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WWDC 2010: App deal roundup
We've received quite a few emails from developers who are providing you with special app pricing during WWDC 2010. Here's a roundup of some of the info we've received: Ubermind is selling Masque for US$1.99 until June 12. The app is an amazing photography tool for iPad. iOS4 devs should look into purchasing iMockups for iPad during WWDC. It's available for 30% off today (June 7), which is $6.99 instead of the usual $8.99. It's a nice mockup tool for apps. UK developer Michael Kaye couldn't make it to WWDC 2010, but he's celebrating by putting BabyBubbles on sale for $0.99, a huge discount from the usual $5.99 price. BabyBubbles is an innovative "baby logger" for new parents, and currently runs on iPhone and iPod touch. Michael says he'll keep the price at $0.99 until BabyBubbles HD appears. Developer Craig Caruso is selling his iLineup for iPad app at the special price of $0.99 this week only. The baseball / softball lineup card package usually sells for $1.99. Cameron Banga at 9Magnets let us know that their iOS device battery management tool Battery Go! will be free until Friday. The regular price is $2.99, so pick it up while you can. Click the Read More link below for more hot WWDC app deals.
First look: SketchyPad mockup tool for web and app designers
Part of my work involves making mockups of websites for clients, and up until this point the easiest way to do that was just to hand draw some sketches, scan them, send them to the client for rework, etc... Now there's a new iPad app from developer Nick Golovin that promises to make the creation of website and app mockups a lot easier. SketchyPad (US$4.99) is an iPad app using a simple sketchpad metaphor and a lot of stencils to make mockups. It includes many of the design elements that are used in web design and app development. The app includes snap-to bluelines for aligning elements, the stencils can be locked in place with a lock icon, and there are tools for layering buttons and other elements on the page. When you're done with a sketch, it can be exported to your camera roll, emailed, or exported to Balsamiq Mockups for Desktop. %Gallery-93085%
360iDev: The AppStar awards
Appsfire has just announced the winners of their App Star Awards contest at 360iDev here in San Jose -- they had an "uber-jury" go through 30-second pitch videos from 33 different unreleased iPhone and iPad apps, and narrowed down their favorites to six different apps in three categories, Games, Utility and Entertainment. Click on the Read More link below to see the list of winners as announced at the conference. Each one of these apps will get a free promotional campaign, an iPad to play with, and a subscription to Animoto, all to start off their App Store experience.
iPad apps: defining experiences from the first wave
There are now over 1,348 approved apps for the iPad. That's on top of the 150,000 iPad-compatible iPhone programs already available in the App Store. When Apple's tablet PC launches, just hours from now, it will have a software library greater than that of any handheld in history -- not counting the occasional UMPC. That said, the vast majority of even those 1,348 iPad apps are not original. They were designed for the iPhone, a device with a comparatively pokey processor and a tiny screen, and most have just been tweaked slightly, upped in price and given an "HD" suffix -- as if that somehow justified the increased cost. Besides, we've seen the amazing potential programs have on iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and webOS when given access to a touchscreen, always-on data connection, GPS, cloud storage and WiFi -- but where are the apps that truly define iPad? What will take advantage of its extra headroom, new UI paradigms and multitouch real estate? Caught between netbook and smartphone, what does the iPad do that the iPhone cannot? After spending hours digging through the web and new iPad section of the App Store, we believe we have a number of reasonably compelling answers. Update: Now includes Wormhole Remote, TweetDeck, SkyGrid, Touchgrind HD, GoToMeeting, SplitBrowser, iDisplay, Geometry Wars and Drawing Pad.
First Look: iMockups for iPad
Developers often carry around notebooks, which they use to sketch out their brilliant ideas for the next million-dollar iPhone or iPad app. The folks over at Endloop, a Canadian iPad development company with a few projects under its figurative belt, have been "coding like madmen" recently for their latest product, iMockups for iPad. The idea behind iMockups is to give devs a way to quickly create wireframes and layouts for iPad, iPhone, and web apps. Any project can have multiple sketchbook pages associated with it, and developers can quickly add elements from a pad at the side of the screen. Details about the app are very sketchy (no pun intended), so there's no word on when the app will be released to the App Store, what the price will be, or if there is any way to export or print the mockups that are created. However, iMockups looks like a good tool for those of you who are tired of carrying around that sketchbook, pencil, and eraser for capturing your app ideas.
