iBooks on the iPhone: Does It Work With MobileMe?

Apple has announced iBooks for iPhone, and while I don’t think I’me ever going to read a book on my iPhone, we’re fine with it. Thing is, Apple also announced they’re going to bring wireless syncing between devices running iBooks (iPad and iPhone), allowing you to read something at home on your iPad, go outside, fire up iBooks on your iPhone and start reading again back from where you were on the first device.

It sounds cool, but how does it actually work? First, I thought of MobileMe, constantly pushing reading status to the cloud and syncing back to our devices as we fire up iBooks again. But then again, this would require a 24/7 active internet connection, which is not always possible on something like the wifi only iPad. Also, it would require iBooks and MobileMe to really push statuses every single second, and that might be a problem for data usage.

So what’s gonna happen? I fear we’re headed towards a local wifi system again, but I’m betting on MobileMe. I think it can be the perfect platform for this, and Apple has the chance to finally find a good usage for it. I guess we’ll know more about the whole MobileMe in a few weeks.

No, You Won’t Be Able to Multitask On Your iPhone 3G

If you have an iPhone 3G, or a second gen iPod Touch, I’m really sorry for you guys. You won’t be able to use the new multitasking feature of iPhone OS 4.0 with them. Actually Steve Jobs mentioned that these devices will be able to do “many things”, but multitasking won’t be one of them. Clearly we know that they can indeed run backgrounding apps with jailbreak extensions, but Apple doesn’t seem to care about it. Also, no mentioned about first gen iPhones and iPods.

Anyway, I bet the jailbreak community will come up with new solutions and enable multitasking (which is there in the firmware) even for these devices. Until that time, you might want to upgrade to a 3GS. Or perhaps the new models that will come out this summer.

iPhone OS 4.0: The Main Features, the Little Touches. What Are You Missing?

The Apple keynote that ended a few minutes ago was one of the best iPhone-focused keynotes I’ve ever seen. Let me say this straight up: with the iPhone OS 4 Apple is going to completely reivent the iPhone experience, but let’s keep my impressions for later. Let’s focus on the features now.

In case you missed it, the iPhone OS 4 comes with more than 100 new features, built around 7 “tentpole” features that will lead the way towards a fresh, brand new iPhone. If you watched the keynote online (and we’d like to thank everyone who attended MacStories’ live chat. You guys have been awesome) you should now know what Apple has in store for us, but we’d like to recap anyway.

Check out all the new stuff that’s coming to an iPhone near you after the break.

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The iPad, From a Typographer Point of View

Stephen Coles over at Fontfeed gives us a great overview about what the iPad’s really missing in terms of typography:

“Yet it’s exactly that part of media consumption, reading, that reveals what’s missing on the iPad: good typography.

Signs that type took a backseat in the iPad’s development were clear back in January when Steve Jobs demoed the device, revealing just four uninspired and uninformed font options in iBooks. Apple also went with full justification without hyphenation, learning nothing from the Kindle’s spacing woes. These decisions were small or unnoticeable to the millions of future iPad buyers watching the announcement. But they stuck out like a sore thumb to typographers, whose job it is to make small, unnoticeable decisions that make text easier and more enjoyable to read”

AdLib - Apple’s Secret iPad Web Framework

Jim Hoskins over at Done21 has found out something very interesting about the iPad and web applications: a framework Apple hasn’t told us anything about yet, labelled “AdLib” which should garantuee native-like performances for webapps. [Link]

From the post:

“With the iPad comes a special Safari bookmark labeled “iPad User Guide.” The page it links to behaves almost exactly like a native application, but in the web browser. It has a split-view with all of the UI flare in UIKit. The crazy part is, it’s done completely in HTML/CSS/JavaScript.

What’s particularly interesting is that it does something that shouldn’t really be possible in Mobile Safari: It includes scrolling panes that can be manipulated with a single finger, complete with the signature iPhone OS “scroll bars” and elastic transitions. If you have ever worked with Safari on the iPhone, you know that having scrolling boxes of content is sort of possible, but requires a special two-finger gesture to scroll.”

Whether this might turn out to be a revolution for developers willing to approach Apple’s devices, I have many doubts regarding Apple freeing webapps like this. It sorta seems too easy and unexpected to me. Perhaps we’ll know something more tomorrow.

Reverse Gold Rush

The iPad has been out for 5 days now, mine is on its way to Italy too, everyone seems to be happy and satisfied. It’s a great device, no doubt about it. But I can hear the far away voice of those people who haven’t purchased an iPad yet and decided to stick with their iPhones. Waiting for better times (camera, 3G, other random excuses) to come. I can hear this voice, I can hear these people complaining because they fear developers have forgotten about them.

Developers, this one is for you. They are right.

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Apple Rejects iPad App For Using “Pinch to Expand” Gesture

AppleInsider reports:

“Scott Sykora and Eugene Kaneko are the creators of Web Albums HD, an iPad application that accesses photos saved to Google’s Picasa Web albums. The software was initially rejected from the App Store, Sykora said, because it employed the pinch to expand gesture to “peek” at photo albums, in the same manner as Apple’s own native Photos application for the iPad.

When the application was initially rejected from the App Store, Apple sent a letter to the developers noting that the pinch to expand feature is “associated solely with Apple applications.” The form letter-like e-mail also mistakenly named another application, leading Sykora to assume that Web Albums HD is not the only software that has been rejected for its use of pinch to expand.”

I can see many other stories like this coming, which isn’t exactly good for Apple. They need to fix it.