Wazzup, people! Ready for our Weekly Roundup? The past few days were packed with a lot of bombastic News, including Apple on a battle with FBI for what may be the encryption’s future, iPhone and iPad users finally being able to recover their devices from Error 53, and Volvo taking a huge step and using phones as car keys. We also present an awesome compilation of UI Concepts as Design Inspiration and a news app with a very different and interactive approach as App of the Week.

Enjoy!

News

iPhone VS FBI: what’s your side on the encryption battle?

 

After the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California — which consisted of a mass shooting and an attempted bombing — , a California judge ordered Apple to unlock the iPhone of the terrorists. A lot has happened since then, with everyone — including Donald Trump and Tim Cook — having a say on how Apple should handle the situation. Check the whole saga summarized on this timeline on how the case has been unfolding.

 

Leap Motion’s overhauled hand tracking built straight into VR headsets

 

Have you ever watched Minority Report? If you have, I bet you loved how Tom Cruise could do a gazillion things just with hand gestures, right? In 2012, Leap Motion presented a hand-sensing gesture controller, but with a lot of bugs and lacking accuracy. However, the company decided to improve the experience and take a bigger step: through a project named Orion, Leap Motion presented a revamped tracking system tailored for VR motion, with a sensor that can built straight into VR headsets. Read more about this leap here.

 

Apple apologized and offered a fix for phones bricked by Error 53

 

Error 53 has been causing headaches to countless iPhone and iPad owners after they had their devices fixed by non-authorized third-party stores. Error 53 occurred with the replacement of the connector between the Touch ID sensor and the home button, making the devices to brick completely. Fortunately, Apple released an iOS update that can make iPhones and iPad recover from what it seemed to unrecoverable. For more details on the Error and the patch, click here.

 

Volvo ditching the conventional car key: use your phone instead!

 

Nowadays, car companies offer keys shaped like its cars, even painted in the same color, or keys with built-in screens. However, Volvo started making way for the future by taking a bold step: by next year, the company wants to ditch the key entirely and replace it by your phone. Through an app, drivers will be able to share access to their cars, start them, open the trunk, among other functionalities. Click here to know more about the digital key and its features.

 

Google has open-sourced its iOS app testing tool to all developers

 

After open-sourcing j2objc — a tool to help developers porting Android apps to iOS by translating their Java code to Objective-C — , Google has open-sourced EarlGrey as well, which is a testing framework for iOS apps. Read more on EarlGrey’s features here.

Design Inspiration

UI Concepts Compilation

UpLabs gathered a great list o UI Concepts, including screen states transitions and feedback animations. The best part is that they’re all coded and available at CodePen, so everyone can see how it was done.

App of the Week

Quartz (iOS)

Quartz just has the best onboarding and you should totally check it out! By running Quartz, the app will surprise you by interacting with you. Instead of presenting superficial intro screens to be dismissed, Quartz will introduce itself and teach you how to use the app… by actually making you use it. The app will send you short messages about news that you can respond right afterwards by tapping the buttons shown on the bottom of the screen. This way, you’re interacting with the app by telling whether you’re interested in the news — thus having the app telling you more on it — or not interested — and then making the app skip to the next news. Quartz tailors the whole process of becoming informed according your needs and interests — it’s an experience worth checking out!