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Switched On: Mountain Lion brings iOS apps, malware traps
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology. According to Wikipedia, the mountain lion, also known as the cougar, is distinguished by having the greatest range of any large wild terrestrial animal in the Western Hemisphere. Indeed, from what we've seen so far of Apple's forthcoming Mac operating system, its new features will likely find favor with a broader range of Apple users than Lion.
Indie video portrays the crazy, notification-driven life of an Apple user
Ever get bombarded by messages or miss out on something important because you had your nose in your computer? If you can answer "yes" to either question, then you will likely enjoy Digitals, a short film by Chris Crutchfield that portrays our busy digital life. Crutchfield says this about his video short, One day I got an email, an sms, a phone call, a Facebook message and two tweets all within about 5 seconds of one another. This video is a re-manifestation of my brain's interpretation of that event. #trustory I won't spoil the clip for you by revealing the plot, but I will say that Crutchfield does an excellent job capturing the cacophony of alert sounds that bombard us each day. Check out the video below and let us know what you think. [Via The Daily What and Parislemon]
Apple to improve Notification Center with fresh talent
Apple is looking outside its ranks and hiring a college student to help revise its iOS notification system. This isn't any college student. The new hire is Jan-Michael Cart, the whizkid who created a clever mocked up Notification Center redesign and then posted it to YouTube. Cart will join Apple as a UI/UXDesign intern for the next seven months. According to Ars Technica, he, and two other recent hires, may work on notifications for a future version of iOS. Apple rolled out its current notification center in iOS 5. Earlier versions of iOS included pop-up notifications and badges, but little else. This latest iteration includes a drop-down window shade with alerts, pop-up alerts and lock screen alerts. Though it's a likeable update, the iOS 5 notification center needs improvement. There are no alert icons in the menu bar, which means you have to pull down the Window shade to determine which alerts need your attention. The alerts are also difficult to manage. You can't delete individual alerts without opening the item, and the "x" button to clear all the alerts is difficult to tap. You can check out Cart's concept video below and tell us what you think of his suggestions in the comments. [Via Ars Technica]
Ads will possess your phone using subliminal sound waves
Er, we don't want to sensationalize this or anything, but your phone could soon be at the mercy of inaudible sound pulses that trigger location-specific ads, sales promotions and other potentially demonic notifications. Unlike normal advertising within apps, and also different to sound-responsive apps like Shazam and Shopkick, a new platform called Sonic Notify is meant to work discreetly in the background, without the need for any user activation. Its creators, NY-based digital agency Densebrain, plan to attach small high-frequency sound-emitting beacons to store shelves, which will "set people's phones off" when they stand in front of a particular product. It's not clear how the platform might affect your battery life, or why you wouldn't just disable it at the first inopportune alert, but drug stores, TV networks and big players like Proctor & Gamble are nevertheless said to be gripped by the concept.
Dear Aunt TUAW: Can I disable those battery alerts?
Dear Aunt TUAW, Maybe I'm the only one this bothers, but Apple made a big deal about their whole new notifications in iOS 5. Then one day I was playing Canabalt, and I'm up to over 15,000! My high score is 17, so my heart really starts beating as I draw in. Suddenly I got a big pop-up on my phone alerting me that I have 20% Battery remaining. Maybe there was a glitch or something but my game kept going for about a second (maybe even a second and a half) before pausing. Obviously long enough for my poor little man to plummet to his death. I looked but couldn't find a way to set that type of notification to "banner." Maybe even go away completely? Please help if you know. If not, let's all complain and maybe Apple will add that in a future update! Your loving nephew, Adam Dear Adam, Oof. That must have hurt! Unfortunately, power level notifications are not controllable through user settings, the way that reminders, appointments, and messages are. You can always try submitting a feature request to Apple. Unfortunately, those tend to be popularity contests -- Apple tends to pay attention to the most requested items, and this is a wee bit, shall we say, niche. Unfortunately, Auntie doesn't really have any advice other than play games on a fuller charge where possible so you don't run into low-battery warnings. And yes, she knows how lame that advice is. Got other suggestions for Adam? Add them to the comments. Hugs, Auntie T.
Poll: Have you upgraded to iOS 5?
We've heard plenty of you are receiving various error messages while attempting to install iOS 5, and some of us haven't had much luck either. But have you been able to upgrade? Let us know in the poll below, and jump past the break to sound off in the comments.%Poll-69801%
iOS 5 features: Custom notification sounds and alerts now available
In January, I called on Apple to allow iOS users to customize the notification sounds on their devices beyond the nearly two dozen built-in sounds offered on the iPhone 4 and iPad. Back then I said, "The iPhone has been on the market for going on four years now, and yet we still haven't been blessed with the ability to use our own sounds for these alert tones. My only question: why the hell not?" If I sounded a bit cantankerous, it's only because the most advanced smartphone on the planet lacked a simple feature that other phones have had since before the iPhone even came to market. The good news is this feature gap has been addressed: as of iOS 5, Apple has at last made it so users can assign almost any sound they want to iOS notification alerts. As before, in the Settings app under "Sounds" you have the ability to alter the notification sounds for Ringtone and Text Tone. New to iOS 5 are tone settings for New Voicemail, New Mail, Sent Mail, Calendar Alerts, a sound for Tweets via iOS 5's built-in Twitter integration, and a setting for alerts sent via the new built-in Reminders app. Drilling down into the next menu allows you to change the tone, but it's here that the similarities end with iOS 4 end. I'll use Text Tones as an example. In iOS 4.3 and earlier, the only tones you could use on an iPhone 4 were the built-in sounds -- 23 in total. Owners of older iPhones had a still more limited selection, with only the original six sounds available. That's changed in iOS 5. The old, built-in Alert Tones are still available, with "Tweet" and "Swoosh" (the default "Sent Mail" sound) thrown into the mix. Scroll past those sounds and you'll see a new category right below those sounds: Ringtones. The Ringtones list is split in two between ringtones of your own that you've loaded on the device and the 25 sounds included with iOS. These can be tones you've purchased from iTunes or tones that you've created yourself through one means or another (GarageBand is my weapon of choice). One restriction that Apple hasn't gone out of its way to advertise, however, is that alert tones have to be less than fifteen seconds or so in order to show up in the list of available sounds. If you have ringtones longer than that, they'll still show up in the list of available sounds for when your phone rings, but you won't be able to use that 30-second clip of "Poker Face" for your SMS notification sound. I'd call that a blessing. The upshot of all this is that instead of being limited to the sounds Apple's chosen to include with the device, you can now assign virtually any sound you want to your alert tones for Messages, Mail, Calendar Alerts, and so forth. After all these years, at last my iPhone can make the "Get new item" sound from the Legend of Zelda series when I get new email, which unlike the "Ding" default makes the New Mail sound something that's actually audible from more than three meters away. Daring Fireball's John Gruber likes to throw tomatoes at bloggers for using the word "finally" when it comes to Apple introducing features or updates, but I don't feel bad at all using it here. Four years was a long time to wait for something as basic as the ability to use our own sounds for notifications, but at least the wait is finally over.
iOS 5 review
Snow Leopard review Apple: Six million copies of OS X Lion downloaded since launch Auto-suggestion keyboard found hiding inside iOS 5 Now well into its fifth year of life, iOS has always been known for its exceptional polish -- and also, its glaring feature holes. But, just like clockwork, each year since its 2007 debut, those shortcomings have been addressed one by one in a sweeping annual update. In 2008, the platform was opened up to developers giving us the App Store, 2009 saw the introduction of copy and paste -- which we'd argue is still the best implementation to date -- and last year "multitasking" finally made a presence. So what has Apple chosen to rectify in 2011? Well, for starters, notifications gets a complete overhaul with Notification Center, tethered syncing dies at the hands of iCloud and messaging gets a do-over with the birth of iMessage. If you recall, we first got acquainted with iOS 5 in May after downloading the developer preview, but how does the final release stack up? And does it have the chops to compete with the latest from Mountain View and Redmond? After drudging through seven betas, we're ready to conquer all that the final release has to offer, so join us, if you would, past the break.
Symbian Belle gets eight minutes of hands-on fame (video)
Screen grabs ain't got nuthin' on this one. Just as we savor a full set of screenshots showing off Symbian Belle in all its glory, a YouTube video of the unannounced OS strolls onto the scene with eight minutes of footage. The successor to Anna is seen here on a Nokia N8, which could be a sign that at least some existing Symbian^3 devices will receive the update when it becomes available. The video exhibits several aspects of the new UI, such as the Android-style pull-down bar for notifications, a back button-based interface, a new virtual keyboard, and a new camera UI -- all of which appear to be significant improvements over the platform's predecessors. If you have a few minutes to spare, dive past the break to get the full tour. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Gmail v2.3.5 for Android adds label-specific ringtones and sync priority mail only options
If you love Gmail and need to access it on the go, you probably already know that Google's Android platform is the best way to do so, and with the new v2.3.5 it's getting even better. The top two new features this time around include the ability to sync only priority messages (saving battery life and keeping unimportant messages at bay) and the ability to individually set notifications and ringtones for any of the labels in your inbox. The Android Market website is still showing version 2.3.4.1, but we successfully upgraded via the Market on our devices. Also new are features like remembering "Show Pictures" for specific senders, a toggle for sticky message actions in all orientations as well as improved overall performance and TalkBack screen reader support. Update: The website is now showing all the details for 2.3.5, hit the source link to update or just check the official list after the break.
Google+ runs out of disk space, floods inboxes with notification spam
If you're one of the lucky ones who landed themselves a Google+ account, you might have felt a little less fortunate when your inbox was bombarded by repeated notifications. Vic Gundotra, the Goog's social mastermind, took to the fledgling service to apologize and explain what happened. Turns out the servers in charge of tracking notifications ran out of disk space for about 80 minutes -- causing them to repeatedly send and resend the same messages. In his Plus posting Gundotra admitted, "we didn't expect to hit these high thresholds so quickly, but we should have." Sure, it may have been annoying to get 17 alerts that your old college roommate added you to his circles, but we've got to give credit to Vic for owning this mini fail. The company better hope it can scale up capacity quick -- Google+ invites are still a hot property and it's got a lot of growing to do before it can truly compete with the likes of Facebook.
Interview: Growl's project lead on coming to the Mac App Store
After the news yesterday that the popular notification service Growl was officially coming to the Mac App Store with the release of OS X Lion, TUAW tracked down Project Lead Christopher Forsythe and had a quick conversation about the reasons behind the decision and the future of Growl in general. Forsythe says that the change to the Mac App Store has been discussed "amongst ourselves for probably about two or three months now," and that using Apple's official store "just makes sense." Perhaps the biggest piece of news we learned from Forsythe is that in the Mac App Store, for the first time since its creation seven years ago, Growl will not be free. Devs working on the project are "still talking" about the final price, but "it most likely will be a dollar or two dollars at most," according to Forsythe. Some may turn up their noses at paying anything for the results of an open source project, but Forsythe says the reasoning behind the charge is simple: "I'm a grown adult," he says, "and my wife wonders why I spend time working on my open source project and not with my two-month old." For all the work Forsythe and his fellow devs have put into Growl, a few bucks seems little to ask. Money is also involved in the other main reason the team wants to move to the Mac App Store. If nothing else, they're offloading the issue of actual distribution to Apple. "We don't have to worry about supporting a download infrastructure any more," says Forsythe, "and that's huge for us." Currently, bandwidth for distributing Growl is all handed by CacheFly pro bono, but Forsthye has seen huge charges covered by them in the past, and the one time the project switched to Google Code, Forsythe says all of Google's bandwidth was eaten up in "a couple of hours, a very short period of time." Yesterday, we heard that some of the more technical Growl services would be dying off because of the switchover, but Forsythe says that's not exactly true. While perception has it that the Mac App Store is ruling out a few Growl services, many of the changes are just so he can focus his team on what customers actually use, and not as much on edge use cases. Services like GrowlMail and GrowlSafari won't be officially supported in the Mac App Store version, but anyone who wants to use those services will still be able to download a PKG installer from the Growl website and be off on their merry way. That's good news for average users like myself and others. Forsythe plans to put his team working on the core Growl app, and let other developers deal with the more complicated function and addons. As for developers of apps that hook into Growl, Forsythe says it's pretty simple: if anyone currently uses the Growl with Installer framework (which allows third-party apps to actually install Growl if users don't have it), they'll have to switch over to the one standard framework the app will be using. The Growl team has had a lot of complaints from users who believe Growl is spyware because a developer uses it to post less-than-helpful notifications ("It's really annoying," he says), so the new Growl framework won't actually install the whole app. The way it will work is that in the new framework, developers who want to use Growl without having it on the user's system will get a simplified version of the notification to run, with just one style in just one place on the screen. "So if the user doesn't have Growl installed," says Forsythe, "they can use Smoke notification in the top corner. If the end user wants to configure that, they'll need to install Growl." That seems like a good balance; it allows devs to take advantage of Growl and its basic function, then send customers on to the full app if they want more features out of it. Finally, Forsythe says that revamping the code like this is giving his team an opportunity to really focus on what they want Growl to be going forward. While the average user won't "miss anything," according to Forsythe, it's true that some services will need to be worked on outside the official Growl team. "If [a service] takes up the same amount of resources it takes to put a cool feature into Growl itself, I'd rather we put the work into Growl itself." That work means we'll see updates to the core app, like a new feature called RollUp that will help get rid of what Forsythe calls "screen spam." Instead of having your screen fill with a bunch of notifications, you'll get just one note after a while that will then expand out into a log of notifications you may have missed. That sounds great, and hopefully we'll see more helpful features like that going forward. Growl has been a solid addition to the Mac lineup throughout its history, and it's exciting to see the open source effort join Apple's official store. There will undoubtedly be some growing pains, but in general, this seems like an excellent move for Growl, and it should be a nice app to add to the Mac App Store's offerings.
Growl coming to the Mac App Store as a full application
Growl is one of my favorite things about the Mac platform -- it's a notification service whose customization and power is unmatched on anything I've seen in other operating systems. And it's going through some changes in the near future: Project Lead Christopher Forsythe has posted on the Growl Google Group that as of version 1.3, Growl will move from a notification service into a full app, mainly to be included in the actual Mac App Store. That has quite a few ramifications, both good and bad. The first is that Growl will be able to take advantage of everything the App Store offers, including ease of installation and upgrades, as well as discovery and any future features planned for Mac App Store apps. But the flip side is that anything the Mac App Store doesn't allow obviously won't be allowed in Growl, so those services (which currently include GrowlMail and GrowlSafari) will be retired completely. This also means that Growl will become an app only for OS 10.7+, so 10.6 (Snow Leopard, the current version) and earlier will not be officially supported. Forsythe says the Lion upgrade is relatively cheap, and it will help the app more to move forward with Apple's OS rather than have to deal with customers who don't upgrade. There's a lot to deal with here, and there will certainly be more issues and questions that come out as the new version enters the Mac App Store along with Lion. He also says that "these are not all of the changes coming," so don't waste all your shock right away on this one. I love Growl and plan to keep using it through the Mac App Store after Lion's release, but a lot of users who might depend on it for specific and edge case scenarios might be left in the lurch. We'll have to wait and see.
MightyText pushes messages and incoming call alerts to your computer (hands-on)
Have you ever missed an extremely important phone call or text because you were too busy finishing those TPS reports on your personal computing machine? There's a Chrome add-on for that. We went hands-on with a new extension (and accompanying Android app) called MightyText, a free notification service launched today that syncs your phone's texts and calls to your computer in real-time. The idea is crazy simple, yet adds unyielding convenience: incoming SMS messages appear on your screen as a pop-up, giving you the option to read and reply to them without touching or even looking at the phone. The full extension will show each conversation thread in its entirety, as well as call logs. When sent from the computer, texts are still patched through from your phone number, so your colleagues will still see your messages coming through with your name on them. To make the service even more appealing, pop-ups alert you to incoming calls, so you can either hurry to find your phone or just send the caller a canned auto-text reply. It sounds like a great concept, but does it do the job? Head on past the break to learn our first impressions of the program.
iOS 5 jailbreak offers third-party Notification Center widgets
Jailbreakers have already cracked iOS 5's Notification Center widgets, according to 9to5Mac. Notification screen widgets are little apps -- or widgets -- that run in the new Notifications Center in iOS 5. iOS 5 will ship with two widgets, stocks and weather. However, as usual, the jailbreak community wants to push things forward faster than Apple does, and they've already come out with a host of third-party widgets. MacStories has an excellent roundup of some of those custom Notification Center widgets but, as always, if you want to use them you'll need to jailbreak your iPhone. One of my favorites is SpringPrefs (shown at right), which shows you details about your iOS system information, including the amount of free RAM, your Wi-Fi and Data IP addresses, and your firmware number.
Apple iOS 5 hands-on preview
<div style="text-align:center;"> <a href="http://www.engadget.com/wwdc-2011/apple-ios-5-hands-on-preview/"><img border="1" hspace="4" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2011/06/ios-5-beta-eng-01.jpg" vspace="4"/></a></div> <a href="http://engadget.com/tag/ios5">iOS 5</a> won't be ready for the masses until this Fall, but lucky developers -- and eager tech bloggers -- are able to get in on the action right now. We just got done downloading the 730MB BETA, and have decided to turn our iPhone 4 and iPad 2 into guinea pigs for all the newness. Apple says that there are over 200 new features baked into the updated OS, and we've run through the biggies from Notification Center to Twitter to that oh-so-convenient split keyboard for you -- all you need to do is click after the break.<br /> %Gallery-125567%<br /> %Gallery-125568%
Xbox Live adds cloud saves, 'beacons' that tell friends what you want to play
These may not have made the cut to appear in Microsoft's E3 keynote earlier today but gamers will probably appreciate two new features mentioned in a letter from Xbox Live General Manager Marc Whitten. "Cloud Storage for Game Saves and Live Profiles" is first up and provides access to ones profile and saves from any console, at any time with the option to save to XBL servers instead of a memory unit or hard drive. It all sounds very similar to the service offered for PlayStation Plus but as Joystiq notes, so far exact details are scant. The other feature mentioned is support for "Beacons" which go one step further than broadcasting what you're playing or watching right now by allowing users to flag what they want to play, and lets friends on XBL or Facebook see that so they can meet you for a game. Check out the full letter after the break or over on the 'stiq, we'll sit back and dream of a future world where bringing our XBL profile by a friend's house to keep track of our beatdowns is as easy as just logging in.
Apple unveils iMessage, its BBM competitor, at WWDC
It's here, the moment BlackBerry owners been waiting for since the original iPhone launched: iMessage. Apple has just announced its new data-based push messaging service at WWDC, which looks to be a full-on competitor to the venerable BBM. This service works on an iOS device of any flavor, and lets you send text messages, photos, videos, and contacts to anyone else with one too. It also supports group chats and integrates with the new Notification Center in iOS 5. According to Scott Forstall, it "works over WiFi or 3G, in case you were wondering," which is yet another blow for RIM. The final nail in the coffin for those of you who simply 'can't live without BBM:' delivery and read confirmations. Boom. Developing...stay tuned to our liveblog for the latest. %Gallery-125462%
MobileNotifier dev snapped up by Apple to work on iOS framework?
We said that MobileNotifier unobtrusive notifications might be the single best reason to jailbreak your iOS device, and it sounds like Apple may agree -- Redmond Pie reports that lead developer Peter Hajas has been spirited away by the Cupertino computer company to work on iOS itself. Hajas wrote that he was taking a break from MobileNotifier, and some newfangled detective work dug up the rest -- a thinly-veiled reference to Steve Jobs, a tweet mentioning a California "fruit" company, and finally an alleged screenshot of Hajas' entry in Apple's employee database. We're feeling slightly bittersweet about the whole thing, to tell the truth, as while we'd rather not have to smash our iPhone chains, the notion that this is all happening now suggests we won't see greatly improved notifications in iOS 5, come Monday. [Thanks, Jeff]
Google Apps is moving on, you'll need an HTML5 browser to go with it
HTML5 beckons the world with its dashing logo and also, we suppose, all the clever little things it can do. Desktop notifications in Gmail and folder-dragging in Docs already refuse to work with anything less -- and before long that will apply to the entirety of Google Apps. Come August 1st, you will find that Gmail, Calendar, Talk, Docs and Sites are all unsupported unless you're using either the current or last major release of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome or Safari. An older browser won't suddenly stop working with Google Apps, but it will begin a steady descent into oblivion. Hey, being popular means you don't have to be nice.
