Analysis of the Apple App Store

Now we have the third-generation MacBook Air. It sports Intel's latest Sandy Bridge Core i5 and i7 CPUs. These take "integrated graphics" to a new level: the GPU is actually integrated on the CPU die, though this does mean a return to Intel's GPUs, which always had a very bad reputation. The Mini DisplayPort connector that was used to drive external displays in previous generations of the Air has been transformed into a Thunderbolt port. The Thunderbolt port will still perform Mini DisplayPort duties if needed, but it's now a general purpose I/O port running at no less than 10Gbps.

Computers have certainly aided learning in recent years, but they haven't yet fostered the promised revolution in education that has been discussed for over 40 years, according to Apple cofounder, educator, and all-around geek Steve Wozniak. Woz made the comments during a keynote discussion at Abilene Christian University's Connected Summit last week, discussing his views on the use of technology in education and the need to adapt teaching and learning to be more effective. According to Woz, we need to focus more attention on younger students before they begin to adopt a perception that they are "failures."

"Education has always been a big part of my life," Wozniak told the assembled crowd, which included Connected Summit attendees from nine different countries and a large contingent of ACU students and faculty. Woz discussed his early fascination with computers and logic circuits, which led to his participation in the Homebrew Computer Club at Stanford in the 1970s.






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In this article, I'll explain how to:

strip away the browser chrome (the url bar and button bar);
prevent viewport scrolling and scaling;
respond to multi-touch and gesture events;
use webkit CSS to get the iPhone OS look and feel;
cache the app so it runs without internet access;
get a custom icon on the home screen; and
have a splash screen load at the start.

The iPhone 4 just begs for some good video content to be played on its high-resolution display—which, contrary to popular belief, isn't made of retinas. The easiest way to get video is through Apple's iTunes Store, but there are many reasons why you might want to watch videos that you already have lying around instead. If you're lucky, your video is already in a format that the iPhone supports. In that case, just add the file to iTunes and sync. But what if it's not in the right format?
The iPhone 4, the iPad, and the latest versions of the iPod touch all support H.264 main profile level 3.1. What that means is that you can play HD video with a resolution of up to 1280x720 and a framerate of 30 frames per second. That's a significant step up from the baseline profile level 3.0 (720x480x30 or 720x576x25) that the older iPhones and iPod touches support, and even an improvement over the older Apple TV, which could only play 1280x720 video at 24 frames per second or less. The main profile rather than baseline profile means that it's possible to use more effective compression.

So how to go about creating those H.264 files?







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On the 13th of July 1998, Jeff Robbin, Bill Kincaid, and Dave Heller released the first version of SoundJam MP. Two years later, the developers of SoundJam sold their software to Apple, and continued development (in secrecy, as is typical of Apple) of the software for the Cupertino based company. In 2001, iTunes was released and, to this day, Jeff Robbin continues to guide the direction of iTunes under the ever watchful eye of Steve "boom boom" Jobs. All was going great. That is until the latest update, when they decided to substantially redesign the application icon.

Released last Thursday, the decision to ditch the antiquated Compact "I haven't bought one in 6 years" Disc and focus the icon on the music note, has caused quite the uproar. The new version of the icon seems to be following the standard "more is more" approach of on screen design: drop shadows, glows, bevels, gradients? We got 'em all! Even the much lauded simplicity of Adobe's icon set for the crash-tastic Creative Suite is an illusion — on close inspection there's a gradient, a bevel and a drop shadow spoiling the typographic straightforwardness.

iTunes icons past.

Even way back in 2001, with the first version of iTunes, things were definitely at the "Fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on its way down to landing in a big puddle of ugly sauce" end of the scale. Three music notes, with the squiggly tails, in purple, pink and, errr, purpley-pink, has me wondering if the first iTunes release was a free inclusion with purchase of a Silicon Valley Barbie. On surveying the previous five iTunes icons, one would have to admit, the latest is definitely the best so far, however, that isn't exactly a compliment, either. Of a differing opinion, Joshua Kopac decided to e-mail His Steveness saying the new icon "really sucks," in one of those rare replies to random emails, Mr Jobs was rather pointed "We disagree. Sent from my iPhone". Boom indeed!

Follow @itunes10icon.

Well the online design community was having none of that and have, in turn, been responding with their own, and more grammatically correct "We Disagree" retorts (on that point, when did Steve start talking like a monarch?). There's been an outpouring of vitriol on Twitter (and a fake Twitter profile), a facebook page has been set up, but the best so far is from online screen grab sharing slash social networking site Dribbble (yes, it has an extra b). The site is overflowing with designers trying to out-do the considerable design cojones of Apple with their own attempts. Unfortunately these efforts seem to be, in my opinion, creating a different flavour of ugly. These attempts are rife with bevels, glows, shadows and 3D effects — I often found myself wondering aloud, why do they bother? Almost every effort retained the same music note, circular container shape and faux metallic bezel. Below is a snapshot of just some of the efforts — ranging from the incremental tweaks, to the radical revisions and the outright ridiculous (rounded corner square CD anyone?)

Alternate icons posted through Dribbble. I wouldn't mind the having the AC/DC one...

If forced to offer an opinion on the Photoshop effects, I'd say there's too much, although granted, my starting point is that any is too much. The blues are rather garish and the contrast is way, way too high. The real culprit though, is the rendering of the music note — too cartoon like. Sharpening up some of the angles, losing the curve and slimming down the crossbar and rounds, might help. But in the end, given the company it will keep in the dock, is it really all that bad? Google Chrome looks like a pokemon ball, for goodness sake! Probably the most compelling argument against it is that most of Apple's icons are almost photo-realistic representations, of, well, things. But given iTunes current Swiss Army Knife-like functionality, good luck coming up with an object to represent everything it does. Amongst its Apple siblings, the cartoon-like clip art feel is certainly exacerbated, and the result is to cheapen the look of iTunes — almost as if it's a children's music learning program, and not the world's pre-eminent entertainment content application.

The biggest problem I have, is the iTunes logotype. The crime against typography committed in this instance is almost Bing-like in its proportions. Unfortunately, the theme is repeated in the logo for Apple TV, and is the logical, yet much higher contrast, continuance of the theme established in 1998 with the monochrome version of the Apple logo. These days the logo appears on products as backlit, or as a reflective surface. Graphically a slight glow and gradient effect had alluded to this effect, but was kept suitably dignified and subtle. With iTunes and Apple TV, the volume has been turned up to 11, and something that might almost be acceptable in a simple shape like the Apple logo, simply doesn't work inside the word iTunes 10. Not what you'd hope for from a company run by someone who credits his understanding, and love, of typography as one of the drivers of the early success of the Macintosh.

So much wrong in just one little .png…

These days, Apple is a very, very successful company, recently eclipsing Microsoft's market capitalization to claim the throne of world's largest technology company, largely on the back of products that didn't exist until recently. The pace of change has also outrun the name iTunes. It's this contradiction that bugs me most of all, but has escaped the attention and vitriol — indeed, here's proof positive that designers get far more passionate about color, shadow, highlight and contrast than they ever will with a pesky little detail like naming. All in one package, iTunes activates, backs up and syncs your iPod, iPad and iPhone, it's your interface for music clips, TV shows, movies, apps, games, podcasts, vodcasts, radio and ring tones. Oh and music. And also books! The name "iTunes" simply doesn't cover all this in a convincing way. God help Apple when, and if, they choose to rename it.

You can follow me and tell me how wrong I am on twitter.

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The stealthy Kleiner Perkins-backed startup called Flipboard has now been revealed to be, as some suspected, a social application for the iPad. The new Flipboard iPad app bills itself as a "social magazine" - that is, one which aggregates status updates, tweets, photos and articles from those you're connected to on social networking sites, like Twitter and Facebook. These updates are beautifully laid out into an easily digestible view which you can flip through with your fingers.

Sponsor

But Flipboard isn't just another "Twitter magazine," - it also just acquired semantic technology startup Ellerdale, whose intelligent data-parsing algorithms have previously been used to create a real-time search engine and trends tracker (still available here, at least for the moment). Now that same powerful technology will be used to design a more personalized real-time experience: determining what social updates are important to you and presenting them in an attractive, magazine-like format.

Flipboard Revealed: Social Networking Updates Become a Magazine

In May, rumors of an under-the-radar startup called Flipboard surfaced, when sources reported it had raised funding from the well-known firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Now the company is confirming these rumors, with news of a $10.5 million Series A venture capital round. It also has other key backers like Twitter's Jack Dorsey and Facebook's Dustin Moskovitz. Oh, and Ashton Kutcher's interested, so there you go.

If the investors' confidence doesn't convince you of the app's potential, though, perhaps its back-end will. Although not available in this initial version, Flipboard will soon integrate the semantic data-analysis technology from the startup Ellerdale into its application in order to app better determine the relevance of the information and updates from your various social networking connections. Ellerdale is already an expert at this, after practicing the art of semantic analysis on Twitter's "firehose" of data.

Flipboard: This Magazine was Built for You

So many people are overwhelmed by the fast-flowing information on the real-time Web, not to mention the massive amounts of raw data which include everything from 140-character tweets to new photo uploads from family and friends on Facebook. Take a day or two off from the Web, and it seems like you've missed everything.

Catching up on all these updates is difficult, too, given the ephemeral nature of Twitter's stream and Facebook's constantly updated News Feed. Flipboard proposes a better way to follow your friends: turn social networking updates into a personalized magazine.

How the Mag Works

Within the new Flipboard app, there's a homepage of sorts created using photos from your social networking friends, a content page and then personalized sections which you create. For now, you can have up to nine different sections, which can focus on any topic - whether that's fashion or motorcycles - or even Twitter lists, if that's your desire.

Within the "magazine's" pages are status updates, photos and even articles based on the links your friends have been sharing. The articles are presented in clean, clutter-free views without surrounding ads and other design flourishes implemented by the publisher. However, for copyright reasons, the articles won't be full-text - only abstracts. You'll have to click through (or rather, tap through) to read the full article using the included in-app Web browser.

Although Flipboard isn't meant to function as a full Facebook or Twitter client, the basic interactions are supported - liking, replying, re-tweeting, etc.

Best of all, perhaps, is the app's cost: FREE. Unlike the Twitter mag competitor Tabloids (iTunes link), for example, a $2.99 iPad app, Flipboard will remain free, generating revenue through in-app ads - full page ones, no less - where revenues are split with the publisher. Future iterations may even include full article text, not abstracts, for those publishers which ink deals with the company. So yes, in the future, you could launch Flipboard to read your daily newspaper thanks to a syndication of NYT's Twitter feed, for example.

Future Plans

Also in the future, additional networks will be supported, like Flickr, Tumblr, Posterous and others, although there are no plans for direct RSS support. You can follow most sites on Twitter and Facebook, Ellerdale's Arthur van Hoff tells us. (Incidentally, his LinkedIn resume reveals his title to be Level III Grand Master of Alphabetical Order at Ellerdale, which we think is fabulous).

Although Ellerdale's influence isn't present in the launch edition of Flipboard, its inclusion is forthcoming. And given our previous review of Ellerdale's prospects, a service we once called "tantalizing" for the data-hounds out there, we can't wait to see it put to a more practical purpose: discovering the trends and relevance within our own content.

You can download the Flipboard iPad app here from iTunes.

Discuss

Mac gamers are in for a treat today, as the Steam client for Intel-based Apple systems has finally been released. We had fun playing with the beta, and now, with the full release, anyone can jump in. Here's the best part: the list of games available is much wider than we had anticipated.

Portal is available as expected, but so is Civilization IV. So are a bunch of Lucasarts adventure games. You can pick a copy of Torchlight, newly on sale for $10. You can buy Braid, or Peggle, or City of Heroes. Right now there are 63 games for sale in the Mac store, and it looks like all of them feature the Steamplay logo, so if you own the PC versions you can download and play the Mac versions for no extra charge.

Just to get you started, you can play Portal for free on your Mac or PC until May 24. The prices for games are all over the place, and of course there are some sales going on (and more coming), but for a launch this is pretty damn exciting. No Left 4 Dead yet, but we'll be patient. If support continues and the game selection continues to grow, this is going to be an easy way for Mac gamers to enjoy their hobby.



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After a year without any updates, the developers responsible for the popular video transcoder Handbrake have released version 0.9.4 of the open-source software. With such a small change in the version number, it would be easy to assume that there isn't much new in this version, but that assumption couldn't be further from the truth. In total, there have been over 1,000 changes since 0.9.3 and, while they might not all be life-changing, many of them make for a better user experience.

First, and perhaps most importantly, the new version incorporates improved code from the x264 project that, according to the release notes, makes for speedier encoding, smaller files sizes, and better picture quality. Additionally, 0.9.4 brings 64-bit support, which also provides 10 percent faster encodes. Ten percent may not seem like much, but when you are ripping a huge DVD library, it adds up in a hurry. Users can now include subtitles in their rips, which can be turned on and off (prior to this version, it was all or nothing). Live preview is also a very welcome addition to the software, as it allows a user to find out what their video will look like given specific compression settings.

“Good design is as little design as possible.”

Damn right. Words to live by.

Dieter Rams is one of the most influential industrial designers of this past century. Jonathan Ive, Senior Vice President of Industrial Design at Apple, is heavily influenced by Rams’ work. You can see huge similarities between Apple and classic Braun products in their simplicity, beauty and function.

From November 18 – March 14, The Design Museum in London is having an exhibition titled “Dieter Rams Less and More”. The exhibition will showcase Rams’ inspiring designs for Braun and Vitsœ. I might have to head to London just to see this.

To satisfy your fix, here’s a short documentary of Rams, a Dieter Rams Flickr group and a Braun Flickr group showcasing the classic Braun designs.

With Apple’s OS X Snow Leopard update shipping today, one can’t help but wonder what’s next.

Thanks, World Famous Design Junkies.

Set up a webdav server. There are quite a few documents published on this subject so I only give a brief summary of the steps I took to accomplish that task. Then things get a little more complicated as I had to convince my systems to use my webdav server

All about AppleScript, from Apple.