Checkmark is a location-based reminder iPhone app. True, ever since iOS 5 and Siri we’ve had the ability to add simplistic reminders via Apple’s built in apps. Yet entering a new reminder remains cumbersome. That’s where Checkmark shines – a new reminder is three quick taps away, and the UI is clean and easily digestible.
It’s currently $2 in the App Store. If you occasionally need quick reminders when you leave/arrive at work or home, it’s a good buy.
Major credit to the Apple CEO here: this is a flat out apology. No wiggle room, no “we’re sorry you feel this way”. And then there’s this:
While we’re improving Maps, you can try alternatives by downloading map apps from the App Store like Bing, MapQuest and Waze, or use Google or Nokia maps by going to their websites and creating an icon on your home screen to their web app.
Apple, naming five competitors as acceptable alternatives? Wow. I’m not a fan of revisionist history, but I doubt we’d see this candor during the Steve Jobs era.
I use Due – a simple reminder app – virtually every day on both my iPhone and Mac. There’s a lot of reminder options on iOS, but I haven’t found anything that comes close to the fluidity and speed of Due’s UI. The syncing also works slick between iPhone, iPad and Mac clients (via Dropbox or iCloud, your choice.)
The app rarely goes on sale, but they dropped the price this week from $5 to $3. If you’re in the market it’s well worth your time.
Kyle Orland makes the case for Terry Cavanagh’s (developer of cult platformer VVVVV) retro, trippy arcade game. I agree with him; it is often frustrating, but it’s addictive as hell. Perfect way to kill 30 seconds between subway stops.
Really dug this wallpaper work by Instagram designer Tim Van Damme. Slick and great looking backgrounds for retina iPads, iPhones, the 15″ retina Macbook Pro and the 27″ Cinema Display (which, should be noted, has less screen pixels than the 15″ Macbook.)
Watts Martin:
What makes Apple the fabulous and infuriating company that they are is their mix of conservative minimalism with crazy risk-taking, running ahead of the herd betting that everybody is going to stampede in their direction. There was no mix this time. Neither the iPhone 5 nor iOS 6 are ahead of the herd. And depending on what Android 5 does, iOS 7 may need to make one hell of a leap not to be behind it.
I’d still argue the wide breadth of apps are the iPhone’s strongest selling point, pushing it ahead of its competition for now. I even find little fault with the iPhone 5’s hardware – gorgeous, minimal, and build quality that few others touch. But in terms of iOS as an operating system? We’re hurting, big time.
Dieter Bohn for The Verge:
Like Microsoft in the 90s and early 2000s, it is taking a very conservative approach to updating its core UI in the name of accessibility and consistency. Apple is keeping the iPhone in a very familiar and safe zone, but does it really need to? It’s risky, taking something that’s massively successful and trying something new and different with it. Most companies don’t do it, but Apple has a reputation built making those kinds of bets. Perhaps it doesn’t deserve that reputation anymore.
As Bohn himself states later in the article, Apple’s not close to the Microsoft Windows Vista fiasco state of Microsoft circa 2000. But do big Apple fans like myself have reason to be concerned? Certainly.
It appears from this Digital Photography Review post that the iPhone 5 camera primary benefit is its speed, albeit with slightly greater light sensitivity.
The Cleartrip author makes some excellent points about Chrome for iOS, most notably this:
The mobile browser is redundant. Being able to change your default browser would’ve certainly been in Chrome’s favour but does Chrome even need to worry about that? Tons of mobile web traffic is generated by Twitter and Facebook — which means that it is rendered within the respective webviews of those apps. When was the last time you launched a browser to read an article that someone shared on your timeline. So in a sense, UIWebviews, Chrome’s great weakness may just work in their favour.
It is true how often I end up pulling up a UIWebview in apps like Instapaper or Pulp.
I’ve given Chrome for iOS a heavy run and like a lot of what it has to offer, most notably tab syncing and opening tabs in the background. But because Chrome can’t be set as my default browser, I suspect within a week I’ll be back to Mobile Safari full time.
Famed game designer Peter Molyneux:
You’re presented with this white room. In the middle of the white room is a black cube. If you touch on that black cube, you’ll zoom into it. This black cube is made up of millions of tiny little cubes. You can tap away at that cube.
As you’re doing that, these words will come up: ‘Curiosity, what is inside the black cube?’ That’s when you realize it’s not just you tapping away at that black cube, it’s the whole world. The whole world is tapping away is revealing layers of this cube.
So so Molyneux to run a project like this. Here’s hoping it translates into a kick ass game.