Alex Heath - page 46

Not to be outdone by Instagram’s reported video product that’s set to debut tomorrow, Vine has started teasing upcoming features and design tweaks. Co-founders Dom Hofmann and Rus Yusupov have posted a couple of Vines that seem to point towards some pretty big additions, like the ability to record multiple Vines at once and save drafts.

Special video categories also seem to be in the works, allowing users to browser content based on different genres that would assumedly be curated by Vine/Twitter staff. Instead of letterboxed videos within the Vine app, a future version will likely bring make videos fill the full width of the iPhone’s screen to create a more immersive experience.

Take a look at the Vines below and use your detective skills to uncover what’s coming:

Over at The Atlantic, a fascinating study has been published that connects location data from smartphones with the layout of a heavily populated city. The findings are that the most iPhone activity is coming from wealthier areas, while Android usually dominates lower income districts. 

Would you consider yourself a tea connoisseur? Perhaps you spend more money on tea leaves than you would care to admit and your brewing process is comparable to that of a thousand-year-old Chinese farmer. Whether you’re an addict or a one who just enjoys an occasional cup, you should check out Tea for iPhone.

The app got a 2.0 update today with a new design and plenty of features.

Apple has given developers access to the first beta of OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.5. Given the planned release of OS X Mavericks this fall, 10.8.5 could very well end up being the last major version of Mountain Lion before Mavericks ships to the public. A developer beta of Mavericks was made available to developers the week of WWDC.

OS X 10.8.4 was officially released on June 4th and it brought a bunch of bug fixes. 10.8.5 will likely focus on bugs fixes and compatibility issues as well.

Source: Apple

Rdio has released an update to its iOS app that brings a feature called “Song Stations.” Like Apple’s recently announced iTunes Radio, you can now create a streaming radio station based on an individual song in the Rdio app. You get unlimited skips, but no ability to vote or down-vote a track to refine the station.

Song Stations are created by tapping and holding on any song in Rdio. Another nice addition is a feature called “AutoPlay.” When a playlist, album, or station has ended, Rdio can start automatically playing similar music based on what you were listening to already.

Rdio costs $10 per month for unlimited streaming on mobile and the web. You can grab today’s update in the App Store.

Source: App Store

Image: MacStories

Louie Mantia is a renowned icon and visual interface designer in Silicon Valley who has worked at big companies like Apple and Square. He was involved in designing many of Apple’s pre-iOS 7 app icons, like Trailers, Remote, Garageband, and iBooks. He even designed the Starbucks and Obama campaign app icons, for crying out loud.

The point is that this guy knows good icon design. He’s posted the above iOS 7 concept on his Dribbble, and I think it looks fantastic. He did the same thing last year for iOS 6. This time around, I think he’s nailed it better than Apple.

“Today, I revisited that original task and took about a day to understand the new style,” said Mantia. “Simpler, smoother, subtler. While I don’t employ the grid they created (and while I instead use the colors I chose), these feel interesting and balanced. Vibrant and bold, but not overbearing.”

Indeed. Please hire this guy back, Tim Cook. He gets it.

Source: Dribbble

Simple, a great bank I’ve been using for the past several months, has brought its “Goals” budgeting feature to the iPhone. If you haven’t checked out Simple as a banking alternative yet, then go do that now because it will entice you. The whole service is exquisitely designed on web and mobile, and the customer support is top notch (there’s an open ticket to chat with a real Simple employee right in the app, if that says anything).

While Simple still has some growing to do, it got better today. Goals helps you manage your money on the go so you don’t go broke buying overpriced lattes and such.

Following the rising success of Twitter’s video sharing app Vine, Facebook is set to bring video to Instagram at a press event this Thursday. According to a report from AllThingsD, Instagram’s “video product” will revolve around quickly sharing short clips, although the allowed length of clips isn’t yet known. Vine lets you record up to six seconds per share.

Chatology is a brand new tool for searching Messages on the Mac without the headaches. If you’ve been experiencing bugs, random crashes, and a lack of search functionality in Apple’s chat software, then this new app is for you.

In May 2012 several U.S. carriers started rolling out a nationwide wireless emergency alerts (WEA) system for wireless subscribers. The free service is intended to share information about natural disasters and other location-centric news, like AMBER alerts.

Over the weekend AT&T announced that it is bringing WEA to its iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S owners across the country. The service will be enabled via a carrier firmware update that has started rolling out to subscribers on iOS 6.1 and higher.

I’ve tried multiple Mac menubar apps for accessing Facebook, and they’ve all been ugly and clunky when compared with Moment, a recently released OS X app from Tapmates.

Moment sits in your Mac’s menubar and gives you quick access to sharing on Facebook and viewing notifications. It’s beautifully designed, simple, and unobtrusive.

Instagram is in desperate need of an iOS 7 redesign. The current interface looks very outdated and overly textured compared to the rest of Apple’s newest OS.

To be fair, iOS 7 won’t ship to the public for months, and I’m sure Instagram’s talented designers are working on an update right now. But in the meantime, the above concept looks great. The navigation buttons and typography meshes perfectly with iOS 7, and I would totally use it on my iPhone.

The design is by Michal Vasko on Dribbble. What do you think?

Source: Dribbble

iOS 7 looks totally different than iOS 6, and most App Store apps are going to have to undergo a big design overhaul to fit it. Gone are the rich textures and deep garnishes. Corinthian leather has been replaced with Gaussian blur. A lot of iOS 6 apps look instantly out of place.

There are, however, quite a few popular apps that look like they belong in iOS 7. Whether it’s by coincidence or intentional forethought, these 16 iOS apps fit in with iOS 7 very well already:

Going to see Man of Steel this weekend? Then check out the official iOS game by Warner Bros. You fly around as Supes and beat on General Zod and his posse.

The gameplay looks decently fun for an iOS title, although the graphics leave much to be desired.

Apple introduced a few new wallpapers in iOS 7. Since the software is only in its first beta, there are only two new static images to choose from. iOS 7 also supports animated wallpapers, and Apple has included two of those to try out. If you’re interested in exploring more about the iOS 7 background, take a look at all the new wallpapers in iOS 7.

If you’d like to get iOS 7’s hi-res wallpapers on your iPhone right now, then you can download them directly from here and here. A zip file with the static version of the two dynamic wallpapers is also available here. These wallpapers are optimized for the iPhone 5 and 5th-gen iPod touch’s 4-inch Retina display.

You can also download Apple’s new OS X Mavericks wallpaper in full resolution for your Mac. It actually looks great cropped on the iPhone’s screen.

Another cool feature in iOS 7 is the ability to use panoramic photos as wallpapers. Apple will hopefully add more wallpapers before iOS 7 ships in the fall.

There are a few popular apps that already look like they were designed for iOS 7. Twitterrific 5 by The Iconfactory is one such example. Months before Apple unveiled iOS 7, Twitterrific started using the general design aesthetic Apple has now implemented across the entire OS. It’s almost like the makers of Twitterrific knew what was coming.

Following the unveiling of iOS 7 and Apple releasing the software in beta form to developers, Twitterrific’s downloads have spiked considerably, sending the app towards the top of the App Store’s charts.

iOS 7 is clearly how Apple sees the future of mobile design. It’s a radical departure from anything the company has ever done before. The general aesthetic also feels a lot more like Android and even Windows Phone 8.

Whether it’s intentional or by pure coincidence, Apple’s internal nickname for iOS 7 happens to be the same as Microsoft’s for Windows 8, according to a new report.

iOS 7 has been released in beta form to those who have paid for a developer account with Apple, but the rest of the general public will have to wait. Apple plans to ship iOS 7 to the world later this fall, so for now you’re limited to seeing screenshots online and the occasional GIF.

Unless you have a jailbroken iPhone, that is. Here’s how to create iOS 7 on iOS 6.

“Apple made this?” That’s the first thing I asked myself when iOS 7 was unveiled to the world at WWDC on Monday. It’s so different from anything Apple has ever done design wise that it’s hard to wrap your head around as a longtime fan of the company.

If you’re still in shock at the randomness and general weirdness of iOS 7 like I am, this tidbit of info helps clear things up: Apple’s own designers weren’t in charge of creating the OS’s icons. A new report reveals the disjointed process that Jony Ive led behind the scenes to create iOS 7 at Apple.

Apple has posted a new 10-minute video on its YouTube channel titled, “Making a difference. One app at a time.” The video highlights several stories about how iOS apps are making a profound impact on peoples’ lives around the world. “Each iOS app offers remarkable — and often delightful — possibilities,” reads the description. “But the most powerful iOS apps ever are ones that change people’s lives in ways they never imagined.”

Some of the stories include a health nurse in Kenya who uses an iPad app to diagnose patients and an amputee rower who uses an iPhone app to program her robotic legs. In classic Apple fashion, the video is beautifully shot and inspiring.

iTunes Radio is one of the staple features in iOS 7. The Pandora-like music streaming service is integrated directly into the stock Music app. Apple’s Eddy Cue demoed it for the first time yesterday, and iOS 7 beta testers can try it out now.

When iTunes Radio launches publicly alongside iOS 7 later this fall, it will not be available outside of the U.S., notes Bloomberg. This likely has to do with the fact that Apple has to setup licensing agreements with record labels in each country ahead of time.

iOS 7 is a weird kind of flat. In many ways it lacks depth, but in others it’s more animated and texture-driven than iOS 6. How ever you want to define “flat,” it’s easy to see the direction Apple is headed. Just take a look at the details.

The magnifying glass in iOS 7 (the little orb that appears when you hover your finger over text) is minimalistic. iOS 6’s magnifying glass was more rounded, and the border was more pronounced. In iOS 7, it’s a nearly flat piece of glass. There’s some shadow to provide depth, but hardly any. Welcome to the future.

Nestled under the Updates window in the iOS 7 App Store, you can find your purchased apps. Like iOS 6, you can choose to look through all previously purchased apps and only the apps that aren’t currently installed on your iPhone.

For some weird reason, Apple never put a search bar in in this part of the iOS 6 App Store. Now it’s there in iOS 7.

A lot of innovative ideas for iOS get introduced in the jailbreak community. Hackers and developers tinker around with Apple’s software and create new ways to access settings or multitask. And then Apple comes along and kills (or sherlocks) those ideas with its own take in a future iOS release. It happens every year without fail. 2013 and iOS 7 are no different.

Here are some popular jailbreak tweaks that Apple has rendered obsolete with iOS 7:

Apple kicked off its WWDC keynote yesterday with an animated video explaining the philosophy behind its design process. Now the segment has been uploaded to Apple’s YouTube channel for the world to see.

“Here, simple phrases paired with elegant visuals describe the thoughts and emotions that go into creating each Apple product.” The video is very much about the company’s core values, like the ad we showed you yesterday.

Bloomberg says that “ads coming this summer won’t focus on the iPhone or any other single product, instead promoting Apple’s brand appeal and its collection of products that work seamlessly together.” The most recent TV ads to come out of Apple have focused on specific aspects of the iPhone, like music and photography.