With a brief blog post, Geohot has let us officially know that he’s managed to jailbreak his iPad. As you can see from the screenshot below, he used Blackra1n to install Cydia on the device.
It will be interesting to see what Cydia developers will come up with for the new device. More importantly, we’ll be able to have multitasking before the release of iPhone OS 4.0 for iPad. We can’t wait.
When I was waiting for my iPad to arrive in Italy, I spent a good amount of time browsing the iPad App Store looking for some great apps to install and try. Of course I searched for RSS apps, word processors, PDF readers but most of all, Twitter clients. As I started looking for decent Twitter apps to install and review, the most obvious choice was to give a try to Twitterrific from the Iconfactory already out in the App Store in its free version with the possibility to upgrade in-app to the premium version.
After 24 hours of intensive usage of the app, here are my thoughts about it.
Stephen Coles over at Fontfeed gives us a great overview about what the iPad’s really missing in terms of typography:
“Yet it’s exactly that part of media consumption, reading, that reveals what’s missing on the iPad: good typography.
Signs that type took a backseat in the iPad’s development were clear back in January when Steve Jobs demoed the device, revealing just four uninspired and uninformed font options in iBooks. Apple also went with full justification without hyphenation, learning nothing from the Kindle’s spacing woes. These decisions were small or unnoticeable to the millions of future iPad buyers watching the announcement. But they stuck out like a sore thumb to typographers, whose job it is to make small, unnoticeable decisions that make text easier and more enjoyable to read”
Jim Hoskins over at Done21 has found out something very interesting about the iPad and web applications: a framework Apple hasn’t told us anything about yet, labelled “AdLib” which should garantuee native-like performances for webapps. [Link]
From the post:
“With the iPad comes a special Safari bookmark labeled “iPad User Guide.” The page it links to behaves almost exactly like a native application, but in the web browser. It has a split-view with all of the UI flare in UIKit. The crazy part is, it’s done completely in HTML/CSS/JavaScript.
What’s particularly interesting is that it does something that shouldn’t really be possible in Mobile Safari: It includes scrolling panes that can be manipulated with a single finger, complete with the signature iPhone OS “scroll bars” and elastic transitions. If you have ever worked with Safari on the iPhone, you know that having scrolling boxes of content is sort of possible, but requires a special two-finger gesture to scroll.”
Whether this might turn out to be a revolution for developers willing to approach Apple’s devices, I have many doubts regarding Apple freeing webapps like this. It sorta seems too easy and unexpected to me. Perhaps we’ll know something more tomorrow.
I’m no painter, but Layers for iPad really made me feel like one. Layers let’s users create beautiful paintings with just their fingers. You can use some of the many available brushes to paint, smudge, and erase. You can even have more Layers to create even more complex paintings.
AppleInsider reports:
“Scott Sykora and Eugene Kaneko are the creators of Web Albums HD, an iPad application that accesses photos saved to Google’s Picasa Web albums. The software was initially rejected from the App Store, Sykora said, because it employed the pinch to expand gesture to “peek” at photo albums, in the same manner as Apple’s own native Photos application for the iPad.
When the application was initially rejected from the App Store, Apple sent a letter to the developers noting that the pinch to expand feature is “associated solely with Apple applications.” The form letter-like e-mail also mistakenly named another application, leading Sykora to assume that Web Albums HD is not the only software that has been rejected for its use of pinch to expand.”
I can see many other stories like this coming, which isn’t exactly good for Apple. They need to fix it.
The Mirror’s Edge iPad launch has had quite an interesting story. Initially, it was planned to launch for iPhone and iPod Touch early this year, but then it was mysteriously delayed. Why this delay? Well know we know. EA decided to wait for the iPad to launch, and it was well worth the wait.
I once read the best way to test a tech product’s design is to give it to someone who’s not tech savvy and see what’s all the interaction about. What better than a 2.5 year old to test the iPad? We’ve stumbled upon this post over at Laughing Squid, and the result is very interesting.
From the post:
“My iPhone-savvy 2.5 year-old daughter held an iPad for the very first time last night, and it turned out to be an interesting user-interface experiment.
As you can see, after geeking out on my Sutro Tower homescreen, she took right to it — including figuring out how to enlarge some of her favorite iPhone-legacy apps to 2x to display full-size on the iPad screen. If you’re good at understanding kid-speak, you’ll also notice that she immediately saw its potential as a video-display device. She lamented the lack of a camera, and wondered about its potential for playing games.”
Watch the video after the break. As Cody also said, “she’s a good example of why there’s the big bezel.”
Latest post by Marco Arment on his blog:
“iBooks’ use of tons of private APIs is frustrating on a few levels, the biggest that it makes all third-party reading-related apps second-class citizens.
I won’t be able to offer many features that iBooks has (such as a true brightness control or integration with the system dictionary), but my customers will expect them, making my app inferior to Apple’s in key areas.”
Now this is an important problem developers have to face right now. Apple’s official applications (the iWork suite, iBooks. I expect MobileMe to join the list in the near future) make use of private APIs that enable features, like the aforementioned system dictionary, 3rd party developers don’t have access to. And as Marco reports, it’s a huge problem, especially to the average customer’s eyes who doesn’t know anything about APIs and frameworks.
Say you want to develop an alternative spreadsheet application because you have a good idea, you’re most likely headed to fail when it comes to implement the basic functions you can see in Numbers, from Apple.
Now you can either give up or come up with a custom solution for your needs. As it stands now, you simply don’t have access to those APIs, and there’s nothing you can do about it but complaining, hoping Apple will its their decision. It’s time to be creative again.
