From the team behind Launch Center Pro and Contact Center, comes a new weather app built with the upcoming iPhone 8 in mind. Weather Atlas is a new weather app that puts granular geographical data at the forefront of the experience.
DisplayMate is out today with a comparison of iPad displays following the introduction of Apple’s new larger 12.9-inch iPad, and the results might surprise you.
While the larger display on the iPad Pro is one of the device’s standout features on Apple’s latest and greatest iPad, the iPad mini 4, introduced alongside the iPad Pro to not quite as much fanfare, actually beats out its bigger sibling in several categories. The iPad Pro, however, does hold its own and DisplayMate’s analysis shows a number of improvements Apple has made to make it one of its best displays for a mobile device yet.
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David Barnard, CEO of Contrast, has today announced that they will be bringing a slimmed down version of Launch Center Pro to the Apple Watch. You can see how the app has been transformed from the grid appearance of the iOS version to a simple list, to optimise screen real estate on the Watch’s much smaller display. This means users can initiate quick actions from their wrist, rather than digging their phones out of their pockets.
The company will ‘hopefully’ have the app available in the App Store when the Watch ships sometime in April.
Another tweet indicates that the company is working on more WatchKit apps as well.
I’m incredibly excited about Apple Watch, and am working on other apps for it. I’m not at all skeptical it’s going to sell really well.
— David Barnard (@drbarnard) March 1, 2015
Group Text+ for iPhone & iPad
Contrast, the makers of the popular iOS automation app Launch Center Pro, released two new apps today that hope to “speed up tedious tasks on iOS.” Group Text+ and Email+ each include features that make texting (iMessage and SMS) and emailing your favorite contacts or groups of contacts easier and quicker.
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If you’re familiar with Launch Center Pro, the iPhone and iPad app we’ve covered that enables powerful automation on iOS, then you may recognize Contrast’s new iPhone app debuting today called Contact Center. While its name sounds like it could be an alternative address book, it’s actually a simpler, easier to learn version of Launch Center Pro focused on staying in touch with your favorite contacts.
Contrast describes Contact Center as allowing you to “automatically paste your clipboard into an email or message, jump right to a contact in WhatsApp, automatically paste your clipboard into an email or message” and more; below we’ll take a look at the new app.
Last October I reviewed Launch Center Pro for iOS 7 and shared a few actions and shortcuts I found useful. Today Contrast is out with Launch Center Pro for iPad, and it’s just as neat for anyone wanting to build shortcuts and more efficient workflows on the iPad.
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Launch Center Pro 2 <3
David Barnard’s Contrast (previously App Cubby) shipped a massive update to the quick shortcut app Launch Center Pro for iPhone today.
Launch Center Pro 2 delivers an iOS 7-inspired user interface and a gorgeous new icon as well as several new features including Dropbox backing up and restoring, various themes, action sharing, and more.
People often ask why anyone would need a separate app to do what their home screen does, but as Contrast’s tag line explains, it allows you to “Launch actions, not just apps!” I’ll share a few of my favorite actions below.
After posting initial benchmark data yesterday for the new Retina MacBook Pro’s SSD and USB 3.0, AnandTech published a longer analysis today about the notebook’s display. The report first took a closer look at the new resolution preferences for Retina MBP users and described the advantages of the different scaling options displayed in the gallery above:
Retina Display MBP owners now get a slider under OS X’s Display Preferences that allow you to specify desktop resolutions other than 1440 x 900. At 1440 x 900 you don’t get any increase in usable desktop resolution compared to a standard 15-inch MacBook Pro, but everything is ridiculously crisp… Even at the non-integer scaled 1680 x 1050 setting, the Retina Display looks a lot better than last year’s high-res panel. It looks like Apple actually renders the screen at twice the selected resolution before scaling it to fit the 2880 x 1800 panel (in other words, at 1920 x 1200 Apple is rendering everything at 3840 x 2400 (!) before scaling… Everything just looks better.
As illustrated in the images above showing benchmark data, the review found greatly improved viewing angles, black levels, and contrast when compared to the previous generation high-res MacBook Pro model. AnandTech then looked at Apple’s claims that the new MacBook Pro display reduces glare by 75 percent from previous generations:
