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Magic Keyboard with Touch ID for Mac models with Apple silicon ā available separately. š³š¤šš»
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I Love This Machine
It is light, fast and an absolute design gem. Small, but not too small. It runs a powerful operating system. Itās highly portable. It is venerable. It is a rare āspeciesā. There is something really special about it. Furthermore, it has a real keyboard that I can trust. Battery life is good. It is out of the way. Itās the perfect device for writing and blogging.
Itās a 2013 11ā MacBook Air.
Iāll explain in the coming week or so.
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Apple: everything is at least to taps awayā¢ #apple #safari15 #newdesigntrend
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Documenting past home screen arrangements
Matt Birchler had an interesting blog post this week about a screenshot of his 2013 iPhone home screen. There are a few interesting things to note. In 2013, it was the arrival of the controversial iOS 7 redesign. It’s interesting to look at the Camera+ icon design which was still not updated for the new style. The dock design style was pretty basic and felt out of place. A few apps are not longer among us these days: Path (which was really a great design example) but most of the third-party apps are still available today.
I wish I had kept screen shots of previous home screen arrangements in the past. Something that I have kept is many screen shots of my password manager user interface dating back pre-iOS 7 era. Here is an example below. When I saw iOS 7, I didnāt have the courage to rework my design. The development of my app stopped right there. I made five thousands dollars with this adventure, between 2009 and 2013. Now Iām using a combinaison of 1Password and Appleās passwords vault.
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On Safari 15 in iPadOS 15 Beta 4
Apple is slowly but surely getting there with this release of beta 4 of iPadOS 15 and Safari 15. I like what Iām seeing, on the iPad. Yet, āwhen you donāt know what is best, just add an option to Settings so the user can decideā strategy seems to be the way to go this time. You know whatās my choice, donāt you?
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Iāve been invited to test Safari 15 Preview on Big Sur
Iām going to jump in because on macOS, I donāt see the change as controversial as on iOS 15. I find it surprising that Apple seeks feedback on the new design. Itās a good thing but also surprising has they tend to do their thing alone. Now, they look a bit in distress while searching for a solution.
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Do you remember when you switched to Apple's ecosystem?
Matt Birchler writing about Apple ecosystem stickiness:
“As I buy more and more Apple products, all of those Apple products get better. My iPhone is more valuable because of the HomePod Mini I AirPlay my podcast to while Iām working. My iPad gets more valuable because it has seamless file sync with my Mac. Reminders is better because it works with Siri in a way no other app is allowed. The list goes on. But this is of course also a bit of a trap. I canāt really get an Android phone, even if I think I would enjoy it more than my iPhone, because then my HomePods become worse, my Mac gets worse, my iPad gets worse, and my Apple services get worse. Because each additional Apple product makes all my other Apple products better, likewise removing something from that mix brings down everything else.”
You cannot use an Apple Watch with an Android smartphone. In Apple’s garden, every product has an extension that takes the form of a service or another physical product from Apple. Did we forget that once upon a time we made a switch from platforms like Windows or OS/2? When a new offering is really making a difference, we tend to switch. Back in the days, a Windows PC was an island, leaving it for the Mac meant that you had to re-buy new software, a few accessories. All things equal, the switch wasn’t necessarily funny. Today’s digital world is quite different, for sure, but pose a similar kind of challenge when switching.
Photo by Miguel TomƔs on Unsplash
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Part of my digital garden focusing on Apple’s rumours has been updated this morning. Most recent rumours about upcoming iPhone and Macs now added. Made with @Craftdocsapp.
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On iPadOS 15 Photos improvements
Iāve been using Photos in iPadOS 15 since beta 2 and I must say that Apple is in fact offering a major update to their photos application. Beyong the updated Stories automatic creation and management improvements, face recognition has become quite impressive. According to a published article by Apple, people faces should be more detectable and recognizable in more extreme conditions. I can confirm this is actually the case. A large number of new photos were surfaced by Photosā improved algorithms which brings more potential content for new stories creation. Managing tagged faces is easier too and provides a refined experience overvall. Photos enhancements in iPadOS 15 is a big reason to upgrade.
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How many times one of my colleage at work, knowing that Iām an Apple zealot, said that iPhone was losing ground to Android? Countless times. Where is this guy now? www.ped30.com
Apple vs. Android: In the U.S., theyāre neck and neck
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iPhone 13 Pro Max or iPhone 13 Pro ā That is the question
Iām planning to go big screen this fall with the iPhone 13 Pro (12s?) Max (I currently own an iPhone 11 Pro). I never owned the biggest iPhone (Plus or Max). There is one thing that makes me pause: information density of the Max seems about the same if not a bit higher compared to the non-Max model. There are six row of icons on the home screen on both models (Max and non-Max), which is kind of lame. Am I getting this wrong?
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When a 2013 MacBook Air is > than a two-years old Chromebook
Iāll be getting a old 2013 MacBook Air for one of my son to replace an aging Chromebook that I bought about two years ago. Think about it. This eight years old MacBook Air is faster, much better design, much better screen quality, more memory and will be able to run macOS Big Sur and all other apps like iWorks et al. I find this incredible that we can read and hear people saying Apple gear is expansive and that is under Appleās obsolescence progamming. I call this bullshit.
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User Interface design dark age era
We are in the dark age (not dark mode!) of user interface design for sure. We get excited for new animated UI elements (example here), but overall, delight has been lost in translation a long time ago. As Mike Rockwell is a link post say:
āI canāt really identify anything that Iāll be nostalgic for in ten or twenty years.ā
I wouldn’t go back to pre-iOS 7 days but there has to be some delightful in-between degree of crafted user interface that had some real joyful elements in them. Apple is not the only one at fault here. It looks like it is a design trend spanning many mediums (print, TV, web, etc.).
Has the industry decided that our devices have reached a level of maturity that warrants making everything minimal, sterile, and utilitarian to help “do work” and “get stuff done”?
Excellent question, Tyler Hall.
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Googleās openness isnāt enough apparently (#antitrust #security #cybersecurity)
Wow, that one is close to being hilarious. Big tech companies are the target of hate these days. Google was hit by another antitrust lawsuit by no less than 36 states about their handling of applications side loading on Android. In summary, it is so cumbersome to side load an app on Android, thanks to security measures, that it makes it hard for competing App Store to compete.
Google makes the sideloading process unnecessarily cumbersome and impractical by adding superfluous, misleading, and discouraging security warnings and by deterring users by requiring them to grant permission multiple times for a single app installation (discussed in more detail in Sections I.C. and I.D. below). The effect of Googleās conduct is to practically eliminate competition in Android app distribution.
Android is supposedly more permissive than Appleās App Store and yet, it looks like itās not enough. This lawsuit is a prime example on why I donāt like the current trend. People want more open platforms but itās never enough. If Apple is ever forced to make profound changes to their App Store business, it will be the beginning of a worrisome trend that I prefer wouldnāt happen. I recently wrote about not wanting another Android platform. Now, I should say that I donāt want another Windows platform disguised in a mobile device. To me, it is scary and close in nature to the same problem of who should own encryption keys. Raging ransomeware cyberattacks are signs of what is coming on mobile devices if we open them up too much, just like Windows.
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What comes before the right to repair? (#apple #righttorepair)
The next step for Apple is to design for repairability which goes beyond recycling. AirPods are the worst example of this. When the battery life on these is reached, there is no practical way to replace them without throwing it to the trash and buying a new one. So for me, the right to repair goes way beyond having a choice of where Iām going to take a device for repair. It is about buying a device that was designed for and built to use recycled materials, but also it is about buying a device that can be repaired for basic things like battery replacement.
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The Touch Bar is a great example of a divisive feature. I love the Touch Bar. Poll: Do you think Apple should kill the MacBook’s Touch Bar? - 9to5Mac
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The more we wait for beta 4, the more chance we will get a step back for Safari redesign. Thatās my guess.
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If you depend on automation shortcuts and use shortcuts in general on iOS 15 & iPadOS 15, youāll quickly realize that any advance Apple made in Notifications are ruined by Shortcuts generated notifications. Those notifications should be treated separately.
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Maybe Apple should sell iPhone without any operating system, that way, everyone is equal. Iād love to build my own kernel because I think it would be the best but since Apple is bundling one, Iām seriously disadvantaged. How is this even allowed?
