Tag: Siri

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.

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 😕