Posts tagged with "iPad"

Super Prober: Sort Of Like Chrome for iPad, Gone Wrong

Two years of App Store and I still haven’t found a decent alternative to Mobile Safari. Something I could keep on my homescreen for more than 2 days. The reason is obvious: you are not Apple. Developing a browser is not like building a Twitter client: we’re talking about the primary tool to access the web here. And if Apple ships an almost state-of-the-art mobile browser by default, well then - sorry if I don’t trust you.

Mobile Safari is a simple application that lets you navigate the web, we call it “browser”. Developing a browser for a cellphone is a difficult task: you don’t have windows, you don’t have tabs, favicons don’t make sense on a small screen. Also, the elegant interface of the iPhone makes it really hard to implement features seen in desktop browser without looking awkward.  Have you seen Opera Mini? Exactly.

But the iPad is magical, right? It’s got a larger display, it’s a tablet, you can put your hands on it! Let’s develop a full-featured browser for the iPad! Not so fast, cowboy. For as much as the iPad is indeed bigger and more suitable to richer applications, take a second look at what Apple offers: Safari for the iPad is, again, simple. Sure, it has those beautiful thumbnail previews for open tabs. Sure, there’s a bookmark bar. Still, it doesn’t overwhelm you with dozens of features that would probably look cool in the App Store description page, but kill usability. Mercury Browser, I’m looking at you.

It turns out, though, someone decided to develop some kind of Chrome-like browser for the iPad and call it Super Prober. I went into the App Store and bought it. Here’s what happened.

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Elements Brings Dropbox Integration to Your Notes - 3 Codes Up for Grabs

Two weeks ago we posted an exclusive sneak peek at Elements for iPhone and iPad, a new text editor by Second Gear Software that stores your notes in Dropbox, so that you’ll have them always available no matter the device you’re using. Whether it’s the iPhone, iPad, desktop Mac or even a Windows PC, just log in your Dropbox account and you’ll find the notes created with Elements in there.

The app was finally released in the App Store a few hours ago.

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Actually, Apple Has Been Using Liquidmetal All Along

Last week we found out that Apple had closed a deal with Liquidmetal, a Californian-based manufacturer of an alloy that is extremely light, hard and that shows a glass-like structure. From what we heard, Apple had acquired “substantially all of [Liquidmetal’s] intellectual property assets,” not to mention a “perpetual, worldwide, fully-paid, exclusive license to commercialize such intellectual property in the field of consumer electronic products in exchange for a license fee.” [Engadget]

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BookBook: Wrap Your iPad In Hardback Leather

Of all the cases and stands we talk about every week, the BookBook for iPad has to be one of the best we’ve ever seen. Produced by Twelvesouth, well known makers of awesome Apple accessories, the BookBook turns your iPad into an elegantly bounded leather book. It even works as a stand thanks to an internal mechanism based on a strip and a button. It’s old style.

“Your iPad is held in the case by two soft leather corners and a soft elastic band that runs across the top of iPad. This elastic band is perfectly positioned below the invisible sensors near the top of iPad and just above the iPad viewing window. You see the full screen, all functions will work and you have access to all controls and inputs on your iPad. You’ll also find a button and string stitched into the case, which are used to transform BookBook into a display stand.”

$70 with free shipping for a limited time. At least you can say you did something to save books. Sort of.

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Hidden iOS 4 Code Suggests Verizon iPhone and iPad 2 Being Field-Tested

Interesting rumor Boy Genius Report has published today: according to one of their Apple sources, there’s a block of code buried deep down in iOS 4 which proves that both the CDMA iPhone and next iPad are about to hit the field test stage. The code makes sure that the device doesn’t need iTunes activation to work:

“Our source says that the code queries the device, and if the device is either a CDMA iPhone or iPad 2, the device will auto-activate, thus bypassing the need for iTunes. We’re told this block of code has appeared every year consecutively before a major iPhone / device release, removed right before launch.”

Another source also told BGR that the code name for the CDMA iPhone is N92AP, while John Gruber said it was N92. The next iPod Touch platform code should be N81AP.

January launch for the Verizon iPhone keeps sounding very likely to me. As for the iPad, the iPad-as-a-line idea (like MacBooks and iMacs, with different sizes, specs) is growing on me.

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Slide Reader: A New Google Reader Experience for iPad

What’s to be considered when reviewing a RSS app for the iPad today? The interface design? The features? The Flipboard-killer factor? Or maybe just how much the app is indeed meant for the iPad?

My point is, many apps are just bigger versions of stuff we’ve already seen on the iPhone last year. Some of them are cool and sold well at launch, but they can’t really hope to revolutionize a crowded market such as that of reading news. Then there are a few of them, made by those who took risks, that change the way we make technology fit in our daily lives.

Let’s take a step backwards and think about the iPad as a new device. Is it still possible to create a new app to read news on it? That’s what the Slide Reader developers are trying to achieve.

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Wide Angle Brings Beautiful Photography to the iPad

It’s no secret that the iPad is great at displaying pictures. I mean, it looks like a digital frame, right? And Apple even put a slideshow button right in the device lockscreen. For this reason photography applications are flourishing in the App Store, especially Flickr ones. Think about FlickStackr, Portfolio To Go, or the upcoming Rouse app by Robocat. Not to mention Flipboard’s feature to consume pictures from Boston.com and the like.

A few days ago I downloaded a new app called Wide Angle which allows you to view beautiful photos from The Big Picture and CBC Photo Galleries on your iPad.

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Nebulous Notes for iPad

When I saw Nebulous Notes for the iPad in the App Store, I raised an eyebrow at the reviews. An otherwise solid looking notepad was getting shit ratings because the developer started things off on a good note with an honest, self review. Yes, he gave himself five stars. But I don’t know why people get bent out of shape when the developer openly admitted he’s reviewing himself when there’s shady companies that do this hundreds of times over to game the system. One five star review isn’t going to greatly affect an app ranking in the large scale of things, so kudos to the developer for his strong beliefs in an application he’s put a lot of work into. I think there was good intentions here, even if commenters on the App Store have taken it the wrong way.

So I downloaded the application, and I found Nebulous Notes to be okay as an ideal Dropbox application for taking notes. All the icons are pretty, Dropbox syncing is seamless, and I can lock my contents to keep my work private from users I share the iPad with. With a few improvements, this could be my go-to notes application.

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Survey Favors iPad as a Go-To Device

One of the reasons I read on the iPad so much is because of tools like Instapaper, Reeder, and Times. I think of my Dad every time I use Instapaper, as I imagine the plentiful snippets of articles I send him are immediately dropped into a “do later” folder that never gets checked. His ability to readily read content would be dramatically increased via Instapaper’s web app on his aging Dell, especially if I created a script for it. I haven’t heard from him lately, but I imagine he’s still perusing through Yahoo or MSN news rather than reading the few All Things Digital or Ars Technica gigs I send him.

I used to visit sites every day, but by achieving a workflow with so many wonderful tools that all do different things, I’m able to delegate content for later reading, tackle it now, or share good articles with my friends. You can bookmark and highlight text in a paperback book or a newspaper in real life, but the digital savviness acquired by the iPad (and even the Kindle) have made digital content less disposable than physical paper. Mind blown right? Obviously it should be the other way around. While we’ll elaborate on this some more another time, a recent survey in the United Kingdom has me hoping that people live along the same lines of thinking I do. Digital content is more convenient, accessible, and engaging than paper equivalents.

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