cursors

Two 'cursors' stories November 2013 - February 2014

Ever wondered why your mouse pointer is angled, not straight?

Here’s the reason, courtesy of a concept drawing from Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, where the graphical user interface was invented, and where Steve Jobs was introduced to the concept that was to lead to the Macintosh. 8BitFuture writes:

When the graphical user interface was later developed by Xerox, however, the team found that the vertical pointer was almost impossible to see due to the low resolution displays in use at the time.

Rather than make the pointer larger, the decision was made to turn it 45 degrees, making it easy to see. Despite the high resolution displays we have today, the concept has managed to stick for 33 years.

iWork for iCloud apps add promised collaboration features, folders, more

Eddy-Cue-Ball-iWork-iCloud

Back at Apple’s October 22nd iPad Air event, the company also unveiled an update to its iWork for iCloud online productivity suite beta that included new real-time collaboration features, easier sharing, and more. The ability to collaborate went live initially, but today Apple is rolling a handful of other new features to the Pages, Numbers, and Keynote iWork for iCloud apps.

New features going live today include a new list to view all collaborators currently working on a project, as well as “cursors and selections” for each person editing a document, presentation, or spreadsheet. Apple also notes that you can now “Instantly jump to a collaborator’s cursor by clicking their name in the collaborator list.”

In addition, all apps today receive new folders to organize files, the ability to print from the Tools menu, and the Keynote app gets right-click to skip slides.

You can check out the new features in the Numbers, Pages, and Keynote app on iCloud.com now. Full list of what’s new below:
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