Author: chrissykes108

Serenity Caldwell joining Apple (again)

Well, this is a surprise – but a nice one. Serenity is one of my absolute favourite writers/podcasters/wizards in the Apple blogosphere, so I’m thrilled to hear of her joining Apple’s comms team. She’s always been extremely enthusiastic, but very willing to criticise Apple when necessary, without finding a need to needlessly twist the knife in order to achieve cheap, easily attainable laughs – unlike some prominent folk on the Apple beat.

With her fantastically memorable multimedia reviews of the Apple Pencil (in 2015, I believe) and the equally impressive review of 2018’s sixth generation, base iPad, it’s easy to see why Apple would snap her up. I’ll very much miss her work as a civvie.

Very best of luck, ‘Ren!

Apple’s new ads sell 2018 iPad as fix for everyday problems

Absolutely loving these new iPad ads collected over at appleinsider.com For me, they encapsulate how great the iPad is for certain tasks, in a way that neither the iPhone or even the smallest, most adorable MacBook can achieve – and I say that as an owner and huge fan of a 2017 12-inch MacBook, the device which is easily my most used computer in terms of sheer time spent.

But despite my love and constant use of the 12-incher (ahem), if I were only able to have one of my core trio of computing devices (Phone, tablet, laptop) be an Apple product, I would chose the iPad every single time, for the very reasons that the above TV spots summarise so effectively. The iPad might not be a master of every possible scenario, but I find it to be the most versatile, in terms of its capacity to occupy such a wide spectrum of possible use cases, from reading a book, getting nostalgic over old photos – to increasingly complex and varied ‘work’ – whatever we want to define as constituting work.

I’m delighted that iPad sales have picked up since the introduction of the base 2017 model, so here’s hoping the surprisingly capable, Pencil-supporting 2018 release continues the trend when we see the upcoming quarterly sales results.

‘God Bless America’: 100 Years of an Immigrant’s Anthem

Very enjoyable post a couple of days ago from Neil Shah at Counterpoint Research that did a top job of outlining some of my concerns regarding Apple’s upcoming expansion of its Maps. I primarily worry not so much about the initial effort, huge though it may be, but more the ongoing constant maintenance that will be required, from now until the end of civilisation (currently slated for 2019).That being said, I’m sure the company wouldn’t have got into the project without realising that very obvious fact, so I’m hopeful. Also, it seems highly likely that building their own mega-detailed Maps data is as much a precursor to the kind of AR/HUD efforts that would be central to both an autonomous vehicle and smart glasses, so my hope is that the compiling and maintaining of this data is viewed in the company as an essential component in their next efforts to redefine how we interact with the world around us.So, no pressure.

The most awaited Apple product of all time

Mark Gurman has a story at Bloomberg today that examines the now-impressively late AirPower charging mat. It’s an enjoyable read and adds a little more BTS details to how a superficially simple-seeming product that was announced alongside the iPhone X in September 2017 could possibly be taking so very long to release.

The reasoning he outlines is, somewhat obviously, devils in the technical details of the mat, specifically the challenges in charging multiple different devices, with different power requirements, alongside Apple’s ambition for these three devices to have a much larger surface area on which a device can be placed whilst still initiating charging – in contrast to many of the existing, single device wireless chargers currently on the market. Existing wireless mats frequently have a fairly defined ‘sweet spot’ that needs to be hit, meaning a degree of care and precision is required when placing a phone down to charge, lest you be greeted by an unexpectedly empty phone as you start your day.

What I find most interesting about the AirPower delay is not so much the reasoning itself, as clearly the product was experiencing some unexpected technical challenges, but more the way in which Apple was confident enough in the product’s development in September to announce it alongside the iPhone 8 and X, to them now being in a position where they are rapidly staring down the barrel of it being an entire year since the product was pre-announced. It would seem that, in terms of trying to give the product the best consumer attention, we will soon be at a point where it makes a great deal more sense to release AirPower alongside 2018’s fall products than, say, a late-July/August release.

If AirPower is released alongside the new iPhones in (presumably) September, it will be interesting to see how Apple frames the product story and whether they acknowledge the ‘delay’ in any manner. Given that the September 2017 product announcement stated that we were getting a sneak peak at a product to be released in 2018, AirPower technically isn’t late as such – but even the most charitable observer of 2017’s keynote would have to concede that it surely wouldn’t have been Apple’s intention to pre-announce a charging mat an entire year in advance. After all, this isn’t the 2019 Mac Pro, where the absence of a first party wireless charging pad would have signalled a worrying abdication of the company’s responsibilities to its customers.

One has to wonder, with a long series of minor-medium product delays (as Gurman notes, Apple Watch, Apple Pencil, AirPods, HomePod, iPhone X), will it ever reach a point where the company makes a point of returning to its policy of not announcing products until they are all-but-ready to ship, a hardware equivalent to the recent refocusing of Apple’s 2018 software releases on stability and bug fixes? Let’s hope so.

Fixing 3D Touch

I’ll be damned astonished if you’ve not encountered this by now, but here’s UX/PD engineer @eliz_kilic with a lovely idea for how to make 3D Touch more discoverable for the average user, something which is sorely needed. I’m a very frequent user of 3D Touch, particularly in respect to Control Centre, the Home app, accessing frequently used contacts such as my flatmate, or composing a tweet as quickly as possible via Tweetbot. With iOS 11, one of my most frequently used instances of 3D Touch became using it to access the Camera shortcut from the lock screen. As a(n extremely) amateur photographer, being able to access the camera as rapidly as possible is a blessing, and is an action I find much more consistent that the ‘swipe left’ on the lock screen that was solely employed circa iOS 10.

I consider 3D Touch a truly useful feature, but for the average user, it’s entirely not apparent what icons are ripe for 3D Touch actions and Kilic illustrates a simple and clean way to highlight areas that are ready to reveal more to users with a simple press. Great idea, nicely presented 🙌🙌🙌

What would happen if we decide to make all links same color and style as the regular text? People would not know what to click on right? Why is 3D Touch be any different? We rely on our vision to decide actionability before anything else. If you can’t distinguish 3D Touchable buttons from those that are not, how are you supposed to know you can press on them?

To beta or not to beta

One of the interesting things about my response to this years WWDC is the way in which my initial feelings towards the keynote  were fairly neutral, neither despondent nor ecstatic. But what I’ve found over the course of the intervening week is that reading (and listening) up on the implications of many things announced (in particular Siri Shortcuts, as opposed to Shortcuts.app, Notifications Tuning, ScreenTime and the myriad small but significant steps forwards in watchOS 5), I’ve realised that I’m probably the most excited to get my hands on 2018’s software releases as I have been for any software update in a number of years.

Now, the only question is whether I feel foolhardy enough to take part in the public betas when they become available, something I did for the first time last year with iOS 11 and which worked out…not so great for me 😕