Iris App is a fantastic and beautiful way to browse Instagram on your iPad

Instagram may not have a native app available on the iPad, but Iris App is here to fill that void. You may not be able to upload photos to the popular photo sharing service, but Iris App does allow you to browse your feed, featured photos, “like” and comment photos, and more.

Along the left hand side, you’ll see a thin column that give access to your main feed, featured photos, your profile, search, and the photos you’ve liked.

Your home feed is displayed as a grid of polaroids. Each Polaroid shows who’s photo it is and the number of likes and comments. These images are nice and big and the design is very clean looking. If you want to “like” the photo, just double tap! You can also tap the heart and a sidebar on the right will slide out that lists all the users who have liked the photo, links to their profiles, and the option to “like” the photo. Tapping the speech bubble is very similar, except for comments. If available, you can also view the photo’s location on a map.

Tapping on a photo will slide a larger version of the polaroid up from the bottom of the screen that looks exactly the same with the addition of an excerpt of the caption. Which leads me to my biggest disappointment — if the caption is more than about 40 characters, the only way to view the caption is in the comment view. I think captions should be viewable from the polaroid/thumbnail view. I like to see caption as I casually scroll and browse through my feed.

If you tap on a user’s avatar, you’ll be taken to their profile. Along the top, you see their name, bio, number of followers and following, a button to follow/unfollow, a “thumbs-up” to recommend the user via email, and a button that lets you view all the user’s photos on a map.

The photos in profile mode are displayed much smaller than on your main feed — there is 4 photos per row vs. two photos per row. But there’s a trigger on the bottom of the sidebar that lets you switch to the larger, more detailed thumbnails if you prefer.

The featured photos and liked photos pages also feature these smaller thumbnails, but oddly, there is no option to view them larger.

The Good

• Pretty
• Browse main feed, featured photos, profiles, and favorites
• Like and comment on photos
• Search for users and tags

The Bad

• Can’t tap tags
• Can’t change thumbnail size for main feed, featured tab, or favorites tab (main feed is big, featured and favorites are small)

The Conclusion

I often use Instagram to browse through photos even when I’m not sharing my own photos and have always longed for an iPad version. Given the fact that Facebook now owns Instagram and that the Facebook iPad app took ages to release, I’m not expecting an official Instagram iPad app anytime soon. I’m just glad to have Iris App as a fantastic alternative.

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From Apple II to Mac to iPad to… what exactly?

Last week, during their Q2 2012 financial results conference call, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that, in terms of sales, the iPad achieved in just 2 years what took the iPhone 3 years, the iPod 5 years, and the Mac 20+ years.

I’ll let that the idea of that jump-to-warp-speed acceleration curve sink in for a moment while I digress into nostalgia.

Apple made mainstream the personal computer with the Apple II, the graphical interface with the Mac, and the multitouch interface with the iPhone and iPad. Decade after decade they made computing ever more personal, from clunky command line to intermediated mouse, to intimate touch. That is the single, relentless theme of Apple’s existence.

They wove branches around the trunk of that theme as well, of course. Cameras and printers that didn’t set the world on fire. Set top boxes that faded away or remain just a hobby. Social networks that have been anything but. Yet a few of those branches have been every bit as compelling as the main theme. The iPod popularized digital audio players and iTunes, digital audio. Apple Stores redefined the retail experience and the brick-and-mortar consumer electronic profit potential. The App Store revolutionized software delivery and the idea of mobile devices as platform ecosystems.

By any measure, Apple has had an unprecedented string of successes that not only dented the gadget universe, but knocked it sharply on its ass.

Now back to that acceleration curve. As mind-boggling as Apple’s past successes have been, they also sharply bring this question into focus — what’s next?

Steve Jobs’ biography raised television, textbooks, and photography as areas of interest. Apple has already dabbled in television with their aforementioned hobby, the Apple TV. They’ve stuck their toe into the textbook space with their recent Education Event and iBooks Author initiative. And, hey… they make iPhoto and Aperture.

There have been persistent rumors of an Apple television set proper, something that Steve Jobs may have said he’d cracked the interface for, and something Apple might have already prototyped to some degree in their labs. It remains to be seen if Apple will ever decide to release their own television set, however. And if Apple does release it, it’s doubtful it could match or exceed the sales of the iPad, that it could it do in one year what the iPad did in 2. It could absolutely change the rules, the way the Apple II did, the Mac did, and the iPhone/iPad did, and disrupt the current television industry to the degree that it soon begins to redefine it, but it wouldn’t redefine computing itself again.

An Apple television wouldn’t be part of Apple’s relentless theme to further democratize and popularize computing. It could further socialize it, since television is more familial than personal, but it would simply be another branch, perhaps lucrative as the iPod, or perhaps just a hobby like the Apple TV. It wouldn’t be a leap beyond the iPhone or iPad.

Same with photography. Apple has already played the iPhone card, and that’s a great play in the point-and-shoot, mobile photography space. High end (DSLR) isn’t mainstream and supporting services is another sub-plot, not a theme.

Same with textbooks. Again, Apple has played that card with the iPad and everything else will just enhance that existing disruption.

So what does that leave? iCars, iWatches, iRobots? Unlike many of their competitors, Apple doesn’t just drop nukes on the future and hope to hit something, sometime. They fire cruise missiles and carefully adjust the course until they hit just exactly what they want to hit, just exactly when they want to hit it. That’s why, despite their tendency towards patterns and cycles, they remain hard to predict.

The Apple II was released in 1977. The Mac some 7 years later in 1984. The iPhone and iPad some 20+ years later in 2007 and 2010. As much as the sales curve is accelerating, the big leaps in product category for the devices that serve Apple’s main theme have slowed considerably.

That’s why the branches are so important, and that’s why there will continue to be iPods and iTunes, Apple Retail and Apple TVs. There will be products besides a personal computer and a mobile device, that mainstream consumers will still buy by the hundreds of millions, and are ripe for an Apple style revolution.

Apple will still pursue their main theme, and will follow the iPhone and iPad the same way they followed the Mac, but there will be a lot more iPods and iTunes along the way.

Perhaps Apple will get into mobile payments and further expand the reach of the iTunes checkout system (sure, Apple could buy Square and Foursquare — and why not Squarespace — while they’re at it?). They could finally overcome the cataclysmic myopia of Hollywood by either funding creators directly and serving up more Dr. Horrible style made-for-digital content, or simply buy a studio like Sony did and force Hollywood, kicking and screaming, into the future (is Pixar for re-sale?). There are many, many opportunities ancillary to Apple’s existing businesses over-ripe-to-the-point-of-rotting for innovation.

So, while every pundit and their analyst seems eager to rumor up Apple’s next big thing while simultaneously dismissing all current things as “iterative”, I’m eager to see all of it. From Mountain Lion and iOS 6 at WWDC 2012 to the 2012 iPhone this fall and the next new iPad beyond it.

Nothing Apple does exists in a vacuum. Sure, at some point in the future, when technology makes it possible, Apple might just re-revolutize personal computing again. Maybe they’ll make it wearable or implantable. Maybe they’ll make it more human, with a natural language and thought interface disruption that does to multitouch what multitouch did to mouse and mouse did to command line and command line did to punchcard.

Or maybe, just like the computer became the network, the device may become the ecosystem, and each element from hardware to software to service will drag each other inexorably forward. Maybe Siri and iCloud are the first indicators of that.

What better way to serve Apple’s theme but for the next big thing to be a relentless stream of small things?

Image credit: iDoodle by Jason Harrison

While Apple never meant iCloud to work like Dropbox or Google Drive, if you don’t mind polishing up your ninja-skills you can get it to do just that!

There’s no shortage of online storage solutions — Dropbox, Box.net, SugarSync, Microsoft SkyDrive, Apple’s soon-to-be end-of-lifed iDisk, and now, Google Drive. Apple’s new iCloud isn’t meant to be online storage at all; it’s designed to abstract away messy concepts like file systems and folders and tuck everything away neatly behind apps.

But that doesn’t work for everybody. Now, like my colleagues here at iMore, I think Dropbox is currently the best cloud storage solution for iPhone and iPad users. However, Dropbox gives you a measly 2GB of free storage and charges a pretty hefty premium for more.

iCloud, on the other hand, gives you 5GB for free and if you are a prior MobileMe user – you should currently have 25GB of storage space available to you. Like Dropbox, you can always buy more space if need be.

iCloud is great for automatically storing your device backups, keeping all your personal information – contacts, etc. and for uploading Word, PowerPoint and Excel files (see our ultimate guide to iCloud for detailed instructions on how to do all of that and more).  Did you know, however, that you can also (with a little tweaking) upload movies, audio files and pictures to store in iCloud for safe keeping?

Sure, you could get an extra 5GB of free storage with Google Drive, Microsoft SkyDrive, or by combining other accounts, but if you’re already an iCloud user, you may not want the extra hassle of maintaining multiple accounts. You might just want to have your iCloud cake and eat it to. So here’s how.

Note: These directions are for Mac OS X users, we’ll do a Windows version soon.

How to use iCloud like Dropbox or Google Drive

First, make sure that iCloud is up and running on your Mac.

1. Launch System Preferences on your Mac.
2. Click on iCloud.
3. Make sure Documents and Data is checked.
4. Close System Preferences.

Next we have to go to where iCloud’s Documents in the Cloud live.

How to create aliases for Documents in the Cloud folders.

1. Launch the Finder
2. In the Menu click on the Go menu and then down to Go to Folder (or use the keyboard shortcut, CMD + SHIFT + G)
3. Type ~/library/ and click on Go
4. Double click on the folder called Mobile Documents (if it isn't there – don't panic, we will show you how to create it below).
5. Find the folders that store your Documents in the Cloud, namely:
   1. Com~apple~pages
   2. Com~apple-numbers
   3. Com~apple~keynote
6. Double click on the com~apple~pages folder.
7. Right click on the Documents folder.
8. Select Create Alias, which will put an alias for that folder on your desktop.
9. Repeat this procedure on all Macs that use your iCloud account.

How to create the Mobile Documents folder

If you don't see the Mobile Documents folder, you can actually create it:

1. Launch Finder.
2. In the Menu click on the Go menu and then down to Go to Folder (or use the keyboard shortcut, CMD + SHIFT + G)
3. Type ~/library/ and click on Go
4. Click on File in the menu and then New Folder.
5. Name the new folder Mobile Documents.
6. Double click the new folder and make a series of new folders called:
   1. Com~apple~pages
   2. Com~apple-numbers
   3. Com~apple~keynote
7. Double click on the com~apple~pages folder.
8. Right click on the Documents folder.
9. Select Create Alias, which will put an alias for that folder on your desktop.
10. Repeat this procedure on all Macs that use your iCloud account.

How to use iCloud alias folders

Now that you have your Documents in the Cloud folders aliased to your desktop, all you have to do is drag and drop files into them. Drag Word and text documents into the Pages folder, Spreadsheets into the Numbers folder, and Presentations into the Keynote folder.

If everything is properly set up and working, dragging a file into the folder on one computer will automatically put it into the folder on the other computers that use your iCloud account, just like Dropbox!

How to use iCloud to store music, movies, photos, and other files

Now, this is great if you are using Office files, but what if you want to use your iCloud to store movies, audio files or pictures?

Fortunately, there is a workaround to upload any file to iCloud – not just documents.

This method works with images, videos, audio files – even full directories and stores them in your iCloud account for later retrieval.

1. login into iCloud.com
2. Click on the iWork icon
3. Click on Upload

You’ll see that you can only upload Word or Pages documents, Excel or Numbers documents, PowerPoint of Keynote documents or text files. That’s where this gets tricky.

1. Navigate to any video, image or audio file (or even folder)
2. Right click on it and select Compress from the contextual menu
3. Add .txt to the end of the file the extension.
4. Agree to the file extension warning to confirm you want to make the change.

Now, go back to iCloud on your computer

1. Click on the Gear button in the upper right hand corner
2. Click on Upload Document
3. Select the file you just compressed and changed the extension for.

Now, when you go to Pages, you will see the file (it will look like a text file) and it should show up on every device you have connected to the iCloud account.

To retrieve the file from another computer, just repeat the process in reverse.

1. login into iCloud.com
2. Click on the iWork icon
3. Download the file
4. Go to your Downloads folder.

And there’s your file. Just rename it back to .zip, uncompress, and voila!

Yes, as hacks go it’s really ugly and really inefficient, but if you understand how the iCloud and Mac filesystems works, and ever really need it in a pinch, it’s there for you. (Unless or until Apple changes things — that’s the risk of using any hack.)

More on using iCloud like Dropbox or Google Drive

So, that's how you can take advantage of your free iCloud storage to store more than just the music and movies you buy from iTunes and your personal information.

Is newfound cloud storage helpful to you? Share you experiences in this forum thread.

• How to set up, back up, restore, and update using iCloud
• How to set up and use iCloud mail, contacts, and calendars
• How to set up and use iTunes in the Cloud
• How to set up and use iTunes Match
• How to set up and use Photo Stream
• How to set up and use Documents in the Cloud
• How to set up and use Find my iPhone
• How to set up and use Find my Friends
• iCloud help and discussion forum

Okay, it’s not that big of a surprise, but Good Technology’s latest data from their enterprise customers confirm that yes, iOS is killing Android in the business world. In the first quarter of the year, the iPhone 4S accounted for 37% of Good’s activations, followed by the iPad 2 with 17.7%, while the new iPad is already claiming 12.1%. The iPhone 4, original iPad, and iPhone 3GS occupy other top spots before Android devices start making the list. By comparison, they scored only 26.1% smartphone penetration and 2.7% tablet presentation. These stats continue the trend initially identified by Good in January.

Of course, Good is often the go-to solution for companies wanting to roll out and manage something other than BlackBerry, which means we don’t have too much context on how well the traditional enterprise leader is faring by comparison, but we’ve seen lots of studies detailing RIM’s downward spiral, and plenty of others corroborating the growing popularity of iOS devices in the enterprise market.

Part of the reason for the Apple’s success relative to Android is the uniformity of the devices. Like BlackBerry, iPhones and iPads come from one end-to-end vendor and so, while they have their own benefits and drawbacks, those benefits and drawbacks are a constant. Once you know how iOS works on ActiveSync or Good, you know how all the iPhones and iPads deployed in your enterprise will work on ActiveSync or Good. It makes everything from rollout to support easier.

With Android, Google has left a lot of the implementation details up to the individual manufacturers and carriers, and so ActiveSync and app compatibility can vary from line to line or even device to device. Having that many more targets drastically increases complexity for both deployment and support.

Apple has also been making it a point to focus on enterprise-friendly features and to tout business adoption figures in their conference calls. Obviously, it’s paying off.

Has your boss issued you an iPhone? How many corporate Android handsets have you seen around the office?

Source: Network World

The standing committee on infrastructure and communications in the Australian House of Representatives will be launching an investigation into why digital goods (such as iTunes music and iBooks) are priced so much more highly in Australia than elsewhere in the world. Traditionally, shipping costs drove prices up for physical goods, but for electronic files you’re downloading, there’s really no good reason for such a price disparity. Stephen Conroy, Australia’s Minister of Communications, said in a recent letter:

There is evidence to suggest that the innovative use of technology is not always matched with innovative new business models in the case of products and services distributed online… I agree that Australian businesses and households should have access to IT software and hardware that is fairly priced relative to other jurisdictions … the global digital economy is likely to make it increasingly difficult to sustain business models that are based on a geographic carve-up of markets.

iOS apps in Australia don’t really cost any more than they do over here, but there’s a pretty big disparity in music prices. For example, Jack White’s newest album, Blunderbuss, and Adele’s, 21, cost $10.99 in the U.S., but $16.99 in Australia. I’m sure there are different taxes to be paid over there, but they can’t be that huge. As for iBooks, there aren’t many textbooks that have found their way to the Australian market since the big educational update. Pricing for iBooks can sometimes be even more expensive than a proper paperback, a situation which is exacerbated by a pricing model which is currently under scrutiny elsewhere, too.

Of course, Apple isn’t the only one in the crosshairs. Adobe is charging $1400 more than the the U.S. version for one software package in Australia. Microsoft will also be called to explain its pricing model to the government over the course of the investigation, which will be launching sometime this year.

Australians, who have you found to charge the most inflated prices for digital downloads? Have the higher prices stopped you from buying software, music, or e-books?

Source: SMH

The widely popular twitter client for iPhone and iPad, Tweetbot, has been updated to version 2.3 and brings with it some great new features, including a new tweet detail view with both inline conversations and replies, the ability to stop retweets from individual users, new gestures, and more.

The new tweet detail view is very neat, but I admit that I actually very rarely look at tweet details. I’m more excited about the new conversation view that also includes replies. Many other Twitter apps mix all replies into the conversation stream making it hard to follow, but Tweetbot clearly labels which tweets are in the conversation at hand, and which ones are replies to the specific tweet you are looking at. Very nice.

The other extremely awesome feature is the ability to block retweets from individual users. That person you are following who has the tendency to retweet what seems like everything in their Twitter feed can now be silenced! If you block their retweets, you only see the original tweets from that user in your feed– some of the people I’m following better watch out!

Tweetbot has also made some adjustments with regards to tweeted videos. Video thumbnails will now show a play button over it as a way to indicate that it’s a video and not a photo. Thumbnail support for Vimeo links has also been added.

Some of the other new features include Droplr support, higher res image uploads when connected to wifi, support for $stock links, improved email format, reorganized tweet drawer, the timeline sync bookmark icon is now optional, and holding down the Compose Tweet button will quickly open last draft.

I’ve always been a huge fan of Tweetbot. Occasionally, I switch to a different client, but I always end up returning to Tweetbot. Fellow Tweetbot users, what’s your favorite new feature in this update?

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A Lithuanian developer, LemonLabs, has recently published an interesting infographic detailing a few simple ways in which designers can prepare their assets for developers in a useful and sensible way. The advice ranges from simple standard resolutions for icons, to highlighting particular Apple style guidelines, and how to package your final bundle of assets. A lot of it seems like common sense, but I’m sure there are at least a few iOS developers out there who would like to make sure their designers have at least glanced over something like this.

If you’re an avid listener of Iterate, our mobile design podcast — and if you aren’t, hurry up and start listening now! — you know the subject of how designers pass of assets to developers is rather hotly contested. Some designers want complete control over final image files, right down to the slice, while others think it’s the developers job to take the Photoshop or Fireworks source file and cut it up themselves. Likewise, some developers have no idea how to edit an image and just want the slices all pretty and packaged, while other developers want final control to the point of preferring to slice the source files themselves.

When you factor in managing Retina (@2x) and non-retina assets, making sure everything is pixel perfect can become both an art and a chore. Luckily, compared to other platform, Apple’s small set of screen sizes makes the task at least somewhat manageable. (iOS developers don’t have to invent their own forms of antialiasing and test against different screen technologies, for example!)

So consider this a cheat-sheet, or a funny way to make a much-needed point.

And for way more on the topic of mobile design, keep listing to Iterate and check out our Mobile Design & Development Forum!

Source: LemonLabs via iPhoneinCanada

It’s been six months since Apple released the iPhone 4S and that means it’s been six months since Apple launched Siri, their virtual personal assistant. Siri does a lot of things very well — it’s the fastest way to set alarms or Reminders, and an easy way to call someone, or respond to text messages while otherwise occupied.

However, it still isn’t very consistent — it will read SMS but not email, it will send SMS and Email but not tweets. And while it’s added Japanese to its list of supported languages, that’s all its added. Still no Spanish, Italian, or Portuguese, no Mandarin Chinese, or other popular languages. Even for the languages Siri does support, it’s still hit or miss at times, and while it works wonderfully for some users, it doesn’t seem to work at all for others. And, of course, the new iPad didn’t get Siri at all…

Apple is still focusing most of their iPhone 4S marketing on Siri, with high profile celebrity ads involving Samuel L. Jackson, Zooey Deschenel, and… Santa. And according to our own Ally Kazmucha’s exclusive talk with Siri co-founder and former Apple employee, Dag Kittlaus, there’s more to come.

But for now we just want to know how much you’re using Siri? Do you rely on her (or him, depending on your language) all day, every day? Or do you use Siri so little you’ve forgotten it even exists? Vote in the poll up top and give us your honest opinion in our Siri Forum — how much do you use Siri?

Some additional investigation into the “Wake Up” flashmob that happened at Australia Apple stores last week reveals it may actually be BlackBerry and Research In Motion behind the stunt. This conclusion was drawn from a wily forum-poster who checked out the teaser site, and found within the source an account code for DoubleClick (an online ad campaign management system). That code apparently matches up with RIM Australia. On top of that, the countdown in seconds points to July 2 12:30 PM PDT, which a tipster suggests will be the launch day for RIM’s new operating system.

Samsung has already denied that they were responsible, so if it isn’t them or RIM, who could be in charge of this campaign, and to what end? My only guess at this point is Greenpeace, who had recently published a scathing report on Apple’s iCloud operations. Greenpeace has made a similarly high-profile protest at an Apple store in London, but this incident seems like it might be a bit too slick and professionally-executed to be a Greenpeace effort.

(It probably wasn’t CrackBerry Kevin — he seems to have an alibi…)

Assuming RIM is behind this “Wake Up” campaign, how effective is it? Does going after Apple this aggressively actually accomplish anything, especially if the organizers are being so coy about what it is they’re promoting or pushing?

Source: MacWorld, Wake Up Australia

For today only, the iMore new iPad accessory store has the Incipio Smart feather Ultralight Hard Shell Case for The new iPad on sale for only $21.95! That’s a whopping 37% off! Get it before it’s gone!

Measuring less than 1mm thin, Incipio’s Ultra Light Feather Case is ideal for the The new iPad user seeking inconspicuous, first-class protection.

Feather is made of an ultra light, ultra strong polymer for light as a feather, form-fitting durable protection without the added bulk. Feather features a soft touch matte finish. Feather by Incipio is so thin that it allows the The new iPad to be used with many of the docks on the market.

Works with Apple’s Smart Cover anchor and clasps

Features:

• Ultra light, ultra strong polymer
• Less than 1mm thin – for superior protection without adding bulk
• Soft touch matte finish
• Light as a feather, form-fitting durable protection

Shop Incipio Smart feather Ultralight Hard Shell Case for The new iPad now!

Each year Apple — an many, many other tech companies — manages to avoid billions in corporate taxes around the world and across the U.S. They do this by setting up offices and funneling money to tax-friendly places like Ireland and Reno, Nevada. Even though Apple’s corporate headquarters is in Cupertino, California, having offices to collect profits and invest money in countries and state with little or no corporate tax, they legally hang on to vast amounts of profit each year.

The New York Times, in another one of their Apple headlined exposés, points out that Apple’s office in Reno, Nevada, only consists of a handful of employees. Nevada’s corporate tax rate is 0%. California’s is 8.33%. You can see where the savings add up rather quickly. And this office is one of many that Apple has established across the globe in order to legally cut back on taxes owed.

Setting up an office in Reno is just one of many legal methods Apple uses to reduce its worldwide tax bill by billions of dollars each year. As it has in Nevada, Apple has created subsidiaries in low-tax places like Ireland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and the British Virgin Islands — some little more than a letterbox or an anonymous office — that help cut the taxes it pays around the world.

A treasury economist, Martin A. Sullivan, estimated that if Apple wouldn’t have used tactics such as these, their tax bill last year alone would have been around $2.4 billion higher. Apple paid around $3.3 billion in taxes on a reported $34.2 billion last year.

Apple has responded to the New York Times‘ assertions that Apple evades taxes:

Apple also pays an enormous amount of taxes which help our local, state and federal governments. In the first half of fiscal year 2012 our U.S. operations have generated almost $5 billion in federal and state income taxes, including income taxes withheld on employee stock gains, making us among the top payers of U.S. income tax.

Apple has conducted all of its business with the highest of ethical standards, complying with applicable laws and accounting rules. We are incredibly proud of all of Apple's contributions.

Although it’s not made obvious in the New York Times article, Apple isn’t the only company that takes advantage of tax code in this way. Most tax code was written with tangible goods in mind and most tech companies also deal with digital goods and transactions. It’s very easy for companies such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, and other tech giants to collect the profits from these sales in low or no tax states and countries. In comparison, a company like Walmart that makes most of their revenue by selling tangible items would have a harder time using some of the same. Walmart recently paid $5.9 billion in taxes on $24.4 billion in revenue.

Although tech companies are lobbying heavily against it, and seeking enormous tax breaks before they repatriate their income, it’s probably only a matter of time before tax codes are revised to better reflect the way in which the digital economy nows operates and does business. Until then, Apple and other tech companies alike will probably continue to enjoy the benefits of outdated tax code.

Source: New York Times

A new jailbreak tweak called Quasar will let you have multiple apps open and running at the same time. If you’ve always yearned for the opportunity to have your iPad work more like a desktop OS like Windows or OS X, Quasar could be just what you’ve been looking for.

Quasar is (the very first) window manager for iPad! Now you can run apps in windows, on your iPad! Simply open any application and it will be opened in a window, just like in your computer. Quasar is integrated to iOS’s default app switcher (double pressing home button). Killing an application in app switcher (or holding the close button) kills its window and the application itself, but if you only click the close button, the window is closed but the application keeps running in background (in the app switcher).

Quasar is a version 1.0 jailbreak app and to be fair you can tell. It crashed the springboard a few times when I was playing with it and froze a couple of times too. There are weird rotations and portrait bugs as seen in the video are quite annoying too. Having said that, this could potentially be a game changer as and when it’s quirks have been ironed out.

Quasar is available through Cydia for $9.99 and is for the iPad only running iOS 5 or higher.

UPDATE: The developer has already released an update and fixed some of the bugs that we experienced in the demo video. The orientation and rotation bugs are now fixed along with a few other things too. Good to see such speedy bug fixes!

 

June 11. That’s the date we’ve long suspected but just this week had confirmed. Apple’s 2012 World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) is now official hurtling towards us (or us towards it). But it’s not the only things going on this week, so let’s get to it.

WWDC 2012 and iOS 6

Apple announced WWDC 2012 at 5:30am Cupertino, California (PDT) time, less than 50 days before the June 11 start date, with a $1600 ticket price, and it still sold out in 2 hours. Many developers and interested parties had created scripts that would look for any change in Apple’s WWDC website and alert them immediately. Others signed up for text message notification services. Still others networked with friends, family, peers, and others to keep constant vigil and light the web on fire the moment tickets went live.

Some got them, some didn’t. No one seemed thrilled with the process. Probably not even at Apple. The list of problems are easy to identify — too much demand, not enough availability, and a high stress, no-notice acquisition process. Solutions are harder to come by.

For gadget enthusiasts, however, the only real problem is anticipation. With WWDC comes Apple’s annual keynote. In years past it’s introduced the iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, and iPhone 4. Last year it introduced iOS 5 and iCloud, but no new hardware.

And this year?

iMore has heard that, once again, there won’t be any new iOS devices this summer, but like last year there’s a lot of software for Apple to spotlight. No doubt we’ll see OS X Mountain Lion get it’s first public demonstration. We should also see iOS 6, or whatever Apple calls the next version of its mobile operating system. There was no iOS SDK event like there was in 2008, 2009, and 2010, so just like 2011 we’re expecting WWDC to see the launch of the first iOS 6 beta.

And that should be interesting to say the least.

I’ll be there all week, along with our apps editor, Leanna Lofte, and my co-host on the iPhone Live and Iterate podcasts, Seth Clifford.

Google Drive

Google Drive is finally here. Unlike Nokia Drive, which is a turn-by-turn navigation service, Google Drive is a cloud storage service. (English is funny, but not as funny as branding in English.) Based on how it’s currently set up, it could also be called Google Docs+, but at this point I’m just happy it’s not Google Play Drive.

And it’s not bad. Prices are more than competitive and if there’s anything Google knows, it’s how to store data at scale. Some might have philosophical problems with the way Google monetizes all that stored data, but nothing’s really free. If you don’t want to pay with money, you’re going to pay with access to your demographic and other data. Everyone has to decide from themselves what’s a fair price and how they’re willing to pay it.

Personally, I’m not switching away from Dropbox any time soon. While Google Drive is cheaper, Dropbox has momentum. All my stuff is already in there, most of the apps I use are already integrated with it, and Google Drive isn’t better enough to make switching everything over anywhere near worth it.

I will add it to the mix, however, much as I did iCloud. Right now I’ll use it as a big online scratch disk and see if anything further evolves from there.

A lot of that will depend on how long it takes the iPhone and iPad apps to ship, and how good they are. Sadly, I’ve come not to expect much…

Why can’t great companies make great mobile apps?

Let’s be perfectly blunt — most of Google’s iOS apps have been terrible at launch and haven’t improved much since. About the nicest thing you could say about them is they make sure Facebook isn’t alone in buggy apps from major corporations that should know better and be better. And I don’t get it. These are two of the biggest, smartest, most talented, and certainly wealthiest technology companies in the world and they can’t make a killer iOS app between them?

Indie developers, unimaginably more limited in resources, literally code circles around Facebook and Google when it comes to mobile. Look at Tweetbot. Look at Twitterrific. Look at Tweetie (before Twitter bought it). Look at webOS, which cash-strapped Palm put together on a shoe-string and a dream. Facebook for iPhone was mortally wounded when the original developer, Joe Hewitt, left the project and while it’s improved slowly over time, it’s not where it needs to be or should be. Not by a long shot.

Google has bought iOS apps (and canned them), Facebook bought Instagram, but neither has shown they have what it takes to transition from web companies to mobile companies. They’re mobile immigrants, not mobile natives, and they’re not enculturating well.

But mobile isn’t just their future, it’s the future. They need to do whatever it takes to nail mobile apps, and now.

Google has a chance with Google Drive for iOS to show us they’re more than a wafer thin UIWebView wrapper and a terrible web-based authentication system. I sincerely hope they do.

Features

Lots of great stuff to shine the spotlight on this week.

• Siri co-founder talks to iMore about the future of technology, mobile interfaces, and implementing Siri: Ally got a chance to hear Dag Kittlaus speak and ask him some questions. If you haven’t read it already, read it now!
• Best free iPhone games: Simon entered the wilds of the iPhone App Store, and hunted down and captured the very best free games available.
• Stellar Q2 2012 highlights why Apple is a must-own tech stock: Chris U. goes over Apple’s killer second quarter to help us make better sense of the crazy high numbers.
• Ultimate guide to iCloud: If you’ve got questions about iCloud, the whole iMore team came together to bring you answers.

Ultimate guide to iCloud

Speaking of the Ultimate Guide to iCloud — we got a lot of feedback on it. It was one of the longest articles we’ve ever posted and for a lot of you it was simply too long to be manageable. So we listened and we made some changes. Instead of stuffing everything into one post, we’ve now broken it up into several parts. The main article is now an index and each section has its own dedicated article (many of which we’ll be expanding on in the near future). Check them out:

• How to set up, back up, restore, and update using iCloud
• How to set up and use iCloud mail, contacts, and calendars
• How to set up and use iTunes in the Cloud
• How to set up and use iTunes Match
• How to set up and use Photo Stream
• How to set up and use Documents in the Cloud
• How to set up and use Find my iPhone
• How to set up and use Find my Friends
• iCloud help and discussion forum

Reading list

• Unravelling Samsung’s Galaxy S3 riddle: Alex Dobie of Android Central spends his time waiting for the Samsung event — and Phil Nickinson’s arrival in the Old World — by going over what we can expect from the next great iPhone rival.
• Former RIM employee takes to reddit for some no holds barred Q&A: For those with morbid curiosity, CrackBerry reformatted a gobsmacking Reddit Q&A into much more legible form. (Or you can read the original on Reddit to get all the responses in a threaded view).
• My Dropbox Writing Workflow: Federico Viticci lays his text editing strategy bare. It’s real, and it’s spectacular.
• CinemaCon 2012: THE HOBBIT Underwhelms At 48 Frames Per Second and the rebuttal, Peter Jackson responds to complaints about ‘The Hobbit’ footage: I dislike 3D — the human eye does not handle converging and focusing well on a fake, flat 3D plane, but I’m undecided on 48 fps. I’d like to try it out, I’m just not sure I’d like to risk trying it out on the Hobbit.

They’ve cut the hardline

Long week and they won’t be getting shorter any time soon. Time to find another exit.