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iOS 6 Concepts: Multitasking and App Store→

iOS 6 Concepts: Multitasking and App Store

The past couple of days has seen a fresh round of new iOS 6 concepts surface online. Specifically, Rene Ritchie at iMore posted a series of mockups showing possible improvements for the current (poor) state of App Store search on the iPhone, while The Verge featured a forum post by member Sentry about multitasking on iOS.

For the App Store, I’ve already largely discussed why I think the new interface represents a step backwards in several areas. Especially on the iPhone, discovery is hampered by a new card-based layout for search results that’s slow and makes terrible use of information desnsity on our device’s screens. Rene offers some interesting solutions:

Taking it one step further, Apple could implement the portrait interface they use for app categories and present a few horizontal list views. The first could present search results filtered by keyword relevance, the second by rating, the third by how many “friends” have the app, the fourth by recency of release, etc. So, for example, a search for “Twitter” could result in the official Twitter for iPhone app showing up first for relevancy, Tweetbot first for friends who have the app, and Flurry for most recent.

Filters are interesting. With iOS 6, not only does Apple have data from Genius and Game Center, they also have direct integration with Facebook and Twitter. I’m not sure this is a path Apple could go down with for such a core feature of the system, but it’d be curious to see, say, how a Facebook-enabled App Store could recommend apps that my friends are liking and using. I’m not sure about the privacy implications, but the appeal of such a functionality could be big for the average user who just wants good app recommendations.

On The Verge, forum member Sentry has an elegant and very Apple-like take on how the multitasking tray could be improved. Practically unchanged since iOS 4, Sentry argues that iOS 6 should make better use of the extra screen space of the iPhone 5 for multitasking. Instead of proposing the usual Mission Control-like UI we’ve seen in dozens of mockups, he says that users are very entrenched into the simplicity of the multitasking tray: it shouldn’t change too much.

In an attempt to offer more functionality and features, they lose the core simplicity of the switcher which made it particularly usable to begin with. Some concepts use the entire screen space to display a grid of app previews, others only double the switcher height to include an extra row of icons. While both offer additional functionality, they actually hinder the flow and ease of app-switching. Whether it’s a full screen grid solution or displaying two rows in the switcher instead of one, both require more from your thumb than Apple’s original solute while tending to be overly brash in appearance as well.

I agree about the app switcher: it’s very easy to use, and, while geeks like us would like to have more options for “real” multitasking, typical iPhone users don’t have any problems with switching apps. I’m still not completely sold on the concept of live app previews for the switcher, but I know (at least I very much hope so) that Apple won’t change this part of the experience unless they come up with something better. An improvement that’s useful, not just different for change’s sake.

Check out the concepts by clicking on the source links above. Also recently: a great concept on how to enhance Spotlight by giving it Siri-like features based on text input.

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Sakura Quick Math

I’ve always been bad at mathematics. It’s not that I don’t like the subject per se: I prefer words.

However, as they teach you in school, numbers are important. Some would argue our universe is made of numbers and mathematic relationships between their entities. Personally, I’d be fine just being able to jot down a quick addition or subtraction and having the result in my head without pulling out my iPhone’s calculator. The meaning of the universe can wait.

I think Sakura Quick Math is an interesting experiment for kids who want to improve their arithmetic skills for schools, as well as people like me who are way past high school and are often reminded that they’re terrible at calculations. Sakura Quick Math combines a clean, typography-oriented UI approach with the personal goal of getting better at stuff like additions, multiplications, divisions, and so forth.

Sakura Quick Math is perfect for students in grades 3, 4, 5 & 6 or those people who want to improve their all round mathematics ability. Multiple difficulty levels allow the app to grow with your skills. Developed in partnership with several schools, teachers and psychologists, with dedicated practice Quick Math should improve mathematics skills.

I like the app for a variety of reasons. It’s a game, but it’s also an educational tool; it reminds me of the Brain Age/Brain Training “games” that were so popular on the Nintendo DS a few years ago. Just like Brain Age, Sakura Quick Math takes advantage of the platform it runs on with a fully touch-based interaction. Through built-in handwriting recognition, the app “understands” the numbers you’re writing on screen. In my tests, I’ve found the app to be really clever at figuring out my scribbles, though it sometimes hung on “4” and “9”. However, it was just a matter of getting how the app wanted those numbers to be written (tip: don’t lift your finger off the screen).

There are various difficulty levels for five modes. The main screen allows you to pick one of these modes, disable sounds, or open the Settings to adjust the handwriting recognition method. You can also check out Game Center leaderboards if you want to feel bad about yourself.

When you’re playing, you have to be fast in writing your answer, as shorter times is what you’re going after. You can write anywhere on the screen, and you can clear your answer with a two-finger swipe if you’re not sure about it. Otherwise, the game will take a correct answer as soon as it’s entered. You can skip questions, or end games and go back to the main screen. The app has a nice selection of sound effects and it displays records on a chart that puts the focus on “getting better” rather than “beating someone else”. It’s a subtle but important difference.

I’ve found Beginner to represent an enjoyable challenge, but then again I’m bad at this kind of stuff, as I said above. You’d probably want to look at the Advanced level for the last mode, which mixes everything in a single game.

Sakura Quick Math looks good, is fun to play, and it’ll probably make my rusty brain a little less old when it comes to arithmetics. Plus, it’s only $0.99 on the App Store, so check it out if you’re looking for something different than the usual Angry Birds or Temple Run-style game.

Ecoute for iOS→

Ecoute for iOS

A while ago our Lukas Hermann published an in-depth review of Ecoute for iOS:

From now on, Ecoute for iOS is my new default music player for iOS. Its UI features every design decision I ever wanted to have on my iPod touch. Plus, it eases up changing and pausing tracks while browsing through your music library, something I often do while I’m on the go. I can’t wait to see this thing on the iPad as well. If you’re a music and design enthusiast like me, or just dislike the system music player on your iPhone or iPod touch, you have to try it out.

Last week, I saw Ecoute had been updated for the iPhone 5, and I decided to give it a try. I’m glad I did, because the app works perfectly for the way I think of browsing my music collection.

The thing I like about Ecoute is that it displays Artists using album thumbnails. The Music app does this only for the Albums view, and then again they’re small thumbnails arranged in a list view. Ecoute is more similar to iTunes’ grid view, which I use on my Mac. When you tap on an album, instead of going deeper into the level views, Ecoute brings up a modal popup that you can dismiss with a swipe – this is not too dissimilar from how the upcoming iTunes 11 will expand albums inline. If you tap on an artist that has multiple albums, a nice animation will “drill down” to show the album thumbnails. Last, when you tap on a song, it starts playing in a bottom bar without opening a new view in the foreground – and that’s exectly all I want from a music app.

Ecoute looks gorgeous on the iPhone 5. If you’re looking for a complete overview of all its features, check out Lukas’ review. For me, Ecoute works better than Apple’s Music app because it reflects the way I tend to browse my music collection.

Ecoute is available at $2.99 on the App Store.

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Hide Newsstand In A Folder On iOS 6 With One Click, No Jailbreak Required

After the release of iOS 5 last year, several users complained that the Newsstand app (effectively a “folder” for magazine and newspaper subscriptions) couldn’t be hidden from the Springboard. Because of its nature of glorified folder, users couldn’t even put it away in an existing folder on the Home screen. However, people soon figured out a trick to make the Springboard hide Newsstand.

This year, well-known Cydia developer Filippo Bigarella has released a simple Mac app to hide Newsstand from any iOS device with a single click. I’ve just tested the app personally on my iPhone 5 running iOS 6, and it works as advertised. Even better, the app doesn’t require a jailbreak at all, as it leverages the existing “folder trick”, albeit making it easier to access.

Simply download StifleStand, and open it on your Mac. Make sure a device is plugged in and recognized by the app. Hit the Hide Newsstand button, and watch as Newsstand gets put into a folder called “Magic” on your Home screen. It literally takes one second to complete.

Please note: Just like on iOS 5 last year, opening Newsstand from a folder will crash Springboard. Use this tweak only if you don’t use Newsstand.

You can then rename the folder and put more apps into it. One bug I’ve noticed is that, because Newsstand isn’t meant to be put into a folder, if the folder is closed you won’t see the smaller preview icon for Newsstand. You can avoid this by placing more apps into the folder, leaving Newsstand at the end, so you won’t see the empty spot from your Home screen.

StifleStand works on any device and it’s super-easy to use. Download it here, and watch a demo video by iDownloadBlog here.

Uniconsole: Copy & Paste Unicode Characters and Symbols

In putting together my Nebulous Notes macros, I ended up having to choose icons for the buttons that would sit on top of my keyboard. As you can see from my screenshots, I’m using specific Unicode characters that add a touch of personality to the interface. I copied those characters using Uniconsole.

Uniconsole is a very simple, do-one-thing-well $1.99 app that runs on the iPhone and iPad. It fully supports iOS 6 and the new iPhone 5 display. Uniconsole lets you copy “unconvential” Unicode characters and symbols of various kinds and alphabets. While you can find these for free on the web, Uniconsole provides a nice interface to switch between alphabets and sections, save favorites, and copy them to the iOS clipboard. You can copy single characters or multiple ones at once; on iOS, you can bring up the native share sheet by tapping and holding on the scissors icon in the text box.

There are various pages of default symbols and characters; by swiping all the way to the right, you can access sections, including:

  • Dingbats
  • Arrows
  • Shapes
  • Letters
  • Technical
  • Currency
  • Old and New Emoji
  • Mathematical

The selection is very rich, and the app is easy to navigate. There’s also a dedicated page that lets you type anything with the system keyboard, and apply a “fun filter” to your text. Filters include things like flip upside down or custom strikethrough.

Uniconsole does one thing extremely well, and while the characters and symbols it collects can be found online with a bit of research, I’ll take the convenience of a Universal app over wasting my time looking for a Unicode arrow any time. If you’re looking for this kind of functionality, $1.99 is money well spent for Uniconsole.

Faster Markdown Editing with Nebulous Notes Macros

I have written about Nebulous Notes before. Back in August, I posted an overview of my workflow with the app, plain text, and Markdown:

Combining Nebulous’ support for text substitution and cursor position macros has enabled me to achieve a powerful workflow when it comes to writing in Markdown. For instance, I can select words I want to turn into inline links, and have the app automatically wrap them between square brackets, and paste the contents of my clipboard (the link) to the right. To copy Markdown-ready links, I use my own bookmarklet. Or if I want to create a list, I can hit a button that inserts an asterisk and a space. Or again, if I need to create a text file with a format that OmniOutliner recognizes correctly, I can indent items with Nebulous’ $tab and $cursor macros.

Since then, a major 6.0 update to the app has been released, which, in my opinion, deserves another look. For the occasion, I’ve put together a few videos showing how I use the macros I have created for easier and quicker Markdown (more specifically, MultiMarkdown) formatting. The videos were recorded on a Mac using QuickTime capturing an AirPlay Mirroring session through Reflection. I have embedded them here using the video tag supported by most modern browsers (video files are encoded in MPEG-4). For Firefox users, there’s a fallback to Theora .ogv files (converted using ffmpeg2theora). I will also make my macros available for download at the end of this post. Read more

A Better Way To Combine iPhone Screenshots with Keyboard Maestro

In May, in my coverage of Keyboard Maestro 5.3 I shared a macro to combine two iPhone screenshots in a single image through a keystroke:

For iPhone apps, I like to take two screenshots, place them side by side, and generate a single image. Until today, I had to manually drag the image out of Photo Stream (or use Scotty), resize them with Preview, create a new image in Acorn, drop the images in there, adjust their position, and save. I came to the point where the process took less than a minute, but still it required a manual and boring effort on my side. Enter Keyboard Maestro 5.3: I rename the images I need to use “1″ and “2″, respectively (“1″ goes on the left side); I tell Keyboard Maestro to run an Automator workflow to scale them; Keyboard Maestro creates a blank image in its clipboard, composites files 1 and 2 onto the image at a specific pixel position, and creates a new .png file on my desktop.

With the release of the iPhone 5, I updated the macro to include a version that would use the bigger resolution of the new device; however, the macro was still requiring two files named “1.png” and “2.png” to be available and selected in the Finder. While the process of manually renaming a file was allowing me to “control” the placement of the screenshots on the final image (1.png would end up on the left), I still received several requests to figure out a way to grab any image – not just those named “1” and “2”–  from the Finder.

Gabe Weatherhead of Macdrifter came up with a way to allow for such workflow, and he allowed me to share the macro here on MacStories. Read more

Apple’s Tribute To Steve Jobs, Yo-Yo Ma, And The Prelude From Bach→

Apple’s Tribute To Steve Jobs, Yo-Yo Ma, And The Prelude From Bach

Camillo Miller of Italian website TheAppleLounge noticed an interesting tidbit about the brief tribute to Steve Jobs Apple published on its website today. The song that plays in the video, the prelude from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1, sounds like F# major. The prelude, however, was composed in G major.

Why tuning down the prelude? It comes down to an important detail related to Steve’s tastes in classical music. The version that Apple is using on the website is played by American cellist Yo-Yo Ma. As Walter Isaacson writes in Steve’s biography, Yo-Yo Ma and Steve were close friends:

There was one classic musician Jobs revered both as a person and a performer: Yo-Yo Ma, the versatile virtuoso who is as sweet and profound as the tones he creates on his cello. They had met in 1981, when Jobs was at the Aspen Design Conference and Ma was at the Aspen Music Festival. Jobs tended to be deeply moved by artists who displayed purity, and he became a fan. He invited Ma to play at his wedding, but he was out of the country on tour. He came by the Jobs house a few years later, sat in the living room, pulled out his 1733 Stradivarius cello, and played Bach. “This is what I would have played for your wedding,” he told them. Jobs teared up and told him, “You playing is the best argument I’ve ever heard for the existence of God, because I don’t really believe a human alone can do this.” On a subsequent visit Ma allowed Jobs’s daughter Erin to hold the cello while they sat around the kitchen. By that time Jobs had been struck by cancer, and he made Ma promise to play at his funeral.

As it turns out, Ma plays the first four Bach suites tuning down his cello a full semitone, and there is a specific reason for doing so. In baroque times, instruments like cellos sounded a little different: the musical note A (A440) didn’t have a frequency of 440 Hz, but was more around 415 Hz – something known as the baroque pitch.

Among several modern ensembles, there is a consensus to play baroque music a semitone lower than A440. By tuning down the A to the baroque pitch,  the prelude from Bach sounds like F# major, while still playing it in the original G major; this helps achieve a more vibrant, “full” sound that is closer to the original and resonates beautifully.

The Cello Suites by Yo-Yo Ma are available on iTunes.

In many ways, Apple is still sweating the details.

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