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iPad in Real Life: Erik Hess, F-5N Tiger II Pilot

I believe people aren’t using iPads only as devices to “watch videos” or “catch up on reading”. Perhaps many people are; but there are some individuals who, thanks to the power and portability of the iPad, have managed to fit the device into their workflows and personal lives in ways that most of us wouldn’t expect. I think these stories deserve to be told. And they need to be told by the people who experience them first-hand.

For the first installment of a (non-regular) “iPad in Real Life” series, I asked Erik Hess to show me how the iPad has improved his flying experience in the cockpit.

Erik Hess spent 13 years as a pilot in the US Navy flying F–14B Tomcats and F/A–18E/F Super Hornets from aircraft carriers. He’s now a full-time designer and partner at high90 and continues to fly the F–5N Tiger II as an adversary pilot in the US Navy Reserve. He posts occasionally at his blog The Mindful Bit and you can find him on Twitter.

I asked Erik to share his experience in using the iPad as a flight-aiding tool in the cockpit. The result is a detailed account written by Erik himself covering a wide range of aspects from software used and replacing paper charts to portability and the importance of the Retina display. Perfect for what I was looking for, I left Erik’s thoughts mostly untouched because I believe, for this series, I should let these voices speak for themselves. Aside from minor editing, I chose to offer Erik’s own story, rather than my summary of it.

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Sponsor: Check the Weather

My thanks to Cross Forward Consulting for sponsoring MacStories this week.

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Check the Weather is a fast, accurate, and beautiful weather app for iOS. It’s universal, so with a single download you’ll get native iPhone and iPad versions. Check the Weather is powered by accurate and powerful weather data (including hazardous weather alerts from the National Weather Service and Dark Sky integration in the U.S.); the app is localized in seven different languages and presents all the basic weather data in a simple and elegant interface.

I use Check the Weather on my iPad on a daily basis because it provides a beautiful overview of my day (I use the app with the Avenir Next font), as well as upcoming days with good-looking weather icons and high/low temperature values.

Find out more about Check the Weather here.

Apple: iPhone 5 First Weekend Sales in China Top Two Million

Apple has just announced that they’ve sold over two million iPhone 5s in China since it launched three days ago on Friday, December 14th. That compares to the more than five million that were sold in the first weekend of the iPhone 5’s availability back in October (where it was available in nine countries).

“Customer response to iPhone 5 in China has been incredible, setting a new record with the best first weekend sales ever in China,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “China is a very important market for us and customers there cannot wait to get their hands on Apple products.”

Apple has also re-iterated that the iPhone 5 will be available in more than 100 countries by the end of December, which Apple says will be “the fastest iPhone rollout ever”.

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Slow Feeds 2.0 Does “Fever for Google Reader”→

Slow Feeds 2.0 Does “Fever for Google Reader”

I have been testing Slow Feeds 2.0, a major update to Slow Feeds released today that adds new features and an iPad version. For those who don’t know Slow Feeds, it’s a neat concept: the app analyzes your Google Reader account, and puts “slow feeds” – articles from blogs that don’t post 20 articles per day – in a separate section. From my old review:

Slow Feeds won’t replace your daily RSS app (it doesn’t want to), yet at the same time, I believe it really has a chance of becoming an app many will use alongside their RSS client on a daily basis. Slow Feeds’ core concept is so clever, and so naturally implemented, I am now wondering why, in retrospective, others didn’t come up with it first.

Slow Feeds 2.0 is a solid update. The developer is extremely clear about his main source of inspiration for the new Hot Links section: Shaun Inman’s Fever. Hot Links doesn’t look at “slow” or “high volume” blogs, it simply collects links that are the most discussed and “linked-to” in your account. Just like Fever, only for Google Reader (and with less features: there are no “kindlings” or “sparks”). It is a natural evolution of what Slow Feeds already did; now the app comes with four different browsing options: Slow Feeds, High Volume, Hot Links, and Starred. With just one app, I can catch up on the different kind of RSS feeds I want to receive every day. I only have two minor complaints right now: there’s no way to hide the sidebar/middle panel in landscape mode, so the web view for a Hot Link is too small for most websites (the app uses panels in portrait mode); second, the sites that are linking to a Hot Link should be listed in the app (Sunstroke gets this right for Fever).

Slow Feeds 2.0 also has an Images view that extracts every image from the articles in your feeds, and displays them as a large “photo wall” on screen. Unfortunately, the feature doesn’t have much utility for mea right now, as I don’t want to browse a beautiful wall of app screenshots (a common topic among the blogs I subscribe to). Ideally, Slow Feeds could let me pick a “Photography” folder from my Google Reader – and in that case the Images view would come in handy.

Make sure to read more about Slow Feeds’ original concept in my review of version 1.o. Slow Feeds 2.0 is a great update the makes the app more useful for my reading workflow, and I’m looking forward to future improvements.

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Dropbox Releases Completely Redesigned iOS App

Dropbox has today launched a major new version of its iOS app, featuring a new UI design, new upload features, and an updated photo experience.

As detailed in a blog post by the company, the new Dropbox aims at simplifying the user interface with “flattened out” colors, simpler lines, and less visual complexity. For instance, the new tab bar of the app doesn’t come with text labels, using only icons to indicate folders, Photos, Favorites, and Settings. In a way, the Dropbox redesign is somewhat reminiscent of the latest Rdio update for iOS, also focused on flat colors and an overall simplification of graphical elements.

The new Dropbox changes the upload system as well. In the previous version, there was an Uploads section to upload items from the iOS Camera Roll to a specific folder; users needed to specify the folder before starting the upload process. In Dropbox 2.0, every folder – including the main Dropbox one – has got a “+” button in the upper toolbar with two options: “Upload Here” and “Create New Folder”. I look forward to trying this feature in particular as I use the Dropbox app to upload photos on a daily basis to different folders; I don’t know whether an upload button dependent on the folder you’re currently viewing will eventually make me save taps, or require more navigation around folders.

Photos are also part of my Dropbox workflow, and the new app introduces a new browsing experience for them. According to Dropbox “all of your photos” including those you have “uploaded from other devices” will be available in the new Photos tab. This view comes with a grid interface to browse photos from newest to oldest. Interestingly, sharing options for photos now include separate entries for “Post on Facebook” and “Facebook Message”. The Photos view retains the Camera Uploads functionality of the previous version (though personally I use CameraSync for this, a third-party app that offers more settings for Dropbox photo uploads).

The new Dropbox app is available on the App Store.

Update: Based on my first tests, it appears only photos uploaded with the app’s Camera Uploads feature are recognized in the Photos tab; it doesn’t seem like the app is recognizing photos I uploaded with third-party apps like CameraSync. Too, like in the previous version of the app, you can’t star folders.

More screenshots below.

“This Won’t Happen On iOS”→

“This Won’t Happen On iOS”

I found myself nodding in agreement with Jason Snell’s latest piece for Macworld:

That’s why I’m optimistic that the dismissal of Forstall to tend his garden might be just the shake-up that iOS needs. In the operating system’s nearly six years of existence, Apple hasn’t really rethought any of iOS’s major features. We’ve seen the continual addition of new features, but very little has disappeared to be replaced by something utterly new. iOS is pretty good, but that stasis is odd, and perhaps even a little self-delusional on Apple’s part: Nothing is inviolably perfect, especially on the first try.

For me, there are two sides to this argument. I have been advocating iOS, and especially the iPad, as a platform capable of doing tasks previously exclusive to “real computers”. At the same time, I’ve also been trying to focus on how “regular people” could benefit from using apps that we thought were only “for geeks”. Maybe not Pythonista or another scripting app, but definitely – just to name two examples – apps like 1Password or Launch Center Pro.

And yet, the single reply I get the most every day is that “this won’t happen on iOS”. Some people seem to think that just because Apple was successful in reinventing the mobile OS five years ago, then they’ll have to stick to that model forever. That they’ll have to keep the Mail app as it is, that they’ll avoid considering more “power user features”, and that trying to make technology work for everyone – from grandparents to nerds – is wrong.

I disagree with the notion that the philosophy of iOS is set in stone. If there’s anything great about software, is that it can be changed. Sometimes it’s a huge undertaking, but it can happen.

I’m not saying change is always good – because I don’t know. But like Jason says, being static and complacent isn’t good either: the market is changing, people change their habits and needs. Eventually, change is not only good, but necessary.

And if Apple didn’t believe this too, we’d all be using a stylus today.

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iTunes 11 Navigation→

iTunes 11 Navigation

Disclaimer: I am not a “heavy” iTunes user, but since version 11 came out – out of curiosity – I have tried to use it more.

I think Lukas Mathis is spot-on with his comments on iTunes 11’s new navigation. Mainly, the different ways to change “views” and “sections”:

To reiterate: if I’m in the store section, I don’t click on «Music» to go to my music, I click on «Library». But if I’m in my music section, I click on «Music» (which is on the opposite side of the screen from the previously-clicked «Library» button) to go to my movies.

I may not use iTunes as my default media manager for music and movies, but I do use it every day to check for app updates and buy new apps. Therefore, I am constantly switching between the “Apps” view of the Library and the “My App Updates” section of the iTunes Store (which, by the way, still hasn’t been updated to a new look). In the Library, the dropdown menu to switch views (Music, Movies, etc) is on the left; when I check for updates and I’m given the updates page, to go back I have to work with a different dropdown on the right. Maybe I’m too old for this stuff, but this breaks my muscle memory. Even worse, if I am in Apps, I check for updates, and click Library in the My App Updates page, I am not brought back to Apps – the Music view opens instead. This is incredibly confusing, and it still happens in iTunes 10.0.1.

I recommend reading Lukas’ post for a reasonable take on iTunes 11’s complicated navigation scheme and menu layout. Personally, I have gone back to showing the sidebar because it just makes more sense to me.

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Televised→

Televised

I don’t watch American TV shows as soon as they’re aired, mainly because, being based in Italy, I don’t have access to legal TV subscription. However, I do like to “stay in the loop” with news and episode dates so I can later download everything in iTunes. Televised is a new iPhone app developed by Robocat that wants to provide a way to easily catch up on “status updates” for TV shows you’re interested in.

Televised takes a very visual approach. TV shows are presented as posters of the current season and the entire app features a custom design by Michael Flarup that is a mix between the dark style of Plex and a remote. In fact, you can tap on the hamburger button in the top left to open a section with buttons for Settings, Help, and “Add Shows”. Unlike most iOS apps, this section doesn’t open from a side, but from the top, with an animated light reminiscent of a TV remote. The design is very particular, but I found it to be slightly confusing coming from apps such as Facebook or Rdio (and really, just about any other app these days), which use a standard side-panel navigation. However, considering Televised’s highly custom approach to navigation, sounds, and modal views, I think the alternative take fits with the rest of the app.

The core element of Televised are the show preview thumbnails. You can tap on one to bring up a modal “card” that comes in the foreground with a nice 3D animation. Each card contains information about a show’s upcoming episode with summary, background photo, airing date, and three buttons at the bottom. These buttons let you share an episode, turn on notifications (which I haven’t been able to test), and “View on IMDB”. Televised uses data from TheTVDB, but if you have the IMDB app installed it’ll try to display a selected episode’s information on the service. I say “try” because – I don’t know if this is related to Televised or IMDB itself – in my tests I haven’t always been redirected to an episode’s proper page.

Televised focuses more on the “upcoming” aspect of TV shows rather than providing a fully searchable archive of a show’s episodes. There are some nice touches (the static effect as background for modal cards is one of them) and some aspects I can’t comment on (such as the future reliability of notifications), and the app does undoubtedly look good on the Retina display. I recommend checking out Televised on the official website, where there’s also a promo video.

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PDF Expert 4.4 With PDF Converter Integration→

PDF Expert 4.4 With PDF Converter Integration

PDF Expert by Readdle is my preferred PDF reader app for iPad. It comes with a polished UI, various annotation tools, and, more importantly, Dropbox sync. The latest update to PDF Expert for iPad, version 4.4, features integration with Readdle’s other PDF app, PDF Converter. As Readdle describes it:

Anyone who has already installed Readdle’s PDF Converter on the iPad can easily convert any files into PDFs from within PDF Expert. Once you send a document to convert in PDF (action button -> convert to PDF), it instantly converts to PDF and is saved back in PDF Expert for annotation. So far, users that have .doc, .pages, .ppt now can convert these file in PDFs and annotate them in PDF Expert.

I have tried the feature with .rtf files (which I often receive), and it works as advertised. Essentially, it works with a URL scheme that from PDF Expert can forward a document to PDF Converter (if installed); this is done through a “Convert to PDF” menu available in the upper toolbar of the document viewer. Once pressed, PDF Expert will send the document to PDF Converter, which will convert it and automatically send it back. I have asked Readdle whether this kind of integration was achieved using x-callback-url, but they told me they’re using their own implementation called RDIntegration.

I personally run my own remote PDF converter through Dropbox, but the option in PDF Expert works nicely and it’s entirely automated, so check it out if you’ve been looking for something like this on iOS and Readdle’s apps.

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