One of the cooless by-product of the Apple strategy is the unification of the processing unit among its product lines, leaving the form-factor the unique differenciation attribute.

Previously there were many people who wanted a laptop, but ended up buying a desktop because it would be more powerful. Now the only choice the customer has to make is whether they prefer the MacBook or iMac form-factor, because the internal hardware is the same in each. Source: Apple execs praises how M1 enables same performance for different devices in interview - 9to5Mac

Apple’s macOS Big Notifications Center is probably the most frustrating, infuriating and un-Apple experience of all. Man this thing is badly designed. Who at Apple think it ok? He or she is a C player! Hoping for major re-work for macOS 12. There, I said it. 🤬

Browsers look more and more like operating systems. Apple knows this, and they are probably afraid for their App Store business.

This article from Alex Russell of Infrequently Notes is very convincing: Apple purposely delay implementation of new web standards to refrain developers to build web applications. New web standards are enablers for new kinds of web applications with richer features set. Those richer apps could go against Apple’s App Store profitable business. No wonder why so many people are using alternative browsers to Safari. But that’s not all. Since Apple, in general is a big player, its influence is unquestionably high, the lack of support from them for so many basic and essential web standards discourage new application opportunities. That’s too bad and makes me wonder how sites like Mailbrew who offers a web application could improve if all browsers, including Safari would support most web standards. Mailbrew is already good on the iPad, closely mimicking a native application, yet I wonder.

Can we hope for changes at the next WWDC conference?

Apple is under so much pressure on so many fronts these days. It is so fashionable to put pressure on them. The App Store is one big target. I’m getting tired of people wishing for changes that I don’t want to become reality. Sure Apple is far from perfect, yet, people should be careful for what they wish for. I decided to express my voice and started to write on the subject. It will be controversial, but it will be honest and true to my beliefs and wishes. I don’t really care if I’m right or wrong. I expect to publish my article just before WWDC. Stay tuned.

On Apple’s Shortcuts notifications: I second this! Notifications are not needed for most of us and should be silenced in iOS 15. At least, provide an option to make it quieter. I like the idea of a status bar indicator, just like the localization services when they are trigerred.

Apple Shortcuts Is Great, but It Needs a Notification Toggle - Initial Charge

I’m so proud of people right now: medias are reporting that 96% of them chose to protect their basic right for online privacy. I wasn’t expecting that many people to select the “Ask Not To Track” option. This is a game changer. This should serve as a clear message to businesses with business models essentially based on personal data mining and online profiling without user consent. Enough is enough. For those who are ok with hyper targeted ads, fine, but not at this cost. I salute Apple for moving forward with this feature in iOS 14.5. Coupled with services like NextDNS, I’m starting to see quite an improvement in my web surfing experience and being more at ease doing so.

Those who selected “Allow” probably didn’t know what it was all about.

Ken Segall on Apple’s stubborn attitude:

“It’s disappointing that the modern Apple is so willing to stonewall, and that it can take an inexcusably long time to set things right.”

Mr. Segall piece is baffling. Taken together, those bad apples make Apple look terrible at design. Apple is opinionated and takes bold risks when designing new products and services. This comes at a cost, occasionally. Apple is far from perfect, but they should know that quickly admitting when they fail makes the mistakes more easily forgiven.

What Apple product currently shipping that has baffling design flaws for which Apple doesn’t seem to care fixing, beside the Magic Mouse? I don’t see that many as they silently fixed most of them in recent years.

Photo credit: Maria Teneva / Unsplash

Surprisingly, Apple’s Night Shift does not help in any way to fall asleep, according to a study. Intuitively, I thought of the opposite. When Apple launched this feature, in 2016, they said it would help. It seems it’s not the case after all. Will they backtrack and remove the feature in a future version? I highly doubt it. Many people do like this feature (I do on the iPhone, I hate it on the Mac), others like @Gruber don’t. What I don’t like is when the feature is in action, opening Photos abruptly turn the visual effect off. The effect is brutal as the screen turns blueish and cold because of the contrasting mode. I would prefer a more gentle disabling of the feature.