Apple makes some pretty glossy displays, and sometimes we wish they’d tone it down a little so we can get some work done by our open windows or underneath fluorescent ceiling spotlights. Moshi has announced a double whammy of an iPad screen protector: the iVisorAG for the iPad 2. Available in black or white to match your bezel, the iVisorAG is laid on top of your current (cleaned) display, and is designed so that no bubbles are left behind. It’s removable, re-usable, and is made to fit perfectly to protect your iPad’s display while reducing glare thanks to the matte overlay. Responsive touch remains unhindered, and you’re still free to use your favorite stylus and brushes with the iPad 2 for art and design. This scratch and smudge resistant protector is available for $30.00 from Moshi’s storefront, and comes with a free microfiber cloth so you can wipe your iPad before application.
Protect Your Display and Reduce Glare with the Moshi iVisorAG for iPad 2
Safari 5.1 Gets “Do Not Track” On OS X Lion
As noted by The Wall Street Journal, Apple has enabled an option in the latest developer build of OS X Lion (Developer Preview 2 was released two weeks ago) to activate “Do Not Track”, an open project by Mozilla to prevent advertisers and other web companies from tracking you online.
Apple Inc. has added a do-not-track privacy tool to a test version of its latest Web browser for keeping peoples’ online activities from being monitored by marketers.
The tool is included within the latest test release of Lion, a new version of Apple’s Mac OS X operating system that’s currently available only to developers. The final version of the operating system is scheduled to be released to the public this summer. Mentions of the do-not-track feature in Apple’s Safari browser began to appear recently in online discussion forums and on Twitter.
Already offered by Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 4, “Do Not Track” can be enabled or disabled by a user at any time; the service will then tell advertisers, web app or companies to stop tracking your movements online and, in a typical scenario, won’t serve “targeted ads” anymore to the browser. The new option hasn’t been given a standalone preference panel in Safari 5.1 yet, but it’s very likely that there will be one come the final release of Lion this summer. Right now, developers can activate the option from the Develop -> Send Do Not Track HTTP Header.
Sketch The Next Killer iPad App on a Dry Erase Board
Quickly prototyping iPad designs doesn’t have to be done on a chalkboard, in Keynote wireframes, or via an iPad app. To get things down quickly without leaving a mess, whiteboards are perfect with your favorite dry erase markers for easy swiping and wiping across Design Commission’s iPad Dry Erase Board. Give your design a project title and screen name, and quickly mark down your favorite interface with your choice of black and red dry erase markers, topped with foam erasers to quickly undo mistakes. Not only is the board gridded and marked so you can quickly get the right perspective on your navigation headers and tab bars, but the back of the dry erase bar features a legend (an interaction key) chock full of iPad symbols, terminology, and descriptors for common iPad symbols and icons. You’ll find lots of subtle additions such as guides for positioning the sidebar in the right the place, and other additional alignment tools in conjunction with the dotted grid that helps you sketch pixel (erm, marker) perfect designs. Being able to collaborate on a whiteboard (or five) and pass around designs in the office can be a huge benefit for those not attracted to the iPad screen, and it’s made from the same folks who’ve delivered various other iPhone, iPad, and browser stencils. Available on UI Stencils for $24.95, you can pick yourself up a whiteboard for designing the next great iPad app.
[UI Stencils via TUAW, Swissmiss]
#MacStoriesDeals - Wednesday
We’ll tweet the daily deals at @MacStoriesDeals as well as exclusive weekend deals too, so please follow! Here are today’s deals on iOS, Mac, and Mac App Store apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get ‘em while they’re hot!
Unofficial Final Cut Pro X Announcement Videos Now Online
Apple hasn’t posted an official video of yesterday’s Final Cut Pro X announcement at the Supermeet in Las Vegas (and some say it likely won’t), but as noted by MacRumors two unofficial videos has surfaced on Youtube showing the entire presentation. The video are in good quality, audio is decent and they can be viewed in 720p.
You can watch the videos below. More screenshots of Final Cut Pro X were posted this morning, as well as confirmation from Apple to “stay tuned” about other apps of the Final Cut Pro suite coming in the future. Final Cut Pro X will be released at $299 on the Mac App Store in June.
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Oscium’s $300 Kit Turns iPad into Oscilloscope
For anyone that doesn’t know, an oscilloscope, or O-scope, is an electronic measuring instrument that creates a visible two-dimensional graph, on a screen, of one or more continuously varying voltages or currents. Oscium has revealed the iMSO-104, a combination of a free universal iOS app and a $300 hardware kit that attaches via the iDevice’s dock connector. Read more
Squrl: Collect Videos From The Web, Watch Them Later on iOS
Released yesterday on the App Store and the web, Squrl is a new service powered by an HTML5 interface that allows you to save videos from several supported services, collect them on the iOS and web apps, and watch them later at any time. The concept behind the service is very simple and attractive: much like an Instapaper for video, Squrl enables you to save videos from Youtube, Vimeo, Hulu, Netflix and many other providers with the click of a bookmarklet (which you have to install from the website). Unlike Watchlater, though, Squrl doesn’t stop at collecting videos in a single place, it also packs social functionalities and organization features to let you create galleries and collections of videos, share them, or even subscribe to collections shared by other users in your social graph. Read more
Suppliers: iPhone 4 Demand Still High, No iPhone 5 Roadmap Yet
Speaking to suppliers “related” to the iPhone’s production in Asia, Digitimes reports today Apple still hasn’t released a roadmap for the next-generation iPhone – unofficially dubbed iPhone 5 until today – leading many to believe Apple might want to focus the upcoming WWDC in June (the usual stage for new iPhone announcements) on software and release a new model this Fall, or in early 2012. Digitimes, however, also reports another “theory” that has been formulated by component suppliers: unlike previous rumors that suggested the iPhone 5 would be a completely new device, the iPhone 5 could be a slight redesign of the current iPhone 4 and still launch this summer “to fend off the rising popularity of Android.”
Apple has not yet released a production roadmap for iPhone 5 as shipment volumes of iPhone 4 have continued to mount and related suppliers are not yet ready to shift their production lines for new products, according to sources at Taiwan-based touch panel makers.
While acknowledging there should be a roadmap for each generation of products, the sources insisted that touch panel shipments for iPhone 4 have remained steady, and that they have not seen a timetable to stop current production in preparation for the next-generation of iPhone.
A report surfaced yesterday indicated the iPhone 5’s production is set to start in September for a Fall release, with a cheaper iPhone model still in the works to grant Apple a larger share in different market segments. According to previous speculation, the iPhone 5 should be an updated version of the iPhone 4 (featuring the same design scheme), but with a metal back and redesigned antenna, 8 MP camera, NFC capabilities and Apple A5 processor.
New Final Cut Pro X Screenshots, Apple Says “Stay Tuned” For Other Apps
Last night, Apple officially announced a new version of Final Cut Pro during the Supermeet in Las Vegas, Nevada. As you might have read in our liveblog and announcement post, Final Cut Pro X has been completely rebuilt from the ground up to be as revolutionary as the first version of FCP released in 1999: full Cocoa, Core Animation, Grand Central Dispatch and 64-bit support, iMovie-inspired menus for easier navigation and media management, a whole new underlying engine that – according to people who saw the demo yesterday – makes the timeline incredibly fast and responsive. With keyboard-based nesting, magnetic timeline, background processing and automatic people and media detection on import, Apple aims at revolutionizing Final Cut Pro.
As announced yesterday by Chief Architect of Video Applications Randy Ubillos on stage, Final Cut Pro X will be released at $299 in June. Final Cut Pro went under a major price cut (it used to be sold at $999), and it will also be available on the Mac App Store – like every new Apple desktop app nowadays. But last night, many immediately wondered whether the lower price and Mac App Store distribution would lead to the demise of Final Cut Express (widely regarded as an “iMovie for Pros”, lacking many of the functionalities of Final Cut Pro) and boxed copies of FCP. Furthermore, Apple made no mention of all the other Final Cut Studio apps last night such as Motion, Soundtrack Pro, Compressor, Color and DVD Studio Pro. On Twitter, I speculated Apple could release them as standalone apps in the Mac App Store or – when they don’t make sense as apps because they’re basically “extensions” to Final Cut – as in-app purchases within Final Cut Pro X itself.
An Apple representative, speaking to The Loop, seems to confirm the theory that other apps will be released alongside FCP X:
Apple on Wednesday introduced Final Cut Pro X, but there was no mention of the other applications in the suite of video apps.
“Today was just a sneak peak of Final Cut Pro, stay tuned,” an Apple representative told The Loop.
The Loop has also received a series of high-res screenshots, one of them you can see above. We should know more about Final Cut Pro X in the coming weeks (Apple hasn’t posted a press release, or updated its website with a sneak peek) as Apple gets ready for a June launch, presumably during or soon after the WWDC.