Developer showdown: Android/Google vs iOS/Apple

iPad habit creeping in to MacBook

Apple's mobile devices

No matter how hard you expect it to happen, those keys on that MacBook’s keyboard won’t ever flip and reveal additional characters. Oh, and there’s no .?123 key on the MacBook to tap and flip the keyboard. Maybe in the future when Apple introduces context aware touch-enabled keyboard for its Macs as per their patent, but not now, not yet, and definitely not on this MacBook you’re typing on.

This is something I have to remind myself almost daily since May. The time spent typing on the iPad has definitely taken over my muscle memory on using the MacBook and its traditional (I’m trying to avoid describing it as quaint) keyboard.

Speaking of additional characters, I wish Apple would incorporate special characters and symbols into the iOS keyboards. All they have to do is make it an additional keyboard option that can be activated by tapping the globe icon.

More than a year ago I got so used to double tapping the space bar to end a sentence when typing on the iPhone, I started doing it on the MacBook.

Designing iOS app icon

Simplenote. The notes app Apple should have came up with

Being a web oriented writer, I don’t have too much to ask from a text app, just one that has a built in word and character counts and a simple interface. I don’t find the need for text formatting or all the other fancy stuff that many word processing apps offer. Most of the stuff I do don’t even warrant text formatting although there’s that thing with embedding links in text.

Apple’s Notes in iOS is as simple as it gets but it requires me to copy out the text and put it into Pastebot because it doesn’t have word count, which is important in what I do. Notes also uses Marker Felt which tries to look friendly but reminds me of Comic Sans too much.

Along comes Simplenote. It’s the Notes app Apple should have came up with for the iOS. I’ve been using it for a while but it’s been recently updated. I suggest you read Shawn Blanc’s review of it.

No iPod touch on homescreen.me

I just realized @homescreen doesn’t have an iPod touch section. Sure you can lump it with the iPhone but what a way to alienate half of iOS device owners. I should’ve noticed it on day one. Funny how I thought splitting up iPhone and iPhone 4 was odd but totally missed out on the iPod touch omission.

Loic Le Meur: How much can you really make developing mobile apps?

“$2,500 average per paid app isn’t enough to cover the costs of an app, especially those that require constant updates to stay ahead of the competition. Remove the Angry Birds best revenue apps from that average and I am sure the average revenue of the average paid apps will be around $500 or so.”

Loic Le Meur: How much can you really make developing mobile apps?

It turns out a few days ago Adobe updated its Photoshop.com Mobile app for iOS and renamed it as Photoshop Express, which made a lot more sense and a lot less mouthful.

Many of you might not know this but Adobe used to run a web project called Photoshop Express about two years ago on the domain photoshop.com. It was designed to be a free and light photo editing web app. They’ve since launched it properly and added links to other services such as Flickr and Facebook but dropped the Express name.

For whatever reason, they’ve now repurposed the name for the iOS app and added iPad compatibility. While the app itself is pretty neat for a light editing app, it’s kind of stupid how you can only launch it in portrait orientation. If you launch the app on the iPad while holding it horizontally, the app will quit and hand over whatever file it was going to open to a random app.

Ars Technica says Intel and Apple destined to clash

Apple hasn’t updated the Mac Pro in almost two years, the MacBook Air is in desperate need of a refresh, the Mac Mini’s recent update didn’t go far enough to warrant the price hike, and the entire notebook line hasn’t seen anything significant of late. It’s been a very non Apple period this past two years for its Mac lineup. Little wonder when you’ve seen how much effort they’ve put in to their relatively new mobile front with the iPhone and iOS platform.

Wondering why Apple has been lagging in its Mac updates and development? Ars Technica takes a look at what seems to be going on between Apple and Intel and why AMD may be in the picture.

Ars Technica says Intel and Apple destined to clash