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Brad Smith wants to encourage developers to explore the final frontier: making apps for Apple TV.
Smith, director of engineering at RadiumOne, spoke at AltWWDC about facing the challenges for this new territory.
“I like to think of it as the forgotten iOS device,” Smith said, showing a slide of Tom Dickson, who has blended every device from the Cupertino company — with the exception of the Apple TV.
If you send friends a lot of pictures via iMessages, you’ll love this new little feature in the iOS 7 Messages app that makes it easier to find old photos you’ve sent friends.
To view all the files that you’ve ever sent someone from your iPhone you can tap the new folder icon at the bottom of a photo preview screen and you’ll get a list of all the files the two of you have sent to each other. No more hunting through chat logs to find that funny pic your friend sent you that you forgot to save.
Via: Reddit
Shazam released version 6.1 of its iOS today on the App Store. The new version comes with a special feature called ‘Pulse’ that can be used to discover new music that is trending on Shazam’s charts.
Included in the big update is a new look for the tab bar, better chart updates, improved Friends page loading, and of course some bug fixes. The new version is available on both iPhone and iPad in the App Store for free.
Here are the release notes:
Google Reader’s execution date is set for June 30th, so the team at Digg has been busy working on build a replacement as fast as possible. Digg Reader isn’t ready to go quite yet, but the company has started testing its new app and announced that it will be ready to go live on June 26th.
Digg posted an update on its progress to replacing Google Reader this morning and stated that the team’s initial launch goals are to satisfy power-users with easy onboarding from Google Reader, a clean reading experience, and useful mobile apps.
Here’s what Digg had to say on its site about the upcoming launch:
With all the new changes coming to iOS 7 there are still a ton of little details to discover while Apple continues to put the finishing touches on it. While iOS 7 does feature a completely revamped UI, its the little changes that make everything really come together.
One redditor put together this handy info graphic that compares some of the smallest iOS 7 UI elements with their iOS 6 counterparts.
Take a look:
Skype for iOS and Skype for Machas been updated today with support for a new feature: video messaging. But don’t think video chat. Skype’s new video messaging is all about recording brief, meaningful moments and sending them to other Skype users, not as a stream, but as a self-contained message that will reach them, even if they aren’t online.
Apple is building a massive new store at the Stanford shopping center in Palo Alto to replace its smaller, more modest retail location a few hundred yards away. The new Apple Store is going up just a stones throw away from a big Microsoft Store that opened last spring.
The new flagship store is expected to be one of Apple’s largest ever, as it will enough extra floor space to test new product ideas. Designs for the store were completed and approved in 2011 by Steve Jobs, just six months before Tim Cook took over as CEO.
According to the Palo Alto Online, construction on the new store is happening seven days a week as contractors hurry to finish the 12,000 square-feet store. The store was supposed to officially open in November 2012, but the sensitive glass design of the building has caused delays.
Here are a couple photos of the store currently under construction:
Japanese part firms Mounantai has turned up three photos of what they’re emphatically claiming is the logic board for the iPhone 5S. There’s nothing soldered or plugged into this part, meaning no early peek at the iPhone 5S’s (presumed) A7 chip.
There’s not much to go on here, except that it looks like the iPhone 5S circuit board might be slightly narrower than that in the iPhone 5, and that while the iPhone 5S might just be a small speed-bump before the debut of the iPhone 6 next year, it’s still gotten a major overhaul on the inside.
Source: Electronista
Poster, a wonderful WordPress client for iOS, which we’ve written about many times here on Cult of Mac, has been acquired by WordPress creator Automattic.
The app has since been pulled from the App Store and will no longer be available in its current form, but developer Tom Witkin, who announced the acquisition on his blog, insists he will continue to provide support for existing users.
Simon & Schuster has confirmed it will be launching a paperback edition of Walter Isaacson’s best-selling biography on Steve Jobs this fall, featuring a younger Jobs on its cover. The book, which will also be updated with a new afterword, will be available on September 10.
There are several truths about cables:
This is one reason I like the look of Brit Morin’s cool DIY project. The other reason is that it’s not just for cables but for several other things I have too many of: sunglasses, neckties, straps (just kidding about the neckties).
This somewhat blurry image of a game controller built by Logitech is believed to be one of the first Apple-approved controllers for iOS 7 that will join the “Made for iPhone” program. It’s built for the iPhone 5, and it’s been designed to meet Apple’s new guidelines for Mac and iOS game controllers.
Bonzart’s Ampel is a cool-looking — and cheap — digital camera styled on the TLR (twin-lens-reflex) cameras of old. But the retro case design isn’t just a gimmick: the Ampel actually packs some great featurres into the old-fashioned shape, including a dedicated tilt-shift lens.
It looks like iOS 7 adds a digital zoom to the video-camera app. You’ll need to be running it on an iPhone 5, but if you are, you can zoom in 2–3x as you shoot. Plus, it doesn’t appear to be the crappy digital zoom used for stills.
You know what I’m thinking? I’m thinking it’s been three whole days since I posted about a wooden iPhone case. And since the last one before that was maybe at the beginning of last week, I’m thinking it’s about time for another one. So here it is: The Colors Handcarved Wood iPhone 5 Case.
Lightroom-using, iPad-owning readers might remember an app called Photosmith. It promised to let you sync your photos ’twixt iPad and Lightroom and let you add tags, keywords and metadata, as well as selecting picks and rejecting the crud before syncing everything back again.
The trouble was, it was confusing as hell, and crashed every few button taps. Now we have version 3.0, and it is everything the original tried to be. In fact, it’s pretty great.
Apple has issued a statement which explains its commitment to customer privacy and how it handles government requests for data following the PRISM scandal. The Cupertino company has reiterated that it did not know about the PRISM program until June 6 when it was first contacted by the media, and that it does not provide government agencies with direct access to its servers.
Remember when the iPad first appeared and everyone said “it’s just a big iPhone”? They were right. From the lock screen to the multitasking tray to the awful, awful clock app, the iPad really was running a blown-up version of the iPhone OS.
Now, though, it looks like Apple has finally designed iOS to sit properly on the iPad’s bigger screen. These screenshots, taken from X-Code’s device emulator, show what the iPad looks like when it’s running iOS 7.
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.
My first impression on seeing iOS 7 on my iPhone was: What is this, a My Little Pony theme?
But after scrutinizing, analyzing, deconstructing and living with the new version, I’m ready to declare iOS 7 an unambiguous masterpiece, a stroke of genius, really.
That may sound like a weird thing to say about a fruity, copycat platform that crashes constantly. But it’s true, and I’ll tell you why.
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.
This is another small but great feature in iOS 7: you can now scrub through songs from the lockscreen if you are playing them through the official Music app. This doesn’t work with third-party music apps, like Rdio, and in practice in the first beta, it can be a little difficult to scrub (the touch target is too small). Still a very nice addition indeed.
Via: Reddit