Seems like I’m saying this more often recently: something must be wrong with people. So wrong that we’ve come to the point we’ve spotted a guy selling iPhone OS 4.0 beta “invitations” on eBay. Read on.
Just Wrong: iPhone OS 4.0 Beta UDID Registrations Spotted on eBay
A Night at the Opera - And Back
I believed in Opera for iPhone. Really, I did.
I’ve always pictured the folks at Opera like a bunch of guys who were striving to create a good, alternative yet standard compliant browser that could show people around the world that developing an alternative browser was possible, and that developing a good alternative browser was possible too. This is not an attack to the Mac or Windows versions of Opera: those are good browsers, even though they have their problems. Especially Opera for Mac, whose interface has been designed by Jon Hicks, has finally started to feel native and snappy on Apple computers. But what happened yesterday - and what’s been happening for the past 2 months actually - is very sad. So sad that looking back, it’s ridiculous.
Brent Simmons Talks NetNewsWire for iPad, App Store Pricing
TUAW has posted an interview with Brent Simmons, the developer of the popular RSS application NetNewsWire. If you’ve been browsing the App Store you may have noticed that NWW for iPad was out on the launch day, and from what Simmons says, it’s been a very successful launch.
Feeds Reading on the iPad: Is Headline The New Reeder?
Many applications try to take the minimal approach nowadays, and a very few manage to achieve it and combine it with an actual usability. Fortunately, these very few apps are indeed some of the best apps around, and if you take a look at the App Store you can see plenty of them in the top paid and top grossing charts. I’m talking about apps like Reeder, Simplenote, Taskpaper: applications that didn’t aim at empowering the user with tons of features and graphical goodness, whose developers just focused on elegance and usefulness. Sure there are applications like Pastebot that mix custom, rich graphical elements with a real purpose, but I thank God every day for apps like Reeder.
But what about the iPad? If you look at the apps out now, you’ll see that most of them try to follow the user interface guidelines suggested by Apple, just like with the first iPhone apps that came out in 2008. Then, after some months, designers and developers started to explore new ways of designing mobile apps, and I bet the same will happen with the iPad. But then again, there are some differences between the launch of the iPhone App Store and the iPad one: it turns out that some devs have already started experimenting with their apps, trying to break the rules established in Cupertino by introducing custom, different and non-native looking UI elements in their apps.
Now back to Reeder, there’s a reason why I mentioned it: today I’m going to take a look at Headline, a feeds reading app for the iPad which, in my opinion, might be the “new Reeder” for iPad.
Too soon to tell? Let’s take a look.
MacBook Pro Core i7 Unboxing Reveals New Trackpad
Engadget has just posted a first unboxing of the just-released new Macbook Pros. They’ve taken a 15” for a spin and, surprisingly enough, there’s a new trackpad as well:
“Other additions to the laptops include “inertial scrolling” (a la iPhone), which feels like a software change to us, but is apparently related to new trackpads on these models, and new configuration options when buying, such as getting yourself a 1680 x 1050 high res display (yes, please) or opting for a 512GB SSD (clocking in, weirdly, at $1,400 for the 2.4GHz models, but $1,300 for the 2.53GHz and 2.66GHz versions).”
Or at least there’s the iPhone scrolling built in. I wonder if it would be possible to revert to classic scrolling though.
Very nice, anyway.
Finally: Apple Granted Patent for the iPhone and iPod Touch Design
Steve Jobs should be a lot happier today. In fact, the US Patent and Trademark Office has finally granted Apple a patent for the iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch design as “the ornamental design of an electronic device”. Basically, no one can copy the design of these products anymore.
Apple Releases New MacBook Pros: Core i5 and i7, Intel HD Graphics, NVIDIA GT 330M
Apple has finally released the long awaited update for its Macbook Pro family, and it’s a very good update. See the details after the break.
New Macbook Pros Coming Today? Apple Removes Tech Specs of Current Models
In the light of the rumors we’ve heard in these past weeks regarding Apple set to launch new models of the Macbook Pro line-up today, I think that at this point it’s quite fair to believe those rumors and just wait for the Apple Store to go down.
If you try to open the Tech Specs page of the Macbook Pros, you’ll see that Apple has removed every reference. No more tech specs. What does this mean? They’re updating the website, and the Macbook Pros are coming. At least that’s what usually happens.
Now we just have to wait a few more hours, get ready for the store to go down and start thinking about if it’s time to replace our computers.
Apple Releases Mac OS X 10.6.3 v1.1
Weird things happen and, when Apple is the subject, someone usually gets fired for that. Or probably not. Well at least that’s what the story says.
Thing is, it seems like Apple has release an “update” to Mac OS X 10.6.3 (both client and server) which is 800MB in size, it’s available here and it doesn’t even show up in Software Update. It’s a Combo updated simply labelled “v1.1”. Perhaps someone messed up and accidentally put it online? Maybe not, and it will start showing up in Software Update soon.
Anyway, we’re including the changelog (which seems the same of 10.6.3) after the break. Go update now.