Video: Apple’s Awesomely Improved iPhone Remote App
I like the Apple TV as a device, but it’s remote is awful. It’s the same little dinky white one that used to come with all Apple computers a few years ago. While it’s pretty good for using the FrontRow feature on a computer, your computer also has a keyboard for navigation and things like searching — the Apple TV does not. And so the white remote by itself is painfully slow navigating the Apple TV. But with an update to both the Apple TV and its Remote app available for the iPhone and iPod touch, Apple has completely revamped the way you can navigate the system using gestures and multi-touch.
Watch the videos below to see it in action, but to say this is improved is beyond an understatement. Rather than clicking those little buttons dozens of times, you can now just slide around the iPhone screen to move around. And it’s much easier to get to the iPhone’s keyboard to do things like searches — a funtionality which is basically unusable with the white remote.
Find the updated Remote app in the App Store here, it’s a free download and will work with iTunes on your computer as well.
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Gmail Makes Its iPhone Web Version More App-Like With Swipe Gestures
A lot of people complain about Gmail not having a native application on the iPhone. While it’s not clear if Apple will even allow that yet with the new iPhone 3.0 SDK, one thing that is becoming more clear: Soon it won’t need one.
The reason is that its iPhone-optimized mobile version continues to get some killer features. The latest is the ability to use the swipe gesture to archive messages — yes, within the browser. Users of the iPhone’s native mail app will recognize and appreciate this functionality (though in that app it’s used to delete messages, not archive them).
This follows the mobile version of Gmail gaining a floating toolbar that gives users easy access to certain functions no matter where they are on the screen. And soon, with full HTML 5 support, mobile Gmail will feature offline browsing of messages, which is perhaps the main reason people want a native app right now.
This is all the more reason to become a Gmail Ninja.
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