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Safari 6.0 Is Nathan Ingraham’s Next Browser→

Safari 6.0 Is Nathan Ingraham’s Next Browser

Nathan Ingraham of The Verge writes,

But just as I’m getting fed up with Chrome, Apple goes ahead and launches Mountain Lion with Safari 6.0. With the addition of iCloud tab syncing across multiple OS X machines (which will finally come to iOS 6 this fall), integrated sharing to Twitter, a unified search and URL bar (finally), and a new gesture-based tab management system, I should be just as productive as I was in Chrome — but without the memory leaks and white screens. As a big fan of Apple’s gesturing system, I’m looking forward to pinch-and-swiping my way through the many tabs I have open all day long.

I love Nathan’s reminisce of Safari on the Mac, and how he, like myself, ended up using Chrome when working online became a priority.

I always have a hard time deciding between what browser to use on the Mac. While most of the websites I visit are now serving media to browsers without Flash plug-ins, there are still plenty of websites that don’t have HTML and Javascript substitues for Flash audio and video players. Chrome is convenient: Flash (while occassionally buggy) is built in, the browser handles having lots of tabs open quite well, and for a while, Chrome’s omnibox was advantageous over Firefox or Safari, whose separate address and search bars suddenly felt outdated. The decision is even harder now that Chrome is available on iOS.

Safari’s clean aesthetic, however, remains unchallenged. Safari’s experience is simply elegant, and I find myself missing the same features that Nathan has come to relish, such as Safari’s Reader, its superior support for gestures, and Apple’s implementation of the bookmarks bar. Safari gels with my idea of what the ideal browsing experience should be, and as with all of their apps, goes out of their way to include subtle pleasantries such as when a download jumps into the Downloads button. With Mountain Lion, Safari also includes the ability to open tabs from other devices, an important and recently added Chrome feature.

I think, for a little while, I’ll be returning to Safari as well. At least until I miss the ability to pin tabs when commenting on the next linked article.

You can learn more about Safari 6.0 for the Mac at apple.com/safari.

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A History of Skeuomorphism In Apple Interfaces→

A History of Skeuomorphism In Apple Interfaces

Thomas Brand has published a detailed overview of Apple’s past skeuomorphic designs in applications for classic Mac OS and OS X. As he notes, the trend towards designing apps that resemble real-life objects didn’t start with iOS at all.

As time progressed, the Aqua interface has evolved to reflect the changes in Apple hardware. Gone are the over the top transparencies, deep drop shadows, and distracting pinstripes. Subtle grays, mute reflections, and soft gradients now fill the retina displays of Apple’s latest portables. Some might say that Aqua is not a skeuomorphic interface because it does not resemble a specific real world object. To them I say Aqua is a mirror reflecting back the design decisions that have made Apple’s hardware so appealing over the last 10 years.

In his article, Thomas mentions old software such as Sherlock, the Appearance Manager of Mac OS 8, Apple CD Audio Player, and the Classic Calculator that Steve Jobs famously designed himself with a “build your own” kit created by a former Apple engineer. iOS may not have reinvented skeuomorphism in software per sè, but it surely gave this way of designing apps a whole new meaning and set of interactions thanks to screen constraints and multi-touch.

Check out Egg Freckles’ article for the full list of apps that influenced Apple’s skeuomorphic interfaces.

Image via TUAW

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Mac and iOS Developer Acrylic Joins Facebook→

Mac and iOS Developer Acrylic Joins Facebook

In other acquisition news, renowned Mac and iOS developer Acrylic has announced they will be joining the design team at Facebook:

I’m happy to announce today that we’ve packed up our small Vancouver studio and will be making the move to San Francisco in the coming weeks to join the design team at Facebook.

Our products and services have not been acquired by Facebook, and while there are no plans for further development on them, Wallet and Pulp will continue to remain available for download and purchase in their current form. We’ll certainly be the first to let you know of any updates or changes here in the future.

Well-known among the Apple community for their Pulp and Wallet apps for iOS and OS X, it’s unclear whether the apps will also keep receiving updates for bug fixes or not. This isn’t the first acquisition of a former Mac developer by Facebook: notably, the company acquired Sofa last year, which then went on to create the Facebook Camera app.

You can check out our review of the latest version of Pulp here.

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Terpstra Day→

Terpstra Day

When I started MacStories three years ago, I had no idea whether or not the site would be successful. But I was told that, no matter the page views and the retweets, the people from the Apple community would make it worth the effort anyway. Brett Terpstra represents everything that’s great about this corner of the Internet.

Brett is the developer of Marked, a writing tool we use every day at MacStories and that, personally, I couldn’t work without anymore. But that’s not the main story. Brett gives away dozens of productivity enhancers for your Mac and iOS devices such as nvALT, Marked Watcher Scripts, Markdown Service Tools, TextExpander snippets for OS X and iOS, and a Clip to Day One service, just to name a few. Gabe at Macdrifter put together a list of all the awesome things that Brett builds, keeps up to date, and gives away for free without asking anything in return. Brett is also the guy behind the ultimate iTextEditors comparison list.

Not only that, Brett somehow manages to combine his love for nerdery, writing, and coding with elegance and kindness. I once mistakenly wiped an entire MacStories post I was editing in a Marked beta, and Brett recovered every part of it, no problem – it wasn’t something he had to do, because when you beta test software, you should know the risks (still, you should look forward to the next Marked).

From my interview with him earlier this month:

My workflow is constantly in flux. I’m what people refer to as a “fiddler.” I’m ok with that, mostly because I get a lot of enjoyment out of sharing the things I figure out on the way. If I just dumped all of that time into a hole and never made anything useful for myself or others, then I’d definitely feel like I was wasting it.

People like Brett make this little community of ours worth writing for every day, and the stuff he makes allows me to work better and more efficiently. Thanks Brett.

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Brief History of the iPad→

Brief History of the iPad

iPad

iPad

Over at 52 Tiger, Dave Caolo has started an interesting new series on the history of the iPad. With a retrospective on devices and patent filings that preceded the iPad’s announcement in 2010 and a look at old rumors and speculation, Dave’s “Brief History of the iPad” provides an excellent look at Apple’s fastest growing product.

In part I of the series, Dave’s research focuses on the tablet-like products that were patented or released in the past century. I found this bit particularly interesting:

The first commercial tablet product from Apple appeared in 1979. The Apple Graphics Tablet was meant to compliment the Apple II and use the “Utopia Graphics System” developed by musician Todd Rundgren. 2 That’s right, Todd Rundgren. The FCC soon found that it caused radio frequency interference, unfortunately, and forced Apple to discontinue production.

In part II, published today, Dave collects the most notable rumors that were floating around ahead of the iPad’s introduction in January 2010.

Frog and Apple worked on the Apple IIc, among others, including this prototype design for a tablet PC. This little lovely, called the “Bashful,” features a full-sized keyboard and a stylus. It went through several design iterations, three of which you can see at WIRED. As Engadget points out, this suggests that Apple had been playing with the idea of a tablet device for 26 years.

Make sure to check out 52 Tiger’s “Brief History of the iPad” here.

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Butane for Campfire→

Butane for Campfire

A few weeks ago, I installed a new Campfire client for iPhone called Butane, and I have been using the app ever since. It isn’t the perfect Campfire client for iPhone, but it’s the best one I’ve used to date.

I’ve always been surprised by the lack of great Campfire clients for iOS. We use 37signals’ Campfire as the main communication channel for our team here at MacStories; we tried many web-based group chat tools over the years, but we keep coming back to Campfire because of its simple design, stable web app, and features like Twitter integration and inline attachments. However, I am no fan of the official Campfire application – which is very basic and sometimes fails to load the latest messages in our room – or Sparks, a popular third-party alternative. Sparks sports a lot of functionalities and it also runs on the iPad, but I find its interface and navigation kind of clunky in some areas, and, like the official app, it often hangs on sending new messages and isn’t generally reliable.

Butane sits in between the official client and Sparks. It’s got a clean design, and it supports direct links to tweet with embedded previews, inline attachments, and sound effects. Furthermore, it implements a Facebook-like panel navigation to see a room’s transcripts and files, search, and people currently online. The main screen of the app – the Lobby – displays all your available rooms, and it’s got Settings to enable sound and vibration, as well as “notification words” for specific keywords. Overall, the design of Butane is clean, messages are sent quickly even over 3G, and you can upload photos to a room directly from your iPhone.

Butane doesn’t support push notifications – this may be related to the Campfire API – nor does it have an iPad version, which I’d love to use. Instead, right now I’m using the Campfire website on the iPad’s Safari – it works, but it’s not an optimal solution.

Looking forward to future improvements, Butane is $3.99 on the App Store.

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Apple Builds Mosaic With Deconstructed iOS Icons for Store Opening→

Apple Builds Mosaic With Deconstructed iOS Icons for Store Opening

As noted by iPordelante (via ONE37), Apple has built a unique billboard to announce the future opening of a new retail store in Barcelona, Spain, at Passeig de Gràcia. In pure Gaudí style, Apple has actually built a mosaic off pieces of deconstructed iOS app icons, such as Safari, Photos, and iTunes.

A demonstration of Apple’s typical attention to detail, the mosaic for the upcoming Apple Store also shows how the company cares about the particular aspects and unique traits of a retail location, from marketing to gadgets.

In the past, Apple used iOS icons to build an animated wall at WWDC 2010; this year, they used App Store application icons to create an interactive “app table” for WWDC ‘12 attendees.

Check out more photos here.

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FoxTube: A Great YouTube App Replacement for iOS→

FoxTube: A Great YouTube App Replacement for iOS

I don’t typically discover new apps thanks to word of mouth or by checking out my friends’ Home screeens, and yet I have my friend Andrea to thank for letting me know about FoxTube.

I’m not the biggest fan of the native YouTube app for iOS. In fact, I think it’s actually one of the worst experiences offered to iPhone and iPad users: several YouTube videos aren’t “available on mobile”, search is too simplistic, you can’t copy direct URLs for videos to share them elsewhere, and, generally speaking, it has remained unchanged for the most part since its original launch. Anyone who spends a decent amount of time on YouTube knows that the iPhone app is just a surrogate of the desktop service. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard my friends saying “You can’t watch that on YouTube for the iPhone” (quite possibly as many times as “I’m using Facebook through Safari because the app won’t load”).

FoxTube doesn’t look pretty and its icon doesn’t look good, but it is by far the best way to access YouTube I have found on iOS. Firstly, it loads any kind of video – even the ones that the YouTube app won’t open. Especially music videos from “VEVO” channels – FoxTube can display those just fine. And whilst the YouTube mobile website can open them as well, FoxTube has settings to choose between 360, 720p, and 1080p video quality. And it loads fast, unlike the mobile website.

Secondly, FoxTube comes with a plethora of other options including caching, background video player, and background audio. By default, the app caches any video you start playing while it’s also buffering, but there are some settings to adjust its behavior. Videos can be dismissed (with a button or gestures, which the app supports for many other controls) and left playing in a “mini player” at the top that runs while you’re browsing something else in the app. Search is “real” search, with suggested results, history, and sorting options. You can share a video (and also copy its URL), and easily jump to an uploader’s video page, the web video page, or the Related Videos page.

And there’s more: a popup menu on the custom video player lets you toggle mirror mode, pinch to zoom, frame-by-frame navigation, and it even enables you to create bookmarks. If you want to use the app as a music player, FoxTube does background audio (with its icon appearing in the multitasking tray).

Like I said, FoxTube doesn’t look particularly nice, and I don’t like the fact that the iPad version is a separate $4.99 purchase. Yet FoxTube is highly functional, and it brings many of the functionalities I’ve always wanted from the native YouTube app (which is not getting any better).

FoxTube is my new YouTube app on iOS, and I recommend it to anyone who’s been frustrated with the stock app. $2.99 on the App Store.

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Apple Ranks 55th in Fortune Global 500, Up From 111th in 2011→

Apple Ranks 55th in Fortune Global 500, Up From 111 in 2011

As noted by @setteBIT, Apple has ranked 55th in the latest update of the Fortune Global 500, the annual ranking of the world’s largest corporations provided by American magazine Fortune. With a total revenue of $108.249 billion and total profit of $25.922 billion, Apple climbed 86 positions up from rank 111 in 2011. Fortune also reports $116.371 billion in assets and $76.615 billion in stockholder’s equity. Speaking in percentages, the profits marked 23.9% of total revenue.

These figures are data for the 2011 fiscal year, which ended on September 30, 2011. Compared to 2010, Apple reported a 66% increase in revenue, and 85% in profits in 2011. The new Fortune 500 list as well as Apple’s numbers for 2011 and all other members is already available online, and will be also included in the print version of the Fortune Magazine on July, 23.

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