Good design certainly is not all to care about. Sometimes, a nifty UI can solve many problems or even hide certain failures in functionality. But it can be as perfect and unique as conceivable — if a product doesn’t work at all, good design cannot change that. Unfortunately, I came across a very good example for this: World Atlas by Technoplus. I only tested the iPhone version, so I cannot tell anything about the usability of the separately sold iPad app yet. But on the iPhone, it’s easy to sum up World Atlas as a well-designed, yet pretty useless app, coded without real care for good UX and features. Read more
Review: World Atlas For iPhone
Apple Starts Changing “iPad WiFi + 4G” Name To “WiFi + Cellular”
As noted by 9to5mac, Apple has started changing the “iPad WiFi + 4G” name to “iPad WiFi + Cellular” in some countries. Currently, the change is live on several international versions of Apple.com, including the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and Hong Kong. Other countries, such as Italy or France, still report the new iPad as “iPad WiFi + 4G” in the Tech Specs page of the product in what appears to be a gradual update of the device’s name. On the websites where the change has already taken effect, a version cached by Google shows the old “WiFi + 4G” product name.
The new iPad, available in almost 90 countries, comes with “4G” networking capabilities, albeit only in some countries, and on selected carriers with support for LTE. Because of Apple’s initial marketing of the device as “4G” regardless of country availability, the company came under scrutiny from Australian and UK regulators, who claimed Apple was falsely advertising the iPad as “4G” and misleading customers without properly specifying such feature was dependent on carrier support.
In Australia, Apple was forced to change its marketing for the new iPad by stating on its website the device wasn’t compatible with Australian 4G networks. In spite of the iPad still working with 3G networks, however, Apple decided to keep the “WiFi + 4G” name even after the initial clarification. This appears to be changing now as the company rolls out an updated product name across all its international websites.
Apple’s iPad Tech Specs page carrying the new name is available here.
Paperless→
Paperless
For the past year, I have been getting rid of paper to archive everything – from receipts to medical bills or business cards, everything – digitally, securely, online. In doing so, I found David Sparks’ Mac Power Users a great resource to learn more about apps and workflows I can use on my Mac and iPad to capture, organize, and archive documents I may need again someday. For the past few weeks, I have especially enjoyed using Scanner Pro on my iPad in combination with a Doxie Go for “bigger” documents and Notability, which is a fine app that lets me annotate webpages and documents and save them into Evernote. On the iPad, I keep a plethora of apps to work with PDFs, but my most used ones remain PDF Expert, PDFPen, and GoodReader.
This week, David published his first book about going paperless, aptly named The MacSparky Paperless Field Guide. Put simply, if you’re planning on removing paper from your life or you’re even slightly interested in this whole idea of digitalizing bits of paper, David’s book is the guide you need to achieve a state-of-the-art system. I have been reading the book, and it’s full of tips and broad recommendations to illustrate how you can capture documents, the apps you can use (both on OS X and iOS), and the best techniques you can rely on to future-proof your PDFs. I have already discovered a couple of new apps thanks to David’s book.
Even better, Paperless has been entirely built using iBooks Author, and it shows: it’s not exactly a “book” as much as it’s an interactive guide with support for two iPad orientations (with different layouts), image galleries, contextual menus, over an hour and a half of screencasts, and iBooks Author’s fancy touch-based navigation. This is the future of independent publishing.
Paperless is only $4.99 on the iBookstore.
Astronut→
Astronut
One of my favorite iPhone games, Astronut by The Iconfactory, was released on the iPad earlier this week. In 24 levels fully optimized for the Retina display, you can enjoy Astronut’s well-known game mechanics (a floating astronaut jumps from planet to planet avoiding enemies and obstacles) with controls reworked for the device’s larger display.
Graphics and sound effects aside (they are both top-notch), I am liking Astronut for iPad even more than the iPhone version because of its control scheme. Astronut for iPad plays in portrait mode, with buttons to jump and activate boost placed at the sides of the screen where your thumbs typically are. This is extremely intelligent game and interface design. But there’s more: you can use Astronut for iPhone as a remote – this has allowed me to prop my iPad on a stand in my living room, and enjoy the game with my friends, sharing the iPhone as a controller.
Only $1.99 on the App Store. Don’t miss the video.
New iOS 6 Maps App To “Blow Your Head Off”→
New iOS 6 Maps App To “Blow Your Head Off”
John Paczkowski at All Things Digital confirms a rumor published this morning by Mark Gurman at 9to5mac: Apple’s forthcoming iOS 6, set to be announced at WWDC, will feature a new Maps application based off Apple’s new mapping backend.
We’ve independently confirmed that this is indeed the case. Sources describe the new Maps app as a forthcoming tent-pole feature of iOS that will, in the words of one, “blow your head off.” I’m not quite sure what that means, and the source in question declined to elaborate, but it’s likely a reference to the photorealistic 3-D mapping tech Apple acquired when it purchased C3 Technologies.
That Apple was going to replace Google Maps with a different technology – and quite possibly its own – is nothing new, at least from a rumor perspective. In the past years, a series of tidbits of information and facts seemed to suggest that Apple was on track to deliver a different Maps application for iOS in the future. Last summer, a series of legal disclaimers pointed at various mapping technologies being used by Apple in iOS, but the rumored new mapping tech that was allegedly meant for iOS 5 didn’t ship with the major update in October, as Apple and Google renewed a deal to use Google Maps in iOS.
In April 2011, Apple confirmed they were “collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced traffic database”, although without specifying whether such service could see a public implementation in a new Maps app for iOS. More than a year ago, we wrote how “in the past years, several job listings on Apple’s website hinted at open positions in the iOS team for map engineers and navigation experts, suggesting that Apple was working on its own proprietary solution to ditch Google Maps on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. The acquisitions of mapping companies Placebase and Poly9 in 2009 and 2010, respectively, gave some credence to the reports that pointed at Apple willing to become the next major player in the mobile mapping scene.”
Most recently, Apple officially acknowledged they are using OpenStreetMap data in iPhoto for iOS.
#MacStoriesDeals - Friday
Here are today’s @MacStoriesDeals on hardware, iOS, and Mac apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get them before they end!
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iCloud “Beta” Website Briefly Shows Reminders, Notes Web Apps
A few minutes ago, developer Steve Troughton-Smith tweeted a photo showing a “beta” login page for iCloud.com, Apple’s suite of web applications to access iCloud services like Mail and Calendar. The photo showed Apple’s icon-based navigation for iCloud.com, with the addition of Reminders and Notes icons in what appears to be an internal version of iCloud.com carrying future features. The login page clearly states the beta version of iCloud.com is available to developers running the latest versions of OS X and iOS.
Available at beta.icloud.com, I managed to grab a screenshot before Apple quickly pulled the website and started redirecting it to iCloud’s public website. The beta page showed a testing environment, and I was able to see the Notes icon in the background, as tweeted by Troughton-Smith.
The accidental availability of iCloud’s beta webpage seems to suggest Apple will announce more web-based functionality for the service at its upcoming WWDC event in June. Just last week, a series of web notifications were briefly showed on iCloud.com.
Update: Courtesy of reader Benjamin Crozat, here’s a larger screenshot showing the just-pulled iCloud.com website. It appears Apple also had a testing website available at developer.icloud.com, which has started redirecting to the company’s public iCloud product website as well.
Update #2: As noted by Tom Klaver, strings in website’s code suggest a beta of iOS 6 will be necessary to use the new web apps. The icon Apple was using for Reminders is also available on Apple’s servers here.
Update #3: Interestingly enough, other code strings from developer.icloud.com point to a new developer icon on Apple’s servers. Currently, Apple offers a developer portal for iCloud at developer.apple.com/icloud with links to downloads and documentation. As several developers have wished for Apple to provide more debugging tools for iCloud-enabled apps, however, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see new web-based tools for iCloud being unveiled at WWDC.
Adobe Launches Creative Cloud, Proto, Collage for iPad, Updates Touch Apps
This morning, Adobe officially launched Creative Cloud, the company’s new subscription-based service that gives users access to CS6 applications, Touch apps, and other tools for a monthly fee. Described as a “digital hub” to download apps, access online services, and share files, Creative Cloud comes with various online storage options to store files directly on Adobe’s servers and access them at any time from connected apps, such as the Touch ones released or updated today.
Creative Cloud starts at $29.99 per month with a one year contract for qualified customers (all registered users with CS3 or later); standard pricing, as detailed in the image below, starts at $49.99 per month with a one year contract, or $74.99 per month with no contract required. Unsurprisingly, Adobe maintained the same pricing scheme for European customers, with subscriptions starting at €29.99, €49.99 and €74.99. The Adobe Touch Apps, available on the App Store, will give users with an Adobe ID one free month of Creative Cloud with “2GB of cloud storage plus the ability to sync between tablet and desktop, access files from the web, and easily share with others.”
Say Hello To Amazing Alex, The Next Game From The Makers Of Angry Birds
Rovio’s CEO today revealed on Finnish TV that the next Rovio game will be called Amazing Alex and will launch within two months. Rovio will be reworking the game a little and it will center around Alex (the main character) who is a “curious young boy who loves to build things”.
“The quality pressure is high. We want to maintain the high standard Angry Birds fans have come to enjoy,” Hed said.
It’ll be based off of Casey’s Contraptions (see above image) which Rovio yesterday acquired to, from developers Snappy Touch and Mystery Coconut. On that acquisition, Rovio’s VP of franchise development, Ville Heijari, said yesterday that “The gameplay is a perfect fit in our arsenal with its approachable, fun and highly addictive take on the physics puzzler genre”. He also noted that Rovio was “reworking the title to enhance it”, so that it was in the Rovio style of “expect the unexpected”.
The Next Web points out that Rovio already owns the domain amazingalex.com as WHOIS records show. Today’s news comes after a stunning week for Rovio, hitting 1 billion Angry Birds downloads and revealing first-quarter revenues of 75.4 million euros (roughly US$106.3 M).
[yle, via The Next Web]