Jay Robinson

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iOS ’86 by Anton Repponen (via szymon)

Oh my, this is beautiful.

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A photo of my eye from the other night.

QR UX: Some clever ideas for integrating QR readers into Apple iOS.

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The Galaxy Nexus seems the perfect size phone to bludgeon someone with.

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Just got around to this, but Pete Warden’s iPhoneTracker is weirdly awesome.

Listenr 1.3 Available now. And it's FREE. →

Ethan Sherbondy:

Listenr app:

That’s right. I’ve decided to make the app free for the time being. The plan is to add some super awesome paid features in upcoming releases, but the core functionality of Listenr will remain available pro bono. Much thanks to everyone who supported me by purchasing the app over the last few months. Now on to the new features:

The two big ones this time are Last.fm Scrobbling and Search. Also, all avatars and post metadata is stored locally on your phone, so this should result in a snappier experience.

Huzzah! And I’m working on reblog support, among other things, as I type this.

Been beta-testing this since it first came out, and it is much improved. It was worth it then at a buck ninety-nine; now that it’s free, it’s a no-brainer. Congratulations to Ethan for his hard work. (You have to appreciate a developer who writes code at the same time that he blogs.)

Go download Listenr and start listening to your Tumblr Dashboard.

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Sencha Inc.:

The Xero mobile web app is one of the most beautifully designed Sencha Touch apps. It was recently wrapped with PhoneGap and will soon debut on the Apple App Store, alongside Android and BlackBerry.

See more screenshots and read about its development in the latest Sencha Touch Spotlight on our company blog.

Photo by Craig Walker.

Gedeon Maheux’s awesome lock & home screen wallpapers for iPhone & iPod touch, based on Star Trek: The Next Generation’s LCARS interface.

Via luigidr: guillee.

My Week with Google Android Nexus S

I’ve been using a Google Nexus S running Android OS 2.3 as my phone for the past week and I like it. It makes for a very decent smartphone. Frequent needs can be met quickly with a minimum of amount of fuss. (Accomplishing the same task on iOS, though pretty, is not as easy nor as fast.)

For example, I could cite the non-modal Android notification system, which allows me to switch to an incoming message by swiping down from the top of the screen. Or I could mention the excellent Android auto-correct; I’ve never typed as fast or as error-free on my iPhone.

But, while I found that I enjoy accomplishing tasks quickly on my Android, I never enjoy using it for more than a minute or two. I often lie in bed in the morning and use my iPhone to check email, shared links, tweets, and new software. I never even wanted to do the same with my Nexus S, because Android is simply not a pleasure to use for prolonged activity. Android eschews user interface elegance for quick interactions and convenience; which makes the Nexus S feel utilitarian compared to iOS.

With that said, it’s unlikely that I’ll be switching to Android permanently any time soon. Let’s get into my good and bad picks of the Android OS:

The Good

• Notifications
  Text messages don’t interrupt me at all, and switching between apps is a breeze. Faster than iPhone, and I love having no badges to dismiss.

• Auto-Correct
  I’ve never been able to type as fast or as accurate on my iPhone. Hit delete after an incorrect guess and I get my original word back, rather than having to delete the word letter-by-letter.

• App Drawer
  I keep frequently used apps on my home screens, everything else goes in the drawer ordered alphabetically — excellent. I hope this feature comes to iOS. Managing folders is a hassle.

• Dedicated Back, Settings, Search buttons
  Touch-sensitive home row buttons provide haptic feedback when used, and free up screen real estate to make way for more content.

  Using the dedicated Back button at times works as an extremely efficient form of multi-tasking. Instead of double-tapping a physical Home button each time I want to switch to a previously used app, I simply tap the Back button until I’m back where I was.

  When I went back to my iPhone or iPad, the physical Home button felt clunky and inelegant compared to the smooth, touch-sensitive home-row buttons of the Nexus S.

• Omnibox Search
  It is so great to have one box to search the Web, Apps, and your phone. Same thing in the Browser: Location plus Google Search is great, as it is on Chrome.

• Hardware toggle buttons
  Eliminates multiple steps needed to toggle WiFi, BlueTooth, GPS, and Brightness. I’ve wanted this for iPhone since the 1st generation.

• System-wide Contacts app
  This system app allows other social apps to add their specific metadata. I can view phone numbers, emails, latest tweet, and last song scrobbled to Last.fm in one view. This would, and is rumored to be, a killer feature on iOS.

The Bad

• Browser
  This is a big one for me. It’s slow. Text is ugly. Text reflows are ugly. Two finger pinch-to-zoom is rough, and two big ugly floating buttons for zoom in/zoom out cover the bottom of the screen entirely too long. There is no “scroll to top” action. Makes casual browsing into a whole deal. Yuck.

• Notifications while display sleeps
  No way to see text message notifications if the display is asleep.

• Battery life
  Sucked for me the first few days. Turning off the active wallpaper helped, but I had to disable WiFi, Sync, Location services, and dim the display to make the Nexus S last all day. Never a problem with my iPhone 4.

• Lack of quality apps
  Beautifully designed, immersive apps with seamless touch gesture support is what keeps me hooked to my iPhone. In my limited trial on Android, there was nothing I saw that encouraged me to use the phone longer than I had to.

Conclusion

As an Apple enthusiast, I would often scoff at friends and family members that had Android phones, though I had never used one. Now I see why casual users are so complacent. If you’d never had an iPhone, Android makes a pretty decent smartphone. Overall, the polish of the UI sucks and offers nowhere near the rich experience of iOS, but the Google Nexus S is usable for “mere mortals”.

For accomplishing routine, smartphone tasks, Android excels. For any kind of extended use, iOS prevails.

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Read other accounts of iPhone users experimenting with Android: Chris Clark’s Month with the Nexus S; Ryan Heise’s Dinner with Android.

The Death of Files by Dustin Curtis →

The iPhone OS completely removes the concept of a “file.” It promotes apps to being the primary level of user interaction, and it stores related things inside databases that are content-specific. When you pick up your iPhone and want to view photos, you open the Photos app, which connects to the photos database and shows you all of your photos. When you want to listen to music, you open the iPod app, which connects to the music database. Everything on the iPhone is task-centric, not file-centric. The “file” part of completing tasks is completely insulated from the user.

This is a new model for organizing things on computers, but it actually much more closely emulates the way people do things in the real world. When you want to eat, you go to the refrigerator. When you want to listen to music, you go to your stereo system. Completing these actions just requires knowing the locations of the things you want to use. If you want to look at photos in the real world, everything you might want to accomplish is in a single place: in the album on the bookshelf. The photos themselves are even inside the album.

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9-bits:

Umm, did anyone else miss that there’s a robot in space, tweeting on an iPhone 4?

Holy shit! This robot is scary.

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Transparent iPhone 4 kit. Yes, please!

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Might switch to the Verizon iPhone 4 just to get this clean back panel.

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Hanging out with Listenr by Ethan Sherbondy and Hao Lian. It’s a native iPhone app for listening to music posted by people you follow on Tumblr.

Oh man, this is totally rad! I’m going to use this every day. Thanks, Ethan!

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Things seen at 2:23 AM cannot be unseen.