Embracing the new iWork design

With the new iWork '13, Apple tried to trace a connecting line between iOS 7 and OS X. Even if we still live in a world of dualisms, in which coexist both Mavericks, with its gray gradients and shadows, and iOS 7, with its "all flat" style, Pages, Numbers and Keynote are trying to bridge the differences in a new, hybrid, way.

The biggest changes all dwell in toolbars and inspectors. All the toolbar buttons now have a "flat appearance" with a minimalistic style and no redundant borders or gray shadows. The inspector is now fixed and with flat tabs, pretty different from its previous, floating, version.

With Records we have decided to make some design changes in order to "embrace this new design". As you can see in the screenshot below, Records tabs now share the same iWork style and toolbar buttons will follow the same design guidelines.

Hope you liked it as much as we do.

Update
 

The past week Records has received the new designer where the user can add and arrange objects. We are currently at work to update the inspector based on the new designer and the new iWorks '13 appearance. We are planning to show more details of the UI in the next few weeks.

User Interface: The Designer

Today we are really happy to share with you a sneak peek of Records' designer we are working on. In this short video we'll show you how guidelines and alignments work in Records. Everything is smooth and easy, and we hope you'll like it.

Check out the video below and send your feedbacks with a tweet at @pushpopcorn.

Remembering Steve

Bento, discontinued

A couple of weeks ago, FileMaker announced that they are discontinuing Bento, but we were not surprised at all. The last Bento update available on the Mac App Store goes even back to October 2012, and it was obvious that the app was going to disappear, sooner or later.

Even if Bento is the closest competitor of Records, we are not here for self-celebration. What Bento leaves behind are 20 employees and thousands of users, and this is more important than the "space left" in the market for Records and other similar apps.

More than ever, we now feel that it's extremely important to provide a new experience in terms of "personal databases" on the Mac, even for those coming from Bento and searching for alternatives.

To make the transition from Bento to Records the most painless we can, we are planning specific features that will possibly ship with the first commercial release of Records.

As always, keep following the project for further updates.

Redefining Simplicity

Here at Push Popcorn, we really love simplicity.
We work and organize our job in order to keep things simple. We focus on the product to make it simple and easy to use for our users.

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." - Leonardo Da Vinci

We are living in a world where "simple" is like a magic word: it seems that a product must be simple to be truly understood and loved by users. It's definitely true but, what really is simplicity?

Sometimes we get confused by apps that look simple, act simple, but they are, to tell the truth, just trivial. An app with just a couple of features, only able to achieve one or two tasks, is it really simple or just dumb?

Simplicity becomes a real virtue when the product isn't simple itself, but it is easy to understand and simple to use.

Developing Records is not easy; when you have to handle many different variables, pieces of information, and combine anything into a robust and stable database, you are definitely building a complex product. And you are even raising the bar when you add features like the selective iCloud sync that has never been done before and you have to make it simple to understand and to use.

Apple is one of the greatest in doing this. Any product, both hardware and software, developed by Apple, is almost a perfect alchemy of complexity made simple.

Think of apps like Automator that tries to help you automate common tasks in a new, incredibly easy, fashion. You are basically developing a script, without coding and with an extremely intuitive UI.
Automator is simple, if you consider simplicity a layer over complexity, a convenient way to decode complexity.

"Simplicity is not about making something without ornament, but rather about making something very complex, then slicing elements away, until you reveal the very essence." - Christoph Niemann

What we are trying to do everyday with Records is to create a complex product, worth several months of development, and yet make it easy to use. Basically, we are improving the User Experience, without compromises on features and functionalities.

Records will be powerful and truly complete from the first release.
Still simple and intuitive: that's our recipe of alchemy.