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iPad GUI PSD for Retina Display Now Available→

iPad GUI PSD for Retina Display Now Available

It has become a tradition for design studio Teehan+Lax – the minds behind beautifully designed software like Readability for iOS – to release a free iOS GUI PSD on every major iOS or device release from Apple. The PSDs, downloaded millions of times in the past few years, have helped designers and developers mock up their apps and iOS designs using Photoshop, while relying on graphic assets that look just like interface elements and controls of iPhones and iPads.

Today, Teehan+Lax released its updated iPad GUI PSD, updated for the Retina display:

We’re really proud to be releasing our latest version today. It’s based on iOS 5.1 and includes hundreds of retina assets available natively on the platform. In addition to the GUI assets, you’ll find perfectly scaled ‘New’ iPads to help you create the apps we’ll come to love in the future.

This time, the file has been made for Adobe Photoshop CS6, which is available for free while in beta. Weighing at 35MB, you can download the iPad GUI PSD here.

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Adobe Updates Revel with Retina Support, Better Photo Management

Revel, Adobe’s cloud-based application for iOS and OS X to store photos online and have them synced across devices, was updated today to include several new features and Retina graphics for the new iPad. As I outlined in my original review of the app (when Revel was still called Carousel), Revel stands as a mix between Apple’s Photo Stream – a feature of iCloud that automatically transmits new photos taken on iOS devices to the cloud – and more traditional lightweight photo editors; with options to quickly crop and rotate photos, filters, and adjustments, Revel allows users to store, sync, and edit photos across devices by paying a monthly or yearly fee.

Revel, however, wasn’t perfect in its first version, and Adobe promised they would add more functionalities for better file management – admittedly limited and overly simplified in Revel 1.0 – to enhance the capabilities of the software. Revel, in fact, simply provided a stream of photos in chronological order, without enabling users to sort these photos in events, simply giving them an option to create and share “carousels”. Aside from supporting the Retina display, today’s major update to Revel brings several new options to organize, browse, and share photos imported from an iOS device’s photo library.

Revel 1.2 lets you organize photos in events. When photos are imported and organized by day, Revel displays an icon next to the date’s label to set an event name, or a different date and time. While in edit mode, this button allows you to quickly select or deselect photos from a specific day. Retaining the same horizontally-scrolling interface, Revel 1.2 also adds shortcuts to view the favorite items from a set, and browse a day in a more convenient grid mode that you can activate with a button, or by swiping to the right across a day’s photos. Photos can be assigned to an event, and photos from a different day – Revel is still largely based on a chronological visualization of your photo library – can be merged into an existing event. While updating the app with new events for my old photos, I noticed that, whilst graphics and images look better on the Retina display, photo thumbnails look slightly pixellated.

Viewing modes have been revamped as well. You can now view all photos, events by date or name, or photos that haven’t been uploaded yet. On the sharing’s side, you can now select multiple photos at once, and choose to share them, save them back to the Camera Roll, or delete them.

While still lacking several of the functionalities seen in desktop photo managers like iPhoto (you can’t sort people’s faces, view locations, and create albums), Revel offers a very intuitive and reliable sync mechanism that makes sure all your photos and changes are always kept in sync across devices, something even Apple’s own iPhoto doesn’t do yet. Revel 1.2 is a free download on the App Store, with monthly subscriptions starting at $5.99 through iTunes. Adobe Revel 1.2 has also been released for OS X, and it’s available on the Mac App Store.

Understanding The Agency Model And The DOJ’s Allegations Against Apple And Those Publishers

Yesterday, the US Department of Justice sued Apple and six publishers, alleging that they had conspired to fix prices. It all centres around the switch from a wholesale model of selling e-books from the publishers to retailers (such as Amazon) to using the agency model of selling books that Apple and the publishers agreed to adopt in early 2010. Some of the publishers have already settled with the DOJ, but other publishers and Apple have vowed to fight the allegations.

But what is the agency model and how does it work? I’ve done my best to explain the two systems and some of the details surrounding the model that was adopted by Apple and the publishers that are in hot contention. I’ve also summarised the DOJ’s allegations as well as their timeline of events that the DOJ goes into great detail in their court filing. Finally, if you find yourself fascinated by the topic, at the end of the post is a further reading section to get more details and some opinions on the issue.

Jump the break to view the full article and video explaining the wholesale and agency models.

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Shigeru Miyamoto: “I Wish I Had Designed Angry Birds”→

Shigeru Miyamoto: “I Wish I Had Designed Angry Birds”

Simon Parkin of HookShot writes about their interview with legendary Nintendo game designer Shigeru Miyamoto:

When we asked him what games he has been enjoying on his smartphone of late, he replied: “There aren’t many games that I’ve played recently that have been truly convincing to me. But that said, I have very much enjoyed Angry Birds, especially the way in which it combines traditional and new game elements in exciting ways. Angry Birds is a very simple idea but it’s one of those games that I immediately appreciated when I first started playing, before wishing that I had been the one to come up with the idea first.

In the interview, Miyamoto also offers his take on the game’s control scheme, and how it could have been better on his company’s portable console, the DS. Nintendo’s guru, the mastermind behind an incredible number of successes and milestones in the videogame history, announced his intention to go back to creating new, fresh games to find the company’s next big hit. I previously discussed the position of Nintendo in today’s highly mobile gaming ecosystem here, and here.

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The iPad As A GPS Speedometer with Speed

Developed by High Caffeine Content, Speed is one of those apps that wouldn’t have been possible – or at least, nearly as enjoyable – ten years ago. Built for simplicity, elegance, and extreme practicality, Speed is a GPS speedometer that uses the iPad’s location data to tell you how fast you’re traveling. It works with iPads that have GPS available, and it has been designed to take full advantage of the Retina display. With a combination of Google Maps and beautifully represented compass, speedometer, and tripmeter laid out against a lusty black leather texture, Speed won’t replace all the functions of your car’s dashboard, but it also offers a glimpse into the future of car interfaces.

I have always believed that, in the future, car manufacturers and designers would opt for more driver-friendly touch interfaces and displays. Whilst not fully there yet, Speed is a great example of what the basics of this concept may look like a few years from now. A large display, a good-looking interface and menus, touch controls, built-in GPS and data polled directly from Google Maps. More importantly, all packaged into a consumer product that also happens to run an app that looks like a minimal car dashboard. Several car makers have already experimented with modular setups to allow for iOS devices to become a central part of the automobile experience; Speed shows that, with modern technologies, even third-party developers can produce something functional and pleasant.

I actually gave Speed a try in my Polo, driving around Viterbo and up to San Martino al Cimino. Once I switched from mph to kmh (just touch the speedometer), the app started updating my location on the map as I was driving, and it started tracking my speed and trip length. The app is surprisingly fast at detecting changes in speed: I have noticed it takes less than 2 seconds to detect sudden braking or stop. The developers say Speed offers a “a near-accurate representation”, and I can attest that’s absolutely the case here. Even better, because of this slight delay, if you’re keeping a constant speed it’ll seem as if the app really knows how fast you’re driving. The technology and implementation are quite impressive.

Some may deem Speed as a nice demo, but useless. While that’s certainly the case if you’re only looking for a full-time replacement for your car’s dashboard – and honestly, how can you expect an iPad to be 100% ready for that yet? – I think the app is worth checking out for its elegance and solid feature set alone. There are even some settings to adjust to magnetic north, use analog/digital speedometers, and use a speed limiter. On a more practical level, these features and settings make for, say, a pretty sweet solution to monitor trip lengths or check just how fast the local bus driver is traveling. It’d be nice to see the app gaining richer data representations (average speed, mileage history, speed patterns) in a future update.

The opportunity for Post-PC devices to improve existing technologies and appliances is huge. Speed is one of the many examples, and a very well-built one. Get the app here, and check out a video below. Read more

Kickstarter: Pebble, an E-Paper Watch for the iPhone

People love to fit their iPod nanos with a super sweet watch band. With its nice watch face and music on the fly, it’s a very attractive piece to add to your Apple nerdware. The Nano “iWatch” could be improved when it comes to its wrist functionality though. Pebble Technology from Palo Alto, California, is not only improving wrist technology but incorporating our smartphones with the Pebble watch, “it’s infinitely customizable, with beautiful downloadable watch faces and useful internet-connected apps.” Pebble connects to our iPhones via Bluetooth and sends information through silent vibrations for incoming calls, emails, messages, and more.

Pebble can easily be customized by adding apps (via the iPhone Pebble app) to be used for cyclists, runners, controlling music, a golf rangefinder and infinitely more apps via the SDK that they have also developed. The Pebble also has customizeable watch faces (much like the iPod nano) to fit each owner’s unique style. The watch will also come in 4 colors - arctic white, jet black, cherry red and one to be voted on my Kickstarter backers.

Video after the break. Read more

Scanner Pro Combines “Post-PC” and “Paperless” In A Single App

Scanner Pro, a camera-based scanning application for iOS devices by Readdle, has been updated to version 4.0, which adds a number of engine optimizations and new features, as well as support for the iPad. I was able to test the latest update to Scanner Pro, and I’m thoroughly impressed by the degree of independence and reliability Readdle achieved with Scanner Pro 4.0.

Let me explain. Until today, I have exclusively relied on a large, heavy wireless printer/scanner or my portable Doxie Go to scan, manage, and organize documents. In order to achieve a seamless paperless setup that required zero, or at least very minimal effort to be maintained and consistently used, I thought that the Doxie Go would be the solution for all my needs, as it offers a portable and lightweight device that outputs images at great quality in PDF. More often than not, however, the new devices and apps we have available nowadays bring new questions for issues we thought we had already figured out; as I began using the iPad as my primary computer, I realized how the Doxie, albeit well-designed and extremely usable, would still require me to use a computer to import scans, organize them, delete the ones I didn’t like, and upload the rest to Evernote.

I asked myself whether the iPad could even become a scanner. After all, the new iPad got a solid camera update in its latest version, and whilst not on par with the iPhone 4S’ camera, an iPhone 4-like lens – I assumed – could probably be a decent alternative to physical scanners, even the portable ones. The difference was mainly in the software: I wasn’t looking for an iPad accessory to turn the device into a scanner, I was scouting around for great scanner apps that would a) work reliably on the new iPad and Retina display, and b) support various online services, have basic document management features, and an “Open In” menu. Fortunately, Scanner Pro 4.0 by Readdle fits all these requisites, and it does so in a way that allows me to say this is the scanner app to try if you own a new iPad, and plan on going paperless using it. Read more

MacStories & Everyme Giveaway: Win an iPod touch

Yesterday we posted a review of Everyme, a new social app that aims at allowing users to communicate with friends and family through Circles. Everyme wants to help people keep in touch with friends, co-workers, family members, or high-school friends they actually care about. The developers want its users to be able to easily share with a private group of people, without all of the manual effort it takes in the way that Google+ does it. They are leveraging data from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and the address book.

Everyme wants to give one lucky MacStories reader a way to keep in touch with their Circles. To enter, simply follow the rules below and if you haven’t downloaded Everyme yet, give it a whirl after reading our review. Check out the giveaway rules below.

Giveaway

Thanks to Everyme, we’re able to give away to one lucky MacStories reader a shiny new black 8GB iPod touch. Contestants must be a US citizen (we’re not shipping outside the US).

To enter the giveaway, tweet the following message before 11.59 AM PDT (April  13th):

Win an iPod touch on MacStories: http://mcstr.net/HxJ3WP

We will search Twitter.com for tweets and retweets and randomly pick up the winners.

Make sure to follow @macstoriesnet on Twitter so we can get in touch with you once the giveaway is over. If you want to increase your odds of winning, you can also leave a comment to this post.

Winners will be announced on Saturday (April 14th).

 

UPDATE! The winner of a black 8GB iPod touch is Emily Caffrey. Congrats!