When the iPad launched, there was an inexplicable lack of a couple of core Apple-made apps. There was no Clock, no Weather app and (thankfully) no Stocks. Now, Clocks has been added to the iPad in iOS6, and weather is also in there – kinda.
The iOS6 beta brings much finer-grained controls to the privacy settings, letting you specify just what services any app will have access to. Previously you’d get an alert whenever an app wanted to know your location. Now you’ll see the same kind of alert when apps ask to use data from your calendars, contacts, reminders and photos.
Tyype, a new ultra-simple text-editing app for the iPad, could point the way to better text manipulation in iOS 6, due to be announced today at Apple’s WWDC in San Francisco. And while we don’t think for a moment that Tyype’s gestures will make actually be in the new OS, it certainly shows that not only is Apple’s way not the sole way to do things, it isn’t even the best way.
Noteshelf — the best writing and scrawling app available for the iPad — has at last gotten a Retina update for the new iPad. And boy was it worth the wait.
Launch Center Pro from App Cubby on Vimeo.
App Cubby has made a little teaser video for the forthcoming new app Launch Center Pro. As you may remember, Launch Center is kind of like Quicksilver or Launchbar for your iPhone — you fire it up and tap buttons to perform actions. You can quickly compose a Tweet, or tap a button to open the Mail app with a new draft already pre-populated with a recipient’s address, or even schedule a message, say, to be sent at a certain time (this will pop up a reminder in the Notification Center).
Lines are already starting to form for the WWDC keynote at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. A Photo tweeted by iOS developer Glasshouse Apps (responsible for The Early Edition and Quip, among others) shows the beginnings of a line outside the glass-fronted conference center.
Apple rumor site 9to5 Mac says it has gotten its hands on the entire spec sheet for the Macs expected to be announced today. There will be a a pair of new desktop Mac Pros, along with a server version.
The site also claims that the current 13 and 15-inch MacBook Pros will get a spec bump, and that there will be a new Retina-display 15-inch model.
The Lady has been trying to get me to go swimming. Up and down. In a pool. Like an animal. I said that I would do only if there were a way to make it less boring, like, say, someone offered to send a waterproof iPhone case and headphones for me to review.
Well, it looks like I might beef up my weak typist’s arms and firm up my beer belly this summer, as ECOXGEAR (a company who’s name contains the word "cox") has launched the ECOXPRO which works with the waterproof ECOXBUDS.
If you live in a place that needs air-con, then you probably already have it. You can move along now. But if you are shopping for a new AC unit, or you happened to buy one made by Kühl, then why not consider this new dongle that will let you control the unit from the cool comfort of your own iPhone?
Canon has announced a brand new video-shooting DSLR, the EOS 650D. This freaks me out a little bit as I used to sell the EOS 650 to people as a part of my Saturday job in a camera store. The 650 was a 35mm SLR that Canon made from 1987 to 1989, and it was the company’s first auto-focus SLR.
Back to today. The 650D has all that you’d expect from a modern camera, plus a swing-out touch-sensitive LCD screen.
I used to work as a the sole waiter in a restaurant where the cash register consisted of a wooden cigar box and a solar-powered Casio calculator. I’m an honest chap, and the chef was also the owner, so it worked just fine. But times have changed, and now there exists a modern alternative to our old cedar box. It’s called the Cashbox and it is fashioned from beautiful bamboo varnished to look like a hideous high-school craft project.
Street View is fantastic. You can check out a hotel’s façade before you even book a room, you can walk down a street where you remember there was this awesome store, only you can’t remember its name, or you can wander through far-off cities.
Now, you can make your own Street Views, with this camera and software kit from DIY Streetview.
If the actual Alien Sky app is as good as this awesome teaser video, then it deserves to be a sell-out success. Who doesn’t love pictures of planets married to dramatic, movie-score music?
Sadly, it might end up just being a little tacky. Like a nightclub after the house lights are switched on, take away the spectacular soundtrack and all you’re left with is an app that lets you add planets, more planets, planets with rings and lens flare to your photos — it’ll get old and tawdry pretty fast.
I do like the lens-flare aspect, though. And for this, I would probably download the Alien Sky developer’s existing app, aptly named LensFlare.
Via: iPhoneography
Oh, man. With WWDC just around the corner, the rumors are rising high enough to choke us. This latest comes from “a source in China” by way of our friends over at ZooGue cases, Tim Angel and Graham Smith. It’s an “iPad nano,” and it may or not have “fake” written all over it.
FourSquare, everybody’s favorite not-owned-by-Facebook check-in service, just got a huge update rendering it prettier, less confusing and much less annoying when blown up for the iPad. There really aren’t many new features – unless you count a complete redesign as a feature.
Many of you will have read the above headline and thought “Meh. Whatever.” And yet here you are, still reading. Well, if you got this far, here’s the reward. Office2 HD, the MS Office-compatible suite for the iPad, has just gotten support for Track Changes and comments. This is big because there is no other software on the iPad that does this. Not even Apple’s own Pages.
With pens, there are really only a few designs — fountain pens with nibs, ballpoints and felt-tipped markers. Anything else is pretty much just a variation on those. But with iPad styluses, pen designers seem to be going crazy with brand new ideas. One of these is the GoSmart Stylus, and at first look it seems like a terrible idea. Pick it up and use it, though, and you’ll be hooked.
There are probably hundreds of apps that will turn your iPhone into a mobile fitness device, using the phone’s GPS to track your speed and from there derive calories burned, route taken and so on. Some of them even connect wirelessly through a dongle to heart-rate monitors and the like. It’s like having a coach in your pocket, only he doesn’t wake you up in the morning by shouting at you.
Now, though, things are going to the next level. Wahoo’s new Blue SC speed and cadence sensor talks direct to the iPhone via low-powered Bluetooth 4, letting it communicate directly with your bike.
Best Of Photo Accessories [Best Of]
We have noticed a big crossover between Apple users and camera geeks. And while the iPhone’s own camera continues to get better and better, your old SLR still has some life in it yet. And whatever you shoot with, there are accessories that can perk up your interest or let you catch an otherwise-impossible shot. These are the best of them.
Those of you using OS X 10.7 Lion (which I hope is all of you) may have missed the ability to adjust the system volume in tiny quarter steps. This feature was available in Snow Leopard and ditched in the Lion "upgrade." Now, in good news for obsessive compulsive Mac users the world over, the option has returned.
Imagine that you stood in one place and took a bunch of photos in different directions. Now imagine that you printed these photos onto glass sheets and arranged them in the same planes that they were shot: the picture you took of the sky is horizontal, facing down. The mountain off to the left is upright and facing right.
Now imagine that these pieces of glass magically intersect to make a lattice which you can turn to view, and that those pieces of glass disappear from view when they are edge on.
You just imagined Stilla, a great new iPhone app which does all of this for you, without harming a single sheet of glass.
Remember Favs, the Mac app which collects your favorite items from pretty much any service on the internet and puts them all together in one place? Well, now you can use it on the iPhone, too: Favs for iOS just launched and it looks like a great way to keep track of your starred items when on the go.
There are a few record player simulation apps for the iPad, but attention to detail and awesome graphics may make Vinyl Tap the best. And better still, it comes with not one but two turntables, with more promised in future updates.
The new 1.3 update to the stop-motion-animation app Frameographer has a new feature called Smart Zoom, and it is so obviously good that every video-shooting app for iOS should be using it already.
SnapFocus is a clever camera gadget from Brandon David Cole. It’s a rig made from bike brake levers, cables and cogs, and it allows a single person to both operate a camera to shoot video, and to pull focus at the same time.