Dear Apple
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iPhone 5 with a bigger screen
There is a slew of iPhone 5 mockups with the bigger elongated screens, 20 icons above the dock, 25… Check for example this 3D iPhone 5 mock-up from MacRumors, or their post. Everybody seem to think the new iPhone 5 screen will be taller. Will Hains via MG Siegler, The Verge… Or even taller and wider at the same time. But they’re all wrong, here’s why.
To me the main drawback of the new retina display is that the text is friggin’ thin now. On iPhone 3G/3GS everything was bolder and easier to read. Maybe I am getting old, but the first thought I had when I got the iPhone 4 was “I wish this thing had a bigger screen”. I don’t really need 16:9 screen, everything is fine. Just make the damn screen slightly larger and it would solve everyting.
Keeping the same body size you can fit 4 inch screen on paper. And you still will be able to operate it with a single thumb, developers won’t have to update their apps to the new screen ratio (as Marco pointed out already), and it will make lives so much easier.
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Font size bookmarklets
Mobile Safari is nice and all but it drives me crazy to zoom in and out on sites with super small fonts and wide lines. It’s getting even worse when Safari Reader can’t parse the page. I kinda like in on Android how you can increate the font-size by simply zooming the page in. Too bad Apple thinks everybody has eagle eyes and don’t need anything like that.
I also vote for a bigger screen on the next iPhone with the same resolution. Those retina screens make letter so think it’s getting hard to read. Anyway, lets get to the point.
Font-:
javascript:var p=document.getElementsByTagName('*');for(i=0;i<p.length;i++){if(p[i].style.fontSize){var s=parseInt(p[i].style.fontSize.replace("px",""));}else{var s=12;}s-=2;p[i].style.fontSize=s+"px"}Font+:
javascript:var p=document.getElementsByTagName('*');for(i=0;i<p.length;i++){if(p[i].style.fontSize){var s=parseInt(p[i].style.fontSize.replace("px",""));}else{var s=12;}s+=2;p[i].style.fontSize=s+"px"}And this:
Transforms to this, perfect:
For detailed instruction on installing Bookmarklets please check the original article by Marcos Kirsch
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“Waiting for other installations to complete…” fix
This horrid bug was following me all day on two macs. It didn’t let me install Safari update then some other stuff. Every time you launch .pkg, another installation starts too and them both are waiting. Found the solution for this on GitHub:
sudo rm /private/var/db/mds/system/mds.install.lock
sudo reboot
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Touché: Touch Interaction with Everyday Objects
Not every day you see innovative touch patents from Disney. And this one worth checking for sure. One wire and almost every object become aware of what you are doing. I wish Apple invented this.
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iPad Keyboard Prototype
One of the things that needs improvement in iOS is keyboard. iOS5 introduced the splittable keyboard, but frankly that ain’t cutting it. The main issue when editing text - there are no arrow keys, so you can’t quickly correct what you’ve just typed.
Of course if you are going to use iPad for serious writing, coding or remote system administration you will need an external keyboard anyway. But the ability to quickly go back and forth in the line and easy text selection would make lives easier for many of us nonetheless.
Here is the concept from @danielchooper that should be implemented from the day one. I hope Apple will do this for iOS6 at least and hire Daniel as well. You can help to get this through to Apple by following the instructions in the video description on Youtube.
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How to create Recovery Partition on an SD Card
Thanks to Lion we now have Recovery Partition right on our hard drives, so you don’t need to find the disk when you want to roll the system back to a Time Machine backup. The only thing – what if you have RAID and no Recovery Partition? Here’s how to make one on an old SD card that you have probably lying around somewhere collecting dust because of it’s small size.
You will need:
- A computer with a Recovery Partition (borrow a Macbook from a friend if you don’t have one around)
- 512Mb SD Card or bigger
Apple has released the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant that could copy the partition for you, the only caveat – it doesn’t work with SD card. You can still use it if you have a USB Card Reader, but what if you don’t have one? Of course you can go a get yourself a card reader, but come on, there is one built-in to every Apple computer these days, lets use what we have. And the Recovery DIsk Assistant can go to Trash meanwhile.
First of all you need to make the hidden Recovery Partition visible in the Disk Utility. Launch Terminal and paste the following command:
defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1This will add a new Debug menu item to Disk Utility, re-launch it and choose “Show Every Partition”.
Ok, now the easy part. Choose the hidden Recovery HD partition, click Restore, and chose the SD Card as the Destination:
After a while of displaying progress bars and various cryptic messages (make sure the card is not write-locked) Disk Utility will make a bootable copy of the Recovery partition. To boot into it simply hold Option when you are starting your computer.
To remove the Debug Menu from Disk Utility, paste the same command in Terminal, just replace 1 with 0:
defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 0
And don’t forget to have Time Machine running to have something to restore to if the need will arise.
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iOS Windows-8-like Cydia hack
While this particular interface looks a bit questionable to say the least, the sheer power of the iPad continues to amaze. Quasar is available to the owners of jailbroken devices from The Big Boss repository for $9.99. Quite a hefty price, but then again this thing turns iPad into almost a proper computer. At the very least you can read a webpage and type in another window at the same time.
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IKEA UPPLEVA: Is this the future Apple TV?
Interesting offer from IKEA, thinking of it, it might even work if the price is right. And of course the Blu-Ray player should be replaced with an Apple TV. The only thing I am wondering about is what brand the TV is? Is it one of those Samsung smart TVs with Android? Or IKEA Android?
These days when only Samsung seems to make money off TV sets and keeps improving them while all the time all other companies are either shrinking their TV divisions or keep operating at a loss IKEA makes a bold move with this “embedded furniture”.
I am really curious about the sound and the screen sizes. And the interface, it’s not that long to wait, hope we will get more details soon.
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