Category: Free

I’d appreciate you taking a moment to fill this out (note this is an iframe, you need to scroll the frame to get to the “finish” button):

Note: I’m assuming you want to interrupt someone and they are using the device.

I don’t typically do WWDC keynote wrap ups, but this wasn’t a typical WWDC keynote. You can find all the details of what was and wasn’t elsewhere, what I want to talk about is the things they announced which appear to be immediate game changers.

Continuity

The ability to start working on something on your iPhone, and pick up at that exact spot on your Mac, or iPad. Whether it be an email, or web browsing. To be able to accept, and place, phone calls and SMS messages from any of your devices.

This is going to be huge. This is about experience, and this is the intangible part of Apple that competitors and non-customers just cannot understand. Syncing files with Dropbox will be cute, in the way that syncing files with floppy disks once was, when this is fully realized — this kind of a shift towards device agnostic computing cannot be understated. The normal user won’t understand why everything doesn’t work this way.

Touch ID

This is another ‘experience’ aspect, but opening up Touch ID to third-party developers is massive. Touch ID was OK when it launched, but now it is truly stellar. It is so fast I cannot understand how it is possible.

What Apple is trying to do is to eliminate passwords on iOS. Think about the magnitude of that for a moment.

Why do people choose shitty passwords, because they hate remembering and typing them. Touch ID obviates all of that.

It’s something no other platform can do, and Apple just did it.

App Previews

To me it looks like these will be simple videos in the normal screenshot preview window, but it’s going to be huge. Apple needed to clean up the App Store, but instead of getting more picky about who they let in, they are giving users the ability to actually see how smooth, how pretty, and how well an app works.

I suspect this helps bring the good stuff to the top much quicker.

Extensibility

This is a developer arena addition, but the ramifications of this one thing are truly a game changer for iOS. Apps can now talk and interact with each other. The examples shown (translating text, share sheet integration, notification center widgets, and custom keyboards) just scratch the surface. This is effectively the x-URL callback scheme taken to the next level.

As I talked about the other day, you don’t need side-by-side apps when you can talk to other apps this way. I need to read more into this, but right now: wow.

Spotlight

A lot of app launchers are going to talk about how they are still a good choice, but for most people the new Spotlight will be all they need. In fact, clipboard history may be the only main feature missing.

That alone is neat, but not game changing. What is game changing is that this seems to remove the need for Google to a large extent. If Apple can get the average user using Spotlight it could mean a big hit to Google. Spotlight can get you what you want, and do it quicker.

Everyone uses Google to find information on places like restaurants, now Spotlight can do that for you — and show you contacts appointments, etc — send it to iOS. It’s not only faster than Google, it’s more rich of an experience than Google could ever have on the Apple platform.

iCloud Drive

This is effectively Dropbox, with far better integration in Apple products. You can’t beat this — you won’t beat it. And it’s on Windows. People like to dog on iCloud, but I’ve been using it seriously since it came out and I’ve yet to encounter any major issue — or even minor issues.

If Apple can scale iCloud Drive there will be no stopping it — and I really believe that.

Storage Limits

An aside to that are the storage limits. Apple allowing up to 1TB, and as cheap as 20GB for $0.99/mo — companies simply cannot compete with that pricing. It’s insane.

Wild Cards

There are two other things that Apple introduced which seem huge on the surface, but which I also have my doubts about.

HomeKit

This is Apple’s ‘secure pairing’ to home automation devices. Nest was curiously absent ((Joking, we know why.)) but there were many other companies. The hardest part about HomeKit being a game changer is that it relies on third party hardware manufactures. One shitty product and people will be turned off of the service for a long while.

Apple will need to closely monitor what device is allowed on HomeKit in order to make this a big deal. With Nest out of the picture I am highly skeptical about the future of this. It’s going to come down to great hardware.

HealthKit

Like the above, this too relies on sharing health data with third-parties. Not only that, but it also relies on third-party hardware to collect the data. Effectively being a middle man for data.

It has the potential of Passbook — but as we have seen Passbook has yet to take off at all.

Lastly: Swift

Apple’s new programming language has gotten every developer all hot and bothered. I don’t program, so I can’t comment, but a lot of people see this as taking the development ecosystem and advancing it far out into the future.

Keynote Overall

There was a lot in the keynote — a lot — and the biggest thing to remember is that unlike other keynotes and product announcements: all this stuff is real. You may not get it today, but developers are already hard at work on it so that when you get it, everything works. Amazing.

Or, actually, I can say it in a lot less words than that.

After careful thought since the announcement of the beginning of the end of App.net ((Or so they say.)) , I’ve decided to start actively using Twitter as my main social network once again. I could write 15,000 words on it, or I could sum it up in three statements:

1. I was wrong. I thought the people I cared about would all whole-heartedly move over to App.net, but they didn’t. (Well, most of them didn’t.)
2. I miss my buddies, I have buddies on App.net, but I miss the specific people who only hang around Twitter.
3. At this point I felt like I was the whiny kid sitting martyr-style in his room while everyone partied carefree in the other room. The only thing this accomplished was my own self satisfaction of knowing that I was doing something I thought was right.

Bottom line: I just want to come back into the room with the party.

So, hey, come follow me on Twitter.

Earlier this week I pushed an update to the design of this site. Visually not a lot has change, but I reworked a bunch of little things. Notably I changed how the site displays the post metadata.

I was never happy with this part of the design before so I’ve been rethinking it. Now you see the post type (e.g. Quote of the Day, Linked, Article) at the top followed by the author (if necessary), reading time (for articles), and date. I really like how this looks — though some tweaks to the space between the metadata and the post title is needed.

Also, if you are wondering, the date serves as the permalink if you need it for quotes and linked items.

In the footer I added a popular post widget and some links to other stuff I am up to. The goal there is just to consolidate my presence and hopefully show some trending stuff — no matter how old the post is. (That home screen organization post is always a top post for some reason, I love it and it may be the geekiest thing I do. I also have an update coming in that front.)

The biggest design change happened on the single post view. Here I added a bunch of, well, crap. This site has been suffering from declining visitors, and declining revenue, and say what you want about it being about the “content” — sometimes you also need to get the word out. That’s my goal. I’m not married to having social buttons, and related post links, BUT thus far these items have tripled incoming social referrers.

So, yeah.

Oh, and I quite like the related posts deal from Jetpack ((A real bitch to style.)) , it’s fun for me to see other posts on a topic. Really fun actually. So whether it helps with traffic or not, I’m keeping it for my own enjoyment.

Let me know what you think of these minor changes and remember this site’s design is always a work in progress. This latest update takes me to my sixth version — or sixth version that I feel wants a version number increase.

Recently I was printing out a bunch of photos to update pictures around our home. One of them I printed out to replace a photo we had been using in the same frame for the past five years — that pictures resides in our entry. The new picture seemed brighter, it looked better, and I liked it, so I thought it would be a nice change of pace form the black and white image that hung by our entry.

I made a snap decision to print the photo on water color paper, and when it was done I was blown away by how great it looks. The photo is now hanging in our entry way, and I stop and look at it every time I pass. I don’t really like this type of gloating, but this image — when printed — makes me exceedingly happy when I look at it. In fact quite a few visitors to our home have remarked on it, which bring us to this post.

I’d like to offer this image for sale as a limited edition print. I am offering two sizes printed and signed by me on water color paper (this paper) on my Canon PIXMA PRO 9500 mkII. The pricing and sizing is as follows:

• 12” x 18” image printed on a 13” x 19” piece of water color paper for $150, signed (on the back).
• 8” x 10” image printed on a 8.5” x 11” piece of water color paper for $50, signed (on the back). Note: because this size format does not fit the natural image aspect ratio, some cropping will occur.

The limited edition factor is not quantity based — though I will write the print number on each image with my signature — it’s limited edition because I will guarantee this will be the only time I offer this image for sale on water color paper. The water color paper gives this image a very lovely feel to it, less ‘printed photo’ and more art.

This site is directly supported by you the readers and members, and right now it just breaks even. The goal of this print sale is to raise money for the purchase of items to review. What items, you might ask? I have a long list and once I figure out how much money all of this raises I will be putting those items to a vote. You tell me what you want to see reviewed.

Shipping is hard. Shipping costs $10 for US, and $20 outside of the US. All prints will be handled with cotton gloves and will be packaged with extreme care.

To order, head here. Sale ends June 6th, 2014.

Note about shipping times: I will be shipping on a continual basis. I hope to have prints shipped within 14 days of ordering.

Hot on the heels of ranting about Notification Center failures. Something related that annoys the crap out of me: your non-breaking news blog asking to send me push notifications. Come on…

Gabe Weatherhead:

Even I consider iOS7 to be a great source of jokes about software crashing. That’s going to be a hard train to turn around.
I really believe that Apple has harmed their brand with iOS7. It’s more devastating than any Samsung ad campaign.

Really? That’s not been my experience at all. Yes, iOS 7 has crashed on me more than iOS 6, but Weatherhead’s statement is pretty strong. I wonder what real data can tell us.

Mind helping?