Sponsor: Smile

Our thanks goes out to Smile this week for sponsoring MacStories with PDFpen 6.

PDFpen offers an affordable alternative for marking up, editing, and adding images to PDF documents. Available across Mac and iOS, PDFpen goes anywhere you do, giving you the capability to correct typos, add your signatures, and re-order pages on the fly. Because PDFpen uses OCR (optical character recognition) on PDFs and scanned documents, text is digitized so you can edit text and search the entire document for a particular keyword or phrase.

PDFpen 6 for the Mac supports Retina displays, and comes equipped with a powerful toolbar for getting things done faster than before. And for use in the office, you can export documents to a Microsoft Word document. Best of all, PDFpen 6 will auto save as you annotate or edit your PDFs, meaning you’ll never lose your progress if you have leave for a quick meeting.

PDFpen 6 is only $59.95 on the Smile Store and the Mac App Store. You can learn more and download a free trial here.

Apple To Live Stream Today’s WWDC Keynote

As noted by MacRumors, Apple will once again provide a live video stream of today’s WWDC 2013 keynote in San Francisco. With an update pushed overnight to Apple TV owners, Apple has added a live feed for WWDC 2013 to its existing Apple Events channel.

The last time Apple used the special Apple TV channel was on October 23, 2012, when they unveiled, among other announcements, the iPad mini. Before October 2012, Apple had offered a live stream for its “Back to the Mac” event in 2010, when the company introduced OS X Lion and a new line of MacBook Airs.

Apple hasn’t yet confirmed whether the event will also be streamed on its website to desktop and mobile browsers, but it’s likely that a link will be put up shortly on Apple’s Events webpage.

Update: As expected, Apple just confirmed that the keynote will also be streamed on its website.

Apple’s WWDC 2013 keynote kicks off at 10 AM PDT; 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)

We’ll be offering a liveblog of today’s keynote here.

The New Yorker’s Exposé on Canabalt→

Simon Parkin of The New Yorker:

“The first endless runner I played was Canabalt,” said Luke Muscat, Jetpack Joyride’s designer. “You had this single button to jump. I loved the juxtaposition of high-intensity action with absolute simplicity.” Prior to Canabalt’s release, game makers had struggled to reconcile the smartphone’s absence of buttons with the interactive complexities of contemporary video games. Canabalt’s solution was elegant and simple: tap anywhere on the glass and your character leaps. Muscat recalled: “I remember playing Canabalt and just thinking, How has nobody ever thought of this before?”

There’s a lot of endless runners on the iPhone, and Canabalt is widely attributed as the game that started it all. It’s also the only runner that’s maintained my interest, being one of a few games that doesn’t ask me to buy something in a store or prompt me with a tutorial. It’s an attractive game with only a few core mechanics and touchscreen controls that aren’t middling (you feel the weight of your character as he leaps from ledge to ledge). There’s a real sense of desperation in the game as you stumble out of the first window and onto the rooftops below, scrambling onto your feet as the game reveals the backdrop of a burning city under siege. It begs you to ask a lot of questions, though it never answers them, even as more is revealed the farther you run. It’s a classic.

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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.

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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

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.

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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.

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Get Hype for WWDC 2013 With These Colorful Wallpapers

MacStories WWDC 2013 Wallpaper Banner

MacStories WWDC 2013 Wallpaper Banner

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:

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.