Sunday night and early Monday morning we learned that Apple has been planning to provide Apple Store employees and customers with a way to wirelessly check-in to retail stores. At a recent week long conference in Los Angeles, Apple Store managers were flown in and treated to the initial location based concept. We now have physical evidence, and more details on the specifics of the new concierge services.
EXCLUSIVE: Concierge, Scout, iQueue, and You. iPhone Based Check-ins Confirmed.
“Back to the Mac” Event in 100 Seconds, Full 1080p Video Now On Youtube
For those of you who’ve just come home from work and would like to fire up some videos on that shiny new Apple TV: you can either choose between a 50 to 1 slimmed down version of the Back to the Mac event video, or enjoy the full show in 1080p on Youtube.
Both videos are embedded below. With HD version finally available for streaming, expect us to dig into those Lion screenshots even more. Read more
Did Conde Nast Fix Its iPad Apps?
Two weeks ago we wrote about a nasty bug some users discovered in the Conde Nast iPad applications based on Adobe’s publishing technologies (oh byt the way, they just made the deal official) which, through a rather simple hack of preference files inside the app’s folder, allowed to download paid issues for free.
Back then, an Adobe spokesperson confirmed a new version of the Digital Content Viewer had been already shipped to developers and a fix would be released soon. Read more
Microsoft Releases Messenger for Mac 8, Windows Phone 7 Connector Beta
Today Microsoft released two new products for Mac users: a first version of Windows Phone 7 Connector that lets you “Sync music, photos, videos and podcasts from your existing iTunes and iPhoto libraries to your Windows Phone 7” (Leopard required) and Messenger for Mac 8, now out of beta and available as a standalone download. It’ll soon be integrated into Office for Mac 2011. Read more
Note & Share: A Note Taking App, With Twitter and Dropbox Support
There are so many note taking apps for iPhone and iPad out there in the App Store, I don’t want to even keep a list of them anymore. Since Dropbox announced the possibility for developers to plug into the system and people remembered that Evernote has always been a great solution to store notes, developers rushed to release both great and terrible clients to create notes and save them to multiple online locations. Me? I’ve been using Simplenote all along and I’m not moving away from it, although PlainText makes a great note taking application with excellent Dropbox support. Read more
iPhone Security Hole Lets You Make Calls When The Phone Is Locked
It seems like there’s a huge bug in iOS 4.1 for iPhone: with a combination of sleep / power button and a fake emergency call, it is possible to access the iPhone’s contact list and phone keypad even if the device is locked. I personally tested the method and, indeed, it works: I was able to bypass iOS’ passcode lock check and make a phone call to a friend of mine. Read more
AirProjector - iPhone Presentation Tool
A few months ago Cody reviewed AirSketch: an iPad sketchpad that allows you to easily share your doodles over a local network to anyone with a HTML compatible browser. Also from qrayon we now have its other half: AirProjector, an iPhone app that acts as a simplified wireless projector.
“Apple Sacrificing Usability For Platform Consistency”→
“Apple Sacrificing Usability For Platform Consistency”
Craig Grannell on iOS scrollbars coming to OS X and the mute button on iOS 4.2 for iPad:
Both these things point to Apple wanting to merge concepts in iOS and Mac OS X at all costs. Some cross-pollination is undoubtedly a good idea—Mac OS X having system-wise auto-save/app-resumption will be a major productivity boost if implemented properly; but Apple must also remember that what works on one system won’t necessarily work on the other—and it should also realise that some things really don’t work from a usability standpoint on iOS as it is, and so welding such concepts to Mac OS X isn’t a great idea.
The mute button is a terrible idea. As for iOS scrollbars and scrolling system coming to the desktop, my only concern is whether these features will bring any real improvement besides graphical eye candy. On the iPhone and iPad, rubber-banding is nice because you actually touch the screen and you get this neat scrolling effect. What about the Mac, though, where you place your fingers on a trackpad and you see a pointer on screen?
[via Dan Frakes]
Lukas Mathis On Lion’s Fullscreen Mode→
Lukas Mathis On Lion’s Fullscreen Mode
Apple has added «systemwide support for full-screen apps» to Lion. While I agree that the window management system we currently have often causes huge usability issues, simply doing away with it altogether is not solving the problem. It’s capitulating.
There has got to be a way of managing windows that gets rid of the problems caused by overlapping windows, while still giving people the ability to see more than one app at a time. How often do people write text while referring to a webpage? How often do people drag a picture from iPhoto into a Word document, or a file from a Finder window into an email message? Even the most basic tasks commonly require people to see more than one app at a time.
While I don’t mind making the Mac easier to use and learn, I feel that simply switching to full-screen modes isn’t a good way of doing that.
But Apple is not thinking about users who constantly jump back and forth between OmniFocus and Chrome. By making the experience “immersive” and letting you concentrate “on every detail”, they’re clearly trying to appeal those users fascinated by iOS’ way of dealing with applications. Frankly, I don’t think I’ll use fullscreen apps that much.