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Posts tagged with "iPad"

Sketch The Next Killer iPad App on a Dry Erase Board

UI Stencils: iPad Dry Erase Board

UI Stencils: iPad Dry Erase Board

Quickly prototyping iPad designs doesn’t have to be done on a chalkboard, in Keynote wireframes, or via an iPad app. To get things down quickly without leaving a mess, whiteboards are perfect with your favorite dry erase markers for easy swiping and wiping across Design Commission’s iPad Dry Erase Board. Give your design a project title and screen name, and quickly mark down your favorite interface with your choice of black and red dry erase markers, topped with foam erasers to quickly undo mistakes. Not only is the board gridded and marked so you can quickly get the right perspective on your navigation headers and tab bars, but the back of the dry erase bar features a legend (an interaction key) chock full of iPad symbols, terminology, and descriptors for common iPad symbols and icons. You’ll find lots of subtle additions such as guides for positioning the sidebar in the right the place, and other additional alignment tools in conjunction with the dotted grid that helps you sketch pixel (erm, marker) perfect designs. Being able to collaborate on a whiteboard (or five) and pass around designs in the office can be a huge benefit for those not attracted to the iPad screen, and it’s made from the same folks who’ve delivered various other iPhone, iPad, and browser stencils. Available on UI Stencils for $24.95, you can pick yourself up a whiteboard for designing the next great iPad app.

[UI Stencils via TUAW, Swissmiss]

#MacStoriesDeals - Wednesday

We’ll tweet the daily deals at @MacStoriesDeals as well as exclusive weekend deals too, so please follow! Here are today’s deals on iOS, Mac, and Mac App Store apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get ‘em while they’re hot!

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Oscium’s $300 Kit Turns iPad into Oscilloscope

For anyone that doesn’t know, an oscilloscope, or O-scope, is an electronic measuring instrument that creates a visible two-dimensional graph, on a screen, of one or more continuously varying voltages or currents. Oscium has revealed the iMSO-104, a combination of a free universal iOS app and a $300 hardware kit that attaches via the iDevice’s dock connector. Read more

Tablets are changing the way consumers engage with content→

Tablets are changing the way consumers engage with content

With more than 165 million tablets expected to ship over the next two years, tablets are growing in popularity and changing the way that we consume content. People are spending considerable time with tablet devices and using them to play games, browse the web and search for information.

I’m not terribly surprised that tablets are becoming a hub for personal entertainment, but I am surprised at what people are using their tablets for (I figured news and reading would be on top). 28% of 1430 respondents (BGR) said the tablet has become their primary computer in the household, with 43% spending more time with their tablets than their laptops or desktops. 84% of those surveyed play games on their tablets, compared to lesser 61% who use their tablets to consume the news. Only 46% of those surveyed use their tablets to read e-books which is astounding.

Assuming that the majority of those surveyed owned an iPad, does this mean that less than 50% of iPad owners download, purchase, or read books from the iBookstore? What about Kindle and Amazon? With the amount of interactive content available on the iPad, it’s understandable people are seeking apps like Flipboard and are consuming media via their usual outlets, though I’m surprised e-books don’t have a bigger market or aren’t generating more attention.

The initial blog post doesn’t reveal too much, but the included PDF details a lot of interesting numerics for the small March survey.

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#MacStoriesDeals - Tuesday

We’ll tweet the daily deals at @MacStoriesDeals as well as exclusive weekend deals too, so please follow! Here are today’s deals on iOS, Mac, and Mac App Store apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get ‘em while they’re hot!

Read more

The iPhone Goes Where No Mac Has Gone Before→

The iPhone Goes Where No Mac Has Gone Before

Francois Fortier shares his experience with using Macs and iOS devices in a corporate environment:

However, the iPhones and iPads seemed to have crept into most Enterprise class companies from the top floor boardrooms as well as the server rooms in the basements. Not only does the current version of iOS 4.3.1 play nicer with Exchange Activesync than Windows Phone 7 and even Android but its extra management features provide comparable security to BlackBerry Enterprise Server managed BlackBerry’s. In fact, the iPhone comes out tops on this fight too since it doesn’t require a Client Access License for it to be managed. Apple has even released a free tool to allow Exchange Admins to lock out other iPhone features if the need be. Here is a table explaining the current state of the mobile OS landscape.

It is no secret that Apple has managed to capture the heart of corporate America with the latest Enterprise additions to iOS for iPhones and iPads. As several Fortune 500 companies deploy or pilot iOS devices instead of BlackBerrys, there’s a trend among IT departments and employees: why would you need to use a separate “corporate device” when you can just activate the enterprise features and switch between your personal and business-related apps on a single iPhone or iPad? Sure BlackBerrys still have a couple more functionalities than iPhones or iPads, but the 400,000+ apps available in Apple’s App Store are the key factor here. Employees don’t want to swap devices anymore.

Fortier also writes:

So there I was in between floors checking the location of the next meeting while lugging my colleague asked me to review the notes from the last for one of the action items, and this is when it occurred to me. No one was looking at me weird because I wasn’t using a BlackBerry or trying to wake a HP EliteBook from Vista Sleep of death mode. In fact it seemed perfectly acceptable for me to checking my iDevices, getting the info out quickly and move along

You know something has changed when people are writing books on how to use the iPad in corporate with apps available from the App Store. Macs might as well be growing fast in enterprise, but iOS devices have done in 36 months what OS X couldn’t in 35 years. [via Forkbombr]

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#MacStoriesDeals - Monday

If you didn’t already know, we’ve set up a new twitter account for Deals, it’s @MacStoriesDeals. We’ll tweet the daily deals there as well as exclusive weekend deals too. Help spread the word! Here are today’s deals on iOS, Mac, and Mac App Store apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get ‘em while they’re hot!

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iPad 2 + Head Tracking: Glasses-free 3D

Jeremie Francone and Laurence Nigay from the Laboratory of Informatics of Grenoble at the EHCI Research Group have created one of the most impressive and, overall, amazing tech demoes for the iPad we’ve seen recently. By combining head-tracking technology that uses the iPad’s front facing camera with basic 3D graphics, they have developed a glasses-free 3D experience that doesn’t require the accelerometer, but it’s entirely based on the camera and the movements of a user’s head in front of the screen.

As you can see in the video after the break, graphics on screen change accordingly to the position of the user to give the illusion of tridimensional objects moving on the display. It is pretty amazing that this system only uses the camera and the effect is so well conveyed in a video.

We track the head of the user with the front facing camera in order to create a glasses-free monocular 3D display. Such spatially-aware mobile display enables to improve the possibilities of interaction. It does not use the accelerometers and relies only on the front camera.

Glasses-free 3D has been deployed by Nintendo in its latest 3DS portable gaming console, and a series of reports in the past suggested Apple could implement glasses-free 3D gaming for the next-generation iPod touch. The demo we have here today is truly impressive, so make sure to check it out below. Read more

“Post PC” Doesn’t Mean “Sans PC”→

“Post PC” Doesn’t Mean “Sans PC”

Michael Gartenberg weighs in on the “post PC” argument started by Steve Jobs at the iPad 2 media event, when he said devices like the iPad are the perfect example of the “post PC” technology era we’re living in:

The iPad and other devices are not here to displace the PC (by which I mean all personal computers, whether they’re Macs or PCs running Windows). In fact, post PC means after PC, a new generation of products that build on the PC. What it doesn’t mean is sans PC, that is, without PC. The personal computer will no doubt be with us for a very long time… but that doesn’t mean we’re not in the post-PC world.

Gartenberg is right, I don’t think Steve Jobs meant “iPads will replace desktop computers in the next 12 months” – rather, something more like “We’ve seen the numbers, and the iPad is clearly a device different from computers that average users actually want to buy”.

Think about it: iPads can’t “replace” Macs yet if only because a Mac is needed to develop iOS apps. And of course, hundreds of other tasks iOS devices still can’t perform. For this reason I think associating “post PC” with “replacing” is a wrong assumption. It’s obvious the iPad can’t replace a desktop Mac – and yes, also because of the cable that’s needed to sync content. But are we seeing a trend? Yes. And what about 10 years from now – what will the average PC sold at Best Buy look like?

“Post” doesn’t mean “sans”, but the post-PC era has definitely started.

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