Speaking of crafting apps, here’s one that I’ve been playing around for the past two weeks and that’s pretty impressive. Revolved, developed by Bartosz Ciechanowski, is a $0.99 iPad app that lets you draw lines and watch them turn into 3D shapes in real-time.

Even if you don’t have any particular artistic skills, it’s just cool to play with the app and see how the split-screen layout renders lines on the right as shapes on the left. The app has been built for iOS 7, so there’s minimal interface chrome getting in the way and you can focus on your creations with controls for curves, colors, and sharing.

Seriously fun and a unique concept. $0.99 on the App Store.

Toca Boca CEO Björn Jeffery describes the unique approach they took with designing the user interface of Toca Builders, the company’s latest construction and crafting app for kids:

Now it may sound counter-intuitive to have characters as an interface, but the fact is that this works surprisingly well for our young builders. Instead of thinking about which buttons to press in order to create a certain effect, kids can identify themselves with certain characters and the construction powers they have. If they want to repaint a structure, they don’t have to look through a menu to find the “repainting button” but instead, remember that Jum Jum the Painter can shoot paint from a long distance to make something a different color. In essence, the player becomes each character for brief periods of time and by that, the question of how to create something is suddenly solved. The app removes the abstraction that a traditional menu would introduce and moves straight into identification instead.

Fraser Speirs comments on the practical advantages of the iPad Air’s “desktop-class” CPU:

What I know about the iPad Air is that I’m constantly being surprised by these apps being ready and waiting for me as soon as I try them. I’m having to speed up my muscle memory as the iPad is ready sooner than I anticipate.

I notice this in two particular situations. The first is in launching and resuming applications. Multitasking on the iPad has been around for a while now and has grown in capabilities over time. There was always a small wait when switching between applications before the resumed app became active. In large part, that delay no longer exists - except for apps where the resumption depends on some network activity, such as launching Netflix from a cold start.

I work on the iPad every day, and I can’t wait to get these improvements with the Retina iPad mini.

Good take on why Apple may be keeping the iPad 2 around for the educational market by Elia Freedman:

While the iPad mini and iPad Air keep changing on schools and forcing them to consider new devices during the period they are trying to purchase, the iPad 2 remains beautifully the same, keeping a reliable device on hand for them to consider.

Steven Aquino, writing at Tech.pinions:

The reality is that, as a nerd, I get by fine with Dropbox. However, just because one solution works for me doesn’t mean Dropbox is the answer, or that iOS and iCloud are above improvement. On the contrary, this piece (hopefully) illustrates that iOS and iCloud can be much better at certain things, like document management.

This topic isn’t new, but it’s still relevant because Apple’s implementation is anachronistic and strange considering other advancements in iOS. There’s a glimmer of hope in iPhoto for iOS 7, but nothing more. Open In is not the solution.