevitably becomes more of a challenge as the App Store grows”, said Evan Doll, a former Apple engineer who went on to create Flipboard with Mike McCue. Recently updated to version 1.9 and available both on the iPhone and iPad, Flipboard was named “iPad App of the Year” by Apple in 2010. “In a way, it’s similar to other types of content discovery online. When a friend shares an article they’ve read, a video they’ve watched, or an app they’ve downloaded, it instantly becomes more relevant to me, often in a way that an algorithm would have a tough time predicting”.
Apple has been shying away from social recommendations on the App Store, but they did implement an algorithm-based system to automatically suggest “apps you’ll love by learning about the apps you already have”: Genius Recommendations for Apps. Available on iOS devices, Genius for apps is capable of looking at a user’s entire history of purchased apps, recommending other apps that meet Apple’s criteria to fall under the “apps you’ll love” metric. Unfortunately, the system leaves much to be desired, without proper organization for different kinds of software (again, games and apps are displayed within the same list) and a simple name-driven approach towards collecting similar apps: in a recent test, I was recommended “TweetFire” because I previously purchased this TweetFire (note the keywords in the app’s title), and Genius thought I would love Stupid Zombies because it had found Zombie Gunship in my Apple ID history.
Looking ahead, integrating search further with Chomp’s technology and Apple’s existing Genius personalized recommendations could be a big shift for discovery and quality of App Store results. As David Chartier noted, “infusing social data into the App Store’s search results could do wonders for app discovery and sheer accuracy”. The combination of an updated graphical layout consistent across stores (yet taking advantage of each device’s screen and unique capabilities), social features, smarter algorithms, and personalized recommendations could potentially revolutionize the way software is discovered and shared on the App Store.
But as Benjamin Mayo also suggested, let’s not forget about Apple’s latest move into intelligent and automated recommendations: Siri. “Personally, I see the potential to integrate with Siri, for further app discoverability. For example, “Siri, I am looking for a casino card game to play” would return a Blackjack app. Or even better, “Siri, is there a better bingo app than the one I have?”
Beyond better search and discovery, personalized recommendations, and new algorithms, several developers agreed that there are various additional improvements Apple could bring to the App Store to encourage users to browse and explore more. While not strictly related to better results, support for screenshots and videos in an app’s description was a common suggestion aimed at letting customers know more about apps they’re about to purchase.
“If a picture is worth a thousand words, videos are priceless. Allowing developers to embed videos from services like YouTube or Vimeo could do wonders, especially for an app space that is still just in its infancy”, said Chartier. Müller added that “videos or screencasts would be a very welcome addition to the App Store”, but he also noted how “adding videos would mean even more work for Apple’s app review team”. Others noted how, in the meantime, Apple could simply make text and web links embedded in an app’s description selectable and clickable.
In addition to app videos, another oft-mentioned feature that Apple still hasn’t officially brought to the App Store is support for trials. Since 2008, Apple has allowed developers to keep multiple versions of an app available on the Store, but as outlined above, the separation and proliferation of “lite” and “pro” applications has only increased the noise ratio of the App Store, rather than its focus. In-app purchases have turned out to be a solid workaround for some (The Iconfactory’s Twitterrific for iOS is available for free on the App Store, with a $4.99 in-app purchase to unlock the “Pro” version), but they are no replacement for the simple “try before you buy” system developers have been using for years outside of the App Store. “With trials of apps, users could easily test out more products to find the one they like best. If the search for a type of utility returns many results, the user would then be able to sample and make a far more informed purchasing decision. Trials would make the somewhat lackluster searching and discovery seen in the App Stores much less of a problem”, said Kafasis.
Last, developers contacted by MacStories agreed on other possible improvements such as opt-in background artwork on app pages for “trusted developers”, developer reputation, and possibility to respond to customer reviews directly on the App Store — ideas that Hockenberry, too, proposed in 2009. While these wouldn’t necessarily lead to a better search mechanism or app discovery system, they would certainly help in better showcasing the growing community of third-party developers committed to the App Store for the long term.
We view Apps different than books or songs, which we do not curate.
If your App looks like it was cobbled together in a few days, or you’re trying to get your first practice App into the store to impress your friends, please brace yourself for rejection. We have lots of serious developers who don’t want their quality Apps to be surrounded by amateur hour.
Well, let’s first say we have two platforms we support. One is open and uncontrolled — that’s HTML5. We support HTML5. We have the best support for it of anyone in the world. We then support a curated platform which is the App Store. It is the most vital app community on any platform. How do we curate this? It’s a bunch of people, and they come into work every day. We have a few rules: has to do what it’s advertised to do, it has to not crash, it can’t use private APIs. And those are the three biggest reasons we reject apps. But we approve 95% of all the apps that are submitted every week.
“In my opinion, Apple needs to think about curation instead of search”, said Hockenberry. For the past years, Apple has been calling its App Store a “curated platform”, but with over 600,000 apps available and the aforementioned weekly cases of scammers, clones, and chart ranking schemes, the definition of “curation” has been growing stale lately. While Apple does have to approve each app that goes for sale on the App Store, its approval systems are largely automated these days, and with thousands of new apps and updates received every day, it has become clear Apple hasn’t been manually curating — like a curator selectively and painstakingly organizes items for a collection or exhibition — App Store apps for a very long time.
But that’s not to say Apple hasn’t, at least partially, held true to its promise of a “curated App Store”. As explained above, every week the company updates the App Store homepage with new lists of New and Noteworthy, What’s Hot, and Staff Favorites apps. For the past few months, Apple has been pointing customers towards “recommended” apps with an official @AppStore Twitter account. Every week, new custom sections grouping related apps are introduced on the App Store, and they are linked on the homepage with rotating or static image banners. These sections usually feature custom image backgrounds, descriptions, and sub-sections to better convey the purpose of the selected applications, and they are entirely hand-picked — there is no automated algorithm choosing apps here.
Unfortunately, given the sheer volume of new software released every week and the constant updates to existing apps, a dozen of custom sections and banners hasn’t proven to be enough to turn the App Store from a digital shopping mall for software into a vast, yet also lovingly curated celebration of the greatness of independent iOS and OS X development.
The topic of curation on the App Store isn’t new to developers and observers of Apple’s ecosystem. In January 2012, Jean-Louis Gassée noted how French tire manufacturer Michelin spun off an entire business to tourist guides and restaurant recommendations just to get people to drive more — and thus likely need new tires more often — to visit the places listed in the Michelin guides. Gassée believes that alongside the 600,000 apps available on the App Store, an Apple-made, curated “App Guide” with reviews and opinions would “give app seekers more than today’s skimpy categories and unreliable user reviews”. A better selection of apps would, in return, further showcase the amazing capabilities of iOS devices, which is where Apple makes a profit.
In 2009, more than a year after the App Store launched, Instapaper’s Marco Arment argued that it was in the own nature of the App Store to be divided in “two App Stores” — one for “simple, shallow games and apps with mass-market appeal”, and another one for “apps and games with more complexity and depth, narrower appeal, longer development cycles, and developer maintenance over the long term”. Four years later, given Apple’s remarkable success and resources, would a system that combines the appeal of thousands of mass-market apps with the act of manually curating higher-quality tiles still be possible?
“Apple is in a position where they can become a trusted source for app recommendations”, Hockenberry explained. “To some degree, they’re already doing it with the features (like Mother’s Day apps in the US). But those features don’t typically stick around. Nor is there any description of why the app was featured. I want Apple to tell me why they think the app is great. And I want to be able to find these recommended apps later on — I’ll happily go look at past recommendations for an app I need instead of searching for “todo” or “flashlight”.”
In a way, the “curated App Store” lacks an editorializing process that goes beyond simply selecting and organizing apps in custom sections, but that also explains why a specific app should be worth of attention. In this regard, developer Loren Brichter expressed his appreciation for the recently released TouchArcade app. TouchArcade is one of the most popular websites covering the iOS gaming scene with daily news, reviews, and commentary. Last week, TouchArcade released its first iPhone app, combining the website’s editorial process with an app discovery system directly linked to the App Store, and enhanced with videos, screenshots, and recommendations. “I think the TouchArcade app is an awesome example of an App Store outside of the App Store. It’s heavily curated by experts, trusted by users, and has a ton of great features like watch lists and videos”, Brichter said.
Ultimately, it comes down to trusting the people who recommend apps to buy. Hockenberry noted how “customers trust sites like Macworld, MacStories, or Daring Fireball to find them the best apps”, and admits that doing “curation” along these lines would change the whole dynamic for developers. “Instead of fighting for a short-term placement in the Top 100 lists, we’d fight for a long-term product review. Look at the amazing things developers do to earn an ADA and imagine if that happened once a week. Earning that “Apple approval” could ensure a product’s success for a long time. Which would be great for both customers and developers alike.”
After four years, the App Store has become more than “a grand slam” — it has ignited an app revolution that created a new economy that supports over 210,000 jobs in the U.S. alone. But Apple should do more with its “curation” process, and with the annual WWDC approaching, developers hope the company has been listening.
“A movie recommendation from Roger Ebert means a lot more to me than a computer generated ranking based on reviewer scores”, Hockenberry concluded. “Automated systems can help, but I think it’s the personal touch that’s missing”.
Released in April exclusively on the iPhone, Everyme offered a new take on private messaging with groups by combining a clean design with a featured called “Magic Stories”, which allowed the app to automatically fetch important updates from other social networks, and bring them into Everyme. From my review:
Everyme is a private “network” of people, organized in circles, connected to other services. The distinction between “communication” and “sharing” will also define Everyme as a private network, or a messaging service going forward. Unlike most messaging solutions, Everyme could improve its “magic” aggregation and cross-service data collection to simplify organization for its users; unlike most social networks, Everyme could, say, think of something like Xobni’s contact history to provide better, more informative stats about the people you care about. It is an interesting scenario, and I look forward to Everyme’s next steps; today, I don’t think Everyme can be compared to Path — as some are already doing — as the focus is clearly on group messaging, whereas Path has taken a more elegant, Facebook-like approach with its digital journal.
Today, Everyme begins its expansion onto other platforms and connected services by releasing an Android app, web access, and an improved iPhone app with support for Instagram, better communication within groups, and more. I have been able to test the new Everyme for iPhone, and while I am still looking forward to a native iPad version (most of my iMessages these days are sent from the iPad), I have enjoyed the changes brought to version 1.5.
The most visible change in Everyme 1.5 is support for photo uploads with Instagram-like filters. Similarly to how Path for iPhone lets you preview filtered photos as you take them, Everyme 1.5 puts a filter bar at the top of the screen, enabling you to see how a picture will look like with Vintage, Hipster, Pro, Adams, or Sepia effects applied. I didn’t find Everyme’s filters to be as attractive and fun to use as Instagram’s, but I do think they are better than Path’s somewhat curious choices. Photo uploads are generally faster in Everyme 1.5, and because not everyone will want to add yet another filter-based photo sharing tool to their workflows, the team added support for Instagram into the app. With an additional login option in the Settings, Everyme can now look for activity in your Instagram account, and populate your Circles with Magic Stories coming from Instagram as well.
Other minor, yet welcome improvements have found their way into Everyme 1.5. When you share links, for instance, the app now embeds summaries inline to give others an idea of what they are about to click on (Everyme features a built-in browser for webpages); users can now create and edit their own bios, and comments are displayed inline within the news feed. Comments can be deleted with a swipe, and, speaking of gestures, Everyme 1.5 also comes with pull-to-refresh to update circles and stories. Overall, Everyme 1.5 appeared to be faster than version 1.0 in my tests, and I was happy to see a new “export data” option to request an export of all your data you shared on Everyme, and get it delivered via email.
Today, Everyme is also launching a web app to communicate with your Circles. Sporting a clean design similar to the iPhone app, the web app features a sidebar on the left listing all your circles, with unobtrusive notification badges for unread stories and messages; you can manage your profile and your Circles, share stories and upload pictures from your computer, and, overall, enjoy the basic Everyme experience from any modern web browser, which should come in handy for those times when an iPhone isn’t available, or to sift through multiple conversations at once with the convenience of a larger display. I haven’t been able to test the web app on the iPad’s Mobile Safari yet, but I assume it makes for a decent temporary solution until the Everyme team comes out with a native tablet client.
Everyme 1.5 is available for free on the App Store.
I already know what you’re thinking: “Justnotes looks a lot like nvALT.” You wouldn’t be wrong in thinking that Justnotes is visually reminiscient of Notational Velocity and its poweruser fork, nvALT, but it wouldn’t be fair to judge without getting hands on. I’d posit Justnotes as an alternative to TextEdit on OS X — it’s a container for creating, sorting, and archiving text files. Otherwise, Justnotes is simply the desktop counterpart to Simplenote… With a twist.
Justnotes wins big as a Simplenote client. Clean like the Simplenote website, Justnotes provides a list view and search bar in the sidebar for sorting through notes, while a blank whiteboard offers unlimited space for writing plain text. Notes can be tagged (delimited by commas or spaces) and starred to pin notes to top of the sidebar. In construction, Justnotes isn’t disimilar from an iPad app. Unfortunately, a fullscreen Justnotes won’t fill up the display, leaving wide spaces of linen underneath the app’s odd fit.
Where Justnotes makes its big differentiator from the aformentioned apps is that Justnotes can sync to several locations at the same time. So while you *can* use Justnotes strictly as a Simplenote client (which it’s great at), you add additional Simplenote accounts or choose folders on your Mac to write notes in. Put simply, you can write notes that link to multiple directories, whether they be online or offline, within Justnotes. This means that repositories of daily notes, work related diatribes, and reviews such as this one can be linked to distinct locations. Every folder or Simplenote account that Justnote syncs too is clustered together in the sidebar. The creation and arrangment of the “lists” you sync are managed through the app’s preferences. Favorites and tags don’t apply to locally synced folders.
As a text editor, Justnotes’ management options are minimal. While keyboard shortcuts are plentiful and explained in app, sort options are accessed through the gear button along with manual sync and a preferences menu item. Notes themselves can be archived off, and must be deleted a second time from the Archive to remove them permanently. Archived notes simply stay in the background and can be accessed through the Archive tab, while the Notes tab shows all of your working documents. Sharing options are few: text can be exported as a PDF or to your mail client, but that’s it.
Where Justnotes excels is at its ability to aggregate several working folders into one app that manages all of your text files. On the other hand, users looking for free Simplenote syncing would’nt find too many reasons to move away from Notational Velocity. Without Markdown support or previews, Mac centric writers familiar with the syntax won’t find much in Justnotes either. I like Justnotes’ style, and I certainly believe that it makes for a richer alternative to OS X’s basic writing utilities. I think Simplenote users will find themselves right at home with the interface, as it provides nothing more and nothing less than what the online service itself provides. Justnotes is currently $5.99, but will go up to $9.99 after the introductory promotion is over. If you’re interested, act now by downloading Justnotes through the Mac App Store. As a note, Justnotes’ folder syncing only works with OS X 10.7.3 or higher due to be compatible with Apple’s sandbox.
Update 12:28 PM: Clarified that Justnote’s folder sync features only work on 10.7.3+. The app will run on any version of Lion.
According to TUAW, Apple will start rejecting Mac apps with “hotkey functionality” starting June 1, when the deadline for Sandboxing will become active for Mac App Store developers.
Apparently, Apple will allow hotkey apps that are already in the Mac App Store before June to offer only bug fixes. New apps and any apps that add features (i.e. non-bugfix releases) will not be allowed to support hotkeys.
TUAW has been told that Apple will be rejecting all apps with hotkey functionality starting June 1, regardless of whether the new features are hotkey related or not. Basically, if you’re developing one of those apps, an app that assumes you can still add hotkeys, don’t bother submitting it to the Mac App Store.
While TUAW doesn’t specifically mention any Mac app that would be subject to this new restriction, it is safe to assume that by “hotkey functionality” they mean desktop applications that allow users to set up keyboard shortcuts to activate other apps or system locations (such as Apptivate), or an app’s specific functionality (such as Alfred’s hotkey to show a search box, or OmniFocus’ hotkey-based Quick Entry panel).
I spoke to various developers of Mac apps with system-wide hotkey functionality, and they were unaware of the changes that Apple may begin to enforce on June 1. Currently, there is no mention of such specific change in the Mac App Store Review Guidelines (or Sandboxing FAQs), and the APIs used by the developers I contacted aren’t deprecated in the latest Mountain Lion Developer Preview, updated yesterday. Some developers told me Apple may have rejected some apps that registered hotkeys without a user’s explicit consent, but according to TUAW the issue is different, and related to the kind of control and experience that Apple wants on the Mac App Store, rather than technical limitations or APIs.
Initially pushed back from November 2011 to March 2012, and then again to June 1, 2012, Sandboxing for Mac apps has found a considerable amount of skepticism in the Apple developer community, as it would pose a threat to existing Mac apps that would have to rework their functionalities around the limitations of sandboxing.
As I wrote in February:
Sandboxing is a new technology in OS X Lion that limits the functionalities of Mac App Store applications to a list of “entitlements” that cover various areas of the operating system an app can access, such as networking, printing, or a user’s files. A sandboxed application would be unable to harm the system outside of its operational scope (managed by the entitlements), and this has caused some concerns as apps would lose access to the Mac’s entire filesystem, which is required by some functionalities of certain applications that aren’t necessary malicious or “compromised”. Similarly, inter-app communication would be a technical issue with sandboxing, as apps like TextExpander, Keyboard Maestro and CoverSutra — utilities that perform actions in the background without asking for user’s interaction in some cases (user-initiated actions can override the sandbox) — couldn’t get past the sandboxing requirement for the Mac App Store.
In the past months, a number of notable Mac developers have voiced their concerns in regards to sandboxing: Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software wrote that “to increase adoption, Apple should expand the current list of entitlements until it covers every reasonable behavior that users expect from Mac apps”; following his decision to stop selling Clipstart on the Mac App Store, Riverfold’s Manton Reece noted how, rather than playing “catch-up” with Apple to work around the list of entitlements for sandboxed apps, he’d prefer to keep selling his apps on his own website — something that the upcoming Mountain Lion will keep supporting thanks to GateKeeper.
Over at TUAW, Erica Sadun says we should say goodbye to “hotkeys, macro programs, end-user customization”. While I can’t confirm the kind of apps and “hotkey functionalities” that Apple has apparently already rejected or will start rejecting in two weeks (I’ve only seen some discussions about clipboard managers and keyboard shortcuts on the Mac Dev Forums), it would surely be unfortunate to lose software like Alfred, Apptivate, or Keyboard Maestro (just to name a few) to an updated Mac App Store policy. Erica Sadun refers to these hotkey-enabled apps as ”all those great little hotkey shortcuts that used to let us bring an app to the forefront and do something”.
That sandboxing would be a technical issue for apps based on AppleScript technologies is nothing new; however, Apple also specifically asked developers to get in touch with the company if technical issues were preventing them from sandboxing an app, suggesting that the company was actively working on getting developers of existing great Mac software on board with sandboxing, without limitations. This week, the Pixelmator team updated their application with support for sandboxing; other developers of “power-user” applications like Keyboard Maestro, however, still haven’t found a proper way to work around sandboxing entitlements, going as far as writing “Keyboard Maestro requires access to other applications to perform your macros and so is not, and cannot, be sandboxed” on the app’s Mac App Store page.
According to Apple’s notice from February, developers of existing apps on the Mac App Store that are not sandboxed may still submit bug fix updates without sandboxing their apps. In theory, this should mean that apps like Alfred or Shortcuts (with hotkey functionality) or Keyboard Maestro (for general incompatibility) should stay on the Mac App Store as long as their developers don’t include new features, but only bug fixes for existing customers. But what’s going to happen when developers of hotkey-enabled apps or already-approved macro programs like KM will decide to update their apps with new features?
Just like in February, the future of sandboxing and Mac App Store apps is uncertain, but it’s looking worse if Apple really has decided to ban hotkey functionality — a common trait of keyboard-based software, such as Mac apps — from the Mac App Store. With the WWDC ’12 scheduled to kick off 10 days after the proposed sandboxing deadline, here’s to hoping Apple will, once again, be more flexible, and offer third-party developers new ways to work around sandboxing — the Mac App Store deserves all kinds of OS X software, from simple single-purpose utilities, to more complex, power user-oriented applications.
Update: Throughout the day, several developers I spoke to confirmed my earlier reports that the APIs to implement global hotkeys and keyboard shortcuts haven’t been deprecated (not even in Mountain Lion), and aren’t going away any time soon. Two developers I spoke to, in particular, confirmed that recent updates to their Mac apps with “hotkey functionality” were approved without issues by Apple.
Furthermore, developers confirmed they couldn’t find any new mention of hotkey-related entitlements in today’s updated documentation for Gatekeeper and Sandboxing. So while more “complex” utilities like Keyboard Maestro and TextExpander may still have to find a way to work around Sandboxing, other apps that incorporate hotkey functionality — like OmniFocus, Alfred, or just about any app that offers a systemwide shortcut — should still be fine for the Mac App Store.
Lex Friedman at Macworld confirmed with his own sources that a ban for general “hotkey functionality” isn’t coming to the Mac App Store, writing that “so long as developers use Apple’s officially supported APIs to register systemwide global hotkeys, their apps will remain eligible for inclusion in the Mac App Store”.
The Sparrow team has been busy rolling out updates for its iPhone app, but a new version of their popular Mac email client is available today on the Mac App Store, and it adds a series of long-requested features and fixes. If you’re still running a POP account, for instance, Sparrow 1.6 will finally let you configure it — this is a functionality “Sparrow switchers” have been asking since day one, but it took the team a while to properly implement it alongside support for Gmail and regular IMAP. If you’re still rocking a Hotmail account via POP and have been looking for ways to get those emails into Sparrow, now’s the time to update.
Version 1.6, however, comes with other improvements and fixes to enhance the performances and overall stability of the app, as well as usability in some areas. A minor yet welcome change in my Sparrow workflow, for instance, is the new “Empty Spam” button that allows me to flush undesired messages with a single click.
Another small change, but a new “Inbox Zero” message now greets you when nothing else is awaiting reply in your inbox. It’s the little things.
Also in Sparrow 1.6, there is a “true unified inbox” that lets you navigate all your drafts, starred messages, and sent emails directly from your unified account. Among the other changes, the tab key in the composer view now lets you toggle down from ‘To’, ‘Subject’ to ‘From’; hitting Esc on Quick Reply will save a draft; and a new Shift-cmd-option-M shortcut toggles the Extended Sidebar (so you can easily switch to a Twitter-like layout with profile pictures and icons instead of labels).
Make sure to check out the Sparrow blog for a full list of fixes and improvements in 1.6. Sparrow for Mac continues to be a staff favorite here at MacStories for its clever combination of social features, intuitive gestures, and customization options, and for this update, the Sparrow team kindly donated 20 promo codes to MacStories readers. You can get Sparrow for Mac at $9.99 on the Mac App Store, or you can enter our giveaway and try to win one of the 20 copies up for grabs. Details below.
To enter the giveaway, tweet the following message before 11.59 AM PDT (May 18th, tomorrow):
Win a copy of Sparrow for Mac on MacStories: http://mcstr.net/Jktamq
We will search Twitter.com for tweets and retweets and randomly pick up the winners. Make sure to follow @macstoriesnet on Twitter so we can get in touch with you once the giveaway is over. If you want to increase your odds of winning, you can also leave a comment to this post.
Winners will be announced on Saturday (May 19th). Good luck!
Here are today’s @MacStoriesDeals on hardware, iOS, and Mac apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get them before they end!
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I remember the first time I heard about Phocus’ Due - John Gruber linked to it. After buying it, Due has always stayed on my iPhone. I’ve tried many similar apps, but Due has always been my go-to application. Due isn’t trying to compete with the larger, more involved GTD apps, so anyone can use it and learn to love it.
One of the most important features of Due has always been the auto snooze feature, as Calendar events and Reminders will show you something once, then vanish back into the OS. Due will continually remind you about something until you get it done, and that’s what I love about this app. I also love that each alert is customizable – need to delay it an hour, a day, or a few minutes? No problem! The timers are also fun and much better than the iOS Clock functions. I use several timers when I’m cooking or grilling, whether it’s flipping burgers or making homemade eggrolls. Due for iOS is a very popular reminder and timer application for iOS, available as a universal application that looks great (and is retina-ready) on both the iPhone and the iPad. We have covered Due several times before, but now it’s available for the Mac!
I was priviledged to help test this app from its inception and it’s been exciting seeing it evolve into the 1.0 release in the Mac App Store. The UI is very similar to the iOS counterpart, so the learning curve is very fast. It has those wonderful pinstripes and the pop-up windows look very nice. The icon is very slick – one of the best I have seen for a reminder application. Due for Mac (along with the iOS version) uses iCloud or Dropbox syncing so that all of your data is available no matter where you are. Set a timer on the Mac app, launch the iOS version so that changes can sync, then go outside. When the timer is up, your iPhone will alert you that it has expired. I prefer iCloud syncing as it is hard wired into the OS; in all my 1.0 testing, sync was fast and flawless.
Like all other versions, Due has natural time parsing which makes it a breeze to enter reminders. Type, “Make dinner reservations with wife at 10am tomorrow” and your reminder is set for 10 AM tomorrow. ”Cancel Spotify and renew Rdio subscription in 1 month” and you get a buzz a month later. There are no awkward date pickers, nor rigid date and time format to follow.
As with the iOS versions, assignable alert sounds are available for the Mac. You can use louder and longer alerts for very important reminders, and softer ones for regular reminders.
Power users will love all of Due for Mac’s shortcuts. Don’t worry about using your trackpad – show or hide Due, create reminders, reschedule them, mark them complete, delete them – it’s all a keyboard shortcut away. Due for Mac also supports Growl notifications. If I had to comment about something that I’d like to see it would be a global hotkey to bring up Due no matter what you are doing, and I’d also like to see an optional menu bar icon.
Due is a very fast reminder and timer application. I’d like to think it’s Reminders on steroids. Due is $9.99 and available via the Mac App Store. The iCloud (Dropbox) sync is worth $10 alone and if you already have the universal iOS app, iCloud and Dropbox sync make Due for Mac a must buy. If you’re looking for a great reminder app to add to your arsenal, you can’t go wrong with any of Due’s weaponry. $15 will cover every one of your devices.
Last night, Flipboard released a 1.9 update for its iPhone and iPad app that, among various fixes and new features, introduces one important addition to the social magazine: audio. As the company writes on their blog:
Our Content Guide is now chock-full of some of the best sounds we could find. We’ve launched new partnerships with NPR and PRI and scoured SoundCloud’s massive community of sound creators to bring you some of our favorites—artists like Snoop Dogg and Diplo; music labels like Atlantic Records and Ninja Tune; podcasts from The New Yorker and Slate; and segments from shows like Radiolab and Science Friday.
Right now, support for audio content is mainly implemented through SoundCloud, which received a new login option in the app’s settings, and NPR and PRI, which have agreed on a partnership with Flipboard to make content available in the app’s content guide, properly reformatted to fit Flipboard’s unique style and interactions. In Flipboard 1.9, support for audio means you can start playing a podcast featured in the content guide (such as TWiT or TNW Daily Dose) or any content available in your SoundCloud account, and go back to browsing links and photos as Flipboard can keep playing audio while you’re reading something else. The app will show up as an audio source in the iOS multitasking tray, and you can control audio playback from within the app itself too with a “note” icon in the upper toolbar (on iPhone) that will display a folder-like animation for viewing and pausing audio.
Looking back at Flipboard’s evolution over the past months, I think support for audio in version 1.9 is yet another example of how the company has been gradually and relentlessly drifting away from a system that simply aggregates “your social links” to embrace a broader vision that’s turning Flipboard into “an Internet magazine”, whether it’s social or not.
Flipboard started off as a neat app to give a magazine-like layout to links shared on Twitter and Facebook. Then came Google Reader, Flickr, and Instagram with more content types and visual previews. The company started announcing partnerships with publishers to display their content beautifully inside Flipboard, and with more content came an explosive growth that led to a re-imagined version 1.5, focused on showcasing “popular stories” and making more great content available to users through a content guide that wasn’t necessarily social — rather, it was aimed at letting users know that more content was available on Flipboard beyond their existing social accounts. After that, Flipboard released the long-awaited iPhone app, unifying accounts with over-the-air sync and bringing Cover Stories — a dedicated view for interesting and popular stories — over to the iPad app.
While still prominently “social” in the way it puts the focus on accounts and supported services, Flipboard has become perfectly usable and enjoyable even without necessarily configuring a Twitter or Facebook account. The company has put great effort on building a content guide that spans different countries, themes, content types, and publishers. Flipboard aggregates top content shared by Pocket, it collects the best things found on the Internet under the “Cool Curators” section, and, alongside the usual Tech and Business news, displays popular videos from YouTube, Vimeo, and even Colbert Report in a Video category. With version 1.9, audio has been brought into the mix.
The social component of Flipboard is still strong (version 1.9 also brings “related sections” for social networks, such as “tweets mentioning you”), but it hasn’t been the only way to enjoy Flipboard for quite some time, and this is more visible than ever in the latest update. Flipboard doesn’t simply create a personalized magazine out of content “being shared with me” anymore — it still does that, but at the same time, it allows me to find other great content that I wouldn’t have discovered otherwise.
More than a “social magazine”, the “Internet magazine” aggregates and reformats content that is also social, but not strictly so. Curation and APIs are keys here. Flipboard was already rumored to be considering support for movies and TV shows last year. Would it be too absurd to think the app will someday gain compatibility with Rdio and Spotify to let you find the best music from your favorite streaming service? How about YouTube and Vimeo, to let users also find videos that are bring shared in those social accounts? According to TechCrunch, ”Flipboard will look into other ways it can do more with video”.
With social accounts, APIs, search, and curation, Flipboard has become more than a social magazine: it is restructuring Internet content for the screens of mobile devices with the help of a strong social counterpart.
A while ago I wrote a quick review about Screenshot Journal, a utility to archive and investigate iPhone and iPad screenshots on the go. It features a zooming capability of up to 400% to inspect single pixels in order to easily find design flaws, but to transfer those screenshots back and forth, I personally use Pastebot. As I recently found out, developer Bjango offers a kind of a mixture of these two worlds: Skala.
Skala is a tool for designers to easily check iPhone or iPad UI designs (or other creations like wallpapers, etc.) they made on their computers on the screen of iOS devices. Skala comes in two apps: Skala Preview on the Mac — which ironically features a 3D version of the feared OS X beachball as its icon — and Skala View on iOS. The latter obviously works on both the iPad and iPhone, but because the design is the same in both cases, I’m going to focus only on the iPhone version here.
Let me start with Skala Preview for Mac. It’s the part of the services you need to pay a little money for, while Skala View for iOS is completely free. After launching both apps on your home or work network you have to connect them via WiFi (which works seamlessly and fast). Skala Preview on the Mac also gives you the possibility to connect itself with Photoshop CS5 (unfortunately, I’m still on CS4, so I couldn’t test this feature) to directly import new creations as PSDs while editing and send them to your iOS devices (it’s even possible to use multiple images in parallel, for instance to check Retina and non-Retina displays at the same time). This way, you are able to check the canvases while you’re still editing them, which is very useful.
If you’re not working with CS5 (CS6 is also supported), you still can preview your creations fast: just drag and drop images of any kind onto Skala Preview or choose the option to automatically copy every image in your clipboard, and they get transferred to your iPhone or iPad. When you already have the screenshots on your mobile device, the iOS app allows you to import images from your Camera Roll as well.
Which brings me to the product’s real magic: the features of Skala View on the iPhone and/or iPad. While your desktop still shows a preview of the image plus size information, you can do various cool and useful things with it on your mobile device. When viewing your images, every single pixel can be investigated by zooming in with even higher magnification, but Skala View can zoom in up to 1600% (4 times higher magnification than with Screenshot Journal), and it still sharply displays every detail of your design; any small or big pixel mistake will be visible. I believe that these features can help in growing your care and attention for perfect designs.
Additionally, designers at Bjango care a lot about colorblind people: with a tap on the glasses symbol you can test your design and its effect on people with protanopia, deuteranopia, tritanopia, or complete color blindness. The colors will change to fit the visual situation people with these disorders have to cope with, and you will see if your design would still be usable in terms of contrast and recognition of different elements. When you’re done with the investigation process and satisfied with the results, you can share it via Twitter, send it as a mail attachment, or save it to your device’s Camera Roll. All these features worked more or less seamlessly on my iPod touch 3rd Gen, as only choosing one of those three sharing options using the pop-up selector panel took a bit longer to load.
Over time, Bjango, and especially their lead designer Marc Edwards, developed a specific UI and UX style, with clear, mostly stainless steel borders and frames, and an overall pretty dark but gloomy and friendly look. Skala isn’t an exception from that. Although the focus clearly lays on the plain images here, and thus not on many innovative UI elements, Bjango still managed to give the app a special touch by redesigning the standard pop-up selectors in a new, black-and-blue style. This very nice and unobtrusive design is also applied to the Mac Preview app, and as such, both apps look the same and fit perfectly together, both visually and functionality-wise.
All these features make up for a very useful tool to check mobile designs instantly on the devices they’re made for. Skala is absolutely worth its price and a recommendation for every iOS designer, especially those working with Photoshop.
Get Skala Preview for just $4.99 on the Mac App Store.
Download Skala View as a universal iOS app for free on the App Store.
Note: the game I used to show the simulation of colorblindness effects is called Phased.
Here are today’s @MacStoriesDeals on hardware, iOS, and Mac apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get them before they end!
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In February, design agency Yummygum posted a exciting Dribbble shot presenting a design idea for a new Growl notification. The tanned leather-styled design, which got inspired by a (also very cool) Growl theme idea of Manu Gamero, was designed in order to create a completely new and innovative theme, which would be different from any other Growl theme:
“The goal was making something else than a (what seems to be the default) semi-transparent dark or light box with tooltip.”
After publishing roundup with 10 really gorgeous Growl themes last month, they’ve now finished their own. It’s called David Leatherman, was coded by Patrick van Marsbergen from Mimbee, looks a bit like a leather credit card, and definitely fulfills the aim of being unique and stylish, though I think it won’t fit everyone’s taste in design.
Nevertheless, it’s pleasant to see that the Growl community is still alive. If you like its style, the David Leatherman theme can be downloaded for free.
I don’t use more than an external display or my MacBook’s internal display since managing a multi-monitor setup isn’t practical with Lion, but in the rare occasions that I do, my cursor always finds a way of wandering off the display I’m working on. EdgeCase boxes your pointer in the current display by putting up a virtual barrier that prevents your cursor from crossing onto the other display unless you hold down a specific key or wait a half-second.
As a simple menubar utility, EdgeCase lets you disable and enable the utility and click one of a few options to get it up and running. By default, EdgeCase will require you to bounce your cursor when it reaches the meeting edge before it transverses displays, but you can turn it off if you desire. Holding down the ctrl key or command keys will grant you access to third party displays: command-dragging app windows will let you carry your application between displays.
I’ve been using EdgeCase to process email and write on one display while watching videos on the other: it’s pretty useful for keeping work and entertainment displays separate. EdgeCase is $4.99 from the Mac App Store.
From the Google Chrome blog:
With today’s Stable release of Chrome, you can. When you’re signed in to Chrome, your open tabs are synced across all your devices, so you can quickly access them from the “Other devices” menu on the New Tab page. If you’ve got Chrome for Android Beta, you can open the same recipe tab right on your phone when you run out to the store for more ingredients. The back and forward buttons will even work, so you can pick up browsing right where you left off.
Signing into Google Chrome synced items such as your bookmarks in the past, but this release brings us closer to the continuity many of wish for with our web browsers: tab syncing between our devices. Google Chrome should automatically update in the background, but you can visit About Google Chrome in the wrench menu to manually update to the latest stable version. Chrome 19 is available today, while the tab sync feature itself is rolling out over the coming weeks.
Also updated in the latest version of Google Chrome is the apps Settings. The new Settings view makes seeing history and clearing out browsing data a cinch by moving them to the first menu. The Extensions sub-menu has pretty much stayed the same, but the Settings sub-menu now contains an expansive list of options you can use to set how Chrome tracks privacy data and how Google Chrome will connect to the Internet (this is where you’ll make Chrome your default browser as well). The options themselves aren’t new, but rather the presentation has been updated to show you general preferences first, while making advanced options a simple extension of the more commonly used browser settings.
In other Chrome related news, Google could be gearing up to release their web browser on iOS according to a tidbit found by Macgasm. If gushing over this mockup was any indication, we’ve been wishing for Chrome to land on iOS devices for a long time now. While Google hasn’t officially announced Chrome for iOS (we’re talking mere speculation), iOS devices may soon be able to take advantage of the tab syncing that was introduced in today’s update.
via [chrome.blogspot.com]
For the past years, Apple has been showcasing the educational advantages of devices like Macs, iPhones and iPods on its Apple in Education website. Since the introduction of the iPad in 2010, however, the company has been making an effort to position the device as the best tool now available to teachers and students to improve the quality of education and level of engagement. The dedicated iPad in Education webpage showcases recent moves by Apple such as iBooks Textbooks and the iTunes U iOS app.
While we have covered schools and educational institutions adopting iPads in the past, the latest profile posted by Apple today on their UK website is quite possibly the best example of iPad in education to date. Those of you who have been following the progress of iPad deployment in schools may remember Fraser Speirs’ iPad Project, which made headlines throughout 2011 as it was the first one-to-one iPad deployment to every people in a school. Speirs documented the process of giving an iPad to every teacher and student at Cedars School of Excellence (Scotland) on his personal website, and today Apple has posted a video profile showing how “Cedars students boost learning with iPad”.
The full video is available here, and it shows teachers and kids using the iPad as a modern, regular tool in their daily lives that has improved the way they create and share content of any kind. One particular segment towards the end of the video struck a chord with me:
I don’t think we could ever go back from where we are right now with the iPad. The only way’s really forward — to more access to knowledge, more empowerment, more creativity…all these things in the classroom”.
As I wrote before, Apple’s education strategy will be interesting to follow. Actually seeing kids and teachers who have been using the iPad as a real substitute for and enhancement over old learning tools for over a year now, however, reminds me that, no matter Apple’s strategy as a company, software is the future of education, and the iPad is giving our kids a bit of that future today.
Detractors of the iPad as a learning tool point at the management required by connected devices to ensure that, in the classroom, the possibilities offered by the Internet don’t get in the way of teachers’ requirements and students’ attention. Fortunately, this is something Apple has been addressing since day one, and that has recently improved with more tools.
Every major change in our society and culture will be awarded an equal amount of optimism and skepticism. As someone who’s been lucky enough to find his dream job in the possibilities offered by the Internet and software, I tend to see skepticism as a challenge, rather than a roadblock. People like Fraser Speirs are proving that, beyond analysts and blog posts, a better education for our kids is possible, today, every day, with a device that’s making kids eager to learn.
Free of the constraints of paper and old, disconnected learning material, the iPad brings new challenges and practical issues to overcome. With time, patience, and willingness to look past rules established in societies different than ours, we must make sure these devices we have built and ecosystems we have nurtured won’t be remembered for Angry Birds, because among other things, our kids deserve a better, modern education. And we have to start building it today.
From the Perian homepage:
We began the Perian project over 6 years ago. We wanted to simplify viewing your content. Our team has attained that goal and with that in mind, Perian will be retired soon. Our stewardship has been a blast but it’s time for all of us to move on.
When I first purchased my Mac, Perian was one of the must-have applications that should’ve been installed as part of your initial setup alongside Quicksilver, MacFUSE, and Growl. Perian, the can-play-anything System Preferences drop-in, was considered essential for anyone with folders of DivX files (even though it could play so much more). While Perian’s developers are dropping support for the over six year old product, the OS X community will have the chance to maintain the product once Perian’s source code is shared after development ends.
Starting 90 days after the final Perian release, we will no longer provide support. We’ll wrap up our loose ends, pack up our bags, and move on to new and exciting projects.
Perian’s developers are asking that the community step forward to handle support requests, and they are directing new users to download Niceplayer as an alternative. Perian should continue to work on Lion as time permits, but its compatibility with Mountain Lion is undetermined. The source code will be posted to Google Code or GitHub soon for developers to learn from. If developers are interested in maintaining Perian, the #perian IRC room on irc.freenode.net will provide a hub where developers can communicate, ask questions, and get in contact with the founders. As it stands right now, Perian’s development will end within the next few months.
via [perian.org]
When I ask myself what timezone a friend (or more recently, colleague) lives in, I fire up the Clocks app on my iPhone or Every Time Zone when I’m on my Mac. In many cases, this needs quite some time and disrupts my workflow; I need to go back to my mail or calendar or any other situation which required this knowledge (meetings, mails or projects) and apply the time differences to them. Yesterday, I stumbled upon Timelanes by B-ReelProducts, immediately bought it, and from time to time while trying it out, I remembered some awkward situations in which I could have needed exactly this app to enhance my workflow.
Timelanes basically is Every Time Zone on the go — with some handy extras and a different, but in no way worse UI. When launching it for the first time, the app automatically locates your current timezone and displays it styled as a horizontal lane. This way, it centralizes your chosen hour of the day, plus indicating the exact current time with a small clock indicator. At the same time, you can easily switch between the days or come back to the current time using the arrows and the clock button at the center of the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen, or you can scroll horizontally until you reach the exact point in time you need (Timelanes works both in portrait and landscape mode).
From here, comparing timezones and times is just two taps away. Using the plus button, you can search for any city in the world — not just those standard “indicating” cities like NYC or Mumbai — and add them to your lanes. Those behind your current timezone are displayed above, those ahead are arranged below it. Tap the weekday information and it will change to the actual date, so you can see when the new day begins in every timezone; swipe one, and you can delete them again. Here lays a small and more or less the only design flaw of the app: the edges of the delete button are scruffy and look pretty ugly in my opinion.
You can scroll to every hour of the day, and all the other lanes will smoothly change to their respective time. With that, two extra features hidden behind the sharing button in the navigation bar are visible: creating calendar events (currently only with the iOS calendar) and mailing these comparisons. This way, Timelanes combines the information delivery with the two most important following actions to it, something I never saw in such apps before. It may sound a bit exaggerated, but to me this is a big step and the reason why I surely will use Timelanes in the future: when choosing these options you can create either a new calendar event with the current time as the start and the other timezones pasted into the notes panel, or a new email message containing a list of all timezones added to Timelanes attached to it.
Besides these features, which got embedded with standard iOS UI elements, Timelanes also features an intuitive and well-adapted UI that fits its purpose and looks nice. It’s clean and uses only at few points sometimes more, sometimes less subtle colors to indicate things like the current date or your own timezone. The rest of the app uses plain black numbers and pictograms. And I don’t exactly know why, but I just love that navigation bar. It perfectly fits my aesthetic ideas of how plastic UI has to look like: it’s unobtrusive and perfectly colored to round up the whole screen (completely black possibly would have been too invasive).
My conclusion: for everyone on the Internet or in other businesses who works with people in different timezones, Timelanes can be a real timesaver. Although the calendar and mail features are simply embedded and their functionality cannot be changed or personalized in any way, the combination of checking and using compared timezones has never been done this well as far as I know. It’s worth a try: get Timelanes for just $0.99 on the App Store.
Following today’s report from The Wall Street Journal about new iCloud features set to be announced at the upcoming WWDC in June, Bloomberg has weighed in confirming a rumor posted today by 9to5Mac about the company’s new MacBook Pro line.
The MacBook Pro machines, to be unveiled at Apple’s annual developers conference starting June 11, also will feature high- definition screens like those on the iPhone and iPad, as well as flash memory to cut startup times and extend battery life, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans haven’t been made public.
According to Bloomberg, Apple may also announce the release of the next version of OS X, Mountain Lion, at WWDC. Previously, Apple had simply confirmed the desktop OS upgrade would be coming “late summer”, without specifying a release date. The publication also suggests Ivy Bridge chips from Intel will be used, as previously reported. Retina displays for Macs is something Apple has been experimenting with in software releases for quite some time now, too, albeit such hardware implementation will require app and website developers to update their graphics for the new screens.
As many are speculating, two distinct reports about WWDC in one day seem to suggest a “controlled leak” by Apple to set expectations for the event, something the company did in the past. Prior to the iPhone 4S’ announcement, for instance, The Wall Street Journal pinpointed the device’s release timeframe and carrier support in the US, a move that several blogs connected to a “controlled leak” amidst rampant rumors during the summer. Apple itself went on the record saying those rumors negatively impacted the iPhone’s performances during the quarter.
WWDC ’12 kicks off in San Francisco on June 11.
via [bloomberg.com]
New services providing financial management usually evoke doubtful feelings within us, as we tend to rely on big, long-time running companies with a good reputation rather than small competitors new to the game. More or less exactly two years ago, in May 2010, Alex Payne joined and co-founded a company called BankSimple with the imagination of a bank without fees, caring for support and responsible money treatment — plus a love for good design and usability concerning its user-end products. It already sounded like an ambitious goal the day he published his announcement post.
Two years later, his company, Simple, has grown into a still small, innovative and transparent financial service for US-residents who own a social security number, a computer, and an iPhone. It’s a combination of “classic” credit card payment and modern online banking.
When participating in the customer base of Simple, which is currently invitation-only, you get a new Simple VISA card, combined with a new bank contract with The Bancorp Inc to normally pay with a credit card, just like with any other banking service. Additionally, Simple provides a very extensive online banking experience. This includes payments and transaction overviews — combined with Safe-to-Spend and organization features — plus the possibility of setting goals to save money, and embedded support mails. Simple’s feature set is pretty complete; take a look at the screenshots taken from the Simple website above to see how well all this stuff is executed in terms of UI design.
But the actual reason for this post (also being the reason why I consider Simple’s concept of banking very innovative) is the service’s new iPhone app, which was introduced last week. The app contains all the features the web app has to offer in a minimalist mobile UI experience. Secured by a standard authorization PIN code, you can check every transaction and due bill anywhere you are— your current balance is visible all the time in the top navigation bar. Edit the transaction information (kind of deposit/payment, location using Google Maps etc.) on the go, take a snapshot of your bills and they get attached to the payments and automatically synced to your Simple account — everything is possible right at your fingertips. Simple is also supporting access to the largest US fee-free ATM network, Allpoint, whose 40.000 locations are displayed within the app using Google Maps. Here lies one of the small fee traps Simple has: international ATMs cost Simple more, and they fund those extra cost by charging a cost-matching fee.
All these features are presented using a modern, but still very serious user interface with whitespace, clear headlining and information typography (it’s set in Helvetice Neue, my favorite typeface of all time). The developers allowed themselves a visual gimmick by styling the bottom navigation bar with a cork look, but this makes the app even more fun to use rather than destroying its usability or the service’s credibility.
Unfortunately I am not a US resident, so I could not test the app by myself. But if you are interested in the service or just the UI of the app, check out the demo video below, and read the announcement post on the Simple blog by Lead Mobile Engineer Dustin Barker explaining the design process of the app. And to all US residents over 18: you can request an invitation and/or download the iPhone app for free if you’re curious whether Simple can replace your current banking system or if is still in a kind of “nerd and hipster toy”-phase.
A new report by The Wall Street Journals claims Apple will be announcing a series of new features for iCloud at WWDC, including a revamped photo sharing system with support for user comments.
The new features, expected to be announced at Apple’s world-wide developer conference beginning June 11, will allow iCloud users to share sets of photos with other iCloud users and to comment on them, these people said. Currently, users can only store one set of photos in iCloud through a feature called Photo Stream, which is designed to sync those photos to other Apple devices, not share them.
The full report is available (behind paywall) at The Wall Street Journal. The publication also confirms iCloud.com will be getting support for Notes and Reminders web apps, as we previously detailed based on a “leaked” beta version of the service.
However, to say that “users can only store one set of photos in iCloud through a feature called Photo Stream” is incorrect. A feature of iPhoto for iOS called “Journals” and released in early March allows users to build sets of photos and share them publicly with a URL through iCloud. These Journals even support additional graphics such as backgrounds, text captions, and they can be viewed in any browser, allowing users to zoom in on single photos and download them. Here is an example of iCloud Journal.
Whilst it would make sense for Apple to simplify iCloud photo sharing and allow easier commenting especially from mobile devices, Photo Stream isn’t the only option to “store one set of photos”. Journals are limited to iPhoto, which is a separate app sold on the App Store that doesn’t come pre-installed on iOS devices, but they certainly show that Apple has been experimenting with iCloud-based public sharing for quite some time, even offering an API to developers for that (albeit limited to storage, with no display options as the WSJ implies here). With MobileMe approaching its deadline of June 30, it’s also worth keeping in mind that Apple’s existing solution to store and share photos, MobileMe Gallery, will stop functioning alongside the service, so it wouldn’t be a surprise for Apple to offer an alternative.
Apple’s WWDC is scheduled to kick off in San Francisco on June 11. Developers have been asking for more tools to integrate their apps with iCloud, and it’s very likely that Apple will announce additions to the service, as well as offer previews of iOS 6 and OS X Mountain Lion at its upcoming developer event.
via [online.wsj.com]
Sparrow 1.1 brought minor enhancements to the best alternative email client for iPhone, including a built-in browser and a Send & Archive option. Sparrow 1.2, released today, adds much-requested support for landscape mode to an email app that, in this new version, also lets you manage email labels and folders.
I have been testing Sparrow 1.2, and while I am no fan of landscape mode on iOS (I never use such functionality on the iPhone), I recognize how some users are going to perform some serious typing for their email replies thanks to Sparrow 1.2. The whole compose interface has been updated to take advantage of the different orientation.
Two features that I have been enjoying in Sparrow 1.2 are proper label/folder management, and improved navigation between messages. The latter brings a nicer, cleaner design to the message “preview” you get when pulling a message up to reveal the next one. Folder/label management, on the other hand, now lets Sparrow directly create, edit, and delete labels or folders without leaving the app to use a web interface or desktop client.
I have tested the feature with Gmail (both regular and Google Apps accounts) and iCloud, and I was pleased to see Sparrow differentiated visually between labels (for Gmail) and folders (for iCloud mail). Because label management has been implemented in the mid panel — the one Sparrow uses to list an account’s mailboxes — you won’t be able to swipe-to-delete; instead, management has been assigned to a new “Edit” button that shows up in the Folders or Labels sections of a single account.
Meanwhile, the Sparrow team has also confirmed that Apple won’t allow them to implement push notifications through the VoIP framework, as they did in early betas of the app. Sparrow will have to build notification support on the server’s side, and the developers confirm this will require a yearly subscription for Sparrow users willing to use push notifications. Previously, the Sparrow developers said push support would be coming “with or without Apple”.
With proper label management, landscape mode, localization in 9 additional languages, and bug fixes, Sparrow for iPhone continues its march towards becoming the best email client for iPhone. You can find Sparrow 1.2 on the App Store today.
Good design certainly is not all to care about. Sometimes, a nifty UI can solve many problems or even hide certain failures in functionality. But it can be as perfect and unique as conceivable — if a product doesn’t work at all, good design cannot change that. Unfortunately, I came across a very good example for this: World Atlas by Technoplus. I only tested the iPhone version, so I cannot tell anything about the usability of the separately sold iPad app yet. But on the iPhone, it’s easy to sum up World Atlas as a well-designed, yet pretty useless app, coded without real care for good UX and features.
Fundamentally, World Atlas (as the name might already suggest) sets out to be a mobile world atlas app, and enhance standard maps with information about any country on the planet and related things like timezones. It sorts the content by firstly offering four different map styles in a tanned leather styled look, which reminded me of an old-fashioned wallet. This design (combined with stainless steel buttons) is coherently implemented all over the app. You can choose between a political map (containing borders, important cities etc.), physical map (with high to depression land areas and climate zones; there’s a prominent typo as well, it’s indicated as “Phisical Map”), a Time Zone map and satellite globe view. Unfortunately, the functionality and UI of World Atlas HD rapidly decreases after selecting the map and the continent (using a pretty cool, inversed map design; see screenshot above) you want to take a look at.
The upcoming “maps” are in fact just scrollable images of the respective continent, and they decrease in viewing quality if you try to zoom in — which makes them just bootless for investigating specific areas and not just the continent as a whole. When taking a look at the screenshots in the iTunes Store preview, you can see also see information windows on specific countries. It took me some time to figure out where this feature exactly hides, when actually using the app. After some time I found them, treasured behind a small button with a flag on it, located in the top navigation bar — I don’t understand why the developers chose such a pictogram to indicate this feature. Same goes with the possibility of calculating distances or locate yourself on any map — they are hidden behind a strange, arrowed “menu” button when using the satellite mode.
Tap the ominous flag button, and up comes a list view with the countries arranged like credit cards in a wallet, colored blue and labelled with white (not really fitting) sans-serif letters. Tapping one of them opens up an information window where you find a small map of the chosen country — just to see how it looks like — and which provides some information like its flag, currency or national anthem which you can playback. Unfortunately, the set of information is way too high for the small screen of an iPhone, and separated into several scrollable panels, so you cannot call it a pleasure to look at them; it’s very hard to read the texts and data, although they are still surrounded by a very detailed UI.
Despite this lack in useful features, I can report two not really advantageous, but noteworthy, well-designed elements of World Atlas: the compass, which uses the gyroscope to show up geographic directions and works pretty well, and, more importantly, the 3D graphic effects embedded into the app. The introduction video, smooth slide transitions between windows and the threedimensional globe satellite view (which regrettably turns into a uninspired, flat Google maps integration when zooming in) are quite stunning examples of what the graphics engine of mobile Apple devices is capable of — and the scroll and move very smooth without being jerky at all. Although they do not enhance the app’s functionality at all, they give it a certain touch and reason of interest.
But to be honest, I still wouldn’t recommend World Atlas. It completely lacks of real functionality, it’s more a small toy, and it needs to be improved in many UX elements. However, it features some nice UI elements and even more impressive graphics work, therefore it nevertheless proved itself worthy of an Inspiring UI mention.
As noted by 9to5mac, Apple has started changing the “iPad WiFi + 4G” name to “iPad WiFi + Cellular” in some countries. Currently, the change is live on several international versions of Apple.com, including the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and Hong Kong. Other countries, such as Italy or France, still report the new iPad as “iPad WiFi + 4G” in the Tech Specs page of the product in what appears to be a gradual update of the device’s name. On the websites where the change has already taken effect, a version cached by Google shows the old “WiFi + 4G” product name.
The new iPad, available in almost 90 countries, comes with “4G” networking capabilities, albeit only in some countries, and on selected carriers with support for LTE. Because of Apple’s initial marketing of the device as “4G” regardless of country availability, the company came under scrutiny from Australian and UK regulators, who claimed Apple was falsely advertising the iPad as “4G” and misleading customers without properly specifying such feature was dependent on carrier support.
In Australia, Apple was forced to change its marketing for the new iPad by stating on its website the device wasn’t compatible with Australian 4G networks. In spite of the iPad still working with 3G networks, however, Apple decided to keep the “WiFi + 4G” name even after the initial clarification. This appears to be changing now as the company rolls out an updated product name across all its international websites.
Apple’s iPad Tech Specs page carrying the new name is available here.
For the past year, I have been getting rid of paper to archive everything — from receipts to medical bills or business cards, everything — digitally, securely, online. In doing so, I found David Sparks’ Mac Power Users a great resource to learn more about apps and workflows I can use on my Mac and iPad to capture, organize, and archive documents I may need again someday. For the past few weeks, I have especially enjoyed using Scanner Pro on my iPad in combination with a Doxie Go for “bigger” documents and Notability, which is a fine app that lets me annotate webpages and documents and save them into Evernote. On the iPad, I keep a plethora of apps to work with PDFs, but my most used ones remain PDF Expert, PDFPen, and GoodReader.
This week, David published his first book about going paperless, aptly named The MacSparky Paperless Field Guide. Put simply, if you’re planning on removing paper from your life or you’re even slightly interested in this whole idea of digitalizing bits of paper, David’s book is the guide you need to achieve a state-of-the-art system. I have been reading the book, and it’s full of tips and broad recommendations to illustrate how you can capture documents, the apps you can use (both on OS X and iOS), and the best techniques you can rely on to future-proof your PDFs. I have already discovered a couple of new apps thanks to David’s book.
Even better, Paperless has been entirely built using iBooks Author, and it shows: it’s not exactly a “book” as much as it’s an interactive guide with support for two iPad orientations (with different layouts), image galleries, contextual menus, over an hour and a half of screencasts, and iBooks Author’s fancy touch-based navigation. This is the future of independent publishing.
Paperless is only $4.99 on the iBookstore.
via [itunes.apple.com]
One of my favorite iPhone games, Astronut by The Iconfactory, was released on the iPad earlier this week. In 24 levels fully optimized for the Retina display, you can enjoy Astronut’s well-known game mechanics (a floating astronaut jumps from planet to planet avoiding enemies and obstacles) with controls reworked for the device’s larger display.
Graphics and sound effects aside (they are both top-notch), I am liking Astronut for iPad even more than the iPhone version because of its control scheme. Astronut for iPad plays in portrait mode, with buttons to jump and activate boost placed at the sides of the screen where your thumbs typically are. This is extremely intelligent game and interface design. But there’s more: you can use Astronut for iPhone as a remote — this has allowed me to prop my iPad on a stand in my living room, and enjoy the game with my friends, sharing the iPhone as a controller.
Only $1.99 on the App Store. Don’t miss the video.
via [astronutapp.com]
John Paczkowski at All Things Digital confirms a rumor published this morning by Mark Gurman at 9to5mac: Apple’s forthcoming iOS 6, set to be announced at WWDC, will feature a new Maps application based off Apple’s new mapping backend.
We’ve independently confirmed that this is indeed the case. Sources describe the new Maps app as a forthcoming tent-pole feature of iOS that will, in the words of one, “blow your head off.” I’m not quite sure what that means, and the source in question declined to elaborate, but it’s likely a reference to the photorealistic 3-D mapping tech Apple acquired when it purchased C3 Technologies.
That Apple was going to replace Google Maps with a different technology — and quite possibly its own — is nothing new, at least from a rumor perspective. In the past years, a series of tidbits of information and facts seemed to suggest that Apple was on track to deliver a different Maps application for iOS in the future. Last summer, a series of legal disclaimers pointed at various mapping technologies being used by Apple in iOS, but the rumored new mapping tech that was allegedly meant for iOS 5 didn’t ship with the major update in October, as Apple and Google renewed a deal to use Google Maps in iOS.
In April 2011, Apple confirmed they were ”collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced traffic database”, although without specifying whether such service could see a public implementation in a new Maps app for iOS. More than a year ago, we wrote how “in the past years, several job listings on Apple’s website hinted at open positions in the iOS team for map engineers and navigation experts, suggesting that Apple was working on its own proprietary solution to ditch Google Maps on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. The acquisitions of mapping companies Placebase and Poly9 in 2009 and 2010, respectively, gave some credence to the reports that pointed at Apple willing to become the next major player in the mobile mapping scene.”
Most recently, Apple officially acknowledged they are using OpenStreetMap data in iPhoto for iOS.
via [allthingsd.com]
Here are today’s @MacStoriesDeals on hardware, iOS, and Mac apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get them before they end!
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A few minutes ago, developer Steve Troughton-Smith tweeted a photo showing a “beta” login page for iCloud.com, Apple’s suite of web applications to access iCloud services like Mail and Calendar. The photo showed Apple’s icon-based navigation for iCloud.com, with the addition of Reminders and Notes icons in what appears to be an internal version of iCloud.com carrying future features. The login page clearly states the beta version of iCloud.com is available to developers running the latest versions of OS X and iOS.
Available at beta.icloud.com, I managed to grab a screenshot before Apple quickly pulled the website and started redirecting it to iCloud’s public website. The beta page showed a testing environment, and I was able to see the Notes icon in the background, as tweeted by Troughton-Smith.
The accidental availability of iCloud’s beta webpage seems to suggest Apple will announce more web-based functionality for the service at its upcoming WWDC event in June. Just last week, a series of web notifications were briefly showed on iCloud.com.
Update: Courtesy of reader Benjamin Crozat, here’s a larger screenshot showing the just-pulled iCloud.com website. It appears Apple also had a testing website available at developer.icloud.com, which has started redirecting to the company’s public iCloud product website as well.
Update #2: As noted by Tom Klaver, strings in website’s code suggest a beta of iOS 6 will be necessary to use the new web apps. The icon Apple was using for Reminders is also available on Apple’s servers here.
Update #3: Interestingly enough, other code strings from developer.icloud.com point to a new developer icon on Apple’s servers. Currently, Apple offers a developer portal for iCloud at developer.apple.com/icloud with links to downloads and documentation. As several developers have wished for Apple to provide more debugging tools for iCloud-enabled apps, however, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see new web-based tools for iCloud being unveiled at WWDC.
This morning, Adobe officially launched Creative Cloud, the company’s new subscription-based service that gives users access to CS6 applications, Touch apps, and other tools for a monthly fee. Described as a “digital hub” to download apps, access online services, and share files, Creative Cloud comes with various online storage options to store files directly on Adobe’s servers and access them at any time from connected apps, such as the Touch ones released or updated today.
Creative Cloud starts at $29.99 per month with a one year contract for qualified customers (all registered users with CS3 or later); standard pricing, as detailed in the image below, starts at $49.99 per month with a one year contract, or $74.99 per month with no contract required. Unsurprisingly, Adobe maintained the same pricing scheme for European customers, with subscriptions starting at €29.99, €49.99 and €74.99. The Adobe Touch Apps, available on the App Store, will give users with an Adobe ID one free month of Creative Cloud with “2GB of cloud storage plus the ability to sync between tablet and desktop, access files from the web, and easily share with others.”
Adobe Photoshop Touch 1.2: Updated this morning, version 1.2 of Photoshop Touch for iPad still doesn’t come with Retina-ready graphics or application icon. Instead, Adobe focused on fixing a few bugs, and bringing some new functionalities to the app, which is now capable of connecting to Creative Cloud. Photoshop Touch now comes with two new tutorials, four new effects (Watercolor Paint, HDR Look, Soft Light and Soft Skin), and options to export as PSD or PNG to the Camera Roll or via email. Images can be transferred to the desktop via iTunes, and the app automatically syncs with Creative Cloud to import compatible files stored online. The default resolution is still 1600 x 1600 pixels, but a new optional 2048 x 2048 pixels setting is also available.
Adobe Photoshop Touch is available at $9.99 on the App Store. Check out our review here.
Adobe Ideas 2.0: Version 2.0 of Adobe Ideas features a Retina application icon as well as Retina graphics for interface elements and virtual ink. Ideas can open .colz files saved from Adobe Collage, but they aren’t imported at Retina resolution from Creative Cloud.
Adobe Ideas is available at $9.99 on the App Store.
Adobe Proto and Collage: Today, Adobe released two brand new Touch apps for iPad, Proto and Collage. Originally announced in October, Proto and Collage are two new tools to create wireframes and moodboards, respectively. Proto lets you build wireframes for websites or apps using CSS grid systems, and is obviously integrated with Creative Cloud to store and import files. This morning, I decided to take the other app, Collage, for a spin, and see how it would fit in Adobe’s renewed focus on Touch apps and Creative Cloud.
Collage lets you create interactive “moodboards” that combine images, text, drawings, videos, and web clips in a single image you can then share or open into other Adobe apps. To my surprise, the first version 0f Collage does have Retina graphics, but the app’s icon hasn’t been updated for the new display, and ink — not text, just virtual ink for drawings — looks fuzzy on the new iPad. Everything else is Retina-ready, from backgrounds and palettes to text and other controls.
The main screen displays thumbnails for collages you have created, and features a Creative Cloud “sync” button that opens a menu to check on sync status and available storage. Unlike other Touch apps, there is no “Import from Creative Cloud” shortcut in the main screen; rather, Collage lets you import items from Creative Cloud directly in the canvas view.
Collage gives you a blank canvas that can contain different types of media. Unfortunately, the app’s sharing capabilities are fairly poor as only JPEG is supported (and there are no settings to adjust output quality), but at least Adobe implemented an “Open In…” menu called “Share with Others” that lets you send a Collage image to other installed iOS apps. Collages can have a background color or pattern, but you can’t import your own background images from the Camera Roll.
In Collage, you can type text, move images around, draw with pen tools, and import playable videos from YouTube. From a creation and direct manipulation standpoint, the app is very interesting, as you can easily get an image from Flickr or Google, drop it into the canvas, and adjust it with a two-finger gesture. The app has some basic layer management capabilities with ” send to back” and “bring to front” options to control the way elements are placed on top of each other. You can open a built-in web browser and take a snapshot of any webpage to insert into the canvas, a feature that could make Collage a decent solution for those who build websites and want to share annotations with a team. For images and web snapshots, a “Source” option available in a contextual menu always displays the original URL, which can be opened in Safari.
Typed text can be manipulated with two fingers as well, or double-tapped to open a dedicated text editing view with keyboard access and font controls. Here, you can adjust the color, choose a font, increase or decrease size, and set an alignement.
What really impressed me about Collage is support for YouTube videos. With a built-in search option, you can search for any video on YouTube, and drop it into the canvas as a playable thumbnail you can move around and resize. The thumbnail preview is fetched directly from the video, and tapping on a play button will make the video “come forward” with a nice animation that opens the standard iOS video player.
Collage files, like other documents created from Touch apps, can be accessed from the web interface for Creative Cloud, which features some basic options for file management (it’s got drag & drop for uploads, but files need to be moved around and between folders with contextual menus), and allows you to create public links for your documents. Interestingly, Creative Cloud automatically grabs the color profile of a Collage board, with links to download the associated ASE file or visit Kuler. By tweaking a few settings, any file can be downloaded or commented on.
Creative Cloud Connection, a desktop interface for Creative Cloud Files, is “coming soon” according to Adobe.
Overall, Collage 1.0 features decent performances on the new iPad and some intriguing media capabilities to build interactive moodboards that, I presume, people will use in lots of different ways.Looking forward to full Retina support and better virtual ink, Collage is $9.99 on the App Store.
Rovio’s CEO today revealed on Finnish TV that the next Rovio game will be called Amazing Alex and will launch within two months. Rovio will be reworking the game a little and it will center around Alex (the main character) who is a “curious young boy who loves to build things”.
“The quality pressure is high. We want to maintain the high standard Angry Birds fans have come to enjoy,” Hed said.
It’ll be based off of Casey’s Contraptions (see above image) which Rovio yesterday acquired to, from developers Snappy Touch and Mystery Coconut. On that acquisition, Rovio’s VP of franchise development, Ville Heijari, said yesterday that “The gameplay is a perfect fit in our arsenal with its approachable, fun and highly addictive take on the physics puzzler genre”. He also noted that Rovio was “reworking the title to enhance it”, so that it was in the Rovio style of “expect the unexpected”.
The Next Web points out that Rovio already owns the domain amazingalex.com as WHOIS records show. Today’s news comes after a stunning week for Rovio, hitting 1 billion Angry Birds downloads and revealing first-quarter revenues of 75.4 million euros (roughly US$106.3 M).
[yle, via The Next Web]
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