Last month, Apple offered a free holiday playlist through the Apple Store app for iPhone. This month, in the same manner, it's offering the 7 Minute Workout Challenge app for free, effectively encouraging users to "jump into the new year."
UI
The Best Calendar iPad App - Sunrise /
Calendar app Sunrise released a major update today, completing two missing pieces of the complicated calendar puzzle — you can now use Sunrise on your iPad with a new design tailored for bigger screens, and there is a much-requested week view to get a better picture of what your schedule looks like. Finally, the company added background updates so that your calendar is always up to date when you open the app. “We realized that mobile is an even bigger paradigm shift than we originally thought,” co-founder and CEO Pierre Valade told me. “Every other day, I don’t even use a computer anymore — I consider the iPad as a mobile device. People want to feel productive anywhere, and work from their iPad. So that’s why we built Sunrise for the iPad.”
iOS: A visual history /
Apple's Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone to the world on January 9th, 2007. In the five-plus years since then, the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch have literally redefined the entire world of mobile computing. That world is moving so quickly that iOS is already amongst the older mobile operating systems in active development today. That certainly doesn't mean it's underpowered or underfeatured — quite the contrary. Through what can only be described as relentless and consistent improvement over the years, Apple has made iOS one of the most feature-rich and well-supported platforms on the market. http://vrge.co/vd6Fhb
How much does it cost to build the world’s hottest startups? /
Could $100,000 and the right developer skills make you an overnight billionaire? How much does it really take to build a product like Twitter or Instagram? With mobile development agencies and product incubators on the rise and more corporate “labs” spinning out each day, there’s no shortage of talent to help you build the next great Web or mobile app.
http://thenextweb.com/dd/2013/12/02/much-cost-build-worlds-hottest-startups
Hands-on with Jolla /
Jolla, a splinter group of former Nokia employees, has taken on the task of keeping the N9's legacy going. It's a project that immediately engenders goodwill through its refusal to simply abandon all that good work in favor of economic practicalities — but that same bravado is also what makes it distinctly utopian. A small and unheralded startup aims to succeed where the formerly giant and resource-rich Nokia didn't dare tread... http://vrge.co/1goJyAG
From A Breakthrough Museum... /
THE REINVENTED CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART IS A CASE STUDY IN BLENDING THE PHYSICAL AND VIRTUAL WORLDS, THANKS TO BRILLIANT WORK BY LOCAL PROJECTS Museums today compete for attention in a wildly difficult environment: If you’re a youngster, why stare at a Greek urn when you could blow one up in a video game? One institution thinking deeply about the challenge is the Cleveland Museum of Art, which this month unveiled a series of revamped galleries, designed by Local Projects, which feature cutting-edge interactivity. But the technology isn’t the point. "We didn’t want to create a tech ghetto," says David Franklin, the museum’s director. Adds Local Projects founder Jake Barton, "We wanted to make the tech predicated on the art itself."
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1671845/5-lessons-in-ui-design-from-a-breakthrough-museum