Sketch for Mac, Reviewed

[This article was written by Raj Ramamurthy. You can check out his personal website here.]

Pieter Omvlee (the man behind the fantastic Bohemian Coding) has long been known for the amazing code behind Fontcase, which is perhaps the best font manager for the Mac.

Pieter has been working on something for the past year or so, though. Long before Sketch was released, Pieter had created DrawIt, a vector drawing application with support for bitmap filters. With Sketch, Pieter decided to rethink parts of DrawIt, and have two products with differing goals in his lineup of amazing applications.

Sketch was most certainly worth the wait. I beta tested the application, and I can confidently say that it’s one of the best drawing tools I’ve ever used. It’s also beautiful, not just in graphics, but also in simplicity: there are beautiful icons designed by Kevin Kalle and the application icon is done by Emanuel Sà. Pieter’s made the approach in Sketch quite simple: there are no document sizes, and the entire application is fluid and smooth. Read more

How The iPad Won Over A Skeptic→

How The iPad Won Over A Skeptic

At first glance, the iPad looked like a heavy, overgrown iPod Touch. After just a few months of use, however, this iPad skeptic realized that it’s so much more - it’s one of those devices I’ve always needed. Those don’t come around very often.

Most things get less interesting the more examples you see of them. If you’ve never seen a computer before, the first one is a revelation, but each successive model gets less and less remarkable.

Apple Inc.’s iPad is the other way around. It looks more impressive in light of what’s come before it.

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Could Apple Make Multitasking On The iPad Better?

I’ve been thinking about this for some months now: what could be the right way to “multitask” on the iPad? Some say we humans can’t really multitask. For the sake of the argument, let’s just say that we want to argue on whether Apple’s way to switch between paused apps on the iPad could be better or not. I think that, with a few tweaks, iOS 4.2 could bring a deeply different experience from the iPhone on the iPad. Read more

Thoughts On New Features in iOS 4.2 for iPad

I downloaded iOS 4.2 for iPad yesterday, and I’ve been playing around with it all day. Overall, I think it’s a pretty solid first beta: the apps that were already updated to rely on iOS 4 APIs just work (of course they’re Universal apps such as Pandora, but iPhone apps in mini-mode work as well), the multitasking system works pretty well in spite of less RAM, animations are ok.

Sure, it’s a beta: those animations are choppy sometimes and I needed to manually “kill” some apps in the multitasking tray that were unresponsive or incredibly slow. Audio in the background froze a couple of times; Mail hangs when opening large conversations and Safari flushes open pages more often than usual.

It’s a perfectly acceptable trade-off to have iOS 4 on the tablet. And it’s a first beta. And it’s got wireless printing and AirPlay. I agree with John when he says that, considering the previous nature of the device, iOS 4.2 might turn out to be the best software update of all time.

I have collected some of the features and neat little touches I like most about 4.2 for iPad. I think it’s going to be a great operating system. Read more

iPad, Light Paintings and Stop Motion

So here’s the thing: real artists come up with masterpieces no matter the platform, tools or limitations. Real artists break the rules. An English firm named Dentsu London has managed to realize a series of stop motion shots assembled from long exposure light paintings. Read more