512 Pixels

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Sponsorship by The Syndicate.

My Army training tells me that reading this is going to be a hot mission.

Nilay Patel at The Verge:

13 hours and 29 minutes. That’s all you really need to know — that’s how long the new MacBook Air running Safari lasted running The Verge Battery Test, which cycles through a series of websites and images at 65 percent brightness. Run time in Chrome was shorter, at 11 hours and 29 minutes, but both are still ridiculously impressive. In fact, it’s the record for a laptop running our test without an external battery.

I wasn’t expecting a Retina display, but I wasn’t expecting this kind of battery life increase, either. While the machine’s base clock speed is slower than the previous model, reviewers have claimed that the slight change isn’t noticeable. I’d say the mid–2013 MacBook Air is a winner.

Well, sign me up.

Chris Clark, on iOS 7:

Best to embrace it, the good and the bad, and get back to work.

I can’t remember a more controversial Apple keynote. ¹

While the original iPhone announcement or even the move to Intel were exciting, they weren’t as controversial as this year’s WWDC, it seems.

OS X Mavericks seems like a home run. ² The now 13 year-old OS has received vastly-updated memory and power consumption subsystems that more closely reflect the needs of notebook users, while new Features like Maps and a revised Notification Center should make regular users happy.

The Mac Pro, while lacking in the internal upgradability of the old model, is poised to be the most powerful Mac again, and in a big way. Plus, it looks like the PC Darth Vader probably had under his desk, which is really just a bonus in my book.

iOS 7, however, has some people lighting their hair on fire. Most developers I’ve talked to are excited about things like background updating and Sprite Kit and are anxious to begin work on making their apps really shine with the new APIs.

Many are worried about how their apps will fit in iOS 7’s new UI paradigm. Apps that sport mostly custom UIs may be fine (albeit some may feel heavy at first), but those developers who use standard controls intermixed with their own have some real work to do in the coming months.

The look and feel of iOS 7 is polarizing, to be sure. I’ve talked to just as many people who genuinely dislike the new UI as those who love it. While I do believe iOS 7’s UI — as it stands today — has some problems, I think Apple will sort the real issues with legibility and accessibility out, but my gut says things like the neon colors, text-only buttons and transparency are here to stay. It’s polarizing, but most big, bold choices are when it comes to things like interface design.

The company has to jump forward with its products, and that inevitably means people are going to be sad or upset.

Developers and users may think they face a choice here: either move with the tide, or dig in and refuse to accept that something as fundamental as how iOS looks has changed. In reality, Apple’s rolling on is something that cannot be stopped. It’s time to evolve for many, no matter how hard it might be.

The word parallax really sums up this week’s news. It is defined as:

the effect whereby the position or direction of an object appears to differ when viewed from different positions, e.g., through the viewfinder and the lens of a camera

Tell me that doesn’t sum up the other 1.2 billion articles about WWDC in your RSS reader.

Tom Witkin:

I’m elated to share that I, along with Poster, will be joining Automattic. I’ll be working with the mobile team where I’ll be both designing and coding.

I missed this news when it was announced, but am excited at the possibilities here. I use Poster frequently to post to 512, and hope its excellence will spread across the WordPress platform.

It is US-only, iPhone-only, requires an Office 365 subscription, and is pretty rough around the edges. Sounds like a winner.

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Sponsorship by The Syndicate.

The new version of the App.net-based messaging app has some excellent release notes.

Live from San Francisco, Myke and I discuss WWDC and wrap up the 512 Podcast for the final time.

This episode is brought to you by: Squarespace, the secret behind exceptional websites. Go to squarespace.com/70decibels to start your free trial and use the offer code 70decibels6 at checkout to get 10% off your first order.

This thing is crazy looking, inside and out. I hope 802.11ac is worth having a tiny Washington Monument in your office.