It helps you take regular breaks from your Mac to rest your eyes, without breaking your flow.
Looks like 10.6.6 wasn’t the last version of Snow Leopard, after all. Earlier today Apple seeded a new version of OS X to developers, 10.6.7. Build number is 10J842. From the release notes, the focus areas are:
Mac OS X 10.6.6 was released two weeks ago with support for the Mac App Store. No word yet whether or not support for AirPrint through shared printers will find its way back into this new version of OS X once it’s released.
In the first beta of iOS 4.3, Apple introduced “multitasking gestures” for iPad: offered as a preview for developers to play with and test compatibility with apps, these 4 and 5-finger multitouch gestures allow users to execute a series of actions otherwise assigned to the Home button. You can switch back and forth between apps, open and close the multitasking tray or pinch back to the homescreens. The gestures need to be activated through Xcode as, again, they are a developer preview of a feature that won’t even be enabled in the public release of iOS 4.3, as Apple let devs know last night.
The presence of gestures that offer some functionalities previously exclusive to the Home button also let the rumor mill run wild, with some bloggers speculating that Apple may get rid of the Home button in the next iterations of the iPad and iPhone. Personally, I think gestures on the iPhone’s tiny screen are a terrible idea – and it gets worse if you have non-average, big hands.
Gestures are a neat new feature for the iPad that provide a glimpse at something Apple is clearly working on: more multi-touch capabilities for iOS devices. These very same gestures, though, gave several developers a hard time trying to figure out how to integrate them with their apps. Read more
If you’re an App developer you might be interested in Nuance’s (known for their speech recognition software) latest pursuit. Nuance is now enabling other developers to incorporate and take advantage of their speech recognition software and place it into third party apps, expanding any app’s functionality in a very cool way.
Nuance has previously teamed up with Ask.com to deliver their speech recognition technology to the Ask for iPhone app and have now opened up the Nuance Mobile Developer Program for all developers. By joining, Nuance says developers will gain access Dragon Mobile SDK with support for more than eight languages plus assorted support forums and documentation.
If you’re interested in using Dragon’s Mobile SDK to add speech recognition, head over here. Full announcement is posted after the break.
A few minutes ago Apple seeded the second beta of iOS 4.3 to developers. It’s available now in the iOS Dev Center. Build number is 8F5153d. The new beta is a 607 MB download for iPad and 679 MB for iPhone. We will update this story as we find out more about the new beta. iOS 4.3 beta 1 was released last week with build number 8F5148b.
Check for updates after the break. Read more
Over the past few weeks there has been quite a back and forth discussion on the possible inclusion of a Retina or high resolution display on the iPad 2. Facts seemed to solidify when Engadget ran an article suggesting the second-generation iPad would have a high resolution display, though they did not specify the exact resolution. But then John Gruber yesterday seemed to disagree with that suggestion citing cost issues, uncovered UI graphics of an iPad camera app that are not optimized for a high resolution display and his own sources.
So why has there been so much doubt and to and fro-ing over whether the iPad 2’s display is high resolution? Well put simply, because there are so many barriers that would have to be overcome and issues that Apple would have to resolve. Click through to read the full article.
Looks like Apple listened to the thousands of users who were disappointed by the change made in iOS 4.2 that turned the rotation lock button into a mute switch. Through a new preference in the Settings app on the iPad, users can now set the behavior of the button to a mute switch or rotation lock.
Apple just seeded a new build of iOS, version 4.3, to developers, and it looks like they finally dropped support for the 2008 iPhone 3G. The device is indeed not listed on the iOS developer website, and nothing makes us think that future beta versions will be released for that model. The latest OS for the iPhone 3G may be iOS 4.2.
AT&T discontinued the iPhone 3G last June. Several users who installed iOS 4 on the iPhone 3G last year lamented that the OS was slow and unusable, mainly because of the slow processor and less RAM on the 2008 device. Apple tried to make things better with iOS 4.1 and 4.2, but the iPhone 3G was clearly showing signs of its age.
Update: there’s iOS 4.3 for iPod touch 2nd generation either.
A few minutes ago Apple released iOS 4.3 beta to developers. It’s available now in the iOS Dev Center. The beta is available for iOS devices and the second generation Apple TV. Supported iOS mobile devices are iPad, iPhone 4 and 3GS, iPod touch 3rd and 4th gen. Build number is 8F5148b. A pre-release version of the Apple TV software has been provided to test AirPlay functionalities with 4.3 apps.
It looks like iOS 4.3 has some cool new gestures built specifically for the iPad. 4 & 5 finger gestures; pinch to the home screen, swipe up to reveal multitasking tray, swipe left/right to switch apps. Update: even though Apple says the gestures are there, I can’t seem to be able to use them at all. They don’t work for me in Apple’s own apps, and there’s no option to activate them in the Settings. We’re hearing several reports of other users unable to use these gestures. Read more
A few minutes ago Apple seeded a new Xcode 4 preview build to developers, which is available in the Mac and iOS Dev Centers. The new version , labelled Developer Preview 6, adds a number of features and enhancements over the previous preview build, which was released in November. Xcode 4 is a major new version of Apple’s development suite which sports lots of new features and a new single-windowed UI. The first version of Xcode 4 preview was released during the WWDC in June, the second build was seeded in late July, Preview 3 was made available on September 2, Preview 4 was released in October.
Check out the release notes below. Read more
