We've actually posted about Smart Scroll before, but the video is a pretty good demonstration of what's happening here. I'm not quite sure this is something Apple will want to implement in the OS, however -- it feels right enough on the iPhone, but I kind of like that my scroll wheel stops when I tell it to. If you'd rather have the iPhone experience on your usual Mac, however, the app is available as a free trial, or a complete license for $19.
Way back in 2006 – after the excitement of the Midterm Elections and before the launch of the Wii – Hetima wrote MissingDrawer, a plugin for the oft-mentionedTextMate that took the standard-issue OS X drawer used by TextMate project file lists and turned it into an Xcode-like pane embedded in the edit window. It was lauded by many as a major improvement of the TextMate UI, but has gone pretty much untouched since then, perhaps because it was good enough for most users to begin with. But Jannis Leidel saw room for improvement.
The new MissingDrawer builds off of the original, adding some aesthetic UI tweaks along with some usability polish. On the aesthetic front, it increases the line height of the file list, shrinks the project buttons and tweaks the file list frame. A new resize method accompanies the Mail.app-style resizer handle and the position of the splitter pane is saved automatically now. And lastly, the panel now hides when using the Show/Hide Project Drawer menu item or shortcut.
You can download the 2008 MissingDrawer (including source code) at Jannis' site, and installation is a couple of double clicks away. TextMate users who liked the first version of the plugin will surely appreciate the touch-up. I know I do.
The developers at Panic have released CandyBar version 3.1.2. If you're unfamiliar, CandyBar 3 is a super simple and fun way to customize Mac OS X's icons and dock (Leopard required). Version 3 introduced some very cool features - like Pixadex integration - that make this killer app even cooler.
Changes to version 3.1.2 include:
Importing Pixadex libraries on first launch is more reliable
Application and volume icons update more reliably in the Finder
Fixed a potential problem with generic file icons
There's more, of course, and you can read the change log here. CandyBar 3.1.2 is a free upgrade for registered users for version 3.x (a single license will cost you $29US).
Everyone knows that you can use a single finger to scroll web pages in Mobile Safari but it's less well known that you can use two fingers to scroll frames and other subpage elements. Normally, on personal computers, you use a separate scroll bar for webpage frames. On the iPhone and iPod touch, these scroll bars do not appear and the content expands to fill the frame set area. By using two fingers at once, you tell Mobile Safari to scroll the element rather than then entire page. I find this especially useful when filling out forms with scrolling selections such as when I do blog posts and need to add categories.
The iPhone offers many ways to send mail. Unfortunately, consistency is not the strong point here. You'd imagine Apple would have designed a single universally recognized "compose email" button and placed it more-or-less in the same place for each application. You'd be wrong. Here's a quick run-down of several extremely different ways to create a new message across several programs:
Compose Button. The compose button, which looks like a square with a pencil through it, appears at the bottom right of many Mail screens and in the SMS Text application at the top-right of the screen. The Reply/Forward button appears just to the left of the Compose icon in Mail. Tap this to reply to a message or forward it on to another party.
Envelope Icon. In the Notes application, the envelope icon appears on the bottom of the page, to the left of the garbage can. Tap it to email the current note.
Use-For Icon. The use-photo-for icon appears at the bottom left of the screen. It looks like a rectangle with an arrow jumping out of it-the arrow is basically a mirror of the Reply/Forward button. Tap this and select Email Photo from the pop-up menu.
Share. You can share YouTube video and Safari URLs by email. Tap the Share button on the Information page in YouTube and in the navigate-to-URL screen in Safari. To find this in YouTube, tap the blue reveal button located to the right of the video name. In Safari, tap on the URL bar and then look up and to the left.
So why so many ways to do what is essentially the same task? This inconsistent design speaks volumes to me about rushing the iPhone to market. It's as if the different groups simply didn't have time to communicate with each other and standardize the way they do what is truly a core task with consistent icons and naming. What do you think? Let me know in the comments.
TUAW reader o!ivier has posted a mockup to his Flickr account of how he believes the iPhoto '08 Events UI should have been designed. Seeing it as a more natural evolution of what Apple is doing with Mac OS X and their apps (iTunes, Finder in Leopard, etc.), o!ivier believes Apple should have built in Cover Flow for browsing events instead of the new 'skimming' UI, where users run their mouse over resizable thumbnails to see all the photos contained in the event scroll by. Instead, this Cover Flow mockup proposes the idea of scrolling left and right through Events just like you scroll through albums in iTunes. Clicking an event produces thumbnails of all the images laid out in the area below, which can then be resized independently from the Cover Flow area.
I rarely prefer design mockups like this over what Apple produces, but I have to admit: I think Apple dropped the ball here. O!ivier's mockup looks far more useful, as you can browse through Events and view resizable thumbnails of all the photos they contain without leaving the Events UI. Don't get me wrong, skimming is cute, but Cover Flow + iPhoto looks like it would look just as slick but provide a far more useful working environment.
Who knows - Maybe Apple just wants to wait for users to get used to Cover Flow in Leopard's Finder. After all, they need to give us at least a few reasons to upgrade to iLife '09, right?
AppleHound has posted a list of all the (supposedly) reproducible bugs they could find in iPhone 1.0. There's 68 in total, and they range from various system hangs (the Phone app will hang if you start a sync while editing a contact photo) to many different UI/Usability bugs. Some of the usability bugs are a little iffy if you ask me-- many of them, like the "bug" where photo albums with less than 20 images don't display an actual number of images, seem to be "working as intended" (because why would you need an image count when you can easily see how many images are there?), and others have already been shot down according to the Apple HIG.
But on the other hand, I can't really fault AppleHound for being such sticklers. First of all, this is a cell phone that costs $600, and you should get what you pay for-- quibbling about interface quirks now means there's a much better chance of getting them fixed in a future firmware update. And second, this is Apple we're talking about. While other cell phone companies get complaints about call reception and service outages, these are complaints about tiny, half-a-second visual inconsistencies. Heck, I love my Razr, and the screen goes nuts without reason almost daily. There's nothing wrong with holding Apple to a higher standard, and maybe if Apple is kept on their toes with the iPhone, hopefully other cell phone companies will find themselves with their feet held to the fire as well.
If you've seen any pictures or movies of Leopard's (mostly) final UI in action from this week's WWDC events or the new Leopard section at apple.com, you've probably noticed that Apple has introduced a new design to their menubar, Desktop and Dock (watch the video to see these new toys in action). The new Dock features an updated design with some eye candy that some might find more useful than others, while the menubar has gone semi-transparent in an effort to place more emphasis on an uncluttered desktop and allowing users to feature their favorite photos and desktop images.
As usual, when an OS maker dabbles with revamping some of their most standard UI conventions, not everyone will want to hop on the train for a ride. Peter Maurer and the crew at Many Tricks (makers of apps like Butler, Service Scrubber, yFlicks and more) are apparently so uninterested in taking a trip with the transparent menubar that they produced what is quite possibly the first non-transparent menubar hack for Leopard. Being that I am but a lowly professional blogger, I have no copy of Leopard on which to tinker with this mod, but given the historic quality of work from Maurer and Many Tricks, I would imagine it's written well, and the source is even provided for those who would like to have their way with this modification.
Now that we've seen the true Leopard in action and a mod for part of its UI has appeared less than a week after the unveiling, it will be interesting to see how the rest of the Mac community - particularly the developers who have the power to make modifications like this - will lay down their opinions through work like Maurer's.
Since the iPhone's introduction in January, the requests and baiting rumors for a touch-screen iPod that looks and acts like an iPhone - sans the actual phone - have sounded from every corner of the web. The world is inarguably intrigued by this new UI Apple developed for their highly anticipated gadget, and many are waiting with bated breath and credit card in hand, believing the iPod will naturally gain these touchy-feely features any day now. The only problem is: there's no way in Cupertino that's going to happen. At least, not anytime soon.
Put yourself in Apple's shoes: you've just smashed one out of the park with the iPod. You spent a few years working on it, polishing it, developing generation after generation of updates that instantly make the previous version look old 'n busted. After a slow start, you eventually take the DMP (Digital Media Player) market by storm, beating out a few major companies at their own game. Six years and a ton of 3rd party accessories later, you are the king of this particular domain, with what appears to be nary a formidable challenger in sight.
Next: imagine that, after introducing the iPod and giving it that nudge it needed to skyrocket in popularity, you embark on another project, spending at least four and a half years developing a killer mobile phone + DMP + internet device the likes the world has never seen. A gadget so cool and anticipated that it is not only shaking up the mobile phone market, but it single-handedly drowns out the entirety of CES during the week of its introduction. A key factor here, oh reader who is momentarily in Apple's shoes, is that the mobile phone market currently speaks in the mouth-watering language of 'billions,' while Apple's iPod sales - impressive as they may be - are playing in the kiddie pool at 'millions.' Whether you want a mobile phone packed into your iPod or not, you can't ignore the fact that the mobile phone market makes iPod sales look like the Zune's on a good day.
Apple has released a Pro Application Support 4.0 update that "improves general user interface reliability for Apple's professional applications." Basically, if you use any of the Final Cut Suite apps, Aperture, Final Cut Express HD or Logic products, you'll probably see this in Software Update. Strangely, as with previous Pro Application Support updates, there isn't a whole lot of extra information as to what this update fixes, or what bugs and quirks it squashes; it's just 6 MB of UI update goodness, I guess.
As long as I can remember - at least since Mac OS X 10.4 and possibly even 10.3 - Mail.app hasn't been able to maintain column widths to save its life. It doesn't matter if I never touch the window width, or if I manually set each column exactly where I want it, or even if I ask nicely - Mail.app almost seems to enjoy playing an obnoxious game of 'what me worry?' with my column widths, tossing them to the digital wind at every opportunity. Run a search? Hello suddenly-double-sized-Attachment-column. Put on a pot of coffee in between TUAW posts? Better make extra room for the Date Received column, cuz there's no telling how much space it's going to gobble up behind my back.
Ok fine, for the record: I don't actually believe Mail.app can tell when I'm making coffee. Still, the point stands: Mail.app needs to brush up on the 'How to be a Good Lil App' rules and learn how to keep everything in its place.
With hacks of all kinds appearing at lightning speed to make the Apple TV do everything from play XviD movies to store more than a mere 40GB, I thought it might be time to step back and look at some of the things it can't do. Granted, many things are possible when a device like this lands in the hands of those who don't take no for an answer, but most of these issues I've found are rooted in features that Apple neglected to create (or in some cases, mimic from their other software and devices). So until someone hacks and slashes their way through the Apple TV's closed source software, let's examine some of the tricks it can't do:
I'm not one to fiddle with the appearance of my Mac's UI. I think Apple did a pretty good job, and I see no reason to change it. That being said, certain parts of OS X's default appearance can be a little inconsistent, and the custom UI theme called UNO was designed to make OS X consistent across the board. UNO 1.5 has just been released, and it is a complete rewrite of everyone's favorite OS X theme. If you want to banish Brushed Metal from your Mac, or just like the look of the so called 'Unified Toolbar,' then UNO is worth checking out.
This isn't the most advanced tip in the book, but I found the trick darn handy last night while performing some badly needed library cleanup. In iTunes, you can open a second window for almost any item in your sources list on the left - the iTunes Store, a playlist or - interestingly - even a folder of playlists. While your library items such as Music, Movies and TV Shows are unfortunately exempt from this convenience, you can simply double-click any of these items to open them in their own window, minus a source list of their own. This is great for having easy access to playing music in one window while you work in another, perhaps cleaning up files, like I was, shopping at the store, or building a new playlist.
Mac OS X's Aqua UI is a mighty purty thing, what with its oh-so-slightly transparent menus, gun metal finish and lickable blue dialog buttons. But what if you want to mold the look of the Mac OS to your bidding or apply a new theme? We've blogged about the likes of ShapeShifter and CandyBar here at TUAW before, but Appleication just put together a roundup of 10 UI modification apps that can enhance your Mac's look and feel in just about every way possible. Armed with this list, you'll have everything you need to set movies and websites as your desktop background, dim apps in the background to get your concentration on, bring that unified look to all your apps and even add the power of multiple desktops to your workflow. Even better for those of you still trying to recover from the blow to your budget after the holidays, most of the apps on this list are free.
Way back in 2006 – after the excitement of the Midterm Elections and before the launch of the Wii – Hetima wrote MissingDrawer, a plugin for the oft-mentioned TextMate that took the standard-issue OS X drawer used by TextMate project file lists and turned it into an Xcode-like pane embedded in the edit window. It was lauded by many as a major improvement of the TextMate UI, but has gone pretty much untouched since then, perhaps because it was good enough for most users to begin with. But Jannis Leidel saw room for improvement.
The developers at Panic have released CandyBar version 3.1.2. If you're unfamiliar, CandyBar 3 is a super simple and fun way to customize Mac OS X's icons and dock (Leopard required). Version 3 introduced some very cool features - like Pixadex integration - that make this killer app even cooler.
AppleHound has posted a list of all the (supposedly) reproducible bugs they could find in iPhone 1.0. There's 68 in total, and they range from various system hangs (the Phone app will hang if you start a sync while editing a contact photo) to many different UI/Usability bugs. Some of the usability bugs are a little iffy if you ask me-- many of them, like the "bug" where photo albums with less than 20 images don't display an actual number of images, seem to be "working as intended" (because why would you need an image count when you can easily see how many images are there?), and others have already been shot down according to the Apple HIG.
If you've seen any pictures or movies of Leopard's (mostly) final UI in action from this week's WWDC events or the new Leopard section at apple.com, you've probably noticed that Apple has introduced a new design to their menubar, Desktop and Dock (watch the video to see these new toys in action). The new Dock features an updated design with some eye candy that some might find more useful than others, while the menubar has gone semi-transparent in an effort to place more emphasis on an uncluttered desktop and allowing users to feature their favorite photos and desktop images.
Since the iPhone's introduction in January, the requests and baiting rumors for a touch-screen iPod that looks and acts like an iPhone - sans the actual phone - have sounded from every corner of the web. The world is inarguably intrigued by this new UI Apple developed for their highly anticipated gadget, and many are waiting with bated breath and credit card in hand, believing the iPod will naturally gain these touchy-feely features any day now. The only problem is: there's no way in Cupertino that's going to happen. At least, not anytime soon.
With hacks of all kinds appearing at lightning speed to make the Apple TV do everything from play XviD movies to store more than a mere 40GB, I thought it might be time to step back and look at some of the things it can't do. Granted, many things are possible when a device like this lands in the hands of those who don't take no for an answer, but most of these issues I've found are rooted in features that Apple neglected to create (or in some cases, mimic from their other software and devices). So until someone hacks and slashes their way through the Apple TV's closed source software, let's examine some of the tricks it can't do:
Mac OS X's Aqua UI is a mighty purty thing, what with its oh-so-slightly transparent menus, gun metal finish and lickable blue dialog buttons. But what if you want to mold the look of the Mac OS to your bidding or apply a new theme? We've blogged about the likes of ShapeShifter and CandyBar here at TUAW before, but Appleication just put together a roundup of 10 UI modification apps that can enhance your Mac's look and feel in just about every way possible. Armed with this list, you'll have everything you need to set movies and websites as your desktop background, dim apps in the background to get your concentration on, bring that unified look to all your apps and even add the power of multiple desktops to your workflow. Even better for those of you still trying to recover from the blow to your budget after the holidays, most of the apps on this list are free.
