iPhone had the first two store UIs; the iTunes Store for content like music and movies, and the App Store for software. The iPad will add a third, the iBookstore, for buying eBooks. These stores all provide content for users to extend the utility of their device. But each has a pretty different user interaction model for accessing, purchasing, and consuming that content.
- The iTunes Store is a separate app that is completely distinct from the iPod app. When you find something to buy, prompting you for your iTunes account password. It then adds the purchase to the app's Downloads tab. Once you have purchased the content, you must then switch back to the iPod app to listen to or watch it.
- The App Store is a separate app. When you purchase something, it prompts you for your iTunes password, and then exits to the home screen, switching to the screen where the app will live. The state of the download is reflected in the app icon. When the download is complete, you tap the icon on the home screen to use it.
- The iBookstore (the one word is the official name as used by Apple) is not a separate app, but lives within the iBooks app on the iPad. Purchasing content prompts for the iTunes password and downloads in-app, which can be directly accessed after it has finished downloading.
Each type of content follows a different workflow when going from access to purchase to use. If a goal of the iPad's low price is to drive content sales through the three stores, as some speculate is the case, then the purchase model should be as streamlined for the different types of content. Forcing different workflows will only confuse users who can't remember which type of content comes from where.
We've all got our thoughts on what the Jesus Tablet will be, so here are my guesses. I fully expect to be completely wrong on all of this, as many of these answers are completely blind shots and that Apple will blow my expectations out of the water.
Hardware
- 8"-10" touch screen, running at 1280x720
- Very thin; less than 1/2" thick (the iPhone 3GS is 0.48" thick)
- About 1lb heavy, light enough to hold in one hand
- 8 hours of battery life
- 32 or 64 GB SSD
- WiFi
- 3G over GSM, and Apple's US 3G partner will continue to be AT&T
- There will be some way to pair your Tablet cell connection with your iPhone's cell connection; either with an official announcement of AT&T tethering, or by adding your Tablet to the 3G account
- Front-mounted camera
- Some kind of collapsible stand in the frame, so the device can sit on a table
Input/Output
- Multi-touch on the display, exactly like the iPhone
- Multi-touch on the back of the device, similar to the surface of the Magic Mouse
- Photos and video via front-mounted camera
- Audio via front-mounted microphone and speakers, wired headphones, or Bluetooth
- Dock connector
- Expanded voice recognition
- Software keyboard, no Bluetooth keyboards available
Software
- It will run the iPhone OS 4.0; or rather, the iPhone OS will become a "Mobile OS X", consisting of the heavyweight Tablet and the smaller iPhone.
- It will allow multiple apps to run at the same time, with some UI for viewing multiple apps alongside each other. This may not be possible on the iPhone.
- It meant to replace a full PC for most common day-to-day needs
- iPhone applications will not run "automatically", but will need to be resubmitted through the App Store approval process. Most applications will run without much modifications. Icons will need to be higher resolution.
- A system-wide Dock for documents, applications, and small widgets will be onscreen at all times
- The home screen will be significantly revamped, and renamed to the Dashboard. App icons, web clippings, and widgets will be freely arrangeable.
- Handwriting recognition will be available for text input, with an optional stylus, or with a gesture such as two closed fingers drawing as if you had a pen.
- Some gestures will be used on the back of the device, such as scrolling and zooming.
Apps
- Standard kind of iPod and Internet communications apps the iPhone OS comes with. iTunes video, iTunes LP content, Maps, and Safari web content will look phenomenal.
- Sketchbook, an unlimited workspace to sketch and write notes, with collaboration features.
- iWork, a full port of the iWork application suite, tied to the Internet (and expansion of the iWork.com web application), with collaboration features.
- iChat, a port of the Mac app, with a heavy emphasis on video conferencing
SDK
- The SDK will be available immediately, with a simulator.
- There will be an emphasis on application interoperability.
- Applications will be able to register plugins with view controllers and UTIs. When an application wants to expose an object (say, an image) to other apps, it will look for app plugins which respond to the "public.image" UTI, load one which matches the UTI, and present the view without leaving the application.
- Applications will be able to expose services, similar to how they work on Mac OS X. Services will be integrated into the voice control system.
Product
- 32 GB model will be available for $899
- 64 GB model will be available for $999
- Available in US in March, major countries by summer
- There will not be a WiFi-only model at launch.
Other Predictions
- Updated MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs, with the mobile Core i5 "Arrandale" processors from Intel.
- There will be no mention of Verizon
- There will be no updates to the iPod or the Apple TV
- There will be no announcements of the iPhone 4G
Just a few years ago, Greenpeace would regularly call out Apple for their environmental impact. In that time, they've managed to climb a few ranks, mostly on the back of their efforts eliminating toxic chemicals like PVC. Kudos to them.
Not to minimize the efforts of other companies high on that list. Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba, Phillips, LG, Sony, Motorola, and Samsung, you guys rock for not polluting all over the place.
OpenEmu is a Cocoa framework and application for running multiple emulators as plugins. Many popular open source emulators; such as SNES9x, Nestopia, and VisualBoyAdvance; are fully compatible with this system. As all the emulators are going through the same architecture, it can be tuned to use the latest Quartz and Core Graphics technologies to deliver screaming performance.
Most of my participation has been in fixing bugs and doing some application-side coding. My big task so far is an in-development ROM organizer powered by Core Data, with smart playlists, Quick Look for save states, and ratings.
Active
VillainousStyle is a drawing library for defining a visual style from a chain of individual drawing instructions. Each instruction modifies the drawing context to perform common operations; such operations include shadows, fills, borders, and shapes. It allows for multiple style sheets which can be used to theme an application in multiple visual contexts. VillainousStyle sits on top of CoreGraphics, and does not use WebKit for rendering at all. It is a fork of the VSStyle and VSShape classes, originally from the Three20 project.
Stylesheets
VSStyleSheet is an abstract superclass for a set of styles. Subclass it and add methods for each style you wish to add. You will likely want to create a protocol for your styles to implement, to ensure that your stylesheet implements all the necessary styles.
There is a global stylesheet, which can be thought of as the "active" stylesheet. Call +[VSStyleSheet setGlobalStyleSheet:] to change the active theme, which will fire a VSStyleSheetChangedNotification. When that gets fired, you'll want to tell your views to update their styles and redraw.
Styles
Styles affect drawing and positioning. Most will affect the next VSStyle objects in the chain.
- Fills
- VSSolidFillStyle - Fills the current shape with a solid color
- VSLinearGradientFillStyle - Fills the current shape with a gradient between two colors
- VSReflectiveFillStyle - Fills the current shape with a glossy-style gradient between two colors
- Borders
- VSSolidBorderStyle - Draws a border around the current shape with a solid color
- VSBevelBorderStyle - Draws a beveled edge border for a 3D effect around the current shape
- VSFourBorderStyle - Draws a border around the current shape with four colors, one for each edge
- Shadows
- VSShadowStyle - Draws a shadow behind content with a given color, blur, and offset
- VSInnerShadowStyle - Draws a shadow inside the content with a given color, blur, and offset
- Positioning
- VSBoxStyle - Adds a margin or padding to the content area
- VSInsetStyle - Adds edge insets to the content area
- Content
- VSTextStyle - Draws text inside the current shape
- VSImageStyle - Draws an image inside the current shape
- VSMaskStyle - Clips the drawing area to an image mask
- VSShapeStyle - Clips the drawing area with a VSShape object
Shapes
Shapes affect the fills and borders, but do not clip the content styles.
- VSRectangleShape
- VSRoundedRectangleShape
- VSRoundedLeftArrowShape - a rounded rectangle with a left-facing arrow
- VSRoundedRightArrowShape - a rounded rectangle with a right-facing arrow
Future Ideas
- iPhone static library
- Cappuccino library
- File-based stylesheets that can be read/written from VSStyleSheet objects
- GUI builder for styles
- More styles!
Active
The templates that ship with Xcode are not the greatest. Some of them are inconsistent and don't enforce good coding standards (e.g. missing a dealloc method). Other templates which would be useful just flat out don't exist (e.g. an NSOperation subclass, or a protocol header file). This project aims to supplement or replace the built-in templates for Xcode to speed up coding and improve the quality of code.
Coding Standard
All files will be processed by Xcode. The generated source files must produce consistent, readable, commented code. The code must have these characteristics:
- Each file must have a comment block at the top describing the file.
- Each class must implement its superclass' designated initializer and dealloc.
- Stub methods must be organized by their purpose, class or protocol. -- Each group must be organized by their class hierarchy, with protocol stubs following. -- Each group must be prefaced by a pragma mark naming the class or protocol the methods were implementing. -- Clusters of methods (such as relating to KVO) should be organized along the lines above, with a pragma mark.
- All method implementations should contain a method call to their super implementation if needed.
- All method implementations should contain a commented out stub line that will signify where to insert their code.
- All comments must be in the form of two slashes //, and none using the /* */ form. This will allow developers to comment out large blocks of code as needed.
Wish List
- Different people want different things in their template. For instance, someone may want to include an implementation of observeValue:... for every class. Would be nice to have a template generator application (yeah yeah, very meta) which would make templates customized to the developer.
Inactive
Tim Cook, acting CEO of Apple:
We're not going to play in the low-end voice phone business. That's not who we are, that's not why we're here. Goal is not to lead unit sales, but to build the world's best phone.
Hopefully this kills the stupid iPhone nano rumors. Kills 'em dead. It's not coming, people.
Amit Singh, creator of MacFUSE, has just released an experimental version of XBinary, which allows the Mac OS X kernel to execute binary types other than Mach-O. Examples of using this include executing ELF binaries, PDP-11, Java jar files, and Windows executables.
The EFF is submitting requests for DMCA exemptions to the US Copyright Office. Among others, they are asking for an exemption for iPhone owners to be able to jailbreak their own devices.
Note that this is different from exempting the iPhone Dev Team, who create and distribute the jailbreaking solution, from lawsuit and/or persecution under the DMCA. This is solely for iPhone owners to do what they want with the device they paid for.
Louie Mantia of The Iconfactory just released another freeware icon set, this time in the style of WALL•E. They look simply fantastic.