A great concept by Teehan+Lax Labs, based on UICollectionView and built with custom designs and code to handle a “scrubbing” metaphor instead of regular scrolling. I don’t think that it would work for me (I need to see multiple upcoming events, and that’s why I love Fantastical for iPhone so much), but I’m all for unique reimaginations of the decade-old digital calendar.
You can download the Upcoming source code here.
Ahead of the App Store’s fifth anniversary on July 10, Apple has sent tech reports a celebrative poster with a timeline of the App Store from 2008 to 2013. The Financial Times’ Tim Bradshaw received a copy and posted a photo (via MacRumors).
Two things stand out to me: Apple’s focus on third-party apps and games in the poster, and how much quicker downloads have been growing in the past year. It’s also nice to see the original Instagram icon in there.
It’ll be interesting to see if Apple will post an interactive “5 Years of App Store” page as they did with iTunes (when they also sent celebrative items to the press).
Moviefone:
“Some see what’s possible, others change what’s possible” are the words sprawled across this exclusive poster for “Jobs,” which features a nearly unrecognizable Ashton Kutcher.
Kutcher is utterly transformed into late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in the colorful new poster (below). Sporting Jobs’s signature round-framed glasses and beard, the actor certainly looks the role.
The movie’s poster focuses, unsurprisingly, on Kutcher, whose resemblance to Steve Jobs is almost uncanny in some shots (shown so far). But as I (briefly) argued last week on The Prompt, I worry that, with such a strong visual resemblance, Kutcher’s voice will break the illusion.
So ‘Oh Hai’ was the eventual outcome. It makes use of iOS face detection and to address our bugbear, we removed the need to interact directly the photo by including two sliders (one for eyes and the other for the mouth). These enable fine adjustments to be made with a complete and uninterrupted view of the results. The final working version was technically finished after more or less three days of work.
A simple, fun app by ustwo. I tested it over the weekend, and it does exactly one thing, quite well, with a straightforward design. The iOS face detection technology behind it is smart and accurate. Free on the App Store.
The public unveiling of each new version of Mac OS X has brought a new default desktop picture, and a new hunt to find a full-res copy of that wallpaper before the official release. The introduction of OS X Mavericks was no different, only this time instead of a space-themed galaxy or nebula, Apple decided to bring Mac’s default look and feel back to earth.
Thomas Brand takes a look back at Apple’s history with Mac OS and OS X default desktop pictures.
In a minor 3.0.6 update released last night, developer Greg Pierce added an interesting new feature to Drafts that will come in handy to further customize the app’s powerful URL, Dropbox, and Evernote actions. In the new version of Drafts (both for iPhone and iPad), you can now specify line numbers as template tags. Read more
As announced last month, an update to RSS client Reeder for iPhone has been released today on the App Store, adding support for Feedly and Feed Wrangler. Arriving just in time for Google’s shutdown of Reader, the latest Reeder update for iPhone brings the app’s supported sync services to four (previously added Feedbin, Feedly, Feed Wrangler, and Fever) and removes Google Reader from the “Add Account” screen (existing accounts won’t be deleted from the app).
Feedly and Feed Wrangler integration in Reeder is solid, but it lacks some features. While I have been generally happy with Reeder’s speed in syncing with Feedly and Feed Wrangler, the app lacks support for Smart Streams – a key functionality of Feed Wrangler that’s already supported by clients like ReadKit and Mr. Reader. To access Smart Streams on the iPhone, my recommendation still goes to Feed Wrangler’s official app, which may not be as polished as Reeder, but that works perfectly with the service’s Smart Streams.
Reeder, a longtime MacStories favorite, is moving into the post-Reader era with an iPhone update that should work for most people and major iPad and OS X updates on the horizon. Developer Silvio Rizzi hasn’t provided a release date yet, but he announced the iPad version will be a completely redesigned app. Due to the lack of compatibility updates, both Reeder for iPad and Reeder for Mac have been removed from the App Store.
Apple’s third quarter earnings report and conference call will take place on July 23rd, 2013, according to an Investor Relations update on Apple’s website first noted by 9to5mac. Apple will provide a live audio webcast of the event.
Apple plans to conduct a conference call to discuss financial results of its third fiscal quarter on Tuesday, July 23, 2013 at 2:00 p.m. PT / 5:00 p.m. ET.
In the second quarter (which ended on March 30, 2013), Apple posted revenue of $43.6 billion. The company sold 19.5 million iPads, 37.4 million iPhones, and ”just under” 4 million Macs, earning a quarterly net profit of $9.5 billion. The company ended the quarter with a cash balance of $145 billion.
In April, Apple posted its guidance for the third quarter, with revenue set between $33.5 billion and $35.5 billion and operating expenses between $3.85 billion and $3.95 billion. During the quarter, Apple hit the milestone of 50 billion apps downloaded from the App Store, introduced a new low-end iPod touch, and held its annual Developers Conference in San Franisco, where it released an updated line of MacBook Airs and announced new versions of iOS and OS X coming this Fall. Apple also previewed the new Mac Pro, a completely redesigned new machine coming later this year.
In the year-ago quarter, Apple posted revenue of $35 billion, with 17 million iPads, 26 million iPhones and 4 million Macs sold. Last year, Apple held its Q3 2012 earnings call on July 24, and released OS X Mountain Lion on July 25. Apple’s Q3 2013 call will provide insight into sales of the iPhone and iPad over the past months, which lacked updates to both lines. On July 23, the iPhone 5 will reach the 305th day of its cycle, and the iPad mini its 263rd.
We will provide live updates from the conference call on our site’s homepage on July 23rd starting at 2 PM PT.
In spite of the existence of various Mac apps to display lyrics of a song that’s currently playing in iTunes or Rdio, I often find myself having to manually look them up through a web browser. It’s not uncommon to see a dedicated lyrics app being unable to fetch lyrics for a certain song, and, unsurprisingly, that always seems to happen when I’m in the mood for learning new lyrics. Having to Google lyrics and type a song’s name is a tedious process that ought to be automated, so that’s what I did. Read more
