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Speaking of Australia, how cool is this game by Stuart Hall and Dave McKinney? It is a variation of the classic four-in-a-row game that uses the iPhone 5c’s case as a grid, cleverly taking advantage of the case’s dots to show interface elements and let you tap on the screen.
The game is called Flipcase and it’s free on the App Store. It also uses UIKit Dynamics for some delightful animations and physics effects. Very clever.
Alec Fraser has a good interview with some Australian app developers about iOS 7 and the new APIs. Many of my favorite apps and games have been created in Australia, and I love that these developers are getting more recognition with iOS 7.
In the end, I probably would have paid the full price for the new version even though it’s really only a re-skin of the old version. But I still applaud their cleverness. They’ve given their customers a way to feel good about an upgrade and apparently found a way to do it without relying on typical IAP unlocks to power their business.
My understanding is that the app comes with three separate In-App Purchases: two for a discounted upgrade, and one for people who don’t have previous versions of the app installed. If old versions are recognized by the app on the same device, the discounted upgrade IAP is activated; otherwise, the app only shows the full-price, $9.99 IAP to “unlock” the new app.
It’s not exactly a straightforward process and I’m not sure that Apple is a fan of the idea of having a standalone “Upgrade” app, but it’s clever considering the App Store’s limitations. I’d be curious to know how well this goes for Headlight Software.
Our thanks to Macminicolo for sponsoring MacStories this week with their Mavericks promo.
The Mac mini gets better and better as a server and Macminicolo has been hosting them since they started this niche market in 2005. They host your Mac mini in a very high end data center where you can use it for all kinds of things. They’re known for their personal service and impeccable uptime.
To celebrate the release of Mavericks, they have a promotion running through the end of October. They’ll host your Mac mini for just $10/mo for nine months. More info here.
If you’ve been hosting a server from your office or home, here is a great chance to enjoy the benefits of a data center.
Federico’s note: I have been using two Mac minis at Macminicolo for the past year, for both personal (media server and automation) and work purposes (MacStories), and I couldn’t be happier. Great service and great support.
When we first saw iOS 7 in June, we knew that we wanted to design an icon set for it. We took our time and we carefully crafted Essence, a set that includes 300 icons, ready for iOS 7.
Essence is exactly what you need to save time and get your app design ready for iOS 7. With a total of 300 unique designs, Essence offers high-quality, detailed, attribution-free icons that cover a wide range of categories from productivity and lifestyle to weather and food. Each of the 300 icons includes a filled “selected” version — so you can choose which icon is best for your app.
I helped my girlfriend Silvia launch this icon set for developers creating apps for iOS 7. Here’s the blog post about it.
The set is available here, and it’s on sale at $19.99 for a limited time.
From the Unity blog:
Like most mobile games developers, we’ve been closely following what important additions and changes the recently released iOS 7 update has made. One of the biggest and most exciting of Apple’s initiatives is the standardization of game controllers for iOS-based platforms. So we’re happy to tell you that, in addition to several important bug fixes for Xcode 5 / iOS 7 (Build&Run, WebCamTexture and status bar), Apple Controller support is included with 4.2.2! This blog post aims to answer most common questions this addition will raise and serve as a short tutorial on how to add support for iOS Game Controllers to your game.
With iOS 7 now approaching its first full month of public availability, game companies are starting to show their support for iOS 7’s new Game Controller APIs. Besides Unity, ClamCase announced their first official controller and leaked photos showed one from Logitech.
With an Apple media event reportedly scheduled for October 22, I have to wonder if further game controller announcements will be held back until that date. Apple likes to invite developers on stage, and third-party controllers for iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks would certainly make for an interesting demo, perhaps showing compatibility for both iOS devices (new iPads are rumored to be announced at the event) and Macs.
As I argued in June, there is great potential for game controllers and AirPlay, and I’m curious to see if and how Apple will start promoting this feature more aggressively.
The concept of the building,” Oppenheimer said, “is collaboration and fluidity. It’ll provide a very open-spaced system, so that at one point in the day you may be in offices on one side of the circle and find yourself on the other side later that day.
Mercury News got an exclusive sneak peek at a scale model of Apple’s new “spaceship” campus, which goes before the Cupertino City Council Tuesday for an initial vote. The photos provide some context to Apple’s impressive proposal – not just for the spaceship-shaped building, but for the entire ecosystem that Apple plans to grow around it.
Check out the full gallery here, and a video of the model on YouTube.
I don’t like screenshots of iOS apps that show status bars cluttered with icons for carriers and Bluetooth, or, worse, red battery indicators. While it’s generally not the most important aspect of an app review, I do think that using screenshots of iPhone and iPad apps with clean status bars shows a level of care that extends beyond the written text. For app developers who only have a few slots for screenshots in iTunes, screenshots that don’t have poor cellular reception and rotation lock or Bluetooth icons are essential for a non-sloppy, professional, thoughtful presentation of their product. It’s a little thing, but I care about it.
Fortunately, other people care about this minor aspect of iOS apps as well. Created by Shiny Development, Status Magic is one of my must-have Mac apps because it solves the status bar problem with ease and a good feature set: once you have the screenshots you need to “clean up”, you can drop them into Status Magic, tweak some options, and export the cleaned up, more professional-looking screenshots with status bar that don’t have six icons in them. Read more
Paul Goldberger from Vanity Fair writes about the collaboration between Jony Ive and Marc Newson, who’ve put together an assortment of 40 items to auction off for Bono’s Product (Red) anti-HIV campaign.
Two one-of-a-kind pieces—a metal desk and a special Leica camera—were designed by Ive and Newson in collaboration, specially for the auction. Several others, like a customized Steinway grand piano and a Georg Jensen silver pitcher, are variations on existing objects that Ive and Newson both liked and got the manufacturers to agree to tweak for the sale, generally by adding something red. (The Steinway appears to be entirely white, but when you lift its lid, the underside turns out to be painted an intense, brilliant red, while the pitcher has a red enameled interior.) A few other items, such as a circa-1990 Russian cosmonaut’s space suit and a sketch for one of Elvis Presley’s stage costumes from 1970, are objects Ive and Newson found and decided that they liked well enough to include in the auction as is.
One of my favorite quotes comes from Marc Newson.
Unlike art, Newson said, “design is not inherently valuable. How would we generate revenue?” In the end, he said, “we decided just to put together things that we love.”
