Interface Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Apple updates look and feel of App Store on iOS

by Mike Schramm (Nov 17th, 2011)

Apple has updated the App Store as usual today with the newest staff picks and featured apps for the week, but there's one other new touch (so to speak) on the iPhone and iPad. You can now simply swipe in the App Store's featured window to flip through pages of apps, as pointed out by ...

Former Apple interface expert rants on Microsoft's "Vision of the Future" video

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Nov 10th, 2011)

A few weeks ago Microsoft came out with a future of productivity video proposing a very touchscreen-based future for us humans. A former human-computer interface inventor for Apple, Brett Victor, has picked apart this video in a beautifully designed "rant" on his site, essentially taking ...

'Invisible' touchscreen prototype tested with iPhone

by Mike Schramm (May 23rd, 2011)

The video on the next page features a prototype for an "invisible" iPhone created by researchers at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Germany. Basically, the idea is that with your iPhone in your pocket, you can hold your hand out and move your finger around on it as if you were holding your ...

Thunderbolt peripherals announced at NAB this week

by Mike Schramm (Apr 11th, 2011)

Sure, you've got a shiny new MacBook Pro with that top-of-the-line Thunderbolt interface, but odds are that you don't have anything besides a DisplayPort adapter to plug it into yet! Worry not -- the National Association of Broadcasters is meeting in Las Vegas this week, and a few companies ...

Pioneer demos new iPhone-powered in-dash interface

by Mike Schramm (Mar 29th, 2011)

We first heard about Pioneer's AVIC in-car units back at CES earlier this year, but earlier today, the company was kind enough to drive a Land Rover up to my curb here in Los Angeles, and I checked out the system in action. The main unit, as you can see in the picture above, is a pretty ...

Aza Raskin shares Jef Raskin's 1981 memo on the genesis of the Macintosh

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Feb 14th, 2011)

If you don't already know Jef Raskin's name, you should spend some time getting to know his work. His son, Aza Raskin, turned out to be a bit of a prodigy, eventually doing important and amazing work at Mozilla in the Labs department. Aza's latest endeavor is a company called Massive Health. His ...

Macworld Expo 2011: Smart Technologies' interactive whiteboards

by Mike Schramm (Feb 1st, 2011)

One of the most interesting booths at last week's Macworld Expo was that of Smart Technologies, who were showing off their interactive touch surface systems. These aren't necessarily Mac-related, unfortunately -- the equipment Smart sells is just an interface, or rather a series of interfaces ...

Papershow for Teachers introduced at Macworld 2011

by Mike Schramm (Jan 28th, 2011)

Papershow made a big splash last year at Macworld during its introduction, and since then has apparently sold fairly well in business circles (the product is now being sold in Staples as well). This year, Papershow is introducing a new edition styled for education applications, called Papershow ...

Boxee demonstrated on iPad at CES 2011

by Mike Schramm (Jan 8th, 2011)

As soon as we heard that Boxee was demoing their iPad version at this year's CES conference, we had to hunt them down and see it. We found them over at Iomega's booth (stay tuned for a writeup of an Iomega product designed to help iPhone backups as well), and asked to see the app. It's about what ...

Apple patents Cover Flow-like spiral interface

by Mike Schramm (Dec 16th, 2010)

Patently Apple has unearthed a new patent that shows off a Cover Flow-like interface for browsing icons or album covers, only instead of Cover Flow's linear layout, this one organizes content in a spiral. We've seen rotating menus in Apple's patents before, but this looks more involved. It's ...

Apple patent reveals scrollable menus, toolbars for OS X Lion

by Mike Schramm (Nov 8th, 2010)

Apple has filed a patent featuring some concepts for scrollable menus and toolbars that could eventually be used in the next version of OS X, 10.7 Lion. The new patent covers all kinds of things, from extra UI elements in the OS X desktop to special iOS menus and features. But they all look like ...

Artist creates real-life home icon

by Mike Schramm (Nov 3rd, 2010)

Artist Johannes P. Osterhoff (whom you may remember from his paintings using OS X elements) has been reusing Apple's interface elements again. His latest project is a real-life construction of the Home icon from OS X, which he's made into a wearable display. The doors and shutters are actually ...

TUAW's Daily App: FlightBoard

by Mike Schramm (Oct 18th, 2010)

I can't say I'm a huge traveler -- even though I've hit up quite a few conventions this year for work, I haven't been flying so much that I need to keep tabs on what's going on at the airport. But I like the idea of FlightBoard anyway. It's an app that will automatically create a departing flights ...

Blind user explains why he loves the iPhone

by Mike Schramm (Sep 20th, 2010)

Here's a wild little story that made its way around the blogonets this past weekend -- it was originally posted in June, but it got recirculated on Twitter, and we first heard it from Steve Troughton-Smith. Austin Seraphin is a blind person, and he says that getting an iPhone changed his life ...

Ping reaches a million, attacked by spam

by Mike Schramm (Sep 7th, 2010)

Apple's new social network, Ping, has been around for about a week now, and all of the pundits have had their chance at weighing in on what Apple got wrong and right. And what's the result? Not bad, but not great -- more than a million people joined the network in just 48 hours. That's not terrible ...