Ever wondered which episodes of our own CultCast feature conversations about WWDC? Or which episodes of the original The Talk Show have Dan Benjamin and John Gruber discussing a Bond movie?
Then try Poodle.FM, an experimental search engine for podcasts from the folks behind the podcatcher app Instacast.
Registered developers have been testing the iWork for iCloud beta since Apple announced it at WWDC, but it appears Apple is now opening testing up to the general public. Many iCloud users who aren’t registered with the company’s developer program have received invitations to get involved.
Government officials have hired security experts from the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center to crack Apple’s new security methods in iOS 7. In a preemptive attempt to curb an influx in smartphone theft, San Francisco’s District Attorney and New York’s Attorney General are putting Apple to the test. Samsung’s Galaxy S4 will also be examined.
The new Mac Pro may very well be one of the coolest desktop machines we’ve ever seen, but unlike the older Mac Pros, this new one isn’t going to keep your work area all that tidy.
Giga.de created the image above to show just how messy things are going to get when you want to add a few external harddrives, DVD burner, audio interface, Blu-ray player and a video capture interface to your Mac Pro. Too bad you can’t just stuff them all inside that fancy thermal core.
Via: Twitter
Although Apple beefed up the MacBook Air line at WWDC last month with new ultrabooks packing Intel’s Haswell processors, they have yet to upgrade the venerable MacBook Pro with the same technology. That’s a bummer, because Haswell can greatly improve battery life without sacrificing speed… surely the kind of tech you’d want in a Retina MacBook Pro.
We still don’t know when we’ll see the MBP line updated, but it’s looking like it might be happening soon, with new benchmark results for a next-gen 15-inch MacBook Pro popping up on a community benchmarking site.
Two weeks after releasing the second iOS 7 beta, Apple has seeded iOS 7 beta 3 to developers along with a third preview of Xcode 5. The new beta build of iOS 7 (11A4414e) is available for both iPhone and iPad as an OTA update, or you can download it directly from the Dev Center.
Here are the full release notes:
Everybody’s obsessing over iOS 7’s user interface — the bright colors, flat design and intuitive response physics.
But the “user interface” of any operating platform isn’t just the visuals. There’s a lot more to it than that.
Apple, in particular, tends to focus heavily on the overall user experience, which involves all the user interfaces and how they work together.
It’s clear, even in the early betas, that Apple is doing a lot of work on the invisible user interface, and some of these changes are at least as powerful and interesting as the ones you can see.
New Voice Features
Apple is replacing the old Siri voice with two new ones. Specifically, Siri’s new iOS 7 voice crosses a line from “robotic” to “human.” Siri also speaks faster and with a more natural cadence, which Apple calls a high-definition voice.
The old iOS 6 Siri spoke in a halting, sometimes overlapping speech pattern that clearly sounded like robotic machine talk.
The new Siri could easily be mistaken for a real person who has recorded the entire response in one sitting. It’s a great feature, one of those subtle but very hard to do upgrades that change the psychology of using Siri to a more positive one.
The iOS 7 version of Siri will also let you choose between a male and female voice. Originally, Siri’s gender was determined by the language.
In addition, the new Siri will learn to pronounce names correctly with a new command. Just say: “That’s not how you pronounced Melvin” (or whatever the name in question is), and Siri will offer you alternative pronunciation options, from which you can select, and the change is permanent.
Another invisible interface improvement takes place with the new AutoCorrect. It now looks at an entire sentence to figure out which words to correct. As a result, AutoCorrect is much better, more accurate and more capable. (This is a user interface element, in my opinion, because it is intelligence that helps the user make decisions about which word to choose and intervenes between the user and the app in the goal of assisting the user.)
New Haptic Features?
Apple announced at WWDC a new game controller API that will enable third-party companies to make gaming hardware for iPhones and iPads. That could enable peripheral makers to build sophisticated haptics into the controller (like an Xbox controller) that buzz and shake and rattle and explode.
The game controller API isn’t a user interface, but it is an open door for other companies to create interfaces. In fact, that’s its entire purpose. In addition to joysticks and game pads, I’m sure we’ll see creative and unexpected haptic feedback add-ons coming out after the release of iOS 7.
It also could enable a haptic case for everyday use. For example, you could imagine a special case for the iPad for visual artists where the “high definition” haptics hardware makes just running your stylus across the screen feel like chalk, pencil, acrylic paint brush, watercolor paint brush and so on.
New Motion Detection Features
A new option called Head Control allows you to select user-defined actions based on a turn of your head to the left or right. The front-facing camera detects the motion.
As with many of the coolest features of iOS 7, this one is in the Accessibility section under Switch Control.
The fact is that most people won’t use this option. However, it’s a totally new interface category for the iOS platform — an extremely rudimentary foray into the same categorical space as Xbox Kinect.
This is how Apple does things. They dip their toe in the water with a very rudimentary version of something that is nevertheless very solid. Then, over time, they add capabilities to the general approach.
I think it’s kind of a big deal that Apple is building in-the-air gestures into the iOS user interface. The next step after that may be hand-waving to go forward or back in a song or movie, a fist gesture to pause or stop and other in-the-air gestures.
Apple’s Invisible Interface Strategy is Clear
Invisible user interface elements are chronically undervalued and underappreciated by pundits, commentators, bloggers and journalists. But for that total user experience Apple is always trying to improve upon, they’re the central component.
Changes in the invisible iOS user interfaces not only tell us a lot about what iOS 7 will be like to use, but also about where Apple is going with invisible user interfaces.
I’m really looking forward to not seeing where all this ends up.
Apple released the third beta of OS X 10.8.5 (build 12F17) to developers today. In the seed note Apple asks developers to focus on Wi-Fi, Graphics, Wake from Sleep, PDF viewing, and Mobile Device Management.
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.
Source: Apple
Apple has added a new promotional page to its website for iOS 7, targeting business users who will be using iPhones and iPads in a professional capacity. “iOS 7 offers more advanced ways to deploy devices and deliver a great user experience for your employees,” the Cupertino company says, before highlighting the many ways in which iOS 7 can benefit business users.
During the WWDC 2013 keynote, Apple made sure to note on several occasions, that the new Mac Pro will support multiple 4k displays. As the current Thunderbolt display is due for an update, many have wondered whether Apple will update the Thunderbolt Display to 4k to go along with the new Mac Pro when it comes out in late 2013.
Shortages at third-party retailers can occasionally indicate whether Apple has a new product in the pipeline, so Glenn Künzler at MacTrast researched the current supply of Thunderbolt displays at third party retailers and found that supplies are beginning to dwindle. One retailer even confirmed that Apple is no longer allowing them to order the Thunderbolt displays.
Here’s are the retailers that are out of stock: