Chris White
Articles by Chris White
Adonit's Jot is a stylish, precise stylus for the iPad
A few months ago I reviewed the Adonit Writer, a superb keyboard case for the iPad. The Writer was the debut product from Adonit, and it's since released an updated version for the iPad 2. Apparently Adonit was just getting started, because it's nearly ready to launch a new product, the Jot. The Jot is a capacitive touch stylus built for the iPad (and any other capacitive touch screen) that comes in two flavors, the Jot and the Jot Pro. Like the Writer it's being crowdfunded through Kickstarter. There are a lot of good styluses out there, many of them quite superb, but the Jot is a whole new take on these familiar accessories. What makes the Jot special is that it isn't using a foam tip like most other styluses; instead, it has a clear, flat, pivoting 'Precision Disk' attached on a small metal tip. I got an opportunity to give both versions of the Jot a try, and it lives up to its promise beautifully. The precision disk is just that, precise. It takes one of the biggest weaknesses of touch screens and drastically minimizes it. You can clearly see the center point of your strokes, and you get more feedback as you draw. I was surprised just how significant that little difference is. Unlike foam, the Jot requires almost no pressure to use and feels a lot like a really nice ballpoint pen gliding across a textureless paper. While it handles strokes wonderfully, I did find that I occasionally had trouble tapping buttons with the disk; usually it connected fine, but I found that it sometimes took a very slight movement to make sure the iPad registered the tap. After using it for a while I adapted my taps a little, and I haven't had any trouble with it since. Being so fast and precise does actually have a slight downside. I suddenly found that most of the notebook and art apps I use feel sluggish and had trouble keeping up with the Jot. Worse, some of them offset the point a little because they expect you to use your finger or something else of similar size. Despite this, I still love using the Jot everywhere I typically use a stylus; it just takes some adjustments. The good news is that Adonit is working on an app fine-tuned for the Jot. From the video it's posted, JotStudio looks really good. Besides being built for the Jot it looks like a flexible drawing program with an internal browser, support for images, web clips and PDFs, not to mention a well designed interface. JotStudio will cost US$2.99 when released, but all Kickstarter backers will get it free. With Adonit's Writer, one of the things I was really impressed with was the craftsmanship. It's every bit as evident in the Jot & Jot Pro. They are carefully designed, the materials are solid, they feel great in your hand and the weight is balanced with enough weight to keep a steady hand but light enough to be comfortable. One of the first things I tested was pulling the precision disk off like they showed in one of the demo videos. Despite the small size it takes a lot of pressure to separate the disk from the main body -- way more than you'd ever encounter using it under normal circumstances -- and the protective cap keeps it safe in your pocket or bag. If it does get separated, it snaps right back on, no damage done. What's the difference between the Jot and the Jot Pro? The key components are the same. You get the same precision disk either way; the materials and size are nearly the same as well. The most prominent difference is that the Jot Pro includes a rubber grip that I find nicer to hold. The Jot Pro also has a magnet in it that can attach onto an iPad 2 when you need to put it down. Did I mention it's gorgeous? The colors available are different between the two versions. The Jot comes in green, red and purple while the Jot Pro comes in turquoise, gun metal and silver. Personally I find the Pro colors to be more appealing. The black rubber contrasts beautifully with the gun metal of the stylus I'm reviewing. Adonit's Kickstarter campaign for the Jot and Jot Pro will be over on Saturday. If you want in on the first batch, a $15 pledge will net you a Jot, while for $25 you can get either two Jots or a Jot Pro. Regardless of whether you've got a Writer and you're backing the Jot, Adonit is quickly developing a reputation for releasing well-designed, lovingly crafted and unique products. I can't wait to see what it has in store for us next.
Adonit Writer is avaliable now
The wait is over and the Adonit Writer first-generation iPad keyboard case is now available. You can order one for US$99.99 right now from Amazon or from Adonit directly. Hurry though, the Writer will only be available at that price until July 10 -- after that Adonit will raise it to the full price of $109.99. Still waiting for the iPad 2 version? It's coming along nicely. Adonit is nearing production on it and hope to ship it to Kickstarter backers early next month. It will be available after they finish fulfilling the Kickstarter orders. If you read my recent review of the keyboard case for the iPad, you know that I was overwhelmingly positive about the Writer. Having now spent a couple of weeks with it, I adore it even more than I did when I wrote the review. It goes everywhere my iPad goes and frees me from having to bring along a laptop whenever I might need to write anything substantial. I also appreciate the flexibility to be able to comfortably type while sitting without a desk or a table. Your millage might vary depending on how you like to sit.
What iOS 5 owes to jailbreak developers
There are a lot of apps that will be replaced -- or at least have some very heavy competition -- from the new features in iOS 5. It's easy to look around the App Store and see developers that have been 'Sherlocked' by Apple's inclusion of their functionality in the core OS; Twitter clients in particular are going to have a hard road ahead, and no-frills reminder apps are pretty much done for. That's not the same thing as the wholesale borrowing that Apple has done from the jailbreak community with this new version of the OS, especially in the new notifications tools. Obviously, since JB devs tend to focus on new interaction methods and other system-level tweaks that would be off-limits to App Store products, there are more and different ideas about how the iPhone and iPad should work being tried and implemented there. That makes it fertile ground for Apple to see what does and doesn't work, and cherrypick the best ideas for internal use. That may not be cool, but it's certainly in character for Apple to leverage third-party innovation in OS development, both on the Mac and on iOS. Here are a few examples of some noteworthy 'flattery' from Apple's iOS team to the jailbreak developers who broke trail. One of the main reasons people jailbreak is to get better notifications and a useful lock screen; both issues Apple has finally addressed in a very big way in iOS 5. A few of the popular lock screen apps are David Ashman's LockInfo and Intelliborn's IntelliScreen, and both resemble (if they didn't inspire) iOS 5's new lock screen. In terms of notifications, Apple's taken aim at a couple of favorite JB apps: Notified and the recent MobileNotifier. iCloud syncing looks like a fantastic backup system, so much so that EvilPenguin already feels that its backup tool iBye is no longer necessary. In fact, James Emrich, the developer behind EvilPenguin told TUAW: "iBye was a backup/restore manager for content. Basically what iCloud does without auto backups."
BudgetBook for iPad is sexy but a little too simple
I've never been fond of managing my finances manually. It seems like most of the solutions are either too complex and time consuming or too simplistic and unhelpful. I'm a fan of Mint because it takes care of almost all of the work for me, but when it stopped syncing with my bank I started looking for a replacement. MoneyBook from noidentity has been a permanent resident in a folder on my iPhone where I store great apps for inspiration, but without an iPad app, I've never considered it an ideal solution for my needs. When I saw that noidentity had released BudgetBook, an iPad app for tracking finances, I was immediately excited to give it a try. BudgetBook is a brand new app; it's not a big brother to MoneyBook, though it's every bit as gorgeous. Unfortunately, it lacks a couple of the features that make MoneyBook so compelling, and it could use some design refinements. BudgetBook focuses on day-to-day spending and budgeting. It's fast, fluid and has practically no learning curve. BudgetBook is best suited to tracking the accounts you use frequently, like savings, checking, cash and credit. It is possible to track longer-term accounts, but it doesn't have any advanced features such as interest tracking or detailed information tracking, which you might find in a finance app with a broader scope.
Adonit Writer: Taking iPad keyboard cases to a higher level
When I'm working at a desk or a table, I can type fairly well with the iPad's virtual keyboard. If I really want to write extensively, I can use the Apple Wireless Keyboard [link fixed]. However, it's difficult to use either solution to write anything longer than an email when I'm sitting with the iPad on my lap. Plus, carrying the Wireless Keyboard around kind of defeats the portability of the iPad. When I first saw the Adonit Writer, I knew I had found the solution. The Writer is a gorgeous Bluetooth keyboard, stand, and case hybrid. It's built to be an ultraportable solution for those of us who do a lot of writing on the iPad in many different environments. Zach Zeliff and Kris Perpich -- formerly from Microsoft and Apple -- had the vision, creativity and dedication to design the Adonit Writer and turn it into the real product I'm typing on right now. The Writer is also another crowdfunded Kickstarter success story; its original goal was to raise US$10,000 to get off the ground, and by the end of the campaign on February 3, it had reached nearly $27,000.
Gameloft launches N.O.V.A. Elite on Facebook, demonstrates the ubiquity of Unity
It turns out N.O.V.A. Elite isn't one of the three new iOS games that Gameloft has licensed the Unreal Engine for. In fact, it's not an iOS game at all. Instead, Gameloft has decided to bring its popular science-fiction shooter franchise to Facebook as a competitive multiplayer 3D shooter tied to your social network and running on the Unity engine. While the core style of the earlier N.O.V.A. games is still the same in N.O.V.A. Elite, it has also picked up many of the features you've probably come to expect from any free-to-play Facebook game, including friends invitations and purchasable upgrades. That's right, if you want to have all the best gear, you'll need to pull out your wallet and exchange real money for Facebook Credits. Don't worry though, they aren't required to play. If you don't mind the free-to-play model, there's a lot to like about Elite. The pace is fast, and I found the gameplay smooth and satisfying, even on dated hardware. The graphics are adequately impressive for a browser-based game, but they are more comparable to N.O.V.A. 2 running on an iPad than a modern native PC or console game.
Kickstart the Flow: a capacitive touchscreen paintbrush
It must be stylus month on Kickstarter, with first the Cosmonaut and now the Flow appearing on the funding website. Like the Nomad Brush, the Flow by Joystickers is modeled after a paintbrush. The Flow has capacitive bristles rather than the traditional foam tip to more closely match the tactile experience of painting with real paint. One of the things that's always frustrated me when painting on the iPad is that the friction from both my finger and any of the styluses I've tried isn't quite right. It can work very well for sketching, but when I open up ArtRage and start using a paint tool, there always seems to be a bit of a tactile disconnect from what I'm doing. A paintbrush that works with the touchscreen seems like the best possible solution short of pulling out real paint and using your iPad as a canvas -- which we definitely do not recommend.
Dark Horse Digital coming to iOS April 27
The wait is finally almost over, Dark Horse Digital will be releasing their iOS app on April 27! I love reading comics on the iPad, the form-factor and experience is perfect. In fact, I prefer it to paper comics. However, while Marvel, DC Comics and some other publishers have been adding more and more issues from their libraries to a number of applications, such as Comixology, Dark Horse has been notably absent. The Dark Horse app is something I've been following pretty closely for a while now. Originally, it was slated to be released in January, but they weren't finished, so they postponed the launch and promised to make it up to excited fans. That's a promise they're making good on by including the first issue of Hellboy: Seed of Destruction bundled with the app, and they'll be giving away a few other titles if they can get enough people to subscribe to the newsletter before it launches.
Countdown to the last few hours before The Cosmonaut stylus launch
If you're an artist and you like to paint with your iPad, then you know how much nicer it can be to use a capacitive stylus rather then your finger. While there are already a number of styluses that work with iOS devices on the market, Studio Neat has decided there's room for one more. The Cosmonaut is differentiating itself by using a wide-grip design inspired by dry-erase markers, which Studio Neat argues is a more appropriate analog for the way we use an iPad than a pen or pencil. Studio Neat's first big product, the Glif iPhone stand, had a very successful launch thanks to backers on Kickstarter who were willing to fund the manufacturing costs to get the Glif off the ground. The Cosmonaut is being funded the same way. The original goal was to have $50,000 pledged by the end of the Kickstarter campaign, and right now -- with only a few hours to go -- they've raised more then $125,000. If the Cosmonaut looks like your dream stylus, you should hurry over to Kickstarter and pledge $25 or more to reserve one in the first batch, which they hope to be shipping in June. The Cosmonaut looks like a pleasure to hold, and I definitely plan on picking one up at some point.
Red Giant Software debuts two iOS camera apps, gives away Plastic Bullet today
If you're familiar with professional video production, then you've probably seen the popular video post-production applications and plug-ins that Red Giant Software makes. What you may not know is that Red Giant released the delightful iPhone photography app Plastic Bullet last year for making your photos look like they were shot with a plastic toy camera. Red Giant Software wasn't done with the iPhone, though, and it just released two new camera apps that look every bit as good as Plastic Bullet.
Get email design chores under control with equinux Mail Designer
If you've ever had to code together a complex HTML email then you know how painful it usually is. It's like taking a trip back to 1999 before the web discovered standards and everyone was still doing table-based design -- only with the addition of cumbersome inline CSS, and the challenge of dealing with scores of different mail clients and their divergent HTML rendering. Unless you do this every day the process can be unwieldy at best and a downright nightmare otherwise. For most of us, learning to code our own email is way more work then it's worth. That's where Mail Designer, a new application from equinux, comes in; it provides a rich graphical email composer that goes far beyond what you'll be able to do in your preferred email client's editor. Mail Designer takes an iWork approach, focusing on a balanced feature set that makes it easy to use and hides all the technical bits in the background before sending your email to Apple Mail for delivery.
Canon printer drivers hitting Software Update
As if Safari and iOS updates weren't enough for one day! Do you use a Canon printer (including all-in-one printer/scanners) with your Mac running Snow Leopard? If so, you have an exciting new update waiting for you. There's no indication of what the new Canon Printer Drivers 2.5 version actually changes, so fire up Software Update, cross your fingers and hope your printing experience magically improves. If Software Update doesn't show that you have an update available, you can download the driver manually from the the relevant Apple support page. [via The Mac Observer]
Blackmagic announcing a free version of DaVinci Resolve
This week at NAB 2011, Blackmagic Design has announced version 8 of the very high-end dedicated color-grading solution DaVinci Resolve. The upgrade brings XML support, multi-layer timelines, curve grading, noise reduction, stabilization, automatic 3D matching and OpenCL acceleration to the solution, making it a substantial upgrade. Unfortunately, if you don't have an equally high-end paycheck then the US$29,995 price for the full system is probably prohibitively expensive, and even the software-only version costing US$995 may stretch many people's budgets. If you're in that boat, Blackmagic has some good news for you: it's releasing a free version in the form of DaVinci Resolve 8 Lite to "help promote the art of color correction."
Avid offers $995 crossgrade to Media Composer for Final Cut users
Are you a Final Cut Studio user? Have you looked at Avid Media Composer and wished you could afford it? Regardless of whether you feel Media Composer is better or worse than Final Cut Pro, it's still a popular editing platform that brings not only prestige but also the potential to pick up more work from clients that want or need their editors to be using Avid. If you're in that camp, now might be the perfect time to add Media Composer to your toolbox. Until June 17, Avid is offering a staggering crossgrade deal to Final Cut Pro users: US$995 for the boxed version. While that may still seem expensive, it's a huge discount from the regular $2,495 price for the boxed edition (or $2,295 for download only).
Dear Apple, here's our Final Cut Studio wishlist
Today the NAB exhibit hall opened, and just about everyone in the video world is showing off the hot new stuff they've been waiting to announce to video professionals from around the world. Apple, however, is notably absent again this year, choosing instead to make an announcement tomorrow evening at the Final Cut Pro Users Group SuperMeet. As rumors of a long awaited update to Final Cut Studio started circulating, we asked you how the new version needed to change. While some commentators defended Final Cut Studio enthusiastically, most of us feel that an update is long overdue despite our affection for Apple's professional video suite. Some users have already jumped ship because their needs are better filled by alternative editing applications, while other users plan to give Apple a chance to meet all their needs with a new update before deciding to explore other options.
What do you want to see in the next Final Cut Studio?
It's no secret that many post-production professionals feel Final Cut Studio has been falling behind over the last two years. While Apple has taken its time developing a new version of its video suite, competitors like Adobe have jumped ahead with significant updates; some have even questioned Apple's commitment to its Pro apps and hoped that Final Cut Studio doesn't go the way of Shake. As we reported yesterday, that is hopefully going change with Apple's announcement at the Final Cut Pro User Group SuperMeet on April 12, coinciding with the National Association of Broadcasters convention.
Boxcar Beta for Mac available, brings notifications to Mac
Today brings a delightful surprise for Mac users with Boxcar joining the Mac family. Boxcar has been the standard for getting push notifications from your social networks, email, RSS and other services on iOS devices since it launched in July of 2009, and it has been one of my favorite iPhone apps from the start. Boxcar currently supports more Twitter events than you probably have time to read, including mentions, direct messages, new followers, trending topics, Twitter list updates and keyword searches. Boxcar also supports other social networks for notifications from Facebook, check-ins from Gowalla and Foursquare, even Google Buzz.
iPhone theft results in a tragic death
We have often written feel-good stories about the quick recovery of stolen iPhones, usually with the assistance of Find My iPhone. Unfortunately, today's story of a theft turned horrifying and tragic when a Chicago woman died after a fleeing thief shoved her down a flight of stairs. According to the Chicago Breaking News, Sally Katona-King was standing at the Fullerton station platform on her way home from work during rush hour Monday afternoon when a thief stole the iPhone from another commuter and pushed Katona-King in his haste to flee the scene. Katona-King was hospitalized after falling down a set of stairs at the station and died Tuesday from what officials believe was a cerebral hemorrhage.
Gameloft's NOVA 3 rumored to be built on Unreal Engine
Gameloft has announced that it has licensed the Unreal Engine for four upcoming games set to be released in 2011 and 2012. Gameloft hasn't announced which games will be running on the Unreal Engine, but Pocket Gamer seems to believe that one of the titles slated to be released this year is the next followup to the popular, and already impressive looking, sci-fi shooters N.O.V.A. Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance and N.O.V.A. 2. Last year, Epic Games started dropping jaws when it released Epic Citadel as a proof of concept showing off the Unreal Engine running on iOS. Epic then followed it up in December with the stunning and widely praised Infinity Blade, a game many have claimed looked as good as current generation dedicated gaming consoles. After all, it's the same engine that powers many blockbuster games, like Gears of War, Bulletstorm and BioShock 2, despite more limited hardware on iOS devices.
iPad 2 loses water damage indicator at headphone jack
While Apple has been softening its policy on water damage for some iOS devices, any trip to the Apple Store for a repair may still entail a little anxiety about the water indicators reporting a problem -- even when you know that your device hasn't been exposed to any liquids. Historically, Apple has checked for water damage by adding liquid contact indicators (LCIs) that change from white to red when exposed to water in the headphone jack and the 30-pin connector of iPhone, iPad and iPod devices. The LCIs are supposed to turn red only after 90 seconds of submersion, but they seem to be a little more sensitive than intended when exposed to a heavy amount of moisture.