Author Archives: Alex Layne

6 things iOS can learn from OS X

The focus of Apple’s last two releases of OS X has been on incorporating features of iOS while refining the user experience, which has worked well so far. However, certain aspects of iOS, such as the lack of good inter-app communication, are making the platform look dated. Apple could solve that issue and others by bringing features from OS X back to iOS, starting with Services.

Services

One of the biggest differences between OS X and iOS is the way they treat inter-app communication. OS X’s little-known Services feature provides a way for applications to transfer data, such as currently selected text, between each other. Let’s say I’m typing a document and I want to search the web for a phrase I’m using. I can select the phrase, use the “Search With Google” service, and a new Safari window pops up with the results. Third-party apps can use Services as well, and users can create their own with the Automator app. This flexibility and customizability is what makes Services powerful.

Let’s switch to iOS. Apps are sandboxed, which means they can’t share files between each other, and the only way to share text is through copy and paste. Third-party apps can’t process actions from other apps without using URL schemes, which isn’t an ideal solution.

Implementing something as complex as OS X’s Services within iOS’s simplified UI isn’t easy. So far, Apple’s taken the approach of only including the most useful Services from OS X in its own apps. In iBooks, for example, I can select a word and define it, make a new email with it, or search the web for it: all the basic stuff you can do in OS X. It’s a sign that Apple’s at least thinking about the problem, and I’m hopeful that the coming iOS 7 update will address it more thoroughly.

Multiple user accounts

Multiple user accounts were introduced with Mac OS 9, and they’ve evolved quite a bit since. Today, each user gets their own settings, files and associated iCloud account. If you click on the currently logged-in user’s name in the menu bar, a menu pops down with a list of other users. Choose one, and that user’s desktop rotates off the screen to be replaced by the other’s.

It’s true that you can sign in and out of iOS with different Apple IDs, but this only lets you download another user’s content from iTunes and not much else. You don’t get your iCloud data or settings, and any changes you make outside of iTunes stay with the other account. Obviously, this isn’t ideal for families that share an iPad or iPod touch. The latest version of Android, Jelly Bean, includes multiple account support for tablets, giving Android users one more feature to tout that iOS doesn’t have.

Slideshow wallpaper

“Slideshow” wallpaper — background images that shift after a set period of time — was introduced to OS X with 10.3 Panther. iOS 4 introduced homescreen wallpapers on the iPhone, but you could only set one at a time; it remains so today. Considering that you can already run a slideshow on an iPad’s lockscreen, doing the same thing with homescreen wallpaper doesn’t seem like much to ask.

Mission Control

Released with OS X Lion, Mission Control consolidates Exposé, Spaces and Dashboard into one UI. I’ll be talking about the Exposé part here, since I don’t see any need for Dashboard or something like Spaces on iOS. Exposé is the feature that zooms and arranges your open windows so you can see them all at once. Click on one, and Exposé switches you to it.

In iOS, switching between apps is accomplished with the multitasking tray. Double-tap the Home button, and the tray pops up, showing your most recently used apps. Unlike Exposé, the multitasking tray only shows you the app’s icon and not the app itself. Apple actually experimented with a more Exposé-like interface in an early version of iOS 4, and Jailbreak tweaks, such as Multifl0w, bring a similar interface. Android and Windows Phone’s task switchers also use app previews and not just icons, and with the multitasking tray making its debut almost three years ago, it feels like it’s time for an overhaul.

Gatekeeper

By default, Gatekeeper locks down your Mac so it will only run apps from the Mac App Store and developers registered with Apple. However, you can turn Gatekeeper off on OS X. On iOS, there isn’t a choice: you can only download apps from the App Store. Because of this, and Apple’s policy of reviewing every app before approving it, there’s been a few incidents over the years, starting with the blocking of Google Voice, which damaged the company’s reputation with some developers. By implementing a Gatekeeper-like system, it would be easier for Apple to defend criticism of its approval policies, as developers could still sell their apps on the web. iOS developers would also be able to get out updates even if Apple rejects them.

There are problems with this, however. Apple would have to allow downloading apps from Safari, which also means building an interface to manage them. App piracy, already an issue on jailbroken devices, would likely increase under such a system as well unless Apple implemented DRM. Malware is another possible concern, though as with Gatekeeper on the Mac, having the default be to only allow apps from the iOS App Store would leave people protected. With all of these negatives, I doubt we’ll be glimpsing over the walled garden any time soon.

Versions

Versions, introduced with Lion, provides a Time Machine-like interface for looking through past revisions of a document. When you trigger it, the desktop slides away as the current app is placed next to its past versions, stacked together on the right. Browsing through past versions is accomplished by a timeline on the side. You can edit the current version right within the interface, as well as copy elements from past versions.

Versions hasn’t made its way to iOS yet, and that’s understandable given the size of iOS devices. How would you fit something like Versions’ interface on the smaller screen of an iPhone or iPad? On OS X, an app’s window can resize to fit comfortably within Versions, but they can’t on iOS. Versions would have to be rethought significantly for it to work on smaller screens, so I’m not optimistic that it’ll be in iOS 7.

Many of these features that work so well on OS X are admittedly a long shot for making it to iOS. However, with Craig Federighi placed in charge of both OS X and iOS software after the departure of Scott Forstall, there’s at least the possibility that OS X features may eventually find their way to the other side.

What other features from OS X would you like to see in iOS? Tell us in the comments.

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5 iOS news app alternatives to Google Reader

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If you use RSS feeds to keep up with the news, Google probably broke your heart yesterday by announcing that it’s shutting down Google Reader on July 1. Reader, aside from being a great web RSS reader, provided the syncing backend for many RSS readers in the iOS App Store, including Reeder, Mr. Reader and Newsify. I’ve been using Google Reader to sync my feeds for five years, so I’ve come to rely on it heavily for my news.

But recently I’ve also come to rely on several news aggregation apps (most of which are really just RSS readers with special features). Real RSS readers will still be around when Reader’s gone, especially given the market opportunity Reader’s demise presents for companies like Digg — which announced Thursday it would pick up where Google Reader leaves off — but it can’t hurt to have options for consuming news on your mobile device. Sometimes I’ll find articles in these apps that I wouldn’t have found in my more focused list of RSS feeds.

Here are five good iOS apps — all of them are free — that you can personalize to help you keep up with the news:

Zite

Zite bills itself as a personalized digital magazine, and it’s actually been around for awhile (it was acquired by CNN in 2011). Zite’s interface is kind of boring, but it’s also straightforward. When you first start Zite, you can choose from a list of default topics for it to pull articles from. You can also add your own topics through the search interface. A newsfeed displays rectangular article previews for your top news. You can like or dislike the articles Zite shows you, and that data is used to find other articles you might like. You can switch between topics by swiping left or right, and view which topics an article has attached to it by swiping up.

Flud

Flud is unique in that you can follow articles that other users are sharing. Each user also gets a Flud iQ score, which measures your influence on the service based on your activity. Besides following other users, you can also search for new sources to draw from, which are added to a favorites menu. Flud’s interface is more interesting than Zite’s, with large article previews and pretty red buttons. However, the large previews mean only two article previews can fit on the screen at one time, so scrolling through them ends up feeling tedious at times.

Circa

Unlike the others on this list, Circa doesn’t show you full articles from a source. Instead, Circa has editors that condense articles into nuggets of information called “points.” Rather than reading the full text of the article, you swipe through a list of points. Because the articles have to be condensed by humans, Circa has a feature where you can follow an article, so you’ll get notified whenever a new point is added to it. You can’t add new sources or topics to Circa, and it only comes with four topics by default. If you’re fine with that caveat and like things straight to the point, Circa’s worth checking out.

Flipboard

Flipboard’s been pretty widely covered by now, but it can’t hurt to throw it in. Flipboard has a sort of homescreen where you can add and arrange topics. As implied in its name, you “flip” through articles rather than scrolling a list, which means you also have to flip through the ones you might not be interested in.The biggest strength of Flipboard is that you can add a multitude of social networks as sources, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google+. You can even add your Google Reader account as a source — until it shuts down.

Pulse

The thing that stands out about Pulse’s app is its interface. Instead of a list of articles, you’re shown a vertically scrolling list of sources and under each is a horizontally scrolling list of articles from that source. The advantage of this is that it allows Pulse to fit nine article previews in one view. Flud only fits two, for comparison. The disadvantage is that it requires a little more scrolling to get through your articles, since they’re arranged horizontally. The headline text is rather small too, and there’s no way to change it. Old eyes beware.

What’s your favorite news aggregator? Are there any you’ve tried that aren’t on the list? Tell us in the comments.

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iTunes 11 review: Hands-on with Apple’s refined jukebox

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iTunes is a truly historic piece of software. It’s gone from a simple jukebox to the most popular media management software in the world, picking up a long list of features along the way. Keeping this legacy going is the latest version, iTunes 11, a major redesign that aims to dispell the opinion that iTunes is bloated and outdated. Read on to hear my thoughts on whether it succeeds.

Interface

iTunes 11 is the biggest visual refresh in the software’s history. It has a new toolbar gradient, a darker, sleeker playback panel, and an all-around cleaner look. The sidebar and status bar are hidden by default, in favor of a simple toolbar along the top. You can show them again by using the View menu. The sidebar’s been consolidated into a popover menu in the toolbar, and connected iOS devices get their own button next to the iTunes Store button on the right.

View modes are gone in iTunes 11. Instead, albums are displayed in what Apple is calling “Expanded View”. This works like a folder on iOS: You click on an album’s artwork, and the interface splits and expands into a subview with a song list and an “in the store” section, which shows top songs and albums for that artist. Expanded View is intelligent enough to pull out the dominant colors in your album’s artwork, which are used to color the background and text, with a copy of the album’s artwork on the side. Expanded View is fun, and works better than the iTunes 10 model, which required you to back out of an album’s song list to see your album list. When viewing your artists, you get a list of artists on the left and the selected artist’s albums on the right. The traditional list view is still there when viewing songs, and you can even show the old-school column browser if you’re so inclined.

iTunes uses Helvetica now instead of OS X’s system font, Lucida Grande. iOS’s system font is also Helvetica, and with Apple’s trend of bringing iOS qualities to OS X it could be that the next major version uses Helvetica as the system font instead of Lucida Grande.

While the new iTunes interface is pretty, it still has a lot of ugly dialogs from the past, like the one above, which appears when you add a song to your Up Next queue but play a different song.

Features

iCloud integration works similarly to how it does in the latest iBooks app for iOS. All of the items you’ve purchase from the iTunes Store show up with a cloud icon on the corner of their artwork, and you can either download them or stream them. Streaming music has a slight delay while it buffers, but it’s not much more than Rdio or Spotify. Streaming a movie has a slightly longer delay of course, but not too long. Downloads are quick as well, and there’s a new downloads button in the toolbar that opens the downloads window. Yes, window, not popover. It doesn’t work like the downloads popover in Safari, which is a shame.

The new MiniPlayer is fantastic. You can search through your songs and manage your Up Next queue, which is all you really need if you’re just playing music. If you click on the album artwork on the MiniPlayer, it’ll pop out into its own QuickTime-like window. You can hover over the artwork to access playback controls, so you can use it as a desktop widget.

The new iTunes Store layout takes cues from it’s iOS counterpart. You can swipe to go back and forward in your history, but it doesn’t animate the way it does in the Mac App Store, which is strange. There’s also a new button to show you what previews you’ve listened to. You can share things in the store on Facebook and Twitter, which unfortunately open up web apps and not native OS X share sheets. It’s weird that I have to go an album’s iTunes Store page to share it as well; you can’t do it by simply right clicking on it.

There’s a new feature called Up Next, which replaces iTunes DJ. If you right-click on a song or album and hit “Play next”, it gets added to your Up Next queue. A new button in the playback panel shows a popover with your Up Next queue. You can also show your playback history by clicking the clock icon. iTunes DJ fans might be a little miffed with the update, as Up Next lacks some of its functionality, such as the ability for iOS users to vote on upcoming songs with the Remote app.

The AirPlay popover has been updated, and now allows you to play to multiple devices at once, which is nice. That’s it for new features. All of the old features, with the exception of Ping, are still there.

The little things

Playlist management has been tweaked: When you start dragging a song, a panel slides from the side showing you your playlists. You can then just drag the song to the playlist to add it.
The iTunes icon has been slightly updated, with a white double eighth note instead of a black one. It better matches the App Store icon, but there are still small differences between the two. The iTunes icon is a little glossier, and the double eighth note has a slight gradient to it. I like it better than the old icon, but I still dislike it overall.
If you unhide the sidebar, you may notice that the icons in it have color, as oppossed to the greyscale icons in iTunes 10. Maybe we’ll see colored icons in the sidebar make a comeback on OS X?
There’s a new “On This Phone” tab when managing an iOS device. It’s a simple view of all the media on the device.
When you’re doing multiple things, like playing a song while syncing your phone, arrows show up in the playback panel that let you switch which activity’s progress is shown.
You can no longer use a dark background in Album view, like you could in iTunes 10. Bummer.

Wrap up

iTunes 11 is the best version yet. Hiding the sidebar and status bar was a good move, removing a lot of the visual clutter that made iTunes feel complicated. Expanded Views are fun, and enhance the music listening experience. The MiniPlayer is more powerful, and actually worth using now. All of this adds up to an iTunes that’s modern and fast.

The only thing holding iTunes back is the buying experience itself. With subscription-based services like Rdio and Spotify, you pay a monthly fee and get à la carte access to media without the hassle of having to buy it first. Finding music feels easier on Rdio because I’m only deciding whether it’s in my collection, not whether I want to buy it. There have been rumors that Apple will move to a subscription-based model for the iTunes Store, and I hope they’re true. As usual, we won’t know for sure until Apple makes their move. Until then, the new stuff in iTunes 11 will have to hold us over.

My Siri wish list: 5 things I want to see

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With improvements added in iOS 6, Apple’s mobile voice assistant Siri can now tell you sports scores, reserve a seat at a restaurant, list the latest movies in theaters, and launch apps. While these new features are welcome, there’s still a lot of room for Siri’s capabilities to expand in ways that would make the service even more useful and popular. Here are the five things highest on my wish list.

Show me more than just restaurants and movies

Movies and restaurants are a good start for helping me find entertainment options, but I wish Siri could tell me what concerts are happening in my area as well. Apple could partner with a company like TicketMaster to add this the same way they partnered with Yelp for restaurants.

I also wish Siri could tell me more about content from Apple’s online stores, such as music and books. It would be great if Siri could tell me if there are any new albums or books coming out by my favorite artists, for instance. Apple already knows this information based on what I download from iTunes. Why not put it to better use? Honestly, it’s a little strange that Siri isn’t already integrated better with Apple’s online stores, which already place Apple at a big advantage over its competitors.

Answer questions about my device

Siri can show me a picture of a weasel, but can’t tell me how much space is left on my phone, or how many songs I have in my music library, or even what version of iOS I’m running. It would be so much easier to just ask Siri these things than to dig down into the increasingly complicated Settings app.

Change my settings

Speaking of settings, Siri won’t let me change them via voice control. I wish I could tell her to turn off Wi-Fi, or turn the brightness to 50 percent, or lock my screen orientation. Some Android device users are fond of using widgets to toggle those kinds of settings, and allowing Siri to do the same would be an easy way to get some of the functionality of widgets without actually adding them to iOS.

Remember what she says

As a personal assistant, Siri’s memory isn’t too sharp. You can go back and look at your history while using Siri, but as soon as you dismiss the app she forgets it. The solution to this one is pretty simple: When you ask something new and Siri responds, you should be able to just scroll up to see a longer history, not just for the current session. Or, alternatively, you could just ask Siri, “What have we been talking about?” to go directly to your history.

Learn other languages

Siri can already do simple, single-word translations thanks to Wolfram|Alpha, but it would be great if you could carry out an entire conversation in a foreign language with just Siri as the translator. Apps like iTranslate Voice and SayHi Translate already use Siri-like interfaces for this, so we know it can work well for it. A universal translator has long been one of the Holy Grails of technology, and implementing it for free on the iPhone would be a big deal, especially for frequent travelers.

Did I miss anything? What do you wish Siri could do that isn’t on the list? Tell us in the comments.

Hands on: Shared Photo Streams in iOS 6

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One of the features I’m most excited about in iOS 6, which is coming sometime this fall, is Shared Photo Streams, which allow you to easily share photos directly to the Photos app on another person’s iPhone. Since Apple didn’t demonstrate the feature at WWDC this year, we thought we’d take a look at how it works.

In the Photos app, there’s a new Photo Stream tab. This is where all of your shared Photo Streams are kept, and where you can create new ones. Creating a new shared Photo Stream takes three steps: First, select contacts; second, name your Photo Stream; and third, decide whether it should have a public gallery on icloud.com. The contacts you invited will get a notification from the Photos app and/or an email asking them to accept.

Sharing photos to another photo stream is also easy. Simply choose a photo and hit the share button. iOS 6′s new share dialog box will pop up, with Photo Stream as an option. From there, you’ll get an interface that looks similar to iOS 6′s Twitter integration (at right), where you can add a comment before sharing. The iPhone being shared to will also receive a notification, and a “new” badge will appear over the shared photo in the Photos app. Users can add comments or “like” shared photos. Comments and likes can be hidden by tapping the speech bubble button on the bottom right.

A Photo Streams can also be shared via a public gallery on iCloud. If the person you want to share with doesn’t have an iPhone, you can send them a link to the public gallery instead. The galleries themselves are minimalistic, with a dark background overlaid with a single row of photos. If you tap on a photo, it’ll put that photo in fullscreen mode. From there, you can swipe left or right to view other photos, or turn on slideshow mode. I’ve made a public gallery specifically for TAB, so you can see this feature for yourself.

Contrary to what I thought at first when watching the Shared Photo Streams announcement during the WWDC keynote, new photos can only be added by the person that created the stream. This means that everyone who wants to share things with you has to have their own dedicated stream, rather than one Photo Stream multiple people can add to. Despite this one caveat, Shared Photo Streams certainly beats using Mail or Messages, though Facebook or Instagram would be a better option if the people you share photos with don’t have iPhones. That said, I look forward to using it to share pictures of my niece with my sister come this fall.

Diving into iOS 6: The subtle design changes

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Apple’s announced iOS 6 update is set to bring a lot of changes to its mobile platform, and after using the iOS 6 beta for a day, I’ve found plenty of new features Apple didn’t mention in the keynote on Monday, mostly small design changes, and even a subtle dig at Google.

Changes to iOS’s default look were something I’d hoped for, and the changes Apple made actually exceeded my expectations. Read on to see why.

Redesigned apps

Music

The music app has been completely redesigned in iOS 6, echoing the changes made to the iPad music app in iOS 5. The main browsing interface has a white theme, but the now playing interface is still black. The play/pause and skip buttons have been redesigned as well. Another change is the sliders for volume and progress, which use white and black instead of silver and blue. Also, the chrome effect for slider knobs will actually rotate as you tilt the device, which is a nice detail.

Phone

The keypad in the phone app has been changed to better match iOS’s new default theme. It uses a white color instead of the dark blue from iOS 5. The buttons have also been redesigned with lighter colors and a more three-dimensional look.

Reminders

You can now set priority for reminders and add notes to them. Notes will apear below the reminder in a smaller font. Reminders can also be reordered manually by hitting the Edit button. Last, you now have to swipe on the title of a reminder list to switch to another one instead of just anywhere on the list, and the dots to indicate which list you’re on are gone.

Game Center

Game Center can now plug into Facebook and recommend people from your friends list who also have Game Center. You can also now challenge players to beat your scores, and there’s a new challenges tab where you can see them.

Weather and Camera

The weather app has a new design with a flatter look and a subtle gradient running through it. The Camera app has a black toolbar at the bottom instead of the grey one from iOS 5.

Other changes

If you watched the keynote, you may have noticed that the status bar was blue in a lot of the apps Apple showed. This isn’t the new color for the status bar, however. Instead, the status bar changes color depending on the color of an app’s toolbar. Rdio’s toolbar is bright blue, so the status bar changes to reflect that. Developers can override this behavior, it seems, as Safari uses a black status bar (which is another change).
The share dialogue has been redesigned, and works much the same as the ones already in Garageband and iPhoto for iOS. Instead of a list, a grid of icons is shown, similar to the home screen. Also, sharing to messages, Facebook and Twitter have been added.
The App Store now has Genius, but it isn’t working in the current beta so I can’t tell you much about how it works. Genius, as you’ll recall, is Apple’s intelligent recommendation service built into iTunes and the music app. Bringing it to the App Store makes sense as an alternative to browsing.
iOS will stop correcting words not in the standard dictionary if you cancel the correction often enough. The word will instead be added to your personal dictionary and synced over iCloud.
Apps downloaded from the App Store will now display a “new” badge until you launch them the first time.
When you slide on a notification in the lock screen, the app zooms into view instead of just appearing.
Notification Center can now show you Amber Alerts and other emergency alerts for your area.
Spotlight will now tell you which folder an app is in when you search for it, which makes it easier to find.
The search bar in Safari simply says “Search” instead of “Google,” yet another dig at the company.

Unfortunately, only registered developers have access to the iOS 6 beta, so most of our readers won’t be able to run it and take a look at the pending changes for themselves. We’ve got you covered, though, and we will continue to write about the impending changes as Apple adds them until the new software is released this fall.

Which changes are you most excited for in iOS 6? Tell us in the comments.

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Apple silently updates AirPort Express

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Coming in stealthily under the din of our WWDC coverage, Apple today has updated its AirPort Express wireless router.

The new model doesn’t plug into the wall like the old one. Instead, it looks just like an Apple TV, and even has the exact same dimensions, but comes in white instead of the Apple TV’s black. The back of the device features two Ethernet ports (one WAN, one LAN), a USB port and an analog/optical audio jack for speakers.

Among the new features of the device are support for simultaneous dual-band 802.11n, which means you can use both the 2.4GHz wireless band and the faster 5GHz band at the same time. AirTunes has been replaced with AirPlay, so you can send songs to an AirPort Express from your iPhone or iPad as well as your Mac. Also, if you have more than one AirPort Express connected to speakers, music can be played on all of them at the same time, which is pretty neat.

The new AirPort Express is available now for $100. Now we’re left wondering when the AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule will get updates, or if they’ve gone the way of the 17-inch MacBook Pro.

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6 things I want to see in iOS 6

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WWDC is right around the corner, and with the likely preview of iOS 6 planned for the opening-day keynote, here’s a list of the things I want to see out of the latest mobile operating system from Apple.

Refined notifications

iOS 5’s Notification Center completely revamped the way notifications are handled on iOS devices, but there are some spots that could use small tweaks that could make a big difference in usability. The most common complaint about Notification Center is how small the “clear” buttons are that remove notifications from the dropdown menu. They’re hard to hit even for my fingers. Making them bigger and including a “clear all” button would mitigate this small annoyance.

Another problem is that the Notification Center dropdown menu is hard to find — it wouldn’t surprise me if most people discover it as the result of an accidental swipe. Part of the problem is that when a notification pops up, it gives you no hint as to where it’s going. If notifications slid up and off the screen, rather than flipping over the top of the current application, it would better make known Notification Center’s existence.

Notification Center in its current form also breaks the “layered” UI concept in iOS built by the UIs for Folders, the multitasking tray and Siri, all of which are below iOS’s main UI, while Notification Center slides down from the top. A simple way to fix this would be to have Notification Center “push” the screen down when you swipe. In fact, there’s a jailbreak tweak called Flowtation that does just that (see video above) that Apple could take some cues from.

And last, a Do Not Disturb mode à la OS X Mountain Lion would be nice, allowing you to manually turn off notifications easily. It’d be nice if you could set start and end times for DND as well.

A more useful Siri

Thanks, Siri.

Apple still labels its Siri voice assistant feature as a beta product, and for good reason. When it works, it works incredibly well, but there’ve been times when I’ve been frustrated by Siri’s limitations. It works well with Apple’s apps, but, for instance, if I want to create a note in SimpleNote instead of the Notes app I’m out of luck. Creating a Siri API so that other apps can have specialized commands makes sense. Those that remember using the first iPhone know how limited it was without third-party apps. The same is true of Siri.

Siri could also use more commands to handle regular iOS tasks like turning off Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. One of the annoying things about iOS is that there’s no quick way to toggle these settings; you have to go into Settings and do a little navigating to find them. Adding this functionality to Siri would make these tasks far more efficient.

I also hope Siri gets full functionality in countries outside the United States, where mapping and Yelp data aren’t available.

Updated looks

iOS was introduced in 2007 with the original iPhone. Not much has changed in the basic look of iOS since then. Tab bars, toolbars and lists all look the same as they did five years ago. The Settings app still has pinstripes, a visual feature that hasn’t been used in OS X since Tiger. It feels like it’s time for a refresh.

Thankfully, it seems Apple agrees. You may have noticed that iPhoto for iOS uses a neutral silver-colored theme for its tab bar and background. Apple’s recently released WWDC app also has the same silver theme. This could just be an experiment, of course. Apple’s used iTunes as a UI testing bed for years, so they may just be doing the same thing here. But it could also mean we’ll see more broad changes to the look and feel of iOS soon.

A new Safari

We’ve covered the improvements made to Safari in Mountain Lion extensively, and I’d really like those improvements to trickle down to Safari on iOS as well. A unified search and address bar, access to iCloud tabs, an offline Reading List and a new loading animation would be excellent additions to the best mobile browser out there.

AirDrop

AirDrop was a feature introduced in OS X Lion that allows you to wirelessly transfer files from one Mac to another. That’s great for two people wtih Macs, but what if one of them has an iPhone? Why shouln’t I be able to AirDrop some documents from my Mac to a friend’s iPhone? Or from his iPhone to mine? Having AirDrop on iOS would make collaboration far easier, and would save me from having to email files back and forth with someone in the same room.

Better inter-app communication

Mac OS X has had a feature called Services since it debuted, something it inherited from NeXTSTEP. Services are basically a simple form of inter-app communication. If I selected some text in Safari, say, I could then email that selected text by using going to the Services menu and clicking that option. iOS doesn’t have anything like this. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just select some text, hit a button, and share it with another app?

On Android, an app can share data with any other app that can accept whatever data’s being shared through its Intents API. That’s a mouthful, but it basically means that I could share a photo from the photos app to the Facebook app just by hitting a button and choosing it. I think Apple’s been hesitant to implement something like this because the list of apps tends to get bloated (when I used Android, I had a list of 12 apps I could share photos to). However, I think the utility of this feature outweighs this drawback.

I’d be perfectly happy if only a few of these items make it into iOS 6. Either way, I’m looking forward to some surprises at WWDC 2012.

What do you want to see out of iOS 6? Tell us in the comments.

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Mountain Lion creeps forward: new features in the developer preview

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In February, we took a look at smaller changes in the pre-release version of OS X Mountain Lion that Mac developers are using. These changes are good indications of what we’ll see when the final version goes live sometime this summer. Apple has released two new previews since then with quite a few updates — some significant, some seriously minor, and some that have even undone changes since we last wrote about it.

Here’s what’s new:

General changes

The App Store now supports automatic downloads, which is one of the things I’d hoped Apple would add. You can also go backward and forward in the App Store and Game Center with two fingers, the same as Safari. Notably, you still can’t do this in the Finder.
There’s a new popover for choosing avatars, which is used in Game Center and the Users and Groups pane in System Preferences.
You can no longer remove apps and stacks from the Dock by simply dragging them off. You have to do it by right-clicking, which I expect is going to draw the ire of many power users.
Launchpad is no longer arranged alphabetically. The “Utilities” folder has also been renamed to “Others”.
The linen background in Mission Control is slightly darker than in Lion.
Font Book now has a full-screen mode and two smart folders in the sidebar for fixed-width fonts and monospaced fonts.
The battery item in the menu bar has been simplified so that the only option is to show the percentage left or not. Showing time left has been removed.
~~You can go from one stack to another in the Dock with one click. In Lion, clicking another stack with one already open just closes the current stack.~~ (Updated: Sorry, this isn’t new to Mountain Lion. Turns out, it doesn’t work in Lion when your Dock is hidden — which mine was — but does when unhidden.)

Safari

There’s a new button for iCloud tabs, which allows access to tabs on other devices.
There’s a new page-loading animation, which you can see in this YouTube video.
Web apps can send native notifications through Safari, as evidenced by the new Notification Center tab in Safari’s preferences.
Reading List has a new look, with a more neutral background color and paper texture instead of linen. It also supports offline reading.
When you download a file in Safari in Lion, the file flies into the downloads button. In Mountain Lion, it flies into the downloads stack in the Dock, and a progress indicator appears over the stack.
Safari has a more “responsive” UI: when you resize a window past a certain point, buttons will be hidden to save space.
There’s a new tab button next to the bookmarks bar when only one tab is open and the tab bar is hidden.

Notification Center

There’s a new “do not disturb” mode, which disables notifications when active.
The menu bar icon has a gray dot in the middle, rather than black. It also changes into a moon when do not disturb mode is on.
There’s a new button in the lower-righthand corner that’ll take you to Notification Center’s preference pane in System Preferences.

System Preferences

The General perefence pane has been simplified. The options for smooth scrolling and double-click to minimize are gone, with the latter being moved to the Dock preference pane. The three dropdowns for the number of recent items has been consolidated into one. The dropdown for choosing the sidebar icon size has been moved to the top section. Finally, there’s a new checkbox for “Ask to keep changes when closing documents.”
The preferences for “tap to click” have been moved into the Trackpad pane and are enabled by default.
The Mission Control pane now has the option to disable grouping windows by application, so all windows will be shown the same way.
Time Machine’s pane has been updated slightly, with flatter buttons and a simpler explanation of what Time Machine does.

Updated and undone changes

When you edit a document that’s just been saved, the “Edited” text in the toolbar no longer flashes blue three times.
In the Versions menu, there’s now an option to revert to the last opened version.
When copying a large file, the iOS-like progress indicator is the only one that appears, completely replacing the traditional copy dialogue.

What do you think of the new changes? Tell us in the comments.

Header image via Flicker user sigsegv.

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Quick tip: Reclaim space in a pinch on iOS devices

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I should have bought the 32 GB iPhone, I thought to myself as I tried to update GarageBand on my iPhone. I don’t have enough space to download the update, the dialog box tells me.

For those of us that tend to fill our phones to the brim with apps and media, this is a familiar scenario. However, there’s a neat trick to make it easier to temporarily reclaim space on your iOS device. In short, simply delete music on your device until you have enough room, and then resync (wirelessly, of course) with iTunes when you don’t need the extra space anymore. All of the music you deleted will be right back where it was.

Deleting music is easy. In the Music app, you swipe across the title of an artist/song/album, then hit the delete button that appears. By deleting all the albums by Modest Mouse on my phone, I was able to save about 600 MB of space, which was enough to download the GarageBand update. A quick resync later, and my music was back.

If you have any more tips on saving space in iOS, tell us about them in the comments.

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