iPhones Phonetic Name Fields

post from Daring Fireball on 19 October 2011 11:03:48 PM. © Daring Fireball

Shawn Blanc:

Two little-known fields in iPhone contact cards are the PhoneticFirst and Last Names. Fill them in to help Siri understand yourrequests better and to keep Siri from mispronouncing the names ofyour friends and family.

The field isn’t new, but the usefulness for Siri is.

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Read The Full Article:
http://shawnblanc.net/2011/10/phonetic-name-fields/

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Font Hipsters

post from Daring Fireball on 19 October 2011 11:03:48 PM. © Daring Fireball

Thom Holwerda, OS News:

Ice Cream Sandwich also introduces a new font, Roboto, which isthe default font all throughout Android 4.0. It’s designed forhigh-density displays, and, as always with anything that isn’tZOMGHELVETICAGGNRFFRRRR, the font hipsters are hating onit[] like crazy.

No one — no one — is criticizing Roboto because it isn’t Helvetica. If anything, the complaint is that it’s too similar to Helvetica. Nor is anyone suggesting that Android should use Helvetica as its system font. In fact, if they did use Helvetica as their system font, the criticism would be louder, insofar as they’d be seen as copying from Apple. (Of course, they couldn’t use Helvetica, because Helvetica can’t be included in an open source OS, but that’s beside the point.)

The criticism is simply that Roboto ungainly, homely, unharmonious.

Of course, had Apple used this font, it would’ve been awesomeand beautifully elegant and understated and magical (how’s thatComic Sans rip-off Marker Felt that’s infesting iOS working outfor ya?).

If Apple chose a font as ugly as Roboto as the system font for iOS, both type and UI designers would be driven into apoplexy with rage. We love great design and beautiful things, and Apple tends to produce great design and beautiful things — we don’t blindly love Apple and claim all it produces is great. I dare you to find one critic of Roboto who claims to be a fan of Marker Felt. Here’s me complaining about it on the first day the iPhone was available: “Marker Felt is silly, ugly, and worst of all, hard to read.”

Alas, I like [Roboto], I think it looks nice.

That’s one.

It’s certainly not as beautiful as Metro’s excellent Segoe-basedtypography, but then again — nothing is.

On Segoe, we agree. But note that everyone agrees. No one from Holwerda’s imaginary Apple-defending Helvetica-loving cabal has anything but praise for Segoe, as Metro’s system font. It’s attractive, readable, friendly, and distinctive.

Honestly, I’m just selfish. I want Android to have an attractive system font, if for no other reason than that the system font is going to be used to render Daring Fireball for anyone reading it on an Android device. This idea that designers who favor iOS criticize Android for being poorly designed just because it’s from an Apple competitor is nonsense — a bogeyman construct dreamed up by open source zealots who refuse to believe over a decade of evidence that open source UIs tend to be ugly, and that ugly UIs tend to be unpopular. We criticize Android for being poorly designed because it’s poorly designed. We favor iOS because it’s better designed. That’s it.

Read The Full Article:
http://daringfireball.net/2011/10/font_hipsters

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Yonhap News: Galaxy Nexus Designed to Bypass
Apple Patents

post from Daring Fireball on 19 October 2011 10:04:02 PM. © Daring Fireball

Lee Youkyung, reporting for Yonhap News:

The Galaxy Nexus smartphone, the first handset built using a newversion of the Android system called “ice cream sandwich,” isdesigned to bypass potential legal attacks from Apple Inc., themobile chief of Samsung Electronics Co. said.
“Now we will avoid everything we can and take patents veryseriously,” Shin told reporters Tuesday on the eve of the GalaxyNexus launch. His comments were embargoed until Wednesday.

As opposed to all their previous phones?

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Read The Full Article:
http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/business/2011/10/19/26/0501000000AEN2011101900020
0320F.HTML

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Remember the Milk, Now Integrated With Siri

post from Daring Fireball on 19 October 2011 10:04:02 PM. © Daring Fireball

Remember the Milk now works with Siri. How? The added CalDAV server support — add your Remember the Milk account as a CalDAV server on your iPhone, and set that account to be the default for reminders, and boom — new reminders created with Siri will go there. Clever.

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Read The Full Article:
http://www.rememberthemilk.com/services/siri/

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China Is Now Apples Second-Most Important Market

post from Daring Fireball on 19 October 2011 10:04:02 PM. © Daring Fireball

Erica Ogg:

Calling the progress in China ?amazing,? Cook said that if youcount the greater China region as a whole (which includes HongKong and Taiwan) it now accounts for 12 percent of Apple?sfull-year revenue for 2011. That?s up from just 2 percent infiscal year 2009, he said. That makes it Apple?s?fastest-growing region by far.?

Wonder if there’s any room for growth in China.

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Read The Full Article:
http://gigaom.com/apple/china-is-now-apples-second-most-important-market/

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Phloat App Relaxes While Challenges The Mind

post from prMac on 19 October 2011 09:05:00 PM. © prMac

P.NOLAND.GAMES has released their first iOS game to the Apple App store. Phloat is a simple yet addictive iOS game available for download that allows the player to float around space while trying to avoid collision with other objects. As simple as this may sound it is quite the opposite! You must use your reflexes and focus to stay moving while dodging objects while collecting fuel to stay moving. The player must keep an eye out for power items that will appear to help them stay alive!

Read The Full Article:
http://prmac.com/release-id-32651.htm

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Lytro Camera

post from Daring Fireball on 19 October 2011 08:03:36 PM. © Daring Fireball

Speaking of fascinating new imaging technology, Lytro today started taking preorders for their new “light field technology” camera. The result allows you to “focus” the image after it was taken. Sounds amazing, and the examples look good. I’ll let others be the guinea pigs on this, but I’m tempted.

(In another sign of the changing times, their desktop editing software only supports one platform, and that’s the Mac, not Windows.)

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Read The Full Article:
https://www.lytro.com/camera

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Image Deblurring

Fascinating new research from Adobe. (Via Scott Beale.)

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Read The Full Article:
http://blogs.adobe.com/photoshopdotcom/2011/10/behind-all-the-buzz-deblur-sneak-p
eek.html

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'Face Frenzy - Monster Edition' just in time for
Halloween

3PigProductions, has released Face Frenzy - Monster Edition 1.0, for the iPhone. It is a fun filled iPhone simulation game that allows a user to choose a favorite monster character and help them prepare for their night by controlling various monstrous facial aliments using a vast selection of tools. Just in time for Halloween, monsters in a frenzy to get their faces ready. Try to keep their mood high before the time runs out and their night is ruined. High scores depend on how quickly you work.

Read The Full Article:
http://prmac.com/release-id-32434.htm

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The Sandbox Is Not Optional on iOS

From a post at ReadWriteWeb by Dan Rowinski on Lookout, a “security” app for the iPhone:

Lookout has created an app that is as simple as the iPhone. It islightweight, easy to use and works. In terms of malware, Lookoutcan add its Android-style virus detector if iOS is ever drowned inmalware.

No, it can’t. App Store apps can only read and write to the file system within their own sandbox. They can’t examine other apps, nor the data of other apps. There will never be third-party antivirus software in the App Store so long as the sandboxing rules remain in place. And so long as the sandboxing rules remain in place, there shouldn’t need to be.

We can argue about whether you should run anti-malware software on your Mac. But it can’t even exist on non-jailbroken iOS devices.

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Read The Full Article:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/mobile/2011/10/where-is-the-iphone-malware-lo.php

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