Posts tagged with "apple"

Xserve Is Dead…Now What?→

Xserve Is Dead…Now What?

The Mac Pro is a great box, but it is not designed to be a server. That matters. The Mac Pro, in trying to equal the Xserve takes up 12 times the space, uses more power, and ends up costing you twice as much if you don’t want a single component able to turn your server setup into a brick. If you’re collocating your servers, the cost to colo a Mac Pro or two is going to be a lot higher than for an Xserve, because you’re going to pay more for power and a lot more for the rack space.

IT folks clearly aren’t happy about Apple’s decision. As far as the iOS environment is concerned, Apple needs to do a lot more there, too.

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ADC: Safari Extension To Search On Apple Developer Website

If you’re an iOS or Mac developer, you must have noticed that searching for framework keywords, reference documentations and guides on Google isn’t exactly the best experience you can get. Wouldn’t it be great to have everything always under control a few keystrokes away?

This extension, ADC for Safari (and Firefox), puts an additional “developer bar” in your browser with shortcuts iOS and Mac OS reference libraries, a search bar and a link back to the ADC home.

It’s unobtrusive and will save you lot of time going back to the developer’s website and / or searching for stuff. Go download it.

Is Realistic UI Design Realistic?→

Is Realistic UI Design Realistic?

When Apple introduced the iPad, along with it came a set of Human Interface Guidelines.

This idea is essentially doubling down on skeuomorphic realism — a derivative device containing features from an analog ancestor for purely aesthetic or emotional reasons.

But how good is that advice, generally? This is clearly a call for more than just the polished aesthetic details and refinements a designer takes pride in. This is about advancing literalist design styles and skeuomorphics on the grounds that it improves usability through a natural understanding of how an app works. Apple rightly resisted this temptation in many cases, but the Notes and Calendar apps are a different story. Apple combined analog design with modern UI patterns at the expense of affordance. My real life, analog paper doesn’t scroll. Are we now to expect its digital replication should?

A very few developers seem to understand that you don’t have to necessarily imitate real life objects to create a successful and enjoyable application. [via Beautiful Pixels]

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iTunes Movies Now Available in Italy and Switzerland, We Want An Apple TV Now

Good news, fellow Italian and Swiss MacStories readers: we haz iTunes Movies. Earlier today Apple indeed silently launched the new iTunes section in both countries, you too can check it out by following this link. Both normal purchases and rentals are available.

We say “silently” because no press release went out nor did Apple put any banners and / or links in the iTunes Store homepage to promote the new Movies (or, in Italian, “Film”) – it’s pretty much a hidden section with a rather straightforward interface. Read more

Mac App Store Name Squatting? More Like A Bug In Apple’s System

Yesterday we reported many Mac developers lamented over the impossibility to register their Mac applications in iTunes Connect and submit them to the Mac App Store for Apple’s approval. Apparently, the problem lied in already registered bundle identifiers – the actual names of the apps.

We reported Tod Ditchendorf, developer of the popular Fluid for Mac, was unable to register the app, just like Realmac Software with Little Snapper and RapidWeaver or Isaiah Carew with Kiwi. That lead use to think name squatters were already targeting the Mac App Store.

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Rumor: Apple Almost Bought Kinect in 2008

Fascinating rumor posted by Cult of Mac today: according to author Leander Kahney, Apple almost acquired the company behind today’s Microsoft’s Kinect controller in 2008. According to the rumor, Inon Beracha, CEO of Israeli company PrimeSense, had been visiting many companies in the Silicon Valley to sell the technology, developed by engineers in the Israeli military.

Based on cameras and an infrared sensor to recognize users’ movements in space, Beracha thought Apple would be interested in applying the technology in its products. Read more

iPad Guesswork One Year Later→

iPad Guesswork One Year Later

The answer is just the same for the iPad. What is it for? Well, I use mine to browse the Internet, cook in the kitchen, play games, manage my finances, earn a living, entertain the children, look at photos and so on. In other words, it’s a computer and that’s how I use it. The novelty of its appearance, functioning and so on seems to require re-categorization or a some highly-specialized usage scenario. Of course in many ways my iPad is significancy different than my MacBook Pro, but in others it’s quite the same.

Here’s what I’m going to do this weekend: find old articles about “Apple’s tablet” speculations and see how many got it right.

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Apple Launches App Store Hall of Fame

The App Store was launched exactly 848 days ago in July 2008. Today, Apple launched a new section in the App Store called “App Store Essentials: Hall of Fame” which is aimed at presenting the “very best of the best” and contains 50 apps for iPhone and iPad, both paid and free.

Among the apps, there are true gems such as Angry Birds, Hipstamatic, Instapaper, Reeder for iPhone, Siri (which was acquired by Apple), Zen Bound 2, Facebook and Photogene. Surprisingly enough, the official Twitter app didn’t make the list, nor did other clients such as Twitterrific or Weet. The list will likely grow during the weekend and the holiday season, so perhaps more apps will be added.

You can check out the Hall of Fame by following this link in iTunes.

iAds Rolling Out Internationally [Screenshots]

It appears that Apple has flipped the switch on iAds, which are now showing up for iPhone users outside the United States and United Kingdom. I’ve personally downloaded a free iAd-supported iPhone app and I got to see two different campaigns: a CitiBank one and an AT&T one. Both the iAds are working fine in Italy.

With Apple getting ready to release iOS 4.2, a worldwide launch of iAds for iPad as well wouldn’t be much of a surprise. Read more