Spout Brings Kinetic Typography to Twitter, Facebook and RSS

Spout, a new app for the iPhone and iPad by collect3, aims at bringing the beauty of kinetic typography (animations made exclusively of words with different font faces, colors, and sizes) to your favorite social networks and news sources. Spout, available at $0.99 in the App Store, works exceptionally well to visualize news and status updates as typographic animations running smoothly and incredibly fast on screen. Seriously, this thing displays tweets and messages like in those typography videos you might have seen before on the Internet. It’s just so cool.

But is it useful, too? Not so much. The effect is really neat, but Spout isn’t anything more than a beautiful visualizer with few interactivity options. Sure, you can login with your Facebook, Twitter and Google Reader accounts to stay on top of tweets, status updates and RSS entries, but there isn’t much you can do to play with the information displayed by the app. You can load a specific Twitter user or search, enter multiple accounts and choose to display real names or usernames for tweets – but as far as “productivity” goes the only thing you can do is load a tweet in a popup and then forward it to Safari. I can see, though, how the developers built Spout to be an interesting typographic experiment, rather than another client Twitter might not even like. Spout will look great on your desk and it makes for a great demo to your friends, but don’t expect to use this as a replacement for Twitterrific or the official Twitter iOS app.

That said, Spout has beautiful animations and works just as advertised. For $0.99, you should give it a try.

White CDMA iPhone Spotted in iTunes, Bigger Icon Found in OS X Lion

In spite of Phil Schiller’s semi-official confirmation that the white iPhone is real and coming this Spring (and it’s a beauty), people keep finding references to the mythical white unit that was announced last year and never shipped.

Interestingly enough, a MacRumors reader found an icon in the iTunes 10.2 resources that suggests a CDMA version of the white iPhone 4 will be released as well, as iTunes contains two different graphic files for the GSM model and CDMA. Speculation in the past months simply pointed to the white iPhone as a GSM unit, but since the release of the Verizon iPhone many wondered whether the white iPhone could be also released in CDMA flavor. An icon found in iTunes is no proof of Apple’s plans for the white iPhone, and could be the result of a designer thinking ahead and preparing graphic files “just in case”.

One MacRumors reader did some poking around in iTunes 10.2 resource files and discovered an icon for the white CDMA iPhone 4 that would be displayed in the Summary window within iTunes when the device is connected. The image is distinct from the original white iPhone 4 icon and clearly shows the antenna break on the top right side of the CDMA version that is not present in the GSM version.

Read more

Analyst Predicts Apple To Be Tablet Market Leader Until 2013

According to at least one research firm, DisplaySearch, Apple will remain firmly as the market leader for tablets for at least the next two years with substantial market share and sales. The firm believes the market will grow at a very rapid rate, accelerated primarily by the iPad, which it believes that Apple will sell 40 million units of this year – a very significant increase from last year’s 15 million units.

Perhaps one of the most fascinating statistics that the firm is floating is that by 2016 the tablet market will be selling 260 million units per year worldwide. That is a very considerable figure considering that in 2010, 351 million PCs were shipped. Indeed if these suggested figures ring true, it could be the case that tablets in 2016 replace a number of PC sales and perhaps even exceed PC sales.

As for Apple’s competitors, DisplaySearch believes that somewhere around the beginning of 2013 would be when they match Apple’s sales volume (combining all Apple’s competitors together though), which would still leave Apple as the market leader for presumably some time. Whether indeed Apple’s competitors can catch up by early 2013 will rely heavily on how well they do this year in launching their first iPad competitors. If they fail, the tablet market could well become similar to the MP3 player market in which Apple has strongly dominated for a decade with its iPod family.

[Via The Apple Blog]

Report: iPad 2 Display Almost Identical In Perfomance To iPhone 4

Whilst many have complained of the lack of resolution increase from the original iPad to the iPad 2, a report by Dr. Raymond Soneira of DisplayMate Technologies claims that, excluding pixel density, the iPad 2’s display delivers “almost identical performance to the impressive iPhone 4 Retina Display.”

In quite an in-depth and thorough examination of the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and iPad 2 displays, it was revealed that for most specifications from hardware color depth to black levels to contrast ratio, the iPad 2’s display matched or was close to the iPhone 4’s specifications and both were classified as ‘Excellent’ by the report. There were, however, two issues with the iPad 2’s display that Dr. Soneira believed could be improved by Apple through a software update.

Read more

FileMaker’s Bento for Mac Updated to Version 4; iOS Version Updated

Filemaker has released Bento 4 for Mac today, and it’s a major update to the previous version of their popular personal database software. It’s also now available via Apple’s Mac App Store, a first for Bento. It will cost you $49 but if you own a previous version, they will give you a $20 rebate. If you want a ‘family pack’ with 5 licenses, they offer a $99 version of Bento.

New features to Bento 4 include the ability to print labels using Avery and Dymo file formats. Sharing databases is easier with this version as well; the user can export the app’s libraries that are populated with data for other Bento users.

You can also upload a database template to the ‘Bento Template Exchange’ that has over 800 free downloadable templates to use. Bento has also added the ability to use geographical location data, grabbed through Wi-Fi, GPS or cell tower triangulation.

Another new feature adds the ability to lock forms to prevent unnecessary changes from being made to your layout. Improved performance and faster launch times have also been added, along with an easier way to switch from Table to Form view.

Bento for iOS was also updated to version 1.1. Changes include the ability to record voice memos, and sync iCal tasks (when paired with Mac). Multitasking support and better image support for retina displays are also included; here’s the link.

If you want to buy Bento 4 from somewhere other than the Mac App Store, you can always visit an Apple Retail Store or buy it directly from Filemaker’s website.

[via The Loop]

Photoshop Express For iOS Updated To 2.0, Adds Enhanced Camera Features

Adobe’s Photoshop Express

for iPhone and iPad has today been updated to version 2.0 and it brings a few substantial, and much needed improvements, to the mobile photo editing app. Perhaps of most importance is the addition of full Retina display support and multi-tasking support, which is a feature that all apps really should have had a few months ago.

Also included in the update is a new camera workflow for what they describe as “rapid in-app photo-taking” but in addition to that is the inclusion of a $4.99 in-app purchase for an ‘Adobe Camera Pack’. This pack improves upon the apps in-built camera functions by adding the features of reducing noise, self-timer and auto reviewing functions.

The app remains free and the 2.0 update can downloaded now, but to get the Adobe Camera Pack you’ll need to fork out the cash for that in-app purchase.

[Via The Loop]

MacUpdate Bundle: 1Password, Parallels, Divvy, App Tamer and More→

MacUpdate Bundle: 1Password, Parallels, Divvy, App Tamer and More

The latest MacUpdate Bundle is a must-have for any serious Mac user: at $49 (that’s 87% off the total value of the apps included) you get gems like Parallels, 1Password, App Tamer, Divvy and TechTool Pro 5. These are apps we highly recommend and especially 1Password and Parallels should be installed on every Mac.

The bundle also includes MacUpdate Desktop, DVDRemaster Pro 7, MacDVDRipper 2, Hands Off, Civilization IV, and A Better Finder Rename.

Save money and get some great apps at the same time. Go buy the bundle here.

Permalink

TapeDeck For Mac Records & Captures Audio, Supports Pro Hardware & Monitoring

Much like TinyVox which we looked at recently, you’d think TapeDeck would be its older brother (though the two aren’t related). TapeDeck for the Mac is a cassette deck for OS X, enabling you to quickly label and record audio from the built in microphone or connected pro hardware, and can allow you to monitor (playback) audio as it’s being recorded. If you have the jack for your Mac’s line-in port, you’ll be able to quickly save off audio to a .m4a file which shows up as a cassette in the tap box (the drawer that holds your cassettes). You can organize recordings by color, add notes, select audio quality per recording, and choose either stereo or mono (mono only records audio on the first of the two channels you’re recording to). It’s old school meets… new school?

Read more

Apple Rolling Out iAds for iPad

Back in December, Apple launched the first iAd for the iPad – a fullscreen interactive experience for the Tron: Legacy movie that allowed users to check out characters’ bios, trailers and storyline within a well-designed interface that was the first to make use of the iPad’s larger screen for the iAd platform. When the Tron iAd was launched, however, Apple confirmed that it would be the only one for 2010, with more iPad-specific iAds coming in 2011. As noted by CNET, the rollout of these new iAds has begun today with Unilever and the NCAA.

Unilever has teamed up with the National Collegiate Athletic Association “to give users an up-close view of three of its stars”. The ad runs in fullscreen mode and comes with video ads featuring Earvin “Magic” Johnson, John Thompson III, and Bobby Hurley. The iAd also enables users to answer NCAA-based questions, and check out daily game schedules directly from the iPad.

With the introduction of iOS 4.3, it was clear that Apple had implemented full iAd support in the tablet. The application to design and develop iAds on the Mac, iAd Producer, was in fact updated last week to include iOS 4.3 support and “creation of ads with multiple banners”. The news of new iAds for the iPad comes after Apple cut the minimum iAd buy in half at the end of the first round of campaigns, probably to address advertisers’ complaints that iAds, although successful and well-targeted, weren’t worth the $1 million minimum spending required by Apple.