With WWDC right around the corner, there are lots of great #MacStoriesDeals this weekend! You can find us as @MacStoriesDeals on Twitter.
#MacStoriesDeals - Friday
How Apple’s Magsafe Connector Works→
Ken Shirriff tore down Apple’s Magsafe 2 connector, explaining the symmetrical pin layout, how the connector sticks to your MacBook, and how the Magsafe LEDs function to notify you of its charging status. The Magsafe is one of the MacBook’s best features, and it’s deceivingly complex: the charger goes through a startup process as it’s connected to verify that it has a solid connection with the MacBook. If you’re into electronics, there’s a lot of geeky information here pertaining to the circuit board, switch, and how to obtain the charger’s ID code.
Liveblog: WWDC 2013 Edition
We aren’t coming back haunted, but we are coming back with @SteveStreza, who will once again be our eyes and ears at this year’s opening Keynote on June 10th. Just like last year, we’ll be bringing you live commentary, photos from the event, and all day coverage of Apple’s latest product announcements in the form of comprehensive blog posts and a good ol’ fashioned roundup for any of the smaller things that happen to show up on stage. And as always, we’ll take some time before the event starts (30 minutes) to chit chat with our readers as developers are let into Moscone West.
This year we also have something cool to remind you of the event on your iPhone. By downloading our Passbook pass, you’ll get a push notification letting you know when our liveblog is kicking off, and you’ll also have the chance to grab a promocode or two from some of our favorite developers.
Passbook
You can install our WWDC 2013 Liveblog pass here.
Apple WWDC 2013 Keynote Time Zones
You can check your own timezone here.
07:00 — Honolulu, Hawaii
10:00 — San Francisco, California
13:00 — New York, New York
14:00 — São Paulo, Brazil
18:00 — London, England
19:00 — Rome, Italy
20:00 — Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
21:00 — Moscow, Russia
22:30 — New Delhi, India
01:00 — Shanghai, China (June 11)
02:00 — Tokyo, Japan (June 11)
03:00 — Sydney, Australia (June 11)
WWDC 2013 Banners at Moscone West
- Apple Starts Decorating Moscone West with WWDC 2013 Banners
- iOS 7 Confirmed: New Banners Up at Moscone West
Note: We’ll provide all day coverage of WWDC announcements on MacStories’ homepage and through our WWDC 2013 hub. We’ll have a liveblog in this post 30 minutes before the keynote kicks off, tweet text updates as @MacStoriesLive, and announce new articles and updates as @MacStoriesNet.
iOS 7 Confirmed: New Banners Up at Moscone West [Update: OS X Too]
It’s been three days since Apple started decorating Moscone West with WWDC 2013 banners, and today the company has started publicly showing off new signage hinting at the next iteration of iOS, iOS 7. In a press release published in April, Apple said developers attending WWDC would learn about the future of iOS and OS X.
Using a very simple layout compared to last year, Apple is simply saying “7” on the banner that’s being put up at Moscone West right now. According to speculation from the past few months, iOS 7 will be a departure from previous versions of the operating system in terms of user interface design. After last year’s reorganization of the executive team, Tim Cook himself confirmed at D11 that Jony Ive, now head of the Human Interface Group at Apple, has been working on a new “look and feel” for iOS.
Update: Apple has also just started assembling banners hinting at OS X, which, similarly to the “7” banner, simply say “X”. The background of the banner seems to depict an ocean wave.
Get Hype for WWDC 2013 With These Colorful Wallpapers
Designed by my friend Silvia Gatta of Icons & Coffee, MacStories’ WWDC 2013 wallpapers are simple, colorful, and delightful. Made to capture the spirit of this year’s upcoming event, these wallpapers have been tailored to look great on any of your devices. Below, you’ll find the perfect match for your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. And if you want the whole set, you can download it all in a simple bundle.
MacStories’ WWDC 2013 Wallpapers:
- Mac & iOS bundle (includes Retina and non-Retina wallpapers)
- iPhone 4 & 4S
- iPhone 5
- iPad, iPad 2, and iPad mini
- iPad (Retina wallpapers for 3rd and 4th gen iPads)
Please be sure to thank @aylys on Twitter if you enjoy her wallpapers.
Kick Off WWDC 2013 With MacStories’ Passbook Pass
As soon as I saw what Second Gear’s Justin Williams had done with PitPass.io, I knew that the system would be a great fit for our WWDC 2013 liveblog. I asked Justin if we could set up reader passes before WWDC, and he was kind enough to work with us. So while we’re putting the finishing touches on this year’s liveblog, you can now install a MacStories pass using this link.
The pass will do a couple of interesting things. Firstly, you can install it directly from an iPhone or iPod touch, or, if you’re on a Mac, using Safari, which will let you add the pass on your iOS devices through iCloud. The pass itself will show you a date and time for our liveblog (12:30 PM EDT, 9:30 AM PDT) on the front, and you can tap the “i” button in the bottom right corner to access more information. On the back of the pass, you’ll find a direct link to our liveblog, links to our Twitter accounts, and a “Giveaway” section.
Passbook supports push notifications, and we’ll use them to reward readers who install our pass on their devices. We will send two push notifications between today and June 10: one with promo codes to redeem apps we like; the last one with a reminder just before the liveblog will start.
I want to personally thank Justin Williams for his support and work on the WWDC liveblog pass. Make sure to check out his apps at Second Gear and upcoming Passbook service, PitPass.io.
You can install the MacStories WWDC 2013 Liveblog pass here.
Hulu Announces a Completely Redesigned iPad App→
Last year, Hulu refreshed their website to put an emphasis on all the shows and programming you love to watch, removing much of the chrome that adorned video players and promotion carousels, and making thumbnails and artwork bigger for easier navigation. Hulu also implemented a new “Shows You Watch” feature for logged in users so you can quickly jump to your favorite show.
Today’s iPad update brings the same minimal redesign to the iPad, adding new features such a discover panel which will tell you more can you expect from a show based on your viewing history. But the coolest feature is the new minimized player, which lets you continue watching a show while browsing for something else.
Vesper Review: Collect Your Thoughts
It wouldn’t be fair to judge Vesper solely by the names of its creators. A new note-taking app for iPhone released today, Vesper has been designed by Dave Wiskus, developed by Brent Simmons, and directed by John Gruber. There’s more to Vesper than the fame of the all-star team behind it, though.
Long-time MacStories readers should be familiar with the iOS apps that I like and use for taking notes, collecting thoughts, and organizing tasks. For years, my entire workflow was based on Dropbox: I would save articles, notes, random bits of text, and even tasks in text files handled by apps like Writing Kit, TaskAgent, Byword, nvALT, and Notesy. Those are still excellent apps, but my setup is more variegate now: my daily thoughts and memories are collected in Day One; longer articles are still stored in Dropbox and edited with specific text editors like Sublime Text; my bookmarks are saved in Pinboard, while everything else – from reference material to annotated screenshots – goes into Evernote. On iOS, Agile Tortoise’s Drafts plays a fundamental role in the way it launches ready to receive any text and is capable of forwarding it to multiple destinations – all while allowing power users to achieve faster, automated workflows.
Specific apps, different services, all with a common thread: sync to a remote backend that ensures my text is always available anywhere.
If you take into account the apps that I have reviewed over the past two years, Vesper may seem anachronistic and uncharacteristically simple: it’s a general-purpose note-taking app with no sync, no URL scheme, no iPad version, and no Markdown integration. When I first tried Vesper a couple of weeks ago, I was skeptical in regard to the app’s reason of existence. But now, in spite of its 1.0 nature and many missing features, I see one – and, more importantly, I believe Vesper gets several things right. Read more
Dropbox for Mac Beta Brings Automatic Screenshot Sharing, iPhoto Import, New “Move” Menu
Dropbox public betas – known on the company’s forums as “experimental builds” – serve as a field test for new features that are being taken in consideration for the app’s desktop clients. And while they don’t always see the light of day in the public release channel, they do help Dropbox collect feedback for future updates and revisions.
Today, Dropbox has released a new public beta for Mac that contains some noteworthy new functionalities to speed up the process of adding files to your Dropbox account through the Finder, and particularly images.
The first one, an automatic screenshot sharing feature, is somewhat reminiscent of tools like Droplr and CloudApp: once enabled in the Preferences, it will allow Dropbox to redirect every screenshot taken on OS X to a /Screenshots folder in your Dropbox, sharing that file and putting a public link in your system clipboard. While not as full-featured as the aforementioned third-party tools, automatic screenshot sharing could indeed make for a nice solution to quickly share screenshots on Twitter and IM – retaining control over files that are simply located in the Finder.
In line with Dropbox’s renewed focus on photos, an iPhoto import feature should let the app turn iPhoto albums and events into Dropbox albums also viewable on the web. In practice, I haven’t been able to test the import feature in spite of my MacBook meeting the requirements mentioned on the forums (iPhoto 7.0 or higher). Based on the description, it does seem like Dropbox wants to replicate the Everpix experience with an automatic desktop importer taking care of fetching files from iPhoto and organizing them in Dropbox albums.
The last new feature of the beta is a “Move to Dropbox” contextual menu that will show up “for most files or folders outside of your Dropbox”. Essentially, this allows you to right-click on any file or folder and quickly send it to your main /Dropbox folder, but without automatic sharing. In my tests, the menu worked as advertised.
Dropbox experimental builds should be taken for what they are: public betas from a company seeking feedback from its users. Features introduced in these builds are sometimes kept, often tweaked, occasionally removed and re-engineered for a future implementation. You can download today’s new experimental build here.