Showing posts with label iPad. Show all posts
Showing posts with label iPad. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
What will we get in iPhone 4.0?
by Rene Ritchie, Wednesday, Apr 7, 2010
Tomorrow at 10am PT, 1pm ET, Steve Jobs puts sneaker to stage and, along with SVP of iPhone software, Scott Forstall, gives us a sneak preview of the highly anticipated iPhone 4.0. No one outside Apple knows exactly what new features and paradigms iPhone 4.0 will offer. However, tradition demands we make our best guesses and ask you to do the same.
This isn’t what we want, mind you. We told Apple what we want back on December 25, 2009: multitasking, better notifications, widgets for the home screen, instant access to important settings, themes, gestures like pervasive pull-down-to-refresh, system-wide “back” implementation, orientation lock, and resolution independence, along with a ton of great reader suggestions in the comments. We’ve also asked for a Finder app, like the Photo but to store document files.
This is what we think we’ll actually get, given the rumors and the direction Apple looks to be going. This is us, TiPb staff and TiPb readers reading the tea leaves…
iPhone 3.2 (aka iPad) features
This is the most obvious, really (and we’ve written about it before). All the little tweaks and enhancements Apple has made to the underlying OS, like adding “replace” to cut, copy, and paste, adding spell check to auto-correct, adding dictionary lookup to text select, etc. Wallpaper for the Home Screen, week view in Calendar and the other, sometimes small but still important, chance to the built-in apps, should be there as well. So should Bluetooth keyboard support. Oh, and iBooks.
Better Mail handling
Steve Jobs himself reportedly responded to an email saying a “universal inbox” was coming. That means, like Mac Mail but unlike current iPhone Mail, users with multiple accounts would have the option of seeing all their new messages in one place and not have to tap into and out of multiple folders every time they wanted to check every new message in every account. (Yes that sentence was crafted to feel as laborious as the current process!). Whether we’ll see more than that — IMAP IDLE, multiple exchange accounts, “synergy”-like messaging integration, etc. is unknown.
Multitasking (of a sort)
We’ve been hearing this for a while now — that Apple will offer some level of multitasking in iPhone 4.0. We’ve even seen it in the shadows. The three use-cases that it could cover are background tasks (listening to streaming internet radio while you browse Safari, keeping navigation running while you check Mail), fast task switching (going from Notes to Contacts and back), and multi-window workflow (dragging data from one application space into another).
While the “Pandora” model could easily be handled by allowing streaming accounts to be entered inside iPod (which already has background access going back to iPhone 1.0), the navigation model won’t be solved unless there’s a more universal background implementation. However, Apple has always put stability and mainstream user friendliness ahead of power-user functionality. A compromise seems most like — full background access for a highly limited number of applications.
Fast task switching was accomplished in large part by the speed of iPhone 3GS. What remains missing is the consistent saving of state by apps on exit (if you leave a twitter client or a race game and then go back it should be at exactly the place you left it), and a more elegant way to quickly move between apps — swiping between two apps 11 screens apart isn’t very Apple. The rumor here is for a Mac OS X-style Exposé implementation where a double-click of the Home Button would cause the current screen to fly out and a grid of active (background) apps to fly in. That sounds much more Apple.
Multi-window drag-and-drop may not be obvious given the small size of the iPhone, but given how Palm’s webOS Cards view presents apps — and how the iPhone Safari Pages view does likewise — is remains a tease. Still, we don’t expect it. Not yet.
New home screen (SpringBoard)
SpringBoard is the internal name of Apple’s Home Screen UI, which right now consists of an 11 page-wide application launcher grid with SpotLight search bolted on to the right. Rumors have persisted since before iPhone 3.0 that Apple has a new SpringBoard experience waiting in the wings. Again, there are several elements that could be at play: better organization, glance-able information, themes.
We’re not wishing here, so no grandiose “Apple will re-invent the metaphor for home screens with some ingenious new approach”. We’re looking at what Apple has already done for clues as to where they’re going. Stacks, then, where groups of similar apps are combined together until a tap expands them into a grid-launcher would be reasonable. Likewise, Dashboard where useful, glance-able information is always just a tap (or swipe) away. Dashboard could even integrate SpotLight, allowing it to replace a singletasker with a multitasker (how fitting). It could function similarly on the Lock Screen, for ultimate glance-ability.
We don’t see themes, however. Though they’d be a boon to users and designers/developers alike, they don’t seem very Apple (beyond the home screen wallpaper already mentioned).
Improved notification handling
We’ve beaten this one to death — if you get a constant stream of SMS, IM, game challenges, or any heavy amount of notifications each new one obliterates the one before meaning all but the most recent functionally never existed and hence never notified you of anything. Both Android and Palm webOS do this more functionally, though developers have complained to us that it may be too complex for the mainstream market Apple is targeting (too much management for mom). Could Apple create a more robust yet still drop-dead-simple notification system for the iPhone? Sure, and given how fast and far push notification has been adopted, we think it’s likely they will.
The simplest solution would be a Notification app (please, no smiley face logo) that listed all new notifications. When you’ve received multiple notifications, the dialog would show the most recent but also inform you of how many others you’ve missed, and an option to “see all” would be presented.
But that would likely make no one happy. This more than multitasking might be the most difficult nut to crack, and may end up being part of that new Home Screen mentioned above. That’s closer to guess work than we’re comfortable with for this post, however, so we’ll just leave it there for now.
iAd platform
“iAd” was rumored to be shown off on April 7, and April 8 is just a day later. Apple’s mobile advertising platform could certainly be part of the iPhone 4.0 SDK feature set unveiled for developers. Gossip says Steve Jobs wants to do for mobile advertising what iTunes did for digital music — make it not suck. We certainly hope so. Punch-the-monkey with push notifications is certainly not the new Home Screen experience we want.
iTunes.com
It’s fairly certain iTunes is moving to the cloud and becoming something akin to iTunes.com. We’d love to see streaming video from Apple, MobileMe “whispersync” to keep our place between iPhone and iPad, and other great, media-centric features. But Apple typically saves those for September to coincide with the new iPod touch and lately, new iTunes releases.
###Mobile iChat
We put this here just for Chad. We still think Mobile iChat (text and audio/video) is coming but not until the 4th generation iPhone is revealed at WWDC 2010. Apple usually holds a few new OS features back to show off the new hardware (like Compass, VoiceControl, etc. last year). Patience, Chad!
MobileMe 2.0
Beyond “whispersync” MobileMe has fallen so far behind Google services, DropBox and others that Apple really has to up its game here. Photo sync, cloud backup, and other features have gone from nice-to-have to must-have. Again, however, that feels more like a WWDC 2010 Phil Schiller announcement to us.
One more thing…?
That’s what we think is most likely to come with iPhone 4.0 tomorrow, but Apple has shown they can always surprise us (who expected the long, long list of previously missing features rattled off at the iPhone 3.0 event?). What are you expecting to see?
Reverse engineering confirms Apple iPad is 'a really big iPod Touch'
by Sebastian Anthony Apr 6th 2010 at 8:42AM
I'm sure you've heard about reverse engineering and industrial espionage -- they are the bread and butter of a competitive tech industry! -- but I had no idea there were firms, such as Chipworks, that specialize in the process. They've just released glorious, revealing details of the Apple iPad's hardware, and a complete breakdown of the new, top-secret A4 processor. For the less-technically-minded, iFixit has a walkthrough for the reverse engineering, too.
The pictures and details are juicy -- you can even order a bunch of die photos! -- but ultimately, there isn't anything exciting under the hood. The iPad is merely a large iPod Touch, with almost identical hardware in places. Chipworks calls the iPad 'a giant battery with a tiny [circuit] board attached to it' -- and looking at the picture above, you can see why!
So, no real news here I'm afraid, unless you're trying to mollify a Mac fanatic. What you're paying for is a large touch-screen and a giant battery -- you are not buying a piece of 'magic', but simply a large iPod Touch. The devil, as always, is in the software. It would not be the first time that Apple has shoehorned some fantastic software into a shiny, but otherwise lackluster hardware package.
In my opinion, the coolest part of this story is that Chipworks tears apart of bleeding-edge technology to produce full, reproducible schematics of a device's circuitry. Nothing is sacred!
The pictures and details are juicy -- you can even order a bunch of die photos! -- but ultimately, there isn't anything exciting under the hood. The iPad is merely a large iPod Touch, with almost identical hardware in places. Chipworks calls the iPad 'a giant battery with a tiny [circuit] board attached to it' -- and looking at the picture above, you can see why!
So, no real news here I'm afraid, unless you're trying to mollify a Mac fanatic. What you're paying for is a large touch-screen and a giant battery -- you are not buying a piece of 'magic', but simply a large iPod Touch. The devil, as always, is in the software. It would not be the first time that Apple has shoehorned some fantastic software into a shiny, but otherwise lackluster hardware package.
In my opinion, the coolest part of this story is that Chipworks tears apart of bleeding-edge technology to produce full, reproducible schematics of a device's circuitry. Nothing is sacred!
Saturday, April 3, 2010
How-to fix the iPad “App Store is not supported in your country” error for international users
by Rene Ritchie, Saturday, Apr 3, 2010
If you’re an international user who just picked up an iPad in the US and want to get some apps via the on-device App Store app, you ‘re out of luck: “Cannot Connect to the App Store. The App Store is not supported in your country”
That’s what you’ll get if you synced via iTunes on your Windows PC or Mac using an international account, like Canada, Australia, UK, etc. and then try to use the iPad App Store app.
Of course, you can just keep on syncing via iTunes but for the convenience of the on-device downloads, you’ll need a work-around.
- Set-up a free US iTunes account.
- Open the iPad iTunes Store app (which does work.
- Scroll down to the bottom and log out of your international account
- Log back in with your US iTunes account
And boom, the App Store app will start working. Now the bad news: anything you download will be locked to your new US account, which makes managements more of a hassle. And if you want to buy apps, you’ll need a US credit card or US iTunes gift cards. But if you gotta have it now, that’s the only solution we have working (if you know a better one, drop it in comments!)
Hopefully before the iPad launches in more countries in “late April” Apple will sort out this little problem and we’ll all have on-device App Store access no matter what country we’re in…
[via tipb.com]
Buying iPad with OS 3.2? You’ll get 4.0 for free, but 5.0 will cost you!
by Rene Ritchie, Monday, Mar 29, 2010
MacRumors got a look at the licensing agreement and noticed the following little gem with regards to free (like iPhone) vs. paid (like iPod touch) updates:
Apple will provide you any iPad OS software updates that it may release from time to time, up to and including the next major iPad OS software release following the version of iPad OS software that originally shipped from Apple on your iPad, for free. For example, if your iPad originally shipped with iPad 3.x software, Apple would provide you with any iPad OS software updates it might release up to and including the iPad 4.x software release. Such updates and releases may not necessarily include all of the new software features that Apple releases for newer iPad models.
In other words, if you get the 1st gen iPad with iPhone 3.2 on it this weekend, you’ll get iPhone 4.0 for free sometime later this year (we hope!) but will have to pay for 5.0 sometime in 2011. (The last iPod touch upgrade was $10 — not as nice as free but well worth it given the functionality added).
What do you think, fair or foul?
[via tipb.com]
Apple.com Launches iPad Guided Tour Videos
by Rene Ritchie, Monday, Mar 29, 2010
Apple.com has just dropped the megaton bomb of pre-launch hype — 11 guided-tour videos of iPad software, including Safari, Mail, Photos, Videos, YouTube, iPod, iTunes, iBooks, Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and the nuclear option — watch all. (We’re doing that one right now!)
Was Public Enemy wrong — is it time to believe the hype? Watch the videos and let us know!
[via tipb.com]
Gmail web app goes iPad optimized!
by Rene Ritchie, Friday, Apr 2, 2010
Google continues to lead the pack when it comes to web apps, so we’re not surprised to see them announce an experimental Gmail site up and optimized in time for the iPad release.
We’re releasing an experimental user interface for the iPad built on the Gmail for mobile HTML5 web app that we launched last year for the iPhone and Android devices. Those devices have large screens compared to other phones, and tablets like the iPad give us even more room to innovate. To take advantage of the iPad’s large display, we’ve created a two-pane view with your list of conversations on the left and messages to the right.
Some other Google web apps will present iPad-optimized versions, while a few will retain their desktop look. Google fired up their iPhone 3.2 SDK for iPad simulator, checked things out, and decided what worked best.
When you get your iPad give it a shot and let us know how they did!
[via tipb.com]
Friday, April 2, 2010
Tired of all the iPad news? Hold faith, summer iPhone goodness will be here soon!
by Rene Ritchie, Friday, Apr 2, 2010, 19 Comments
There’s a ton of iPad news being announced at the moment, and some iPhone 4.0 and iPhone G4 (not iPhone 4G!) rumors aside, it’s swamping TiPb right now. (Believe me, I have the lack of sleep to prove it!)
We’re figuring that every spring will be all about the iPad, summer will be iPhone-centric, and fall will bring iPod touch mania. That’s Apple’s cycle and that means it will be ours. We’ll do our best to keep improving the site so you can more easily get what you want, but the most important thing to remember is that Apple is killer at leveraging technology from one product into the others. A lot of what we see from the iPad now we’ll likely see in the iPhone this June/July, and updated again with the iPod touch in September.
Apple calls the platform iPhone OS for a reason, after all.
So, if you’re sick of the iPad we apologize and ask that you bear with us. We’ll have more than enough for everyone of everything as the year marches on. And in the meantime, hold faith. It may look like a lot of iPad news but again, this stuff is important for iPhone and iPod touch users as well. You’ll see that come summer!
Thursday, April 1, 2010
iTunes 9.1 now separates universal binaries, iPhone + iPod touch, and iPad apps in Album View
iTunes 9.1 now separates universal binaries, iPhone + iPod touch, and iPad apps in Album View
iTunes 9.1’s Album View provides an easy way to sort your universal binaries (iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad) apps from your iPhone and iPod touch only, and iPad only apps by separating them out in just that order.
It’s a small touch but a nice one for those of us who fret about just such organization minutia.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
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