How Do You Touch an iSlate?

Great article over at AppleBits, which contains many questions I’ve been asking myself for a few weeks now.

I don’t agree on the keyboard shortcuts idea, but Cody brings some interesting discussions on the table, which are definitely worth a look. Here’s a brief quote:

“The first thing we have to think about is our actual desktop. What would it look like? How would we interact with it? I image the iPhone played a huge role in the development of this device, and possibly helped Apple kill two birds with one stone by being the “test” device that enabled them to study how people interact and want to interact with a touchscreen. Apple addressed the issue of menus (menus suck), by making apps front row and center on the home screen. I don’t have to page through a list of items or navigate into folders to launch an application – it’s immediately available with a tap and maybe a swipe or two of the finger. The iSlate’s desktop will be the most important element of the software, as it’s where we will spend most of our time launching apps and organizing data.”

Apple’s Mythical Tablet: The Text’s The Thing

Interesting post over at Macworld analyzing the text entries possibilities the upcoming Tablet could have. I still firmly believe the tablet won’t just copy text inputs systems from other devices, but Steve will unveil something totally original and that “makes sense”.

A vertical keyboard wouldn’t surprise me, anyway.

Chronicle 3 Winners Announced, Coupon Code for MacStories Readers.

Thanks everyone for the support and the comments! Also, I’d like to thank Littlefin for giving us these 3 licenses to give away.

Here are the winners:

Othmane Benkirane

Josinho7

Future51

You’ll receive the license straight in your inbox in a matter of a few hours.

For those who didn’t win, wait! We have a fresh coupon code, valid for this week only, which enables you to buy Chronicle at a 20% off. The coupon code is: MACSTORIES

In case you missed it, here’s my Chronicle review. At $16, you should go buy it and managing your bills. A great app.

The Secret Ingredient of Being a Great iPhone Developer? Instant Coffee. And Lots of It.

Seems like Michael can’t get anything wrong. I mean, I’m in love with Outside (read my review, then go spend 3 bucks guys. Seriously.) and I’ve just found out that Michael and the other Robocat guys have uploaded a cool video of Outside’s “behind the scenes”.

This is the original post, but I’m embedding the video below. It gives an awesome and interesting insight into what actually goes into developing and launching an iPhone app, watching it going live and see the money coming.

As for coffee, I’ll go to Copenhagen someday and bring the guys some good Italian espresso. I’ll trash the Nescafè thing myself, I promise.

Launching Outside from Michael Flarup on Vimeo.

AppSaurus: A “Genius” App Store.

It’s not a secret that finding the right applications for you in the crowded App Store is sometimes very, very hard. Maybe it’s because of the inner structure of the App Store (top grossing apps are more likely to show up in the charts), maybe it’s because of Apple’s policy and sometimes it’s due to a lack of marketing creativity from the developers themselves but the fact is - a small percentage of users really find what they’re exactly looking for. And so came Apple related blogs like MacStories to do the job of talking about less known apps worth a look. Now, even if a blog like MacStories  mentions 10 new apps a week, it’s still impossible to actually mention every single app that gets published or updated. The App Store is huge, there are thousands of developers and the App Store should be updated to a more organized structure. This is the real problem at the end of the day.

So what? Could there be a better way to discover applications you’d like to have? Like, recommendations? Sure there is. Let me talk about AppSaurus.

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MenuBrain: Simple Text Snippets in the Menubar

How many times have you wished to have a collection of text snippets a mouse click away? Yeah, my entire workflow is somewhat based on recurring snippets I usually insert into mails, posts and other invoicing stuff. I’m currently using ClipMenu (the great, free clipboard utility you must go download now) to do the whole job of keeping snippets organized into folders, but for those who don’t like Clipmenu or just want an even simpler application, I’ve just discovered MenuBrain form The IconMaster which might be perfect for you.

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Keep Track of Your iPhone’s Life with Statistique. Review and Giveaway!

If you use your iPhone as much as I do, it’s very likely that you like to keep track of everything it can do. You have badges enabled for every application, you jailbroke it to install additional tools like statusbar tweaks, you read guides about how to get the most out of it.

Now, there are many apps in the App Store that enable you to track various stats of the iPhone, but today I’d like to talk about an application I discovered last week and I’ve been using for a few days now: Statistique.

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Dear Apple: What We Want to See for iPhone 4.0

First part of what’s gonna be a great series from TUAW, based on the suggestions people made about OS 4.0.

The most requested features are:

  • New Lockscreen, with “a brief overview of all the new data we’ve received” instead of notification boxes;

  • New Homescreen, with location-aware capabilities and Exposè

  • Universal Documents folder

  • Disk mode

I’m totally up for them. But there’s one thing missing, I’d love to have better iTunes integration. iTunes should become an application to completely manage your iPhone on your desktop, not just a sync tool. Again, I want iTunes 10.

Showcase Your iPhone First Page: #sharethe1st

I am always curious about how people effectively manage their Macs or iPhones. As a matter of fact, I’m always looking for suggestions, idea..inspiration. To satisfy my curiosity, I made a quick poll on Twitter yesterday and I asked my followers to send me their first page of their iPhone springboard, including the #sharethe1st hashtag.

I received a lot of mentions including pictures of your iPhones, both jailbroken and not, showcasing some cool configurations and apps I didn’t even know.

So I decided to put something together and here’s a post which collects the pictures you sent me, with a link to the author’s profile and website. I’d like this to become something usual with you guys so feel free to @reply me on Twitter with a screenshot of your 1st Springboard page. Please also include the #sharethe1st hashtag.

Enjoy!

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