I knew there was something going on around Mail.app and a secret project an “all-star team” was discussing, but Ars Technica has just made the thing real. Seems that people like Brent Simmons, Gus Meuller, Cabel Sasser and John Gruber are indeed working on Letters, the app that probably will replace Mail.app as our default email client.

The story is very long actually, so I suggest you to read the whole post over at Ars, and this could be a real revolution. A team of Mac OS X third party developers and bloggers that team up to create the perfect Mail application?

You just made stop thinking about the Tablet. And that’s definitely something.

John Casasanta from Tap Tap Tap and Macheist has posted an article regarding the sales figures for Convert since its August ‘09 launch. He then analyzes the current situation of Mac development, and how in his opinion the App Store is affecting it by providing higher revenues for developers and a more focused, yet powerful way of distributing applications.

From the post:

“The App Store has proven to be a super-efficient distribution system. In a nutshell, you can earn a lot of money even with 99¢ apps because you can reach so many people. Conversely, the Mac shareware market has always comparatively been very inefficient. Developers depend on services like VersionTracker, MacUpdate, i use this, and even Apple’s own Mac OS X Downloads site, etc for small publicity/sales spikes. But all of these sites (including Apple’s) get far less attention than the App Store.

[…]

Because of the much smaller reach and resulting far lower number of Mac software sales compared to iPhone, developers have had to compensate by keeping prices at a much higher point. But this is also what’s kept the market down and now on a decline, unfortunately.”

Is the Mac market really..dead? Or is it just going through an evolution that might revitalize it with the release of 10.7? No doubt things are going to change, or everyone will start developing iPhone apps. But what will happen when the iPhone market will be saturated?

Oh yeah, there’s the Tablet one.

Great piece over at GoSquared’s Liquidicity blog, surely worth a read.

From the post:

“Apple’s responsible for kickstarting the touch screen revolution with the iPhone, so why would they do anything other than push themselves as far as possible along the trajectory they’ve already begun? When you consider the possibility of Apple building a device that not only sits alongside your iPhone, but replaces your MacBook, the game changes. Whatever Apple’s tablet finally shows up as, I’m pretty sure it’ll be more “this is the end of keyboard and mouse computing as we know it” than “oh it’s a big iPhone”

After the first part, which was about the software, TUAW has posted the second part of the “Dear Apple” series. The second part puts the focus on hardware and here are the most wanted specs for the “new iPhone”:

• Status Indicator Light

• New Design

• Front Facing Camera

• 5MP Camera

• OLED Display

• LED Flash

• 64GB Storage

I don’t agree with these as much as I agreed with software. Seriously, front facing camera? I don’t want to talk about the italian providers and their coverage, but you american guys - weren’t you complaining about AT&T until 2 days ago? Oh sure: you want to make conference calls on wi-fi. As if a laptop wouldn’t be enough under a wifi connection.

Then, OLED display. Well, at least let’s hope it won’t be as OLED as the Nexus One display, right?

Interesting post over at Apple-Bits, discussing the upcoming Tablet running iPhone apps in a dashboard-like interface. From the post:

“iPhone apps are small and easily digestible. Sure some of the apps (like games) can be quite large in terms of file size, but for the most part all of the apps on the iPhone provide many basic functions that could easily turn your current dashboard into a super dashboard. Not only would they be tucked out of the way, hidden from view, you could call them up and use them anytime you wish without having to take your iPhone out of your breast pocket. And unlike running an iPhone app on a MacBook or an iMac, and iSlate would allow you to carry over the same touch functions you’re used to on the iPhone.”

Sure the idea sounds cool, but yeah - sounds. How would you manage apps that have integration with iPhone OS core applications, like Mail? Just the first question I can think of. Sounds cool, but it’s not gonna happen.

What’s your take?

There’s something many Mac-heads love about Mac OS X, and that’s consistency. Consistency in the UI, consistency in the applications, consistency in how users can perform a large variety of actions in different applications - in the same way. Take a look at Smart Albums: you can create them in then same way in every app (including the Finder) that supports them. Regardless of the reason you want to create a smart collection on your desktop or in LittleSnapper, Mac OS X presents you the same menu.

But when I switched to Mac OS, I just didn’t notice this.

I didn’t even understand why I should actually create smart collections, when the good old normal folder structure was still working fine to me. And that’s the case of many users out there: they don’t get the importance of an operating system that can guide them through the process of having a consistent experience, no matter what they’re doing or would like to.

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So true:

“Unfortunately, because of the overlap between the area that triggers scrolling and the area that triggers spring-loading, I cannot have one without the other. And the end result is that I have to scroll down through the list of sub-subfolders first before I can reach the rest of the list of subfolders.

Fortunately, Mail doesn’t continue this silly behaviour ad infinitum. Otherwise, it would be a nightmare. It only confuses scrolling and spring-loading once, presumably because after that, since the drawer is scrolling down, I am not longer lingering on any given position long enough to trigger spring-loading, until I actually choose to stop the scrolling by lifting my selection back up a bit.

And once I’ve actually dropped what I was dragging in the desired location and released the mouse button, of course Mail collapses everything back up and I am back to normal.”

How do you solve this problem? Do you use Mail Act-on, Fastscripts or other utilities that integrate with Mail.app?

Thoughtful piece by Shawn Blanc, outlining many aspects of the rumored, upcoming yet nonexistent Apple tablet.

“While Patrick Rhone and John Gruber think the Tablet may be nothing short of the reinvention of personal computing, I’m with John Siracusa, who thinks the software will be so obvious it’s boring. Meaning: it will certainly be awesome, but not as breakthrough as the iPhone was.

[…]

Take the new Nexus One as a comparison. The Nexus One has great hardware when compared to the latest iPhone: faster processor, more RAM, gorgeous screen, better camera. For all intents and purposes it should be the best smartphone in the world. But it’s not because it runs second-tier software.

When Steve Jobs announced the iPhone he said he’d been waiting two and a half years for that moment. He also boasted the iPhone OS as being “5 years ahead of any other mobile software.” And after three years so far he’s still right. It’s amazing that even an original, 3-year-old iPhone is still one of the most advanced, powerful, and user-friendly mobile phones available today.”

Whether or not it will as breakthrough as the iPhone was, I’m sure Apple won’t release a “normal” product. Hopefully, we’ll know everything about it in just two weeks from today.

Great article over at AppleBits, which contains many questions I’ve been asking myself for a few weeks now.

I don’t agree on the keyboard shortcuts idea, but Cody brings some interesting discussions on the table, which are definitely worth a look. Here’s a brief quote:

“The first thing we have to think about is our actual desktop. What would it look like? How would we interact with it? I image the iPhone played a huge role in the development of this device, and possibly helped Apple kill two birds with one stone by being the “test” device that enabled them to study how people interact and want to interact with a touchscreen. Apple addressed the issue of menus (menus suck), by making apps front row and center on the home screen. I don’t have to page through a list of items or navigate into folders to launch an application – it’s immediately available with a tap and maybe a swipe or two of the finger. The iSlate’s desktop will be the most important element of the software, as it’s where we will spend most of our time launching apps and organizing data.”