Experience, design & technology.

Posts tagged “ipad”

Call that a collage?

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Posted on September 29th, 2012

Um, what the hell happened to mixel? An original, fun and highly sticky app for iPad has become something very, very different. It has gone from this: to this: The original mixel was a joy to use, to play with, to remix. The new version, the ‘just add pictures’ version? Rubbish. Khoi explains that there were economic reasons for scuppering the development and maintenance of the iPad version, but it doesn’t sit well with me. He says that the app simply wasn’t social enough to be profitable. What were the hard costs of mixel that couldn’t be overcome? My suspicion is that it had something to do with the server/storage/web front end parts, that these costs weren’t offset by the (advertising?) revenue brought in…

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Waving away the cloud

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Posted on March 26th, 2012

I really like iCloud. It syncs my contacts, my apps, my photos and more, all without really asking for much in return. But there’s one area where iCloud falls over repeatedly – and it’s an unacceptable failure for a service which (at face value) looks like yet another move by Apple to dislodge the MS Office behemoth from the default position in spreadsheets, presentations and documents. The failure I’m talking about, is Documents over iCloud. At first, it seems like a dream come true. Syncing on an iOS device, just like dropbox for the mac. Sure it only works for 3 apps, but those apps are well designed, great to use and make for any must-have app list today. But the current implementation of…

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To PC or not to PC

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Posted on February 7th, 2012

Shawn on the “iPad-as-PC” debate, piecing together the views both for and against, concluding with a resounding “Yay”; Yay Matthew Panzarino: Look, tablets are PCs, get over it. Andy Faust: It’s replacing people’s needs for traditional computing environments in the home and office, and people are buying it in record numbers. Wikipedia (from the definition of “Personal Computer”): A personal computer (PC) is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator. Nay Adrian Kingsley-Hughes: I agree with Moorhead, it’s time to stop the madness. If tablets are classed as PCs then why not smartphones? Or smartfridges? Or digital watches? There’s plenty…

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Touch me

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Posted on January 31st, 2012

I’ve noticed this strange quirk happening lately, most noticeably when I’m on my laptop at work. I’ll glance up at the laptop screen, spot a link in a web page (perhaps one I’ve launched using a keyboard shortcut), and reach up to touch it. Not reach for the mouse, not reach for the trackpad (which is already halfway between my hand and the screen), but reach up for the screen itself. My brain is telling me that the right thing to do is to touch it. I’d written off the concept of touch screens on laptops, after all, who wants to spend their time hovering an arm above a screen, won’t we all suffer from gorilla arm or stress injuries? Well perhaps not. I’d…

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Tweaking that comparison chart

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Posted on January 11th, 2012

Marco posted this about a month ago — it’s a pretty decent take-down of the Amazon kindle fire vs iPad 2 comparison chart Amazon put up to promote the fire. Price $199 $300 less than iPad 2 $499 Volume Buttons No Yes Stability Needs Improvement Very Stable Home Screen Frustrating That was a small swipe. Did you mean to tap? Try again Easy Tap an app to open it Magazine Reading Infuriatingly Awful Pretty Good My copy+paste doesn’t do it justice.  I won’t spoil the punchline either, go check it out for yourself.

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This child is only 4 1/2 years old.

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Posted on December 21st, 2011

Beth on Brushes from Fraser Speirs on Vimeo. I wasn’t too impressed by this, until I heard Beth saying things like.. “daddy, how do you get…” Just incredible. This child is only 4 1/2 years old, making fine detail tracing work on an iPad, using swipe, pinch, tap and a combination of those. Phenomenal. Where do you go with this? Do you; A. make a quip about how she didn’t get the memo, or B. refer to her using a bicycle for the mind, or C. wonder if and/or when android tablets will be able to tell similar stories? Hard to say. Nonetheless, I’m super impressed!

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wildchords is awesome

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Posted on December 12th, 2011

I love this. A bunch of crazy finnish guys who love music and want to make the world more musical, have created a new ipad app called wildchords. It’s a game that makes learning guitar fun, and addictive. It walks you through a number of guitar exercises and helps you learn. It’s aimed at would be guitarists of all ages, and is a whole lot of fun. The most amazing thing is that it just works. One more example of that ipad magic, it all just seems to happen. Wonderful. Check out the video of the Ovelin guys presenting this at Slush 2011 (?). These guys had an idea, made something amazing and are really seeing incredible results.  Ambition tied to ability, really making great…

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