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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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Moving Adobe Lightroom from one machine to another
I’m finally done moving Adobe Lightroom Classic from my iMac to my M1 Mac mini. A few takeaways: it’s a tricky process involving many folders to copy (presets, settings, photos, catalog, etc.). Lightroom is bad at managing digital assets when things need to be reorganized. The Apple Silicon optimized version is faster but not as much as I thought it would be. My Mac mini never stop to impress me, it’s such a fast device. I’m close to being able to put my 2017 iMac for sale.
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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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Weird.
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Moving from Castro to Pocket Cast: 100% completed. šØš»āš»āļøšš»š
I waited for close to a year for Castro to bring its podcasts app to the iPad. Today, with the announcement of Automattic buying Pocket Cast, it came back on my radar. It didnāt take too long to make the switch. Pocket Cast is a real multi-platform player, feature rich and has an as good design as the other players. After Tumblr, DayOne, now Pocket Cast, I want to give it a try and see how Automattic will build on it. Meanwhile, Iām really enjoying it.
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On PC in the cloud
Microsoft announced their PC in the cloud offerings this week. While it is probably based on their previous offering, Windows Virtual Desktop service, it does look like a milestone to me. Iāve been in IT for more than 25 years. I saw the migration from the mainframe to the client-server applications architecture. After that, it was about virtualization taking over with the popular VMware hypervisor. In the last five years, I saw the cloud taking over the IT world. The latter has a much more profound impact than any trend I witnessed or was part of in my career.
PC in the cloud is only offered to business customers, for now. I can see Microsoft offering the service to the general public in a not too distant future. Iāll probably subscribe to an instance for my personal needs. Being able to run the PC in a browser means being able to use it on any of my current Apple devices, from the M1 Mac mini to my iPad Pro. This is something Apple will never enable itself, certainly not within Safari. The future looks interesting.
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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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Bye Bye Skylum - I barely knew you
In preparing to move off my 2017 Intel iMac (and put if for sale), I must make sure to re-install remaining applications on my M1 Mac mini. Photography-related apps were the last to be updated for the M1 chip. Lightroom CC is now fully optimized, but none of the Skylum apps I was (rarely) using: Luminar 4 and Aurora 2019 HDR. After spending some time on their support forums, I found out that none of their apps are optimized for the M1 chip. I had to make the call: bye bye Skylum. I barely knew you.
If a software vendor like Skylum is unable to update their apps in a timely matter, more than a year after the M1 chip has been announced, I give up. It is sad because these are the kind of applications that would take advantage of the power of the M1 chip. Too bad. My photography workflow will focus on Adobe applications, for good or for worse.
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A few thoughts on cleaning up my Twitter accounts following list
Since last year, Iāve been making a major cleanup of my Twitter account. I came from following more than 2000 people down to less than 300ā¦ and my goal is to drop below 100. Iām slowly getting there. Here are a few take outs from this major cleanup of my accounts following list.
First, there are a lot of stale accounts on Twitter, which tends to artificially increase āfollowshipā. It looks like people stopped tweeting a while ago ā they left the building. Second, a bunch of accounts were iPhone developers that I started following during my indie developer era, back in 2009-2013. My interests have since then shifted to writing and blogging. I no longer need to get in touch with the developers community. Third, and this coud be the most troubling take out: Twitter has become less and less useful in my numeric life. Articles readings happens more and more though RSS feeds and Mailbrew. So, whatās left for me from Twitter? Getting reactions from people during specials events, related to Appleās announcements. Thatās pretty much it.
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Iāve been experimenting with time tracking. I’ve been doing it as an experiment at first, but now it’s part of my workflow. I’m using Toggl and Timery. Ask me anything.
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The power of iPadOS 15: setting up a workspace made of four apps with a simple shortcut from the home screen. So cool. šØš»āš»š¤
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The return of the Touch ID?
A recent poll ran by 9To5Mac gives surprising results about what people would like to see if Touch Id is to return to the iPhone. Touch ID under the screen wins popular favour… personally, I would prefer Touch ID to go on the power button, just like the iPad Air because it is easily accessible while holding the phone.
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Every few days, I go on the Apple Store app to configure a 12.9ā 2021 iPad Pro with 512 GB just to confirm delivery date estimates. Iām crazy.
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Pleaseā¦ stopā¦ usingā¦ ellipsisā¦ for gods sake (#apple #ux #design #iosdev)
In the following screenshot taken this morning on my iPad screen, how many ellipsis signs to you catch? I highlighted them for you to make it easier. To all developers, to all designers, to Apple: please, stop this shit NOW and find a better way, use your imagination, stop being lazy at design. Thank you.
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I rarely post my photos hereā¦ but here we are, itās an exception day. This one is from the lake in front of my rented chalet. My photos are available here for those wondering: numericcitizen.photos
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Public beta, already? That was fast. (#ios15publicbeta #ios15beta2) If my experience is any indication, I wouldnāt install that on an iPhone, if itās the only device a user have.
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Thought of the day: for me, Appleās Widgets are more transformative to the iPad experience than they were to the iPhone, by far.
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On design trends ā sadness
While reading a recent article from Basic Apple Guy about News+, there is this illustration that shows how far Apple News icon has come since its beginnings. I have included the illustration here. It shows how bad design has become in the last five to ten years. That is really depressing to see. As much as things like AR and LiDAR technology help bring real world and virtual world closer together, UI design seems to go the opposite direction. Why is that? When will that trend stop and maybe revert a bit? Why canāt we get visually joyful icons anymore? Is it a matter of design costs being too high?
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Apple and Architecture
This is one of the many reasons why I love Apple. They put so much money into this building restoration, it is mind blowing. The amounf of efforts that went into renovating this historic site is beyond any public-founded projects could have done. This brings me to this interesting question by Basic Apple Guy:
(ā¦) should corporations be allowed to get their hands on this historic architecture and turn them into private businesses? Rightly or wrongly, the fact of the matter is that many governments don’t prioritize or have the means to prioritize the extensive work required to take on this scale of restoration.
I tend to have a polarizing view on anything related to architecture. My father was an architect and so Iām profoundly sensitive on the subject. Yes corporation can take over abandoned historic buildings as long as they do it under the supervision of an urbanism council or something like it. Here, Apple transformed a building into a store but each time Apple chose to do it in a gentle way. I mean, it is barely noticeable from the outside that this is an Apple Store. Itās a very respectful way to do it.
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Appleās Shortcuts and Photo processing
Now that Darkroom officially supports iOS Shortcuts (and will support Shortcuts on Monterey this fall), I canāt wait to get Pixelmator to do the same, as this is my go-to alternative to Lightroom CC for photos editing on the iPad. I like Darkroom by the way but I do have to make choices. Screenshot from MacStories.
