I’m not even going to premise this review with a short story this time around. Quite frankly, Photogene makes editing photos dead simple. The UI couldn’t be more intuitive. Well, okay, perhaps it could be, but I didn’t have to learn anything before making adjustments I’d normally do with Acorn or Pixelmator on my Macbook. A few tips, a few taps, and a save button later, I had some spicy photos served up for publishing goodness.
Posts tagged with "iPad"
Photogene, Where Editing iPad Photos is Easy as Pie
Offline Pages for iPad: Simple and Free Offline Reading
We’ve heard so many times that the iPad is the perfect device to consume content and you know what, after some days of testing I have to agree. The iPad is just perfect to read, watch movies and listen to music. Instapaper on the iPad feels great, and so does the iPod app. Safari is very well developed, it’s fast and makes it easy to jump from one page to another just to read what’s new. I’ve never done stuff like this on my iPhone. But on the other hand, don’t listen to those who say you can’t produce content on the iPad: I’m finding myself writing entire posts, taking notes and storing screenshots with it. All in all, it’s a great productivity device.
Back to using the iPad as a reading device, there’s Instapaper and a couple of good feeds readers that allow me to stay up to date with the latest news and read longer articles from my couch or bed without having to worry about carrying the MacBook with me. It’s a good environment. I’ve just found out this other application though, free in the App Store, which is called Offline Pages and might come in handy if you’re not a fan of Instapaper.
Want the Perfect iPad Stand? There’s A Cat For That
Seriously, something must be wrong with people. I don’t know how to explain otherwise these pictures appeared over at OS X Daily of some people using their cats as iPad stands. Read again, cats as iPad stands. And quite useful stands, they say.
[UPDATE]: Turns out the cat actually happened to be at the right place at the right time. The idea could be explored, anyway.
It’s Official: The iPad Has Been Jailbroken with Blackra1n, Cydia Installed
With a brief blog post, Geohot has let us officially know that he’s managed to jailbreak his iPad. As you can see from the screenshot below, he used Blackra1n to install Cydia on the device.
It will be interesting to see what Cydia developers will come up with for the new device. More importantly, we’ll be able to have multitasking before the release of iPhone OS 4.0 for iPad. We can’t wait.
Twitterrific for iPad, Reviewed.
When I was waiting for my iPad to arrive in Italy, I spent a good amount of time browsing the iPad App Store looking for some great apps to install and try. Of course I searched for RSS apps, word processors, PDF readers but most of all, Twitter clients. As I started looking for decent Twitter apps to install and review, the most obvious choice was to give a try to Twitterrific from the Iconfactory already out in the App Store in its free version with the possibility to upgrade in-app to the premium version.
After 24 hours of intensive usage of the app, here are my thoughts about it.
The iPad, From a Typographer Point of View
Stephen Coles over at Fontfeed gives us a great overview about what the iPad’s really missing in terms of typography:
“Yet it’s exactly that part of media consumption, reading, that reveals what’s missing on the iPad: good typography.
Signs that type took a backseat in the iPad’s development were clear back in January when Steve Jobs demoed the device, revealing just four uninspired and uninformed font options in iBooks. Apple also went with full justification without hyphenation, learning nothing from the Kindle’s spacing woes. These decisions were small or unnoticeable to the millions of future iPad buyers watching the announcement. But they stuck out like a sore thumb to typographers, whose job it is to make small, unnoticeable decisions that make text easier and more enjoyable to read”
AdLib - Apple’s Secret iPad Web Framework
Jim Hoskins over at Done21 has found out something very interesting about the iPad and web applications: a framework Apple hasn’t told us anything about yet, labelled “AdLib” which should garantuee native-like performances for webapps. [Link]
From the post:
“With the iPad comes a special Safari bookmark labeled “iPad User Guide.” The page it links to behaves almost exactly like a native application, but in the web browser. It has a split-view with all of the UI flare in UIKit. The crazy part is, it’s done completely in HTML/CSS/JavaScript.
What’s particularly interesting is that it does something that shouldn’t really be possible in Mobile Safari: It includes scrolling panes that can be manipulated with a single finger, complete with the signature iPhone OS “scroll bars” and elastic transitions. If you have ever worked with Safari on the iPhone, you know that having scrolling boxes of content is sort of possible, but requires a special two-finger gesture to scroll.”
Whether this might turn out to be a revolution for developers willing to approach Apple’s devices, I have many doubts regarding Apple freeing webapps like this. It sorta seems too easy and unexpected to me. Perhaps we’ll know something more tomorrow.
Layers for iPad: Reviewed.
I’m no painter, but Layers for iPad really made me feel like one. Layers let’s users create beautiful paintings with just their fingers. You can use some of the many available brushes to paint, smudge, and erase. You can even have more Layers to create even more complex paintings.
Apple Rejects iPad App For Using “Pinch to Expand” Gesture
AppleInsider reports:
“Scott Sykora and Eugene Kaneko are the creators of Web Albums HD, an iPad application that accesses photos saved to Google’s Picasa Web albums. The software was initially rejected from the App Store, Sykora said, because it employed the pinch to expand gesture to “peek” at photo albums, in the same manner as Apple’s own native Photos application for the iPad.
When the application was initially rejected from the App Store, Apple sent a letter to the developers noting that the pinch to expand feature is “associated solely with Apple applications.” The form letter-like e-mail also mistakenly named another application, leading Sykora to assume that Web Albums HD is not the only software that has been rejected for its use of pinch to expand.”
I can see many other stories like this coming, which isn’t exactly good for Apple. They need to fix it.