At WWDC, Yahoo received an Apple Design Award for Yahoo Weather. This coincided with the unveiling of iOS 7 and its Weather app, which displayed striking similarities to Yahoo’s effort.
With the latest update to the app, Yahoo has brought the same award-winning design to the iPad. The full-bleed imagery from Flickr really shines on a larger display. The layout for iPad is largely a port of the iPhone design with upgraded icons and assets but refinements have been made for the iPad where necessary. For example, forecast information can be much larger because of the additional real-estate.
Procreate, the powerful sketching app for iPad and 2013 WWDC Apple Design Award winner, received a major update to version 2 today bringing with it support for the 64-bit Apple A7 chip as well as a new 4k resolution canvas.
The update also includes an iOS 7 redesign and a new icon to match as well as several performance enhancements.
Procreate 2 is a free update to existing users and $5.99 on the App Store for new customers. Happy creating!
Apple’s Campus 2 project will also house a 1,000-person auditorium off the main R&D ‘Mothership’, though this structure looks even more other-worldly. The Norman Foster mockups from Cupertino.org, and dug up by Apple Gazette last week, show an auditorium entrance surrounded by glass and with a metal roof.
The auditorium itself will be underground from the glass-surrounded auditorium. For its product launch events, Apple has typically either used its own Town Hall at its main Cupertino HQ or buildings in San Francisco such as Moscone West or the Yerba Buena Center.
It seems likely that with 1000 seats, Apple Campus 2 could replace most product unveilings at the main campus and in San Francisco. However, Apple will continue to need Moscone West for WWDC, a conference that brings in around 5000 people each year.
We’ve included the floor plan drawing from our original full gallery of the space from September of last year. You can see from the renderings and the floor plans that both the elevators and stairs that resemble the ones at the 5th Avenue Retail Store in New York.
Since Apple first unveiled its new MFi game controller framework at WWDC earlier this year, we’ve already got a look at a couple controllers hitting the market in the near future from both Logitechand ClamCase. One of the other companies that Apple mentioned at WWDC was Moga, and today we get a look at what might be the first press shot for the company’s upcoming MFi controller dubbed “MOGA Ace Power” (via Evleaks). A second image below shows the controller when in “closed” mode without an iPhone docked:
We don’t get many details about the controller above, but judging by the configuration and the fact that Apple already announced Moga was working on a controller, it’s a pretty good chance we’re indeed looking at the company’s upcoming MFi controller. Like some of Moga’s current controller products, the Ace Power will apparently sport a 1800mAh battery that will charge your device while docked in the controller. Expand Expanding Close
As we noted earlier this month, the Anki Drive iPhone-controlled cars demoed at WWDC this year will hit store shelves next week. The cars use a set of onboard sensors and AI software to steer themselves around the track and interact with one another while following behavioral paramaters set in the iOS app. The app also allows you to add upgrades to your car to change how it behaves and how other cars react to it.
The starter set will come with two cars and a track to race them on, and will cost $199. Additional cars will be available for $69 each. The app used to control the cars has been available in the iTunes Store for some time now, but has yet to be updated with the ability to actually use it with the cars. The whole lineup will be available in Apple Stores nationwide on October 23rd.
With Apple CEO Tim Cook’s endorsement, Anki, a company with artificial intelligence and robots-based products, debuted Anki Drive at WWDC earlier this year. Anki Drive is a car game for iOS that connects to physical cars. The app is currently available via the App Store while the cars and mat system will be available via retail channels…
It seems that Apple’s beta release of iWork for iCloud has proven popular as some users are being denied access with a message stating that Apple has had an ‘overwhelming response’ to the service … Expand Expanding Close
At WWDC earlier this month, Apple once again recognized some of the top designers of iOS and Mac apps with the annual Apple Design Awards. This year, one of the apps that won the student category was Finish, a unique task management app which we reviewed when it launched in January. Finish was created by Ryan Orbuch and Michael Hansen, a high-school duo from Colorado.
This week, we sat down with Orbuch and discussed the inspiration behind Finish, the ADA, and more. You can listen to the complete interview below the break.
In response to much of the negative criticism directed towards iOS 7, some have suggested that iOS 7 will change substantially before it is released to the general public. Looking back at previous versions of iOS reveals a long trend of subtle refinements to the operating system during beta periods, not dramatic changes. Let’s take a look at how each version of iOS has transformed:
Apple’s refreshed MacBook Airs introduced earlier this month at WWDC certainly bring some major improvements over previous generations thanks to Intel’s 4th gen Haswell processors, 802.11ac WiFi, and other internal upgrades. However, while reviews have been quite positive and focusing on the up to 12 hour battery life, it appears some users are experiencing teething issues with the new machines, which isn’t exactly something new for the first release of a refreshed Apple product.
The first release of a new or revamped product can often run into some issues early on that Apple attempts to work out in future firmware updates or hardware tweaks. We saw it with the Retina MacBook Pros, and it’s likely Apple will release updates to address some of the issues that users are experiencing with the new MacBook Airs.
Just like last year, Apple has uploaded their full WWDC 2013 Keynote from last week to their YouTube channel. Previously, if you wanted to view this year’s keynote, you’d have stream it from Apple’s site, or through the Apple Keynotes Podcast (HD Link) in iTunes.
MacStadium announces plans for Mac Pro hosting and colocation
Less than a week since being teased at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, the Mac Pro is already finding its way into new and useful places. MacStadium, which currently utlizes the Mac mini for dedicated hosting and colocation, has announced plans to offer Mac Pro hosting later this year.
MacStadium has already developed custom racks for the new Mac Pro (via Macworld/TUAW), which features a brand-new design that is much smaller than the previous model, and can store 270 Mac Pros in each Mac Pro POD. That’s fifteen rows, nine columns, and two Mac Pros per slot. Expand Expanding Close
Crytek, the company behind CryEngine and the popular Crysis series, is planning to release a new tactical action game later this year for iOS called ‘The Collectibles’. We’re told the company implemented support for Apple’s new MFi gaming controller framework just in time to give developers a preview of the game and new controls during a session last week at WWDC.
Developers tell us team members from Crytek’s Budapest studio demoed the game on stage, which has the player command a squad of five through your typical war-torn environment. It isn’t the first time Crytek has released a game for iOS devices, but it is the first time it’s bringing a shooter of sorts– the genre its best known for– to the platform. There doesn’t, however, seem to be any first-person shooter elements, as the title looks to be an overhead, tactical action game from the screenshots below. Expand Expanding Close
I had the opportunity to travel to San Francisco this year for WWDC and experience the City by the Bay for my first time. Though I wasn’t among the lucky few to attend the keynote this year, that hardly robbed me of any adventure in the journey. Because this was my first time making the trek (and I was technically covering a portion of the event for work), I deliberately planned what gear was most appropriate for trip and sort of compiled a list of recommendations based on my experience below. Expand Expanding Close
On Monday Apple finally unveiled to the world the next iteration of OS X, Mavericks. A developer preview of the new operating system is available now as a Mac App Store download for registered developers. Delivering Mavericks via a download is super conveient and easy for everyday users but can be unhelpful in several troubleshooting or advanced OS modification situations. The only way to obtain a bootable OS X Mavericks USB flash drive is to create your own: Expand Expanding Close
Asymco’s Horace Dediu points out with the graph above that Apple has been adding about a million new store accounts every couple of days. The numbers seem to be based on Tim Cook’s announcement at WWDC that Apple now has 575,000,000 million store accounts (which we assume includes all App Store, iTunes, and Apple Online Store accounts). That means most of them have credit cards on file and as Cook noted, that’s “more accounts with credit cards than any other store on the internet.”
Something new in iOS 7 that hasn’t been getting much coverage is the improvements Apple is making to Core Bluetooth for better integration with Bluetooth LE accessories. Apple is making a lot of changes to its Bluetooth APIs in iOS 7 that will not only allow your iOS devices to work with more Bluetooth LE devices, it will also introduce new features for everything from time to notifications, keyboards, and stereo sound.
Enhance your apps with support for new types of accessories. Location beacons are a new class of low-powered, low-cost transmitters that can notify nearby iOS 7 devices of their presence. Location beacons will provide apps a whole new level of location awareness, such as trail markers in a park, exhibits in a museum or product displays in stores. Other new features include the ability to setup and configure Wi-Fi accessories, such as AirPlay speakers, directly from iOS.
Vampire Weekend will perform for WWDC attendees this year.
Weeks after Modern Vampires of the Citywas featured on iTunes as a free stream ahead of its release date, Vampire Weekend has been officially announced to perform tomorrow night at WWDC Bash for conference attendees.
Here’s one great reason to give your Mac the night off. Vampire Weekend will perform at Thursday night’s WWDC Bash. The party starts at 6:00 p.m. at Yerba Buena Gardens.
Vampire Weekend has been tapped by Apple in the past starting with WWDC 2010 when Apple played “California English” and “Giving Up The Gun” as well as “Oxford Comma” in between sessions. “Holiday” was featured in between sessions in 2011.
WWDC attendees will be able to download two Vampire Weekend songs from iTunes ahead of the WWDC Bash. If you can’t make it to WWDC Bash, you can still enjoy the fun by checking out Vampire Weekend’s new album on iTunes… or casually FaceTime call an attendee at just the right moment.
@faitherina I’m very surprised you haven’t started asking for a 2-hour FaceTime call from one of us tomorrow night.
The basic idea is simple: Inter-app audio will allow developers to make their app act as an output and or input for sending and receiving audio to and from other apps. In fact, we already somewhat have that functionality through third-party iOS app Audiobus. However, with Apple’s new inter-app audio feature available to devs, apps will no longer have to use a third-party app like Audiobus to send audio to one another. At first glance it seems to make Audiobus obsolete, an interesting move after Apple just recently implemented support for the third-party service in its own GarageBand app. Either way, it means a ton of new possibilities for creating music and sharing audio on your iPhone and iPad are on the way with the update to iOS 7 this fall.
We dug into Apple’s documentation on Inter-App Audio to find out how it works and also spoke with Audiobus about what this means for them:
We didn’t get any updates to Apple TV at WWDC this week like some were hoping for, but yesterday Comcast–one of the cable companies that has been rumored to be in discussions with Apple over a new and improved Apple TV service– unveiled its next-generation cable box arriving this fall. On top of a brand new UI and platform dubbed “X2”, the company also gave us a look at its revamped iOS apps & a new controller with voice control features that will let you search by actor, show type, series, etc.
While showing off a new slick UI with recommendations and brand new, customizable guide views, the company also showed off integration with apps such as Pandora, Rotten Tomatoes, and zeebox for ratings. Within the new apps section (shown at 16:40), we see integration with Facebook, Pandora, Instagram, Xfinity Home apps, and much more.
An interesting aspect of the presentation, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts noted that the company sees the new open platform as being an open architecture that would allow for a “family of boxes” and a family of personalized remotes. We’re not sure if that means the company has plans to integrate third-party hardware with its platform, like an Apple TV for example, but it’s clear Comcast has no plans on completely getting rid of its own cable box anytime soon. It also doesn’t look like Comcast is waiting around for Apple to revamp its TV service with apps and voice control, and we also got a quick look at the new X2 experience running on an iPad and iPhone (pictured right). Expand Expanding Close
With the latest changes to iTunes Connect, Apple has clearly changed its approach to mobile advertising. For the last three years, Apple has targeted large brands with minimum buy-ins ranging in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. However, uptake of iAd does not seem to have been at the level Apple expected, which has had a negative impact on developers, who have commonly observed low fill rates for their ads.
In mid 2010, Apple allowed app developers to participate in the advertising side of iAd program, by showing banner ads that link directly to their apps. With newly announced changes to iAd, which have been discussed in-depth at WWDC, Apple has furthered this push.
Yesterday’s unveiling of the all-new Mac Pro at Apple’s WWDC keynote certainly made up for the fact that we didn’t see any updates to Apple’s pro apps like we we’re hoping. However, you might have missed Phil Schiller’s rather quick confirmation that a new version of Final Cut Pro X is indeed coming later this year: Expand Expanding Close
Yesterday at its WWDC keynote presentation, alongside the expected design overhaul in Apple’s upcoming iOS 7, the company briefly showed off a slightly new direction for its ad campaigns going forward. While it kicked off the presentation with a video describing its focus for the new simplified design elements in iOS 7 (below), Bloomberg reports that its latest ad (above), which just started appearing on TV last night, marks a new direction for Apple’s marketing efforts. It also claims that Apple’s meetings regarding the company’s marketing message have become less focused following Steve Jobs’ death now that Apple’s senior vice president of marketing Phillip Schiller is in charge: Expand Expanding Close
