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With the summer heat beating down upon them, Federico and Myke support Stephen during his time of confession, have a memorial service for their very first iPhones, discuss RSS, fashion and more.
Also: a Keyboard Maestro/AppleScript tip towards the end. You can get the episode here, or subscribe via iTunes.
A great concept by Teehan+Lax Labs, based on UICollectionView and built with custom designs and code to handle a “scrubbing” metaphor instead of regular scrolling. I don’t think that it would work for me (I need to see multiple upcoming events, and that’s why I love Fantastical for iPhone so much), but I’m all for unique reimaginations of the decade-old digital calendar.
You can download the Upcoming source code here.
Ahead of the App Store’s fifth anniversary on July 10, Apple has sent tech reports a celebrative poster with a timeline of the App Store from 2008 to 2013. The Financial Times’ Tim Bradshaw received a copy and posted a photo (via MacRumors).
Two things stand out to me: Apple’s focus on third-party apps and games in the poster, and how much quicker downloads have been growing in the past year. It’s also nice to see the original Instagram icon in there.
It’ll be interesting to see if Apple will post an interactive “5 Years of App Store” page as they did with iTunes (when they also sent celebrative items to the press).
Moviefone:
“Some see what’s possible, others change what’s possible” are the words sprawled across this exclusive poster for “Jobs,” which features a nearly unrecognizable Ashton Kutcher.
Kutcher is utterly transformed into late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in the colorful new poster (below). Sporting Jobs’s signature round-framed glasses and beard, the actor certainly looks the role.
The movie’s poster focuses, unsurprisingly, on Kutcher, whose resemblance to Steve Jobs is almost uncanny in some shots (shown so far). But as I (briefly) argued last week on The Prompt, I worry that, with such a strong visual resemblance, Kutcher’s voice will break the illusion.
Here are some great #MacStoriesDeals for 4th of July! We will be updating this post throughout the week so check back. You can find us as @MacStoriesDeals on Twitter.
Apple’s MagSafe 2 connectors and are probably the best thing we have going for laptops right now. Your dog can trip over the cable, get run over by the vaccum, or yanked out by kids running around the house, and the cord just magically detaches itself from the MacBook without sending the machine to the floor. Which is great — that’s exactly what we want.
Unlike their first generation counterparts, the redesigned MagSafe connectors are not very forgiving when charging a laptop in your lap, on the bed, or on the sofa. In attempt to better balance the strength of the MagSafe connector, Tetrio has developed the Snuglet, a small ring that tightens the MagSafe connector just enough so that it stays in place when we’re using it, but is still supposed to come out of the laptop when it accidentally gets pulled. It pops into the charging port on your MacBook and is later removed with a removal tool (it looks kinda like a SIM tray ejector tool).
I won’t lie. I’m admittedly super skeptical of this particular KickStater because if it fails to prevent a falling MacBook then it’s really not that useful. I would love to see a proper demo video showing that the MagSafe 2 still works to save your MacBook’s skin when the cord is tripped on, especially with a laptop as light as the MacBook Air.
Tetrio are asking for $9,000 for their campaign, raising $2,977 so far. The first 250 backers can pre-order a pair of Snuglets for $12, while the second batch of 250 can pre-order it for $15. Everyone else can pledge $19 for their very own pair of Snuglets. Learn more about this Kickstarter and back the Snuglet here.
Apple’s ‘Back to School’ promotion is live in the United States for the 2013 school year, offering incentives in the form of App Store gift cards to students who purchase a Mac, iPad, or iPhone. In addition to an education discout for qualifying Macs, students who purchase a Mac will receive a $100 gift card, and students who purchase an iPad, iPad mini, or iPhone will receive a $50 gift card. You can use these gift cards for iTunes purchases, to buy things like text books in the iBookstore, or to purchase apps from the App Store.
The promotion is open to any student, parent or staff member or a K-12 or higher education school with any purchase made between July 2nd and September 6th, 2013. If you order online, Apple is offering free shipping on orders over $50. Apple is also suggesting various back to school accessories like backpacks and cases on the ‘Back to School’ promotional page.
So ‘Oh Hai’ was the eventual outcome. It makes use of iOS face detection and to address our bugbear, we removed the need to interact directly the photo by including two sliders (one for eyes and the other for the mouth). These enable fine adjustments to be made with a complete and uninterrupted view of the results. The final working version was technically finished after more or less three days of work.
A simple, fun app by ustwo. I tested it over the weekend, and it does exactly one thing, quite well, with a straightforward design. The iOS face detection technology behind it is smart and accurate. Free on the App Store.
The public unveiling of each new version of Mac OS X has brought a new default desktop picture, and a new hunt to find a full-res copy of that wallpaper before the official release. The introduction of OS X Mavericks was no different, only this time instead of a space-themed galaxy or nebula, Apple decided to bring Mac’s default look and feel back to earth.
Thomas Brand takes a look back at Apple’s history with Mac OS and OS X default desktop pictures.
