iPad By Davis: “Apple restores app gifting to iOS App Store, shows they can update Share Sheets dynamically” plus 16 more |
- Apple restores app gifting to iOS App Store, shows they can update Share Sheets dynamically
- Facebook for iPhone and iPad now lets you choose which album when uploading photos
- Apple releases iTunes 11.0.1
- How to get turn-by-turn, Street View, transit directions, and more with Google Maps for iPhone
- The Austin American-Statesman Has a New iPad App: It’s Beyond Terrible
- Apple launches new status page for iCloud, iMessages, Siri, and other services
- Want to attend CES 2013 for Free? Now's your chance, thanks to the The Mobile Nations 2013 CES Experience!
- Apple adds 'App Store Best of 2012' section to App Store
- You Don't Know Jack brings hilarious multiplayer trivia back to iOS
- Samsung chief strategy officer uses Apple products, praises Apple's ecosystem
- Bungie co-founder teases new made-for-mobile shooter
- Google Maps vs Apple Maps update
- iOS 7 wants: Just put the damn filters in Photos.app already
- Football Manager Handheld 2013 for iPad: Out Now
- Google Maps Hits the App Store, No iPad Version Of Course
- iMore show 329: 2012 iPhone and iPad gift guide
- PADD is heavy on Star Trek eye candy, light on content
| Apple restores app gifting to iOS App Store, shows they can update Share Sheets dynamically Posted: 13 Dec 2012 05:14 PM PST
Apple has restored the ability to gift apps from the iPhone and iPad App Stores, something that was previously possible but went missing when iOS 6 shipped last fall. Mark Gurman from 9to5Mac spotted the triumphant, if stealthy return:
The redesigned iOS 6 App Store was a bit of a mess at launch, but has been improving steadily since then. It's certainly possible it simply took Apple until now to get everything stable enough to start adding back features. What's even more interesting is that Apple was able to add a feature to the Share Sheet over HTTP. (There was no firmware update, the new gifting option simply showed up in the grid.) App Store is a web-based app, gifting is an entirely Apple-controlled process, and its possible the core functionality was all there just waiting to be surface. In other words, this might have been a unique or at least rare set of circumstances. But, the more Apple can update iOS without having to push out new versions, the better for everyone. (Including pushing out built-in app updates via the App Store mechanism...) Source: 9to5Mac 
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| Facebook for iPhone and iPad now lets you choose which album when uploading photos Posted: 13 Dec 2012 03:42 PM PST
Facebook for iPhone has received a little update, today, that now allows users to choose an album when uploading photos (finally!). Facebook also claims that the News feed and Timelines load and open faster. Now, Facebook doesn't give any detailed information about how much faster the News feed loads and claims to have "completely rebuilt" Timeline so that it opens faster on your iPhone. No details on exactly what was changed. So we'll ask you, oh awesome readers, do you agree with Facebook's claims? Does your News feed and Timeline indeed load any faster? And what about album selection when uploading photos? Excited about that addition?
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| Posted: 13 Dec 2012 03:18 PM PST
Apple has pushed out an update for iTunes that fixes a few bugs. iCloud purchases should now appear in your library even if iTunes Match is turned on, users with large libraries should now enjoy a more responsive experience, the AirPlay button will appear when it should, and there is now an option to display duplicate items in your library as well as other important stability and performance improvements. Go grab the update and let us know what you think! Are these bugs now fixed for you? Are you experiencing any new bugs? 
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| How to get turn-by-turn, Street View, transit directions, and more with Google Maps for iPhone Posted: 13 Dec 2012 02:00 PM PST
Google Maps brings a lot of great features back to the iPhone, including Street View and transit directions, and adds Google version of turn-by-turn navigation into the mix, all for free. However, some of those features aren't exactly easy to find. If you're just getting started with Google Maps for iPhone, here's everything you need to know.
How to get turn-by-turn directions with Google Maps for iPhone
      How to use voice navigation with Google Maps for iPhone
 How to get transit & walking directions with Google Maps for iPhone
   How to view past destinations with Google Maps for iPhone
   How to use Street View with Google Maps for iPhone
  How to get business information with Google Maps for iPhone
How to set up syncing with Google Maps for iPhone
 
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| The Austin American-Statesman Has a New iPad App: It’s Beyond Terrible Posted: 13 Dec 2012 01:20 PM PST
My hometown's leading newspaper launched a new iPad app yesterday. It's called Today's Paper from The Austin American-Statesman and it's beyond terrible. It's not just a terrible iPad newspaper app, it's an embarrassing app to even have published in the App Store. I'm amazed any sensible publisher has put their name on this. I should've realized how useless this 'paper' was when attempting to take a look at the app when it launched yesterday. That in itself was a farcically bad experience. It went something like this: – I run an iPad site, do iPad app reviews, and especially enjoy iPad newspaper and magazine editions. So I was excited to see a new iPad app from Austin's leading newspaper. I'm not a current print or online Statesman subscriber but I was a very keen potential iPad subscriber. – I installed the app and immediately found that I could not so much as tap to view a single article before hitting a roadblock. To view anything at all in the app you have to sign in as an existing subscriber or take on a new subscription. I've been covering iPad newspaper and magazine apps for over two years now and I cannot recall a single other title that refuses to show any content at all before demanding your money. Great start, and it only gets (much) worse from there. – I knew I couldn't sign in so I hit the Subscribe button and chose the only available option – the $9.99 per month subscription. I tried this several times and got a variety of error messages that all seemed to imply it was just not possible to buy anything on the iPad App Store. Just for laughs, I went to the App Store, installed an iPad magazine, and bought an issue of it with zero errors or problems. (...) © patrickj for iPad Insight, 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us         Comments
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| Apple launches new status page for iCloud, iMessages, Siri, and other services Posted: 13 Dec 2012 01:46 PM PST
Apple has launched a new status page for it's stores, services like iMessages and Siri ,and iCloud that is far more granular and informative than the previous version. While the old page was simply a list of status messages pertaining to iCloud, the new page contains a board with a section each for Services, Stores, and iCloud. An indicator, either a green square for 'Normal' or yellow triangle for 'Issue', gives the status of each individual service, such as iMessage, Siri, or Mail.
Additionally, below the board there is a timeline that details specific issues, as well as who is affected by them. The timeline gives the exact amount of time an issue lasted, both in text and on a view reminiscent of Calendar's day view.
This is a much more comprehensive and status page compared to the previous version, and it shows that Apple takes communication about service issues seriously. Bookmark it now. Source: Apple.com 
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| Posted: 13 Dec 2012 01:23 PM PST
Do you love mobile gaming? Are you active on Twitter and Facebook? Do you spend hours on end posting in Mobile Nations' communities? More important, have you ever wanted to attend the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas and are available the second week of January next year? If you answered YES to all of these questions -- have we got an experience lined up for you!
There's no doubt that CES in Las Vegas is an event any tech junkie MUST attend at least ONCE in his or her lifetime. All of the latest and greatest (and sometimes bizarre) tech is at CES -- it's something to see. And even better than going to an event like CES as an outsider is to go as an insider. That's why we are thrilled to announce the "Mobile Nations 2013 CES Experience," in which six lucky individuals will receive round-trip travel and accommodations for CES 2013, courtesy of NVIDIA Tegra! Woohoo! Keep reading for all the details
To Apply, Here's What You Need to Do:1. Record a 30-second to 2-minute video - Fire up the video camera on your smartphone and record a quick video of yourself. Give a big hello to Mobile Nations and let us know which site(s) you're active on and why you love them. From there, tell us what your favorite mobile game is right now. Finally, tell us why you think we should select you to take part in this Mobile Nations 2013 CES Experience. 2. Submit Your Video - Upload your video to YouTube (you can leave it unlisted if you want). Then send an email to cesexperience@mobilenations.com with the link to your submission video. Be sure in your email to let us know your full name, address and phone number so we can get a hold of you if you're selected. 3. Like NVIDIA on Facebook or follow @NVIDIA on Twitter! - Show our friends at NVIDIA a little love. Recording and submitting your video is enough to enter, but we hope you'll go the 'extra mile' to show them your support! Not sure what to submit? See my sample video below for encouragement, support, and more details! :) Get your video submissions in soon, because the deadline for entries is Friday, Dec. 21 at 11:59 p.m. EST. We will select and announce the 6 lucky recipients across all of Mobile Nations early the following week! Before you enter, read these important notes:
What the Winners Get:
What You'll Need to do in Vegas:Of course, as an insider at this event, you're going to see and do a lot of cool stuff. Along with that comes some other cool things NVIDIA and Mobile Nations will want you to do:
Good luck to all that enter, and remember, the entry deadline is Dec. 21 at 11:59 p.m. EST! I'm looking forward to reviewing the entries as they come in. Hope to see you at CES! 
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| Apple adds 'App Store Best of 2012' section to App Store Posted: 13 Dec 2012 12:11 PM PST
The end of the year is upon us, so Apple has created a collection in the App Store highlighting the best iPhone and iPad apps of the year. For each device, Apple chose a winner and runner up for App of the Year and Game of the Year as well as included lists of their favorites in many different categories. iPhone App of the YearThe iPhone App of the Year is Action Movie FX, an app that lets you add Hollywood effects like death rays, car crashes, and missile strikes to movies you shoot.
The runner up for iPhone App of the Year is Figure, an app that allows you to easily create music and beats with synth, bass, and percussion tracks.
iPhone Game of the YearThe iPhone Game of the Year goes to Rayman Jungle Run, a charming and addicting platformer.
The runner-up for iPhone Game of the Year is Letterpress, an addictive, social, strategic, and beautiful word game.
iPad App of the YearThe iPad App of the Year goes to Paper by FiftyThree, a beautifully crafted app for jotting down notes and sketches.
Runner-up for iPad App of the Year is Action Movie FX, the same app chosen for iPhone App of the Year.
iPad Game of the YearThe iPad Game of the Year is awarded to The Room, a mesmerizing puzzle mystery game.
And runner-up for iPad Game of the Year goes to Waking Mars, an adventure game that takes you on a exploration of the Red Planet to cultivate ecosystems and unlock secrets of a lost civilization.
What do you think of Apple's Choices? Do you agree or would you have chosen something else? Planning to pick any of these up now that Apple has given their endorsement and praise? Apple doesn't seek user advice when choosing their picks, but iMore does! To vote for your favorite apps, head on over to the iMore Readers Choice Awards and cast your vote! You even have a chance to win the iOS device of your dreams if you do! To see the other apps that Apple chose as their favorite, head on over the Best of 2012 section of the App store. 
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| You Don't Know Jack brings hilarious multiplayer trivia back to iOS Posted: 13 Dec 2012 11:46 AM PST
Back in the spring, classic trivia game You Don't Know Jack as launched on iOS, but somewhere along the way it teetered out and was pulled down. Well, Jack is back, free, and plugs into Facebook. Every day, players can jump into a free round of five truly bizarre questions. Their score is then pitted against other random online players, or their Facebook friends that also happen to have played the same match. Players earn coins which can be spent on limited-use power-ups to crank up score, or on unlocking hilarious new mock-advertisers. Players will also have to shell out some coins if they want to to play more than once a day, which will probably be worthwhile since they're pumping out new content all the time. I've been a long-time fan of You Don't Know Jack, way back to its Flash-based webshow days in the mid-90s, and it's great to see the game has evolved without losing its unique, in-your-face flavor. This is a must-download - go play it and have a few laughs. Free - Download Now
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| Samsung chief strategy officer uses Apple products, praises Apple's ecosystem Posted: 13 Dec 2012 10:07 AM PST
Samsung's new chief strategy officer, Young Sohn, seems to be something of an Apple fan, owning several Apple products, including an iPhone and a Mac. While he also owns a Samsung devices for work, Sohn says that Apple's iCloud and otherwise tight integration between devices makes their products attractive to customers, and that's one of Apple's big strengths. MIT Technology Review reports:
While Sohn says that he thinks that Samsung's Galaxy line of phones is superior, he criticized Samsung's experience as "device-centric". Sohn said that while he believes that Samsung has the largest platform in the world between all of the products they make, that they are not integrated into an ecosystem like Apple's devices, and Sohn believes that Samsung can do more to connect its devices to a wider system. Android, of course, connects Samsung's phones and tablets to the wider Google ecosystem, but that's not something that Samsung can control. As a long-time Apple user, it's not really surprising that Sohn still uses Apple products at home, especially since he only joined Samsung in August. But it is good to hear an executive call out where their companies own products are weak, especially compared to those of a rival. That's something we could use more of from everyone, including Apple. Source: MIT Technology Review 
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| Bungie co-founder teases new made-for-mobile shooter Posted: 13 Dec 2012 10:12 AM PST
Bungie co-founder Alex Seropian has gone public with a new game called Morning Star with his new company Industrial Toys. Morning Star thrusts players into the defense of Earth from a nigh-unstoppable alien menace. Sounds familiar, but Industrial Toys promises that the control scheme will do away with any relics of the console control scheme. What, exactly, that entails is still very much a mystery, but we've seen other games go into more detail as to how they intend to make first-person shooters less sucky on mobile. At most, you can spot some Bioshock-style supernatural abilities at play, but otherwise, The action looks decent enough, but we'll have to wait to play it to see how exactly these guys hope to change the shooter formula. Any Halo fans out there? What would you like to see change in the current breed of first-person shooters, such as Modern Combat 4? Source: Industrial Toys 
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| Google Maps vs Apple Maps update Posted: 13 Dec 2012 09:51 AM PST
Google Maps for iPhone is now available from the App Store, and those experiencing problems with Apple's built-in iOS 6 Maps app now have a free, proven alternative to use, complete with turn-by-turn navigation, Street View, and transit directions. So... how does the new Google Maps app stack up? Up until iOS 6, the stock Maps app was powered by Google location data. With iOS 6, Apple dumped Google, licensed TomTom and others instead, and rebuilt an entirely new app with Flyover, turn-by-turn, vector tiles, and more. But the actual point of interest, routing, and general location didn't work very well, especially outside major U.S. cities. And it was a big problem for Apple and users both. We've taken a look at a lot of mapping solutions for iOS from stock options to alternative paid options. Nokia also recently released Nokia HERE for iOS to give users yet another option. Many users are still very attached to Google Maps and for good reason. It's inarguably one of the most robust mapping solutions on any platform.
The new version of Google Maps for iOS comes with a lot of the features that users of older iOS versions are used to but adds some new features as well. The largest and most welcome addition is actual turn-by-turn directions complete with voice navigation. Once you've searched for a place to go you can easily enter turn-by-turn and voice navigation in one tap. You can cancel and resume at any time or view the entire route. Along the top you have the ability to quick view steps as well which will temporarily pause voice navigation. Once you're ready to resume, you can do so with one tap.
From the main voice navigation view you can slide upwards to view list details of the route. You can also mute voice navigation altogether if you'd like. If there were multiple routes found, you can view those and choose between them by tapping each individual one or swiping back and forth between given routes. This is a great feature for those times when there are detours on one route and you'd like to quickly go another way. Unlike Apple Maps, you've also got transit directions which are much needed for anyone living in an area that heavily relies on public transit. For many, this was a deal breaker on iOS 6. Well, you've got the option back now and it functions almost the same way as it did under previous iOS versions of Google Maps. The overview of a location also gives you a nice Street View preview that you can tap on in order to view in more detail.
Users can sign into their Google account via the app in order to pull mapping information on any routes they've viewed from other Google Maps enabled devices. If you view driving directions on your Mac, they'll also be available for your iPhone so you don't have to re-enter them. You can also view a detailed history of routes and destinations under settings. These are things Google obviously was not able to offer as a native mapping solution in previous iterations. Overall, Google Maps for iOS is a big jump forward in terms of functionality and usefulness. While many users were upset by Google data it being pulled from iO MapsS, it may not have been a bad thing. Free of their entanglement and tussles, both the built-in iOS 6 Maps and the new wholly-owned Google Maps apps are free to do what they want, as quickly as they want. Google Maps for iOS is far closer in functionality to Google Maps for Android than ever before, and while it sucks it took so long to get to the App Store, it was worth the wait.
Additional resources: 
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| iOS 7 wants: Just put the damn filters in Photos.app already Posted: 13 Dec 2012 09:13 AM PST
A while back I joked on Twitter that if Apple put filters and tilt shift into the built-in Photos app, I'd never use Instagram again. A lot of people maintain Instagram isn't about the filters or effects, but the community, but frankly there are already way too many communities for me to keep track of, and I'd just as soon make as many as possible as redundant as possible. You can say adding filters to Photos.app is skating to where the puck was back when the NHL was still skating, but any time basic functionality is baked into the OS, at a basic level, it reduces complexity. In iOS especially, where you can't alter the default apps, and the built-in iOS camera is available at the swipe of a lock screen icon, and the Camera Roll can post to Twitter directly, and Facebook, and more, that's where I want basic filters and effects to live. It's Camera Zero. Everything else is an alternative, an extra step, and the more they're a value add and not a must-have, the better. Look at only some of the current slate of filter (or filter-and-share) apps. From top left: iPhoto, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook Camera, and Flickr. iPhoto's interface is overly involved and complex for people who just want to futz with and share photos, and none of the third party filter-and-share apps do simple interface as well as Apple. And all of them require more steps then if the functionality was included in the core OS.
Apple had video effects, for good or for ill, in the 2009 iPod nano, and Apple included filters in Photo Booth for the iPad, so the core concept isn't without precedent. Android includes filters in the stock Camera app as well.
Basic editing was added to the Photos app with iOS 5, shifting filters and effects there in iOS 7 there makes the kind of sense that does. In fact, Apple could build in live filters and effects, since they have full access to every atom and bit of the machine, something not afforded third party apps. Once a filter and/or effect is applied, Share sheets would make it a snap to send to not only Twitter and Facebook, but iMessage and Photo Stream, or to set as a wallpaper. It becomes OS-centric rather than app-centric, and anything that gets added to the Share Sheet would get to source photos with filters and effects "for free", in one step.
Online photo ownership is a huge battleground, with entrenched players like Facebook/Instagram, Google+/Picasa, Yahoo/Flickr, and Twitter all trying to make their platforms stickier, and hedge against social migration, by making the things we care about, especially photos, fun and enjoyable on their networks. But they're often dicks about it. With basic filers and effects built into Photos.app, if Instagram blocks Twitter, if Twitter blocks 3rd-party clients, or if Facebook or Google tries to assert copyright on my photos, I don't have to worry that I'll lose my ability to make some of the best mobile photos on the planet look like polaroids from the 1960s. I'll have iOS 7. I'll be fine. 
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| Football Manager Handheld 2013 for iPad: Out Now Posted: 13 Dec 2012 08:06 AM PST
Hurrah. The hell with Google Maps, THIS is what hit the iPad App Store last night: Football Manager Handheld 2013. This is the iPad and iOS version of the long-standing best football management game ever. It's also one of my all-time favorite games – on a PC and on the iPad over recent years. This year's version has a good number of new features, including In-App purchases for things like stadium expansion, attracting a wealthy chairman, and new challenges for the game's Challenge mode. Here are some of the other new features:
(...) © patrickj for iPad Insight, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us  Related Stories
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| Google Maps Hits the App Store, No iPad Version Of Course Posted: 13 Dec 2012 07:39 AM PST
Big news last night for iOS users who use a maps app regularly: Google Maps for iPhone was released. After all the problems,with Apple's new maps in iOS 6 many people have been anxiously awaiting the return of Google Maps. There was some speculation for a while about whether Apple would reject the app or hold up its approval, but it seems as if it got through pretty quickly once Google had it ready. It's no big surprise to see that there is no iPad version of Google Maps yet – Google seems to put very low priority on the iPad for most of their app releases. Their Google+ iPad version came a year after the iPhone app. I'm not a real heavy user of maps on iPhone or iPad. I work at home and most of my meetings are by Skype and phone, so I've installed the app and will use it now and again, but I don't have any great insight on how it looks compared to the last time we saw it as a built-in app before iOS 6. Those of you who are big maps users, what do you think of the new Google Maps? © patrickj for iPad Insight, 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us  Related Stories
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| iMore show 329: 2012 iPhone and iPad gift guide Posted: 13 Dec 2012 07:37 AM PST Rene and Georgia share their favorite iPhone, iPad, and Apple gifts for the holidays, including iOS and Mac devices, accessories, and apps. This is the iMore show!
Show notesHosts
CreditsYou can reach all of us on Twitter @iMore, or you can email us at podcast@imore.com or just leave us a comment below. For all our podcasts -- audio and video -- including the iMore show, ZEN and TECH, Iterate, Debug, Ad hoc, and more, see MobileNations.com/shows
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| PADD is heavy on Star Trek eye candy, light on content Posted: 13 Dec 2012 07:00 AM PST
I'm a Trekkie. Or a Trekker. Some claim there is a difference between the two, but really it's hard to define the qualitative differences between the two - Trekkie seems to imply to me that while I'm a pretty big Star Trek fan, I don't take it far enough that I have a closet dedicated to replica uniforms. I'm also a techie, which I suppose goes hand-in-hand with the Trekkie bit. Star Trek's technological predictions have been hit-or-miss over the years. According to Star Trek: The Original Series' "Space Seed", we were to have concluded a world-wide Eugenics War that ended with the defeat of our augmented super-human overlords and their escape into deep space aboard a cryogenic sleeper ship. In 1996. Clearly, that didn't happen, or I really wasn't paying attention in the 90's. But Captain Jean-Luc Picard's 24th century U.S.S. Enterprise-D was littered with PADDs - Personal Access Display Devices - thin tablets of varying size with touchscreen displays and access to the ship's databases. Today's iPads and Android tablets are significantly more capable than what Star Trek's PADD was ever demonstrated to be capable of. And to add insult to injury, the PADD could in theory hold a massive amount of information (extrapolating Moore's Law out to 2360, we're looking at around 10^73GB of storage space - 8.882 octodecillion yottabytes - which is far more memory than held in the brains of the entirety of the human species, estimated to be around 20 yottabytes in total), but it was more often than not used as a single document per tablet deal to allow for the relatable experience of a desk overflowing with 'paperwork'. And don't get me started on the hilarious three-inch-thick communication terminals found on the desks of Picard, Sisko, and Janeway.
The interface of the 24th century is known as LCARS (Library Computer Access Retrieval System), characterized by bright colors on a black background, rounded rectangular buttons, a tall bold font, and a flat appearance divided by straight-edged rounded-cornered bars and angles. In a way, if you were to combine the aesthetics of iOS and Windows Phone, you'd get something that looks like LCARS. The beauty of LCARS was that it looked futuristic on both the small screen and the silver screen and was easy to fill with generic graphics that matched the style and made it look like the Enterprise was busily going about its mission (even if the majority of the background screens were unchanging back-lit plastic sheets). Attempts have been made since the beginning of the web to bring LCARS to the internet, though by-and-large it hasn't gone well. LCARS has always been portrayed in Star Trek as a touch interface, whether on the huge consoles and screens of the Enterprise or on the smaller hand-held PADD tablets and tricorder scanners. As such, it's never worked well in intensive mouse-driven applications.
With the sudden availability of touchscreens in the form of smartphones and tablets, the LCARS interface is ripe for a second go 'round as a user interface. While we're unlikely to get a full-fledged Star Trek PADD complete with LCARS everything anytime soon, you can at least get a serious doseage of Trek and LCARS on your iPad and iPhone thanks to the updated Star Trek™ PADD for iPad ($4.99) and new Star Trek™ PADD for iPhone ($1.99) apps. The original version of PADD was released for the iPad back in June of 2011, but just a few weeks ago received a major update to version 2.0. The update coincided with a released of PADD for iPhone, bringing the LCARS interface from the big screen to the small screen. In no small dose of coincidence, the screen sizes of the iPhones and iPads roughly correspond to the devices sizes of Star Trek's most common PADDs, with the iPad Mini best fitting the bill as far as screen size, thickness, and even the radius of the corners.
The updated PADD app retains the LCARS interface of old, offering a lot of Star Trek eye candy in the process. Both the iPad and iPhone apps maintain the same basic interface, so we'll discuss them in tandem. PADD is intended as a Star Trek reference, replacing the old Star Trek Encyclopedia that was last updated in 1999 (and thus lacks the final two seasons of Star Trek: Voyager, all of Star Trek: Enterprise, and the two most recent Star Trek feature films). The database is broken down into categories, such as Aliens, Ships, Characters, Episodes, and Cast. The ten categories don't all match - the database is set up to access in-universe canon; the biography of Klingon Chancellor Gowron and the biography of real life person Deep Space Nine executive producer Ira Steve Behr are treated equally - but they're at least grouped by color to help differentiate. The PADD app only works in landscape (despite the fact that most PADD use in Star Trek was in portrait orientation), and these menu options are located in a bar across the bottom of the screen, framed by an incongruous faux-3D bit, which confuses whether I'm supposed to be looking at a PADD or the viewscreen on the front of the Enterprise's bridge.
The app does launch differently on the iPad and iPhone. The iPhone version of PADD opens into a basic colorful grid of the categories, sized for easy finger-pickings, whereas the iPad version opens into a full-on nested LCARS interface with links to the various categories and rotating images from the database scattered about the screen (thankfully the grid of categories is still found along the bottom of the screen). Once you've selected a category, a scrolling alphabetical list of the available content in that category appears, with an alphabetic selector along the right side of the screen. The list is simple enough, with thumbnail entry images on the left, and a title and a preview of the entry's text content on the right. Tap on any part of an entry listing and the full entry is opened for your perusal, with the complete text and any additional images made available. Navigation is accomplished either by selecting a category at the bottom, or tapping the back button at the bottom left. This back button occasionally kicked me back to the launch screen instead of taking me back to the previous screen, which was especially annoying when I'd gone several levels deep from hyperlinked entries to other characters and actors in the database.
Search is available in the app, accessible from a tiny button to the bottom right of the categories menu (it's especially tiny on the iPhone). Search works well, querying both the titles and contents of the entries, but smartly displaying matching titles before moving on to matching content. The app supports voice input, but let's be honest - Siri isn't going to recognize and return Qo'noS when you search for the Klingon homeworld by saying "Kronos". On PADD for iPad there's an annoying design decision that I've had trouble trying to understand: the layout of the interface changes between entries. Sometimes images are displayed on the right side with the character info on the left, and other times its text on the top and images below. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to why the layout changes between entries. Images are displayed with a medium-sized preview next to (or over) a grid of small thumbnails. If you want to view an image full-size, you have to tap it so it's viewed in the preview box, then tap the preview to see it full size. With the exception of content uploaded in conjunction with the upcoming film Star Trek Into Darkness (teaser trailer here), the images are of small size, and thus they look depressingly poor when viewed full size on even the iPhone's little screen.
For an app that uses very few interface elements from iOS, PADD is surprisingly fast on its feet. The problem is that PADD is also deliberately slow, going through staggered Trek-inspired interface-building transitions that looked cool for television but in real life are a pain to wait for after the sixth or seventh time. Especially when the lightweight web content doesn't seem to be fetched while you're waiting. PADD is also incredibly heavy on the chrome. While Star Trek's LCARS interface was designed to be somewhat functional, it was also designed as chrome for the television and movie sets. PADD goes overboard with the chrome, with normally a little under half of the screen dedicated to non-functioning frames, grid globes, waveforms, graphs, and random text and buttons. This might be cool if it was all at least marginally interactive - lighting up when you press them like you might expect them to - but all the chrome does nothing but look neat and take up precious space. Tapping the chrome can elicit various audio responses, with the app selecting from a random sampling of beeps, alarms, and vocal chiding from the computer. I also have to call into question the font choice for PADD. The LCARS interface uses Swiss 911 Ultra Compressed, which looks cool and kind of futuristic, but also is very dense. For the television screen and even the movie screen, this was great font choice because the designer didn't have to worry too much about the legibility of the text on most occasions - it was filler. But in PADD for iOS it's not filler, it's the content, and it's not easy to read, especially on the iPhone.
Further confusing things, PADD puts out a lot of sound. As in, non-stop sound. There's the low hum of the Enterprise's warp system, which while setting the Star Trek tone, is something that a PADD would never have reason to reproduce. The hum is easy enough to ignore - it's the constant background beeping and booping that's nerve-grating. Additionally, PADD responds vocally with samples of a Majel Barrett-Roddenberry (the omnipresent computer voice) randomly responding "Working", "Accessing", or "Acknowldeged" whenever you press a button (PADDs rarely had to respond audibly like that - beeps and the content changing was always enough before). Thankfully, PADD obeys the settings of your ringer switch, so if you find all of this nonsensical chatter as annoying as I do, it's easily silenced. If you leave PADD sitting untouched for too long, sixty seconds to precise, it'll switch into a screensaver mode. There are two blinking and beeping screens displayed - a graphic of a warp core with a futuristic directional pad and a labeled schematic of the dorsal view of the Enterprise-D. PADD cycles between the two screensavers every fifteen seconds, and it never times out and lets the screen turn off. So don't set down your iPad or iPhone running PADD and walk away, or you'll come back to a drained battery. Tapping the screensaver drops you back into your previously-viewed content, alas no interactivity here.
In its earlier incarnations, PADD for iPad was not modular in its back-end design, requiring an update to the app in order to add new content to the database. With the update to 2.0, PADD gained an additional 170 on-device entries and the ability for the database to be updated independent of the app. This should, in theory, allow for more rapid and frequent updates, free of waiting for approval by Apple's App Store gatekeepers. PADD can give you push notifications when it's updated, should you want be notified of such things. The push update mechanism has already been put into play, with items like the poster for Star Trek Into Darkness getting pushed to the app after its November 29th update. Okay, it's time to get to the meat of PADD - the content. Once you put aside all of the literal bells and whistles of PADD, it's a Star Trek reference app. It's not immediately clear how many entries are available in PADD, though it appears that they number in the high hundreds, if not thousands. Some entries contain links to other relevant entries, though this treatment can usually only be found in major entries like main characters, vessels, and episodes (at the very least I think each entry should have a link to the appropriate episode(s) so you can get more context, but what do I know?). The structuring of the content itself is a source of additional confusion. The entries are generally formally written, though occasionally they delve into asides and less formal prose (much like this review, in fact). Main characters are given a broader treatment, including a bulleted list of data, timeline, and a detailed biography. For some characters the biographical data is presented as a psychological profile, other times it's just straight encyclopedic data. The entries aren't always complete - for example, for T'Pol (the Vulcan science officer on the Enterprise NX-01), the entry stops as the ship is about to enter the Delphic Expanse on a mission to save Earth - this is the beginning of the second season, with a full two years of biographical data missing.
Generally the entries take an "in-universe" approach, as if you are holding a PADD in 2380 and reading about Captain Benjamin Sisko's career. But it's not always that way, the entry for Chris Pine's alternate version of Captain James T. Kirk (the app's description says that the database will not cover events from the alternate JJ Abrams timeline, but it most certainly does) is written in a much more relaxed style that acknowledges the effects of temporal hijinks from the 'reimagining' film. Granted, there's only so much data that could be gleaned about this alternate Kirk from just one film (PADD's database does not factor in the expanded universe of comics, books, and video games, which are not considered to be part of the official Star Trek canon), but entries like the new Kirk's are replete with out-of-character references and language such as this gem "Once reunited, the young men took the improbably fight to Nero and prevailed, ending the Narada's reign of terror." Doesn't sound much like a reference book to me. The database offered by PADD for iOS is described as being comprehensive and drawing from the database of "information as officially published by CBS on StarTrek.com." While impressive, the database is far from comprehensive, as the missing two years of the Star Trek: Enterprise character bios can attest (and if you're thinking they just need time to get around to filling in the exploits of Captain Jonathan Archer and the gang, just remember that Enterprise went off the air over seven years ago). The old Star Trek Encyclopedia offered a comprehensive look at Star Trek, though it was a bulky affair and by virtue of being bound paper wasn't as user friendly as a hyper-linked website. Even so, the books were sure to let you know that there were other entries with a little bit of bolding. The unofficial but delightfully comprehensive Memory Alpha database, on the other hand, is bountifully hyperlinked and full of imagery. Memory Alpha is a wiki (and hosted on Wikia), with more than thirty five thousand entries compiled since its creation nine years ago. Hundreds of Trekkies have offered their input and fact-checking into Memory Alpha, shaping its structure and entries, building thoroughly comprehensive articles on every Star Trek subject imaginable.
Memory Alpha's main entry covering the happenings of the Enterprise-D from Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek Generations is more than five thousand words long, once you factor in background info on the construction of the various studio models, the design of the bridge, and appearances in video games the article approaches seven thousand words. PADD's entry on the Enterprise-D doesn't even cross the five hundred word threshold. Historically CBS has had a relatively cool relationship with the Star Trek fan community, so it's not surprising that they didn't partner with Memory Alpha to bring their excellent and massive fan-built database into the app, saving CBS a massive amount of work and instead only requiring that they build a wrapper for the wiki. Alas, that's not the approach they took, and there's not an app for Memory Alpha. Adding a layer of possible confusion, the app's description repeatedly mentions Memory Alpha, but in reference to the fictional Federation information archive from the original series episode "The Lights of Zetar", not the aforementioned fan-built database. Additionally, we'd like to think that the app could offer more in the way of multimedia content. The app makes plenty of noise on its own, but with more than seven hundred hours of Star Trek at CBS' disposal, there's not a single clip or video to be found in PADD for iOS. With all of the text, small images, and extraneous sounds present, PADD weighs in at 39.5MB for the iPad and 36MB on the iPhone, though what exactly constitutes the 3.5MB difference isn't clear. PADD is generally going to be installed on a device that will be constantly connected to the internet, we'd like to think that live retrieval of content could have allowed for a lighter-sized app while permitting continuously updated content with higher quality media to be loaded on demand. As A Trekkie, I was excited by the possibilities of the updated PADD app. I've always thought the PADD was one of the coolest bits of Star Trek technology, and certainly one that was easy to comprehend coming into existence (warp drive and transporters are still very much theoretical and will likely end up looking nothing like the science fiction incarnations). But PADD for iPad and iPhone feels more like a poorly conceived toy, not unlike the finicky LCARS-based websites of the early web. The app is touted as a comprehensive database of Star Trek information, but it's woefully lacking in both data and presentation. I want to like it, I really do, but I really can't see it being used as a useful Star Trek reference without a serious overhaul that places less emphasis on the eye candy and more on quality of content and accessibility. Then again, maybe that's not what this app is really meant to do - perhaps it's a toy wrapped in the guise of a reference database, meant to delight our inner nerd by hitting the nonfunctioning chrome to see what random Star Trek computer sound effect is going to chime in next. In the meantime, I'm just going to point Safari to Memory Alpha.
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