It would seem that controlling things using gestures is fast becoming the new thing to do. Microsoft have enjoyed great success with their Kinect motion detecting hardware that allows users to use their bodies as the controller for certain games as well as navigating through menus with gestures. An increasing number of iOS apps are starting to include gesture-based user interfaces that allow users to navigate through the various app screens using a number of different gestures including flicks and swipes.
JoinedDecember 18, 2011
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A technology enthusiast, former software developer, and current Head of Quality and Testing at a leading SaaS company. A developer of multiple apps. A lover of pleasing people and a believer in being your authentic self.
Ever since the introduction of iOS 5, Notification Center based tweaks have been all the rage. It seems that barely a day passes by without a developer dreaming up a new way to use the Notification hub for jailbreak purposes. Developer Ron Melkihor has come up with ClipboardEdit for Notification Center, which as the name might suggest allows jailbroken users to manipulate copied text strings directly through NC.
Apple have responded to a number of complaints raised by users, who have been seeing their 10.6 version of iTunes crashing in random situations. It would seem that when Apple released iTunes 10.6 after the new iPad media event in San Francisco, they inadvertently introduced a number of bugs which became apparent when users were playing videos, changing artwork size whilst in grid view and synchronizing photographs to an attached iOS device.
Remember those rumors a few years back about the possibilities of Apple releasing some kind of magical and revolutionary touchscreen Mac contraption? If you do then you will no doubt remember that they were quickly squashed due to the fact that they believed using a touchscreen interface on a Mac-like machine would prove to be unnatural and offer a terrible user experience. The company quickly followed up with the launch of the original iPad, a device that has achieved phenomenal success.
For those who prefer to embark on their iOS journey in a landscape orientation, it may be slightly annoying that certain native apps and parts of the OS isn’t set-up with landscape support. Apps such as the default Settings app are strictly portrait-only affairs and no matter how ferociously you flip that device around; it refuses to to budge. The same goes for the multitasking switcher tray which can be invoked by double tapping the Home button on the device. The bar that appears along the bottom on the screen containing backgrounded apps is designed to work in portrait mode only.
Over the last few months a number of vulnerabilities have been found within the iOS platform that could potentially allow some ethically challenged individuals to gain access to certain parts of a user’s handset if it is lost or stolen, even if a passcode lock is enabled. The methods used have generally been long winded and allows access mainly to the device’s Camera Roll, recent call logs, as well as allowing the perpetrator to be able to make outgoing voice or FaceTime calls in some cases. Being able to circumvent the passcode lock and access that kind of minimal data is concerning, but on the grander scale of things hardly represents a massive breach.
Although Apple pushed out iOS 5.1 along with the release of the new iPad earlier this month, it didn't really bring any earth shattering changes to delight the iOS user community. One of the additions that Tim Cook and his team talked about is the fact that they have removed the option to double tap the Home button on the lockscreen to display a camera shortcut button in favor of permanently displaying a camera icon that reacts to a swipe up gesture.
The lack of Messages app alternatives on Cydia could be either due to the fact that biteSMS and others have pretty much covered all bases and are extremely functional, or it could have something to do with the amount of work involved in creating such an app. Whatever the reason, the guys over at Handcent haven't been deterred and have released their HandcentSMS app through the Cydia store which they believe can unlock the messaging potential of a user’s iPhone. HandcentSMS is an entirely free, very powerful and highly customizable alternative to Apple's native app which handles both SMS and MMS messaging services.
No longer shall Android users have to suffer the indignity of downloading Temple Run from the Google Play Store only to find out that it is a cheaply made imitation from less than ethical developers trying to make a quick buck off the good name that Imangi Studios have built up. The Temple Run game has built up a huge reputation, thanks to the many thousands of downloads it has received on the iOS App Store and has quickly gained a cult following who can't put the game down.
When the iOS App Store was first launched in 2008, not even Apple themselves could have predicted the store’s meteoric rise to become the undisputed heavy-weight champion of the app distribution world. At the beginning of 2011 Apple launched a competition, offering a $10,000 iTunes gift card to the lucky App Store user who downloaded the 10 billionth app from the store. The Cupertino company has since repeated that offering by giving away a gift card of the same value to whoever downloaded the twenty-fifth billionth app.
