When Jony Ive took over the role of leadership for Apple’s Human Interface in October of last year, many speculated that the style of Apple’s design language across iOS and Mac OS X would also shift towards a flatter, more clean style. This speculation was fueled mainly by Ive’s feelings towards skeuomorphism and his minimalist design aesthetic.

Starting with today’s emailing, Apple has completely redesigned the look and feel of its iTunes promotional emails (Thanks, Nicholas). While perhaps not as stark of a change as something like the podcasts app update,  this redesign falls in line with many of Apple’s other recent interface changes, primarily the use of lighter typography and less visual noise.

iTunes MiniPlayer

iTunes 11.0.3, which was launched last week, was a fairly minor update, aside from a new MiniPlayer design which sheds some of the traditional iTunes feel in favor of a flatter design. When viewing large thumbnails of your album art, gone is the glossy title bar and playback controls, replaced with a fairly plain and utilitarian flat black UI.

2013 WWDC Announcement

When Apple sent out its promotional emails for WWDC this year, they created quite a stir around the web thanks to the design of the graphic. Compared to past years, 2013′s announcement is much cleaner and flatter, thanks mostly to its plain, stark typography and lack of heavy textures and rich details. Apple’s trend toward thinner, more modern fonts started last year with iOS 6, and has been becoming more prominent throughout their branding ever since. When Apple ditched Google Maps in favor of their own solution in 2012, they decided to display the map data in Avenir, a slim, modern font new to iOS. This typography also made it over to some of Siri’s results panes.

In addition, iOS 6′s updated weather application also shed its heavy typography in favor of a more elegant look. Similar fonts can be seen on Apple’s iPhone 5 webpage. It wouldn’t be at all surprising to see more fonts of this nature appear in iOS 7.

Overall, Jony Ive has only been in charge of Apple’s Human Interface for a few months, and it’s hard to tell in exactly which way he’ll take software design. However, if the changes we’ve already seen are any indication, Jony Ive is taking the same approach to software as he does to hardware: taking an already great product and refining its design down to its purest form.

This post was written by Michael Steeber from 9to5Mac.
You can view the original post by clicking here.

In just over a year since its 25 billion milestone, Apple’s App Store has just crossed the threshold of 50 billion downloads. As a reminder, the App Store launched just shy of five years ago, on July 10, 2008. The App Store has celebrated three major milestones since its launch, the first for the 10 billionth download in January of 2011, followed by 25 billion just a little over a year later.

In a press release this January, Apple noted that over 40 billion apps had been downloaded, meaning that one-fifth of all downloads from the App Store have already come in 2013. It remains quite remarkable that five years after launch, the App Store is still seeing such accelerated growth.

To celebrate 50 billion downloads, Apple is giving away a $10,000 App Store gift card to the lucky person who downloads the 50 billionth app, with 50 runner ups receiving a $500 card. Apple typically reveals who the winner is within a few days after the contest ending.

As a reminder, the 25 billionth app was downloaded by Chunli Fu of Qingdao, China, who was flown out to Apple’s Beijing headquarters to receive her card. The 10 billionth app, however, was downloaded by Gail Davis of Orpington, Kent, UK, who was contacted by Eddy Cue, an Apple SVP.

Amazing coincidence!? Apple to magically hit 50B App downloads RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF GOOGLE I/O?! apple.com/itunes/50-bill…—
Seth Weintraub (@llsethj) May 15, 2013

We just hit 50 billion app downloads. Thank you. It couldn't have happened without you. #50BillionApps tw.appstore.com/hgE—
App Store (@AppStore) May 15, 2013

This post was written by Michael Steeber from 9to5Mac.
You can view the original post by clicking here.

If you’re someone that regularly edits photos, or enjoys graphic design work, then you’ve likely used Pixelmator, which is arguably the best alternative to Photoshop on the Mac. Today, the popular $15 app is getting a huge update, known as 2.2 “Blueberry,” which includes over 100 new features. I’ve been testing out the new options, and they’re pretty great…

Shapes

Pixelmator 2.2 focuses heavily on shapes and vector drawing options, bringing to the table a slew of new options. First and foremost is the new Shape Style palette, which lets you set and tweak a variety of different settings on your shape, bringing Pixelmator more in line with the more premium alternatives such as Photoshop. From the Shape Styles palette, you can edit properties such as fill and stroke colors, stroke size, drop shadow, inner shadow, and more.

Along with the new shape style pane is a slew of new shapes to use. More than 40 are included in the app, but you can also create and import your own custom shapes, which can save a lot of time in the long run. Shapes are now more customizable than ever before, offering quick controls to adjust the number of points on the shape.

Perhaps most exciting is the ability to turn text into shapes, a welcome feature. Any text, from full sentences to individual letters, can be turned into a shape, making it much easier than before to work with fonts and type. Once you’ve turned text into a shape, all of the same shape style properties that are applicable to normal shapes are available to your text shape as well, meaning it’s now really simple to create great looking, stylized type, right in Pixelmator. Last but not least, the Move Tool has been updated to be content aware, and can now tell the difference between an image layer and a shape layer, only revealing the move options that correspond to the layer you’ve selected.

Paint Selection

Pixelmator 2.2 also includes an entirely new tool, called the Paint Selection Tool. This tool is somewhat of a hybrid between the paintbrush tool and the Magic Wand Tool, letting you easily select regions of similar color by simply painting over the selection you want. The Paint Selection tool recognizes the color area around where you’ve painted, and automatically highlights to the borders. While not dramatically different from the Magic Wand Tool in terms of overall functionality, it’s a simpler approach to fine grain selection, and gives you more control over the content selected.

Light Leaks

Adding to its ever growing collection of Effects, Pixelmator 2.2 gains a new retro Light Leak Effect, which contains 8 customizable Light Leaks, each offering a unique look and sliders for adjusting the intensity. While certainly not perfect for all photos, these new effects are great for pictures that you want to a retro feel. If you play around with the effects for a little while, you can get some pretty realistic and neat looks, similar to what you’d get with the photography technique of lens whacking.

Vectormator

Pixelmator’s last big new feature is an alternate mode for the app called Vectormator. Activating Vectormator by pressing Command-Shift-V on your keyboard strips away all tools and options not essential for working with vectors, leaving you with a simple layout oriented towards shapes and typography.

Aside from the aforementioned features above, Pixelmator 2.2 Blueberry includes many other small tweaks, including an improved Type Tool, new gradient presets, improved Drawing Toools, the ability to copy a shape’s style to another shape, as well as some much welcomed performance improvements. For existing users, you can grab this great update for free in the Mac App Store. For new customers, the app will set you back $14.99. You can download it here.  As the only credible alternative to Photoshop on the Mac, I can’t recommend Pixelmator any more highly.

This post was written by Michael Steeber from 9to5Mac.
You can view the original post by clicking here.

Released today in the App Store, Onavo Protect promises to protect you while browsing the web on your iPhone. The app allows you to set up an always-on VPN connection, adding an extra layer of security to your browsing experience when you’re on public Wi-Fi networks. Unsecured wireless networks open up the possibility of your personal data being intercepted, and Onavo Protect is intended to keep you safe from those with malicious intent. Additionally, the app warns users when the site they are using is attempting to send a password in an insecure manner, and automatically blocks known phishing sites.

According to Onavo, the application, which is optimized for both the iPhone and iPad, includes the following features:

• Your data connection is secured with an extra layer of encryption with a free always-on VPN
• You can connect to any public WiFi hotspot without worrying about being snooped
• Phishing and malicious sites are blocked off without having to change any of your browsing habits
• Your personal information, like usernames, passwords, credit card numbers and even social security numbers are protected from being used insecurely

This post was written by Michael Steeber from 9to5Mac.
You can view the original post by clicking here.

As more and more consumers switch to using iOS devices to enjoy media, the need is becoming apparent for a more full featured and well-rounded video player. While Apple’s Videos app provides basic and simple functionality for viewing movies, when it comes to storing, organizing, and viewing your entire library of videos and movies, Apple’s stock app falls flat.

FireCore, the group behind the popular aTV Flash software for jailbroken Apple TVs have released a new app called Infuse, which promises to fix all of that, offering you a versatile way to view and organize videos in a variety of different formats. Let’s check out how it worked.

Design

Upon installing Infuse, the first thing I noticed was how well the app was designed. The interface struck a perfect balance between skeuomorphism, with its textured wood background and red movie curtains, and a traditional sense of how a user interface should behave. When you first the launch the app, you’ll be presented with a card telling you to add movies to the app. Videos can be added from a small selection of sources, primarily interfacing with iTunes. If you’d prefer not loading in your content from iTunes, you can also bring in your video files through the iOS Dropbox app, or through email, all of which are a little tedious. It would be nice to have a more streamlined content importing process. I can’t remember the last time I connected my iPad to iTunes, but I found that the easiest way to get movies on my device. FireCore has informed me that they will be adding the ability to sync files wirelessly from your browser in the future, but that functionality isn’t currently in the app.

Setup

Before you begin to bring your movies into Infuse, you’ll probably want to log in to Trakt. If you haven’t heard of it, Trakt is essentially a tool that allows you to automatically keep track of everything you’ve watched. This process is called “scrobbling.” Infuse has Trakt support baked right into the app allowing Trakt to automatically “scrobble” everything you view. Pulling down on the red ribbon at the top of the screen will allow you to login to Trakt or setup an account. You also have the option of sharing the app with your friends from here as well.

Adding a variety of video formats to Infuse is where the app really shines. Infuse supports 14 different video types, both obscure and widely recognized, ensuring that it’ll be able to handle just about any file that you throw at it. I wasn’t able to dig up examples of all 14 file types to test, but I did try out the AVI, FLV, MP4, M4V, and MOV file formats, and they all worked great, save for a slight stutter that occurred only when playing back HD video and syncing files at the same time, a rare occurrence . Unfortunately, I was unable to get DRM’d content purchased through iTunes to play in Infuse, due to restrictions put in place by Apple in iOS.

Usage

Once you’ve gotten your media into Infuse, you can easily start tweaking it to your liking. On the iPad, all of your videos will appear in a grid towards the bottom of your display, with large movie art cycling through above. These thumbnails and movie art are generated by the app if the movie isn’t known, and are stock movie art if the video can be identified. Overlaid on the bottom of these previews is a synopsis of the film, along with information about the video format itself. If you’re using the iPhone version of Infuse, using the app in portrait will reveal a thumbnailed list of all of your videos, again, the images being automatically generated. Flipping your iPhone into landscape will show you only a scrollable list of your movies with larger poster art, similar to how it appears on the iPad. Tapping on any video in your library will open up a movie “ticket” with metadata about the selected video, all automatically generated. In the case of known films, you’ll be presented with information about the characters in the movie, the plot, and year of release, along with a rating. In more generic video files, you’ll simply see the title of the video along with information about the video and audio format, resolution, and duration.

Hitting the play button on the movie ticket will cause the stub to tear off, and your video will start playing. The player interface looks much as you’d expect from iOS, although the scrubber bar appears to be themed slightly, giving it a unique appearance. In the upper right hand corner of the media controls, you’ll see a small gear icon which allows you to adjust several properties about the currently playing video. From the video tab, you can set the system brightness, change chapters, and change whether or not you’d like to stretch or letterbox your video. The audio tab lets you alternate between tracks if the option is available, and the subtitles tab lets you download subtitles for your movie in a variety of languages. This feature only really works on well known movies that have open subtitle information available about them online, but I found that when it did work, it was very accurate.

Conclusion

Infuse is probably the first video player I’ve seen for iOS that looks great. The visuals and design of the app are incredible, and I can’t give the UI high enough praise. It’s great. From a functionality standpoint, the app also offers many features that competitors don’t; most notably the ability to play 14 different formats of video without the need to convert and encode, as well as great subtitle and Trakt integration. However, Infuse isn’t perfect. I found the performance on the iPad to be a little slower than I’m used to, and the iTunes video importing process is less than stellar. Additionally, the inability to play DRM’d content from iTunes might be a big problem for those who use iTunes as their primary service for consuming media.

I don’t think that Infuse is meant for the average consumer. It’s meant for those with extensive movie libraries that are scattered across their computers in various formats. Infuse offers a way to consolidate your video collection into one spot on your iOS device, and that’s why people will love it. Infuse is a universal app and is available in the iTunes App Store for $4.99.

Screenshot Gallery

This post was written by Michael Steeber from 9to5Mac.
You can view the original post by clicking here.