Orbit - bringing 'SpringBoard Exposé' to life

Early this month Ocean Observations posted a video on YouTube of a concept they dubbed 'SpringBoard Exposé'; a way to quickly navigate the multitude of home screen pages many of us have on our iPhones or iPod touch.

In chatting with Louie over at The Iconfactory, he 'suggested' I go and see if I could make it into a reality. After two hours of work, I had the concept up and running on my iPhone.

Simply tap the Orbit icon and you're zoomed to what I dub the 'Orbital View' of your home screen, from there you can tap any of the pages to zoom directly there. For anyone with many pages of apps, this will change the way you use your device, I guarantee!

Fast forward to today, its first day of release, and Orbit is a huge hit on the Cydia Store. Louie cooked up some awesome artwork with a little prodding from me, and the reviews across the web have been outstanding. For posterity, here are some of the reactions from users on Twitter:

"Very polished, works flawless for me"
"Just bought Orbit from Cydia. It kicks ass!"
"Just purchased, and installed Orbit!!! This is the best iphone app I have on my phone.. I works GREAT!!! Thank You!!!"
"Just installed Orbit... My life is so much easier now. Thank you! Probably the best thing ever for the iPhone."

Orbit 1.0 is available now from the Cydia Store at $1.99, but the story only begins here. There are many awesome improvements in the pipeline, and I hope you all enjoy Orbit as much as I have enjoyed making it. Please spread the word!

Orbit: Available on Cydia

22 comments:

  2. Really great App!!
    I have already bought it!!

    Please don't forget to solve Stacks bug and to implement new features!!

    Thanks to your work!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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  3. orbit + stacks are MUST HAVE!!!! they are 2 very very good reasons to jailbreak
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  4. Is the app working on ipod touch 2g?
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  5. Orbit works really well, ty. :]
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  6. Bought it, love it, can't live without it :D
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  7. ORBIT is a must-have-enhancement of the GUI, which ought to be implemented ... by APPLE.
    But why do I have to be registered at Facebook or Google, when I just like to buy this marvellous app? I don't like to buy apps that way!
    Why isn't it possible to buy via KAGI or element5 - like PDAnet??

    Best regards, Jens
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  8. It would be great if you could make the page previews bigger when there are only a few pages on the iPhone. I have only 6 pages and the previews could be much bigger. Thanks.
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  9. GREAT APP! Now if I may offer some suggestions for improvement. Make a way to launch it without the icon (seems you already are working on that), also if the screens that show up in orbit mode could auto resize to fit the screen. Example, I only have 6 screens, so when launched they only show up on half of the screen while the other half is just black and wasted. Instead it could resize depending on the number of screens so no room gets wasted.
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  10. Man!!! Steve I love you I just looked on my iPhone and noticed that I jailbreak it because of you! Everytime I look on your Site there is something new (maybe because the RSS feed) and the new Stacks are wonderful and Orbit definitely too!

    I hope the backgrounding app will be release soon :-D

    greetz grafagoggel

    P.S.: If you need help as a designer or something like that I'd be proud to help you
    ReplyDelete
  11. Question!
    Is Blackra1n a corrupt jailbreak?
    Running 3.1.2
    I used Blackra1n to jailbreak a 3GS (I happened to get one that day.. a little before Blackra1n came out ... not even planing for it.)

    I can't get winterboard or SBSettings to work either D:
    Something else, when it said restart springboard in cydia, I tapped it twice kind of quickly and it ended up launching the phone app as soon as it got to the spring board, I couldnt launch Orbit when I tried clicking on it then. I restarted and when I tried it seemed like it wanted to work and I saw the edges of the 9 badges, but then it quit.. and thats the most I've gotten it to do
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  12. @Ben if you installed Icy using blackra1n, everything breaks
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  13. Gah, I did.
    Thanks for the awesomely quick reply, whats the best way to remove it, SSH?

    Oh and what about the Rock store? I just installed everything >.>
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  14. Okay, I looked around with the Icy tip...

    It apparently corrupted system file that people don't seem to be able to name (so I can't ask someone to ask for a replacement.)

    It seems like I need to restore... So I guess I'm gonna just backup, restore and use Blackra1n without installing Icy!
    P.S. I asked it this way since backing up seems to keep so much data and I don't know if it'll work :P
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  15. Great piece of software! Keep up the good work!
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  16. excellent jo! keep going! to enter Orbit maybe you start it with swipe up or swipe down.
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  17. Just bought it, and works fast. I'm thinking of placing all my stuff on springboard instead od folders (categories).

    But, on some video I saw that orbit could be invoked just by tapping home button. I dislike placing orbit icon on bottom row. Is there a way to make single-click home button invoke orbit ?
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  18. can we have the honor of reviewing your app for our site, www.iPhonePixelPost.com ?
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  19. I also bought it. Great work!
    Just one little bug with SBSettings > When you open SBSettings and then close it there is no reaction when tabbing on the orbit icon.
    Could you please fix that in an update?

    Thank you from Germany

    Pascal
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  20. i bought this app and love it but sometimes when i open sb settings and then close it and tap on orbit it dosnt bring up the expose
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  21. Trying to theme orbit for use with Winterboard but the files don't appear to change.
    I've created replacement graphics to tie in with my 266 theme (I'm the Dev) but they don't appear to be working.

    I've created the folder 266 System/Bundles/com.steventroughtonsmith.orbitdummy and placed the graphic files for lock_90.png, lock_140.png, search_90.png, search_140.png... etc but they don't theme.

    Any help greatly appreciated!
    ReplyDelete

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