iPad

Apple has just made the WWDC 2013 keynote available on their YouTube channel. So, whether you've yet to see it, or you just want an easy way to watch it again (and again), hit the play link above and enjoy all the OS X Mavericks, new MacBook Air, new Mac Pro, iWork for iCloud, and iOS 7 action. Bring your own popcorn.

Not only does iOS 7 seem to ever-so-slightly increase the size of iPhone icons, it seems to move away from the more common rounded-rectangle shape to the more complex superellipse. Hopefully Apple will provide tools to make generating curves of this type easier for developers and designers, but in the meantime Marc Edwards of Bjango has been doing a lot of maths (his spelling, not mine!) and has come up with something that seems to match up very well. He's also working on Bjango's own interface design tool, Skala and I'd be shocked -- shocked, I say -- if he's not already got superellipses, and likely tesseracts and other geometric wonders, well under way. Check out the formula and the image proof via the link below. Source: Marc Edwards

Every year, the Cannes Lions festival honors contributors to the marketing and advertizing industry for their innovative and creative techniques. This year, TBWA Media Arts Lab took the Grand Prix award for its magazine ads for Apple’s iPad mini. The winner was a series of five different advertisements, each presented on the back cover of five different magazines. The entire page was blank, except for the lower left corner, which displayed an image of the iPad mini, full sized, showing the cover image of that magazine’s current issue. The magazines involved were Time, Surfer, Wired, The New Yorker, and Wallpaper*. The campaign stood out for its strong effect. “It has kind of a guerrilla feeling,” said Marcello Serpa of Almap BBDO. “It’s a product that goes inside the media and says ‘I’m going to kill you, [then] I’m going to save you.’ Let’s embrace. It’s redemption.” Serpa is referring to the fact that tablets in general, and the iPad specifically, have been an adversary to print media by offering a way for the world to go completely digital. Apple’s iPad mini campaign was one of three top contenders. Dove’s “Sketches” campaign by Ogilvy was the iPad mini’s biggest opponent. The judges were split down the middle on which one should win the Grand Prix. The iPad mini campaign won out in the end because it embodied the theme that the judges were looking for. “Dove is a beautiful, emotional piece and a beautiful insight and it’s going to win a lot,” Serpa said. “In the end we were looking at a piece that makes print, the category itself, a hero.” [Via: Adweek, Adage] » Related posts: Apple Taking Over Several Magazines with Clever iPad Mini Ad Campaign First Official iPad mini Accessory now Available in the Apple Store Apple iPad Mini Event Finally Announced (Official)

I love a lot of things about Messages for Mac. Even though it has numerous issues, the ability to receive and respond to iMessages, as well as AIM, Jabber, etc. if you really must, makes it enormously useful. Except, searching on it absolutely sucks. The moment you start typing in the search box, Messages freezes in a way that makes iTunes seem snappy. It's not good. It's the opposite of good. Enter Chatology. Flexibits, best known for Fantastical, are past masters at fixing the pains that ail us. As they did for calendaring, they're now doing for message search. Here's the deal: Enter a search term and Chatology shows you a beautifully, practically arranged set of results. It's dynamic, so if you have an existing search up, and a new message comes in that meets the same criteria, it just shows up there. You can also isolate images or links, so you find only exactly what you want. I've been using the beta for a few weeks, and it's been invaluable in locating URLs, passwords, and other information that Messages by itself made arduous to track down. Despite being on the beta, I bought a copy the moment it launched, and it's running cheerfully beside this very window right now. All that said, it's a tool meant for power Messages users, for those who depend on being able to find information they need immediately when they need it. And it's priced for just that type of person. If your personality or your career demands it, Chatology can get you just that information, quickly, elegantly, and powerfully. If you're not sure whether, for you, it'd be a nice to have rather than a must have, there's a free trial so you can find out. $19.00 - Buy now Demo - Download now

What are you most looking forward to in OS X 10.9 Mavericks? iOS 7 wasn't the only star of the show at WWDC 2013, OS X 10.9 Mavericks was officially announced and released to developers the very same day. During the keynote we saw the numerous new features that would be coming to the new version of OS X, including some until now iOS exclusive apps in Apple Maps and iBooks, and a consumer friendly approach to password management with the new iCloud Keychain. But, we want to hear from you guys; what are you most looking forward to in OS X 10.9 Mavericks? There's a lot to choose from too; improvements to Notification Center, Apple Maps and iBooks coming to the desktop, Finder tabs and tags, iCloud Keychain and the new version of Safari, multiple display support and so much more besides. So, we've narrowed down a few, with an option for something else entirely. We got some great feedback from you on iOS 7, so now it's time to take a look at OS X 10.9! Drop a vote up top and leave us your thoughts in the comments below!

Apple may not be releasing the iPad Mini with the Retina display right away, according to a report they gave earlier this week. Instead, a slimmer version may be released first, supposedly in the second half of this year. This next-generation slimmer iPad Mini will be receiving an upgraded processor. The current A5 processor will be replaced with the A6, as the iPad Mini with the retina display was forecasted to have. The disappointment that Apple fans will face is that, like the current generation, the new device will contain a 1,024x768 display. read more

I backed the Crux Skunk iPad keyboard case project on Kickstarter almost a year ago. I thought it looked like one of the most impressive iPad keyboard cases I’d seen, and it offered some impressive sounding features – a notably slim design, a 360 degree hinge that allows for a great range of typing and viewing positions for the iPad, and a full-size QWERTY keyboard. Well, mine finally arrived a couple days back and I have tested it out a little and have some very quick first impressions to share. Here they are, in no particular order: – The packaging for the Crux Skunk is fairly nice. – The name feels bizarre to type and to to say. My daughter thought I was making it up as a joke. I wonder if there’s some cool back story behind it. – For my pledge level (I think it was $155) it came with an attractive black leather carrying case – a nice touch. –...Read the whole entry... »        Related StoriesARTcloth: Some Artistic Flair with Your iPad Screen CleaningSmart Cargo for iPad: Kickstarter Project Now LiveSmart Cargo: On-Board Magnetic Storage for the iPad 

Parts of iOS 7 shown off by Apple during the WWDC Keynote and on Apple.com look like we're still seeing the design briefs or wireframes rather than the final art. Palettes have been chosen, elements have been put in place, but so far it looks like iOS 7 hasn't been given the level of polish we've come to expect from Apple, even during the beta stage. From icons to interface elements to typography, we seem to be getting a very rare glimpse at a very early work-in-progress, and something that still needs of a second coat of design paint. Given the realities of iOS 7's development, that makes a certain amount of sense. Whether or not Tim Cook's change in leadership led to a rapid change in direction, whether or not Jony Ive's desire to shake things up led to the marketing design department taking the lead, rather than human interactive department, whether or not iOS 7 is really more of a late stage alpha than an early stage beta, it's absolutely the most audacious interface transformation we've ever seen from Apple, and that type of evolution isn't easy, and certainly not at this pace. Yet beyond the level of finish, there are certain things that seem... off. For all the amazing new work Apple has put into removing textures, amping up the skeumorphism, and opening up the design potential, and almost entirely objectifying and gamifying the new interface model, certain fundamental elements of design seem missing, and that's generating a lot of feedback from professionals and enthusiasts alike. Apple mentioned clarity, deference, and depth as the key tenenets of the iOS 7 interface. Deference and depth seem deftly handled. Clarity, however, still seems to be a challenge. Take contrast, for example. A good rule of thumb is that you should be able to hold something away at a distance and still be able to make out all the important elements. Light vs dark, or vice-versa, is the easiest way to ensure that, but so are textured vs. untextured, focused vs. unfocused, and more. iOS traditionally has done that very well. iOS 7, however, includes a lot of light, flat elements on equally light or flat saturated backgrounds, greatly reducing contrast and usability. Proportion is another problem area. The grid that's being used doesn't have enough gravity. It should be incredibly difficult for objects to reach towards edges, and almost impossible as a whole. The Safari icon, however, gets its entire circumfrance uncomfortably close to the border. There's a reason why the Apple logo doesn't go from sleeve to sleeve on company t-shits. Just like serif typefaces that need to be visually, not mechanically aligned to grids, iOS 7 icons need to be visually weighted in their space. (Neven Mrgan explains this brilliantly on his Tumblr.) Consistency is also an issue. Gradients currently go in different directions, which can confuse the eye and draw attention towards them, rather than the icons, glyphs, and content upon them. (Louie Mantia shared some ideas on normalizing the palette, gradient direction, and icon waiting on Dribbble.) The typeface, Helvetica Neue Ultrathin, works for small amounts of text set very, very large, but becomes far less legible when used for general interface text. Especially now when un-styled text is being used in lieu of buttons. Perhaps, as Sebastiaan de With has suggested, it's time for a custom typeface optimized for the digital era. If not that, then at least enough weight at each size to be legible at a glance and at a distance. All of this hampers clarity. (And yes, I'll pile on the new signal status indicators as well.) Apple is almost certainly aware of the issues, of course, of many of the articles, shots, tweets. Hopefully none of this is news to them; it's the stuff they're already discussing internally and working hard on even as we kvetch and complain. The architecture -- the springs and struts and planes and movements -- all seem solid. If that were wrong or broken, it would be cause for far greater concern. If

Services like iTunes and products like Apple TV have made it easier than ever for people to "cut the cord" from cable TV - enabling them to pay either a la carte for programming they want or to use subscription-based services they think are worth the money, like Netflix or Hulu Plus. Apple's latest changes to Apple TV sadly don't do anything to help that move - in fact, they work against it. On Wednesday Apple pushed live an update to Apple TV that provides the second and third-generation black boxes with access to five new services: HBO Go, WatchESPN, Qello, Crunchyroll, and Sky News. Qello focuses on live concert and music documentaries, while Crunchyroll focuses on Japanese anime and Japanese and Korean live-action TV shows. Both services are subscription-based, like Netflix, Hulu Plus and other services Apple TV also supports. Sky News is free to watch and unencumbered by any sort of subscription system. Apple is, by all accounts, trying to make peace with cable companies, and this is one of the first tangible examples of that effort. But it sets Apple down a path that some Apple TV users are bound to be unhappy with, because HBO Go and WatchESPN both depend on an authentication system that requires you to have an active cable television account. Trying to set up either service prompts you to visit web sites and enter a unique identifier after selecting your cable service provider and signing in using your cable TV account to verify. In principle, this isn't fundamentally different from needing to subscribe to Crunchyroll to access their services. And it isn't new - the same restriction exists for the HBO Go and WatchESPN apps on iPhone and iPad. But it is an unwelcome encumbrance for the Apple TV, at least for users who were hoping to shirk the expense and trouble of a premium cable TV subscription. It's also a slap in the face to customers of services that don't support the authentication system, like DirecTV users. Unsurprisingly, HBO content on iTunes is old - last season's Game of Thrones is on there, for example, but season three, which just wrapped up, is nowhere to be found. If it were there, there would be less reason for people to subscribe to HBO through their cable provider to begin with. And that would hit HBO where it hurt - in the pocketbook. So what are users of unsupported services, or people only interested in a la carte programming, expected to do in the interim? They have to wait. Surely some will. Some will get impatient and use BitTorrent or another file-sharing service to grab pirated copies of the latest shows they want to watch. Cable content providers aren't going to give up easily, and the cable companies are going to act as their gatekeepers any way they can. It's a multibillion industry controlled by some of the most powerful media companies in the world. We've heard a lot over the years about the supposed Apple television set, and how once Apple's in the TV market - really in the TV market - things are going to change. Radically. But it turns out to be Age of Aquarius magical thinking. It's a nut that, despite Walter Isaacson's tease in the Steve Jobs biography, Jobs himself was never able to crack. Almost two years after Jobs' passing, Apple's work secure fresh programming for Apple TV users is finally yielding fruit. Unfortunately, Apple has had to make compromises - compromises that complicate things for some of their customers.

Whether you know it or not, your iPhone and iPad actually tracks what you're doing in Safari for several reasons. The main ones being to speed up browsing and to store logins. On the down side, website data can also be used for tracking purposes. If you'd rather not have sites track you, clearing out this data now and again is a good idea. Here's how: Launch the Settings app from the Home screen of your iPhone or iPad. Scroll down and tap on Safari. Again, scroll down to the bottom and tap on Advanced. Now tap on Website Data. This is where you'll see all the sites storing data via Safari. Scroll to the botom and tap on Remove All Website Data. You'll be asked to confirm you'd like to delete all data with a detailed explanation of what it does. Just tap Remove Now to confirm. That's it. All the website data currently stored on your iPhone or iPad is now gone. Depending on how much you browse, you may have noticed lots of data being stored. This is also a way to free up a little storage space now and again if you find yourself running dangerously low.