DwellClick Changes The Way You Click & Drag

Whether your main desktop setup consists of an iMac rocking a Magic Trackpad or Magic Mouse or you’re more of a MacBook user relying on the built-in glass trackpad, input methods on OS X machines don’t change. In fact, moving the cursor on screen and clicking and selecting and dragging stuff around hasn’t changed for decades. In the same way Steve Jobs saw the first mouse device almost thirty years ago and was impressed by the concept of interacting with items on screen, today’s pointing devices retain the original concept of a user’s hand and fingers touching an external or embedded surface / buttons to perform actions like scrolling, selection, clicks and drags. Of course iOS devices have changed this: with multi-touch gestures and displays, the user no longer moves something on screen, he touches the screen. Many say Lion is going the way of iOS with the addition of gestures and iOS-like commands, but as long as computers have non-touch displays the fundamental concept of indirect clicking and controls will live. DwellClick, a new app available on the Mac App Store, provides a way to change the default behavior of clicking and dragging on OS X by enhancing the experience with less clicks and button pressing.

DwellClick basically enables clickless operations on a computer. Instead of clicking you move and point, and DwellClick will take care of the actual clicking for you. Same applies for dragging windows and files or scrolling a page: as DwellClick is smart enough to recognize whether you’re hovering over an app window, a folder or a scrollbar, the utility will understand what you want to do and contextually change its functionality to let you move a window, scroll without releasing you hand from the trackpad, and so forth. DwellClick wants you to save hundreds of clicks every day, but it’s clearly not an app for everyone. Those who are used to clicks and scrolling after years of computing won’t probably appreciate the new ideas brought along by DwellClick. In fact, I had a hard time trying not to click everything on screen in my first tests when I was just moving the cursor with DwellClick enabled – as you move and stop the cursor, DwellClick clicks. You can set a click delay time in the settings, as well as disable automatic clicking and dragging, or customize the color of the blinking light that tells you DwellClick has clicked something on screen or started dragging an element around.

DwellClick also plays well with modifier keys and control-clicking: when the app’s turned on, you can hit keys like Cmd, Option or Control to tell DwellClick they should go with the next click. Or, you can simply double-press one of those keys to “lock it” with a visual cue displayed on screen. Similarly, hitting the Fn key when DwellClick’s running will activate an iOS-like popup menu to double-lick, drag and control-click. It sounds complicated but it’s actually very intuitive once you’ve found your perfect delay time. You can read more to get the hang of it in DwellClick’s online User Guide.

At $11.99 in the App Store, DwellClick doesn’t come cheap but it’s undoubtedly an app that dramatically changes the way you control your computer. For users who don’t mind change and innovation, this utility will probably make using a Mac even easier; for people like me, change will be difficult especially when you’re really used to the standard way of clicking and selecting files. But you should give it a try if you’re looking for something new.

Aelios Lets You Explore The World’s Weather with an Innovative Concept

Released earlier today in the App Store and created by Jilion, developers of the beautiful SublimeVideo HTML5 video player, Aelios for iPad is a new weather app that I’ve been testing over the past week, which aims at offering a fresh and innovative experience for “exploring weather” on the tablet like no other. The app, rather than displaying complex data sets and graphs to showcase current weather and forecasts with every possible detail, wants to give users a great new way to browse an interactive map on screen that’s also able to automatically tell the app the location you might want to check out.

The concept is new, so here’s how Aelios works: the main UI is made of a map and a “ring” you can dial and move on the map. When you move the ring on the map, it automatically locks to the most highly populated location it finds; so, for example, if you head over Italy quickly, the ring will lock into Rome by default, and same applies for London in the UK. If you do want, however, to fine tune your location search and see the map in greater detail, you can zoom in and choose any other location recognized by the software, or simply hit the button and fetch your current position. You can also manually search for a location thanks to the search button in the upper right hand corner. Once you’ve found a location you’re interested in, it’s time to focus on the ring. By default the ring displays time in a convenient 24 hour format that places midnight at the top and noon at the bottom in a virtual watch. The watch also shows the hours of dark and light, and visualizes how many hours of the current day are left before tomorrow. As you tap on the screen, weather icons for current conditions and forecasts will jump next to the ring to show temperature and wind depending on the time of the day. Everything happens around the ring and virtual watch locked to your location, basically. But if you try to rotate the dial, the ring switches to a different view and shows the next 7 days of forecasts, rather than just today. The concept is the same with icons next to the virtual watch, temperature, wind, and so forth. When you want to go back to the 24 hour view, rotate again and you’re set. The animations, the graphics, the sounds are top-notch in Aelios. The app supports both landscape and portrait mode and allows you to tweak units in the Settings.

At $2.99 in the App Store, Aelios is a beautiful app by Jilion that doesn’t disappoint when it comes to quickly checking out weather forecasts through an innovative UI that might be disorienting at first, but grows over time as it makes the entire experience of browsing maps and tapping around real fun. Make sure you don’t miss the promo video on the app’s website.

iPad 2 Head Tracking + Glasses-free 3D App Now Available

Back in April, you might remember we posted a video showing a software experiment by Jeremie Francone and Laurence Nigay from the Laboratory of Informatics of Grenoble at the EHCI Research Group aimed at bringing glasses-free 3D to the iPad’s screen. The demo, largely based on Johnny Lee’ 2007 work with the Nintendo Wii, used the iPad 2’s front-facing camera to track the movements of a user’s head and simulate various 3D animations on screen without the need of glasses, by simply modifying a 2D environment in order to give the illusion of “looking at a small window.” Francone wrote in April:

I use the front facing camera to detect and track the 3D position of the face of the user in real time. Then I use this data for dynamically adapting the perspective of the 3D scene. This Head-Coupled Perspective system gives the user the illusion that he looks at a small window. Objects can be displayed in front of the screen surface, or behind the screen surface. Such technique has a number of great properties, especially on mobile devices.

The experiment, viewed 1.5 million times on YouTube, has become an app and it’s now available for free in the App Store. It packs all the demoes seen on the video, it also runs on the iPhone 4 and, after a few tests, I can say it works pretty well although maybe it’s not just as fluid as the original video (might have been because of my room’s light conditions though). However, the Head-Coupled Perspective technology for iOS definitely does its job in displaying monocular 3D that does not use the devices’ accelerometers or gyroscopes.

The face tracking system does not detect and track the face in every lighting condition. Read the instructions in the app to get a good tracking.

Head-Coupled Perspective does not create a stereoscopic display! It provides a kind of monocular 3D display: the same picture is seen by both eyes. In the future, it might be combined with a stereoscopic display for a better 3D effect.

i3D for iPhone and iPad is available here for free. In case you missed it, check out the original video below.
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Reports Of A Grand Central Apple Store Resurface

The Wall Street Journal has today revived suggestions that Apple is looking to open an Apple Store in the New York Grand Central Terminal. Back in early February there had been reports from the New York Observer that Apple was planning to open their largest store at the terminal. Those rumors were then squashed in early March after reports surfaced that negotiations had fallen through.

Todays report from the WSJ claims that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is looking for new tenants and that Apple has expressed interest in establishing a retail presence within Grand Central. The space on offer is large, but not large enough to be the world’s largest Apple Store – which is currently the Regent Street (London) store which is 25,000 square feet.

The agency is looking for a single renter for two adjacent balconies on the north and east sides of the terminal. It will issue a request for proposals Monday.

A spokesman for the MTA told the WSJ that the agency dealing with the space has spoken to Apple and is hopeful that they bid on the space. Their report also suggests that the MTA may even be working specifically to find space for Apple, offering two adjacent spaces for rent, even though one is still occupied by a tenant. That tenant, who operates the Metrazur restaurant, would likely receive a hefty buyout from whoever purchases the space.

If Apple is interested in renting the space they will have to do so publicly – with all retail space within Grand Central awarded through an open bidding process. Jump the break for a plan of the retail space on offer – highlighted in red on the right hand side, labelled “East Balcony”.

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iPhone 5 To Feature Curved Glass Screen?

According to DigiTimes, the latest rumor going around the Taiwan supply chain is that the next iPhone (whether it be the 4S or 5) will feature a curved cover glass for the display. It would see the next iPhone resemble aspects of Google’s Nexus S phone which had the glass curved into a concave, or perhaps like the older model iPod Nano which had convex glass.

In the past, manufacturers of the glass for smartphone displays had been reluctant to commit to the investment in appropriate glass cutting equipment because of the high capital costs associated with producing them. However, Apple is said to have purchased between 200 and 300 glass-cutting machines for the glass manufacturers according to DigiTimes’ sources.

Prior reports put the production of the next iPhone as beginning in August this year, but today’s DigiTimes report notes that there is no firm timetable yet for the beginning of production. Apple is supposedly still involved in working with suppliers for cover glass, glass cutting, lamination and touch sensors to improve yield rates before production begins.

[Via DigiTimes]

Explosion Tragedy at Foxconn Plant Claims Third Life

Today some more details have emerged over the explosion and subsequent fire that occurred at a Foxconn manufacturing plant in the city of Chengdu, China. The sad news is that a third life has since been lost and 9 people (of the 15 that were injured in the incident) remain in hospital as a result of various injuries.

The Chinese paper, Commercial Times is reporting that the explosion took place around the location of a building that houses coating lines and other various chemical materials. An investigation is currently ongoing, but early signs point to “an explosion of combustible dust in a duct” within one of the polishing workshops. On a related note, the SACOM watchdog group had published a report two weeks ago that criticized several aspects of the Chengdu plant, including insufficient venting of the polishing department, where it was said that there was large amounts of (highly explosive) aluminium dust.

Foxconn rejected the report when it was released, and although early signs do point to a dust explosion, it must be noted that the investigation is still in the very early stages to say with certainty that this was the cause. Meanwhile it has been reported in the Commercial Times and China Times that Foxconn, in efforts to quell investor concerns, will be increasing production of the iPad 2 at their Shenzen plant (which already produces most iPad 2s) to offset any loss in output at their Chengdu plant whilst it is being repaired and investigated.

[Via Engadget and DigiTimes]

Apple Updates Apple Store App with Custom Configure Options, New In-Store Features

 

As widely expected, Apple has just updated the official Apple Store app to version 1.3 including custom configure options for Macs and the ability to get support quickly inside an Apple retail store. Contrarily to previous speculation, the app seems to be US-exclusive and doesn’t include an iPad universal version for now. With the new configure options, users are now able to build and order the Mac they want by selecting different RAM configurations, hard drives, displays and more – just like on the Apple Online Store. As for in-store support, the screenshot below shows you can access Mac OS X Tips and Tricks and workshop schedules, see how many customers are in line in front of you, and check out the next opening at the Genius Bar.

 

From the changelog:

- Enhanced in-store mode lets you get help and support quickly when you’re at an Apple Retail Store.
- The ability to custom-configure a new Mac with the options you want.

The app is available now in the App Store here.

Update: the app is actually becoming available internationally this time. Here’s the link to get it from the Italian store. The Apple Store app is now slowly propagating across Europe, as it’s out in France, Germany, UK, and Spain.

Retail iPad Displays Can Return to Home Screen, Run Custom Web App

A few more interesting tidbits about the iPad displays Apple has put up in their retail stores to showcase specs and prices and offer product comparisons have surfaced today. As we already knew, the iPads default to a device or computer they’re paired with to display additional information, making it impossible for customers to return to the iOS home screen by pressing the Home button. As reported by 9to5mac however, it is possible for store managers to “unlock” the devices with a custom gesture combination and use the regular iOS.

An Apple Store Manager relayed to us that the new iPad 2 displays are able to turn into “normal iPads” with a few swipes in secret combination. To find out if true, I went to the Soho store and tried it out. Yep, it works.

Additionally, MacRumors points out that an iPad was found unlocked in an Apple Store, with the iOS home screen displaying and “Enroll iPad” app icon. The app is not a native one but, as many suspected, a webclip that launches an AppleConnect interface in Mobile Safari to log in and associate the iPad to a Mac, iOS device or iPod inside the store. It’s likely that the custom retail software is getting all the data from Apple’s servers, meaning that all changes to iPad stores displays (prices, tech specs, artworks) can be performed remotely by Apple without local modifications by employees or store managers.

The interesting bit was the app that was on the dock which says Enroll iPad. It isnt actually an app but instead a Safari bookmark. Clicking on the app takes you to Safari shown in the last image. I tried to go back to the homescreen but I couldn’t seen the Home Button does not do anything.

Of all the rumors we’ve heard in the past weeks about the “Apple Store 2.0 experience”, there was one that claimed employees were instructed to download a folder containing GBs of data from Apple’s corporate servers – some suggested that private folder could be a retail-specific disk image for OS X Lion. We’re just speculating here, but it could be possible that employees were simply told to download the app data from the servers to test the retail software hours before launch, and the rumors posted were incorrect. Private folder or not, the new Apple Store experience has launched today, and now we’re waiting for the updated Apple Store app to go live in the Store.

First Impressions and More Details On Apple’s Updated Retail Stores

After last night’s photos of Apple’s changes to the retail experience (dubbed “Apple Store 2.0” in recent rumors and speculation), a MacTalk forum member has posted (via MacRumors) his first impressions of the new retail space and in-store tables featuring interactive iPad displays to offer more product information, compare tech specs, and call a Specialist for further assistance. As previously reported, the iPads being used by Apple next to each device and computer are special units glued to a mounting block that’s also glued to the main table, running a custom app that’s impossible to hide by locking the device or clicking the Home button. Forum poster jack112006 says he’s tried different combinations for pressing the Home button, but none of them worked as the iPads are likely impossible to hack in-store to visualize the underlying OS. Furthermore, as we saw from the pictures, the units are connected to a single cable that, once inside the mounting block, is divided into two separate cables: one for security and anti-theft measures, one (a very thin 30-pin dock connector) for charging purposes.

The second cable is quite special. It is an ultra-thin 30 pin ribbon cable. It is tight against the iPads body in the acrylic block, and is used for charging, and I would imagine periodic device re-imaging for a new product, etc. The software on all the iPads is very special, and is set up so that the Home button is inactive.

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