There we have it, a new iPad, a new iPad Pro, joining a growing and more confusing iPad lineup than ever. I won’t repeat the best comments from MacStories (“Apple Announces Strange New iPad and iPad Pro Lineup“) and Six Colors (“The iPad’s erratic odyssey continues”). How are this week’s announcements influencing my buying decisions?

I’m currently using a 2018 11-inches iPad Pro. Going to the 2022 M2 iPad Pro would be a significant step, at least from a processing power perspective. Should I stay on the 11-inches size or go to the 12.9-inches version and get a big screen upgrade? Using this new iPad as a photo-processing machine and as a second screen to any of my Mac would undoubtedly support the bigger iPad. But what a weird setup this would make to use a much-better secondary screen like the 12.9-inches iPad Pro on a 2020 M1-based MacBook Air machine. There is no comparison to be made.

In its video clip of fewer than five minutes, Apple is positioning the latest iPad Pro weirdly and surprisingly: the best machine to experience the “exciting” Stage Manager. What a strange way to present the iPad Pro. It will undoubtedly help but having to buy an expensive iPad to get a different and questionable way to multitask on a tablet is doubtful.

Oh, and what a missed opportunity to have Freeform ready simultaneously and present it as the best way to collaborate in a creative environment! We will have to wait until “later this year” to come to get a sense of Apple’s vision of collaborative work. Oh, and Final Cut is still MIA. Instead, Apple continues to rely on third-party apps to show how powerful the iPad Pro actually is. Thanks to DaVinci Resolve or Affinity, when they ship their new beast of software. Later. Eventually.

I don’t know why but my feeling is that the 2022 iPad Pro is only a transition machine, and the real deal will be next year’s update. Oh, and these keyboard choices are as strange as all the rest.

I’m unsettled. 🤔

As I write this, rumours are pointing to an imminent release of some updated iPads today. What is novel this time is not the CPU to be used, the screen attributes, or the long-awaited app called Freeform. What is novel is the fact that there won’t be an Apple event for the announcement but a few well-crafted press releases. Apple judges the updates as not worth tech pundits’ time, flight to Cupertino, or even a secret press briefing.

I would argue that we are officially entering the iPad commodity era. Thanks to Apple, who neglected to show the iPad’s true potential with a ported version of powerful apps like Final Cut Pro, a real multitasking experience, the iPad is becoming a mundane device. Putting an M2 processor in it won’t change the story here. Freeform, a low-profile app that Apple quickly demonstrated at the WWDC conference last June, won’t probably appeal to many, being late in the game of collaborative work and creativity. Even long-time bloggers and iPad believers like Matt Birchler are no longer waiting for the iPad to ignite the personal computing segment.

We will see shortly if Apple has a few surprises in-store today.

Photo credits: Photo by Niklas Hamann on Unsplash

In case you didn’t know, I’m a big fan of Apple (from the corporation, the products to the company’s history). Here’s a little secret: I maintain a document of possible upgrade paths for all my current Apple products. It’s fun. Yes, I’m a bit crazy.

Each year, during the fall, Apple releases a slew of new products. Each year, I spend some time updating my document to reflect my analysis of possible product upgrades. Take the iPhone for example. I’m currently using last year’s iPhone 13 Pro. I’m super happy with but I’m pondering the idea of upgrading to the iPhone 14 Pro Max. So, I list all the reasons why I should do it and all the reasons why I should refrain from doing the upgrade. It’s the same drill for my aging 2018 11-inches iPad Pro. Or my Apple Watch Series 6. It’s quite fun and educative because for each product, I spend quite some time studying it and pondering their technical advances over my current product. It’s really fun. And crazy.

This year, it’s a bit different for some reasons. There’s still nothing in the Apple tech landscape that could trigger a purchase. Not yet. Rumours about an upcoming iPad Pro refresh and a more powerful Mac mini with an M2 are aplenty. Things could change in a few weeks.

But, seriously, what is more fun than anything else is the waiting game. Pleases come while waiting for something to happen. I read somewhere that people who wait patiently to get something are more happy in life than those who succumb rapidly to fill their immediate needs. I must be quite happy then.

Header photo credits: Photo by Zhiyue on Unsplash

A recent Twitter thread about the possible iPhone Dynamic Island inception by Matt Birchler caught my attention a few days ago but couldn’t find the required time to write my take.

How long could Dynamic Island have been in gestation at Apple? A few weeks, a few months? I think this has been in the works for quite some time. Besides the visual appearance, the API goes with it and needs a design period too. I’m sure Matt understands and knows about that. I would argue that Apple worked on this way before this year’s announcement. Best integration between hardware and software takes time because of how Apple is internally structured. Secrecy plays a significant role in making things longer to achieve too. Apple plan’s for the long run, and I think the pill shape was set in stone last year.

The second thing that caught my attention is this: How long will Dynamic Island be with us? What if Apple can make the camera disappear under the iPhone’s display? Would this make Dynamic Island pointless? No. My take is that the feature is here for the long run, even though the camera and all other sensors could disappear entirely. Apple is training us to accept Dynamic Island as a fundamental part of the iPhone experience. We may even expect the feature to be the de facto standard of the best iPhone user experience. I don’t think we will revert to the previous design that Dynamic Island is taking care of. The black pill share could be dynamically removed when not required but could then pop up to respond to the current context dictated by the user interaction.

The Dynamic Island is such a terrible name but the feature in itself is brilliant, so Apple.

The way I see it, there is nothing in an updated MacBook Pro line with M2 processors and a tweaked iPad Pro line to warrant a keynote. There has to be something special, really special. iPadOS 16.1, macOS Ventura aren’t enough. The rumoured Mac Pro? Maybe, but no signals on its imminent release either. An updated Apple TV hardware? Nah. A larger MacBook Air (like 15")? Why now? That is why I agree with Gurman’s view and the next product release will go through a set of press releases later in October.

MacRumors in iPhone 14 Pro Owners Complain of ‘Slow’ Camera App - MacRumors:

Affected users are seeing the Camera app take four to five seconds to activate after the Camera app icon is tapped, with the problem occurring after the camera has been opened once already.

Coupled with other issues related to the camera and AirDrop, even though I’ll probably upgrade to the 14 Pro Max, I’ll gladly wait a few months before taking the plunge. But, fixes are coming very soon, apparently.

iFixit writing about the internal redesign of the iPhone 14 in “The iPhone 14 Feature Apple Didn’t Tell You About”:

This is the most substantial iPhone redesign since the X. It’s hard to understate how big a change this is. For a reference point, Samsung hasn’t changed their phone architecture since 2015.

So, with the biggest update in years, we’re upgrading the iPhone 14 to a repairability score of 7 out of 10. That’s the best score we’ve given an iPhone since the iPhone 7. This is the most repairable iPhone in years.

Who wrote that smartphones, iPhone in particular, have peeked? A fundamental redesign of the iPhone to make it more repairable seems not only a good move but a much-needed change of thinking. If Apple is serious about environment protection and carbon footprint, they not only have to think about the choice of materials but also the way iPhones are built so they are more easily fixed. Kudos to Apple. Why this design is only for the iPhone 14, not the Pro, is a mystery to me.

The more I look at reviews, watch YouTube videos and visit Apple.com, the more I realize that considering my current hardware setup, there aren’t many reasons to upgrade to the iPhone 14 Pro (currently with 13 Pro), the Apple Series 8 (currently with Series 6) or the AirPods Pro 2 (currently the original Pro version). The Apple Watch Ultra could be a reason, but I’m not the target customer for that one.

Waiting for October releases and going to the Apple Store tomorrow. Just for fun.

So, I’ve been testing iOS 16 since its early beta stage, and I love it so much. One of the best features is the customizable Lock Screen. But it also creates an issue, the same with Apple Watch watch faces: how to decide which widgets to use and place in those limited slots. There are more and more widgets available each day, but the space is so constrained. I cannot find a strategy to create a Lock Screen that I’m fully satisfied with. I end up creating many of them, but switching among them isn’t smooth, except if they are linked to a focus mode. It’s not a first-world problem, but it is annoying. I’m left with a sense of constant dissatisfaction.

Here’s an interesting post by Gruber about Android vs iPhone’s relative popularity in different places around the world. I have some observations to share from my experience.

After spending three weeks in Italy for vacation, from what I could see, there was a lot of iPhone around me independently of the place I visited. Sure I saw many Android phone users too. But a majority were iPhone users. Regarding Android’s relative popularity in Germany and France, I would consider the possibility of an aversion for what Apple represents (an “American icon”) in those countries as a partial explanation. Maybe it’s not cool to support an American company like Apple?

Another interesting fact: WhatsApp is THE messaging service app people seem to use the most. iMessage isn’t popular in Italy, it seems.