My iPhone 11 Pro running iOS 14

Yesterday iOS 14 dropped. Unlike some incremental iOS updates, this one can change how you use your iPhone or iPad, should you choose use the new Home Screen Widgets (you have the option to never see a widget if you don’t want to).

I’ve jumped in head-first.

In the short 24 hours or so that I’ve been using widgets, I’ve found myself organizing my home screens into activity themes.

Roughly put, I’ve created:

Home Screen 1: Most Used Apps & Work-Related Apps
Home Screen 2: Media Consumption Apps
Home Screen 3: System Utilities & Miscellaneous Apps

This arrangement will likely change as more third-party developers release their own widgets (Spotify, I’m looking at you).

Home Screen 1 - Most Used Apps and Work-Related Apps

Home Screen 2 - Media Consumption Apps

Home Screen 3 - System Utilities and Miscellaneous Apps

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Quibi and mindshare versus marketshare

Quibi, the newest video-streaming kid on the block launched yesterday:

Quibi, the oddly-named mobile streaming service founded by Jeffrey Katzenberg, was downloaded over 300,000 times on launch day, according to preliminary data from app store intelligence firm Sensor Tower. That’s only 7.5% of the approximately 4 million installs Disney+ saw when it launched in the U.S. and Canada on November 12, 2019. However, it was enough to send Quibi’s app to nearly the top of the charts on the App Store. Today, Quibi is the No. 3 app on the Apple App Store, but only No. 29 on Google Play.

The disparity once again highlights iOS’s mindshare versus Android’s marketshare. Sure, Android’s install base towers over iOS’s but iOS users spend more. How many millions of shitty, budget Android pocket computers are out there, not being used by people because they’re not fun to use?

Related news: This morning, Philip Elmer-DeWitt referenced a Piper Sandler survey revealing (not surprisingly), “A record 85% of U.S. teens own an iPhone, a record 88% want one.”

Fun Interface

John Gruber on the upcoming iOS 13 and what bothers him with the “post-iOS 7” UI:

I don’t know why, but one of those things has been bugging me a lot in recent months: the drab gray color that indicates tapdown state for list items and buttons. Putting aside skeuomorphic textures like woodgrain and leather and the 3D-vs.-flat debate, the utter drabness of tapdown states is just a bad idea. I didn’t like it when iOS 7 debuted, and I like it even less 6 years later.

In classic iOS, when you tapped down on list items or buttons, they’d instantly light up in vibrant color. The standard color was a bright cheerful blue. In iOS 7 through 12, the tapdown state is the color of dirty dishwater.

I agree with Gruber to an extent.

I remember how weird iOS 7 felt when it came out. It was the first major iOS update after Scott Forstall left Apple and Jony Ive took ownership of iOS. Readability was shitty (it used a lot of Helvetica 35 Thin) and there was poor foreground/background contrast in Control Center with greys and whites. It felt like a print designer was designing their first RGB interface. It also didn’t feel fun. Love skeuomorphism or hate it, iOS, up to version 6 felt fun (I hate to break to the the skeuomorphism haters, but iOS still a lot uses skeuomorphism, but that’s for another post).

Fast forward to today and I think iOS 12 feels much more fun. There are more rounded corners (and bigger radii on those corners), and animations have more easing to them. Transitions are not as robotically linear as they used to be.

This isn’t to say there’s not room to improve iOS and make make it more fun.

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Let’s see your hand, Huawei.

Yesterday Reuters announced Google was revoking Huawei’s Android license, forcing them to use the open source version (I thought Android was open source? I thought “open always wins”? What’s up, Google?).

Today Huawei responded (via The Verge):

“Huawei has made substantial contributions to the development and growth of Android around the world. As one of Android’s key global partners, we have worked closely with their open-source platform to develop an ecosystem that has benefitted both users and the industry.

Huawei will continue to provide security updates and after-sales services to all existing Huawei and Honor smartphone and tablet products, covering those that have been sold and that are still in stock globally.

We will continue to build a safe and sustainable software ecosystem, in order to provide the best experience for all users globally.”

Vlad Savov at The Verge adds:

For its part, Huawei has been making preparations for an eventuality of losing access to software from US companies like Google and Microsoft, and it has been developing an in-house operating system alternative to Android. That may be what the company hints at in the final paragraph of its statement when it says it will “continue to build a safe and sustainable software ecosystem.” Sustainable being the key word.

I can’t wait to see what kind of half-baked trash fire of an operating system Huawei is developing.

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Software

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Command + Z

Jon Gruber doesn’t think iOS has gotten ‘Undo’ right yet on iOS:

Undo has been in the same position in the same menu with the same keyboard shortcut since 1984. Undo and Redo are powerful, essential commands, and the ways to invoke them on the Mac have been universal conventions for almost 35 years. (Redo came a few years later, if I recall correctly.)

iOS does in fact have a standard convention for Undo, but it’s both awful and indiscoverable: Shake to Undo, which I wrote about a few months ago. As I mentioned in that piece, iOS does have support for the ⌘Z and ⇧⌘Z shortcuts when a hardware keyboard is connected, and the iPad’s on-screen keyboard has an Undo/Redo button. So for text editing, on the iPad, Undo/Redo is available through good system-wide conventions.

The shake gesture was fun and novel in the early days of iOS but it’s silly, inefficient, and cumbersome in 2018.

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Interface, Software

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“I trust Apple a lot less.”

I got my iPhone’s battery replaced, and I’m angry Apple didn’t tell me to sooner:

Two weeks ago, I went to an Apple Store and had a new battery put in my iPhone 6S. The very next day, I realized how unusable my old battery had been making my phone.

The repair restored functionality that had been seeping away so slowly I hadn’t really registered the loss. Apps now load when I tap them, not when they feel like it. The keyboard doesn’t freeze when I try to reply to emails in Outlook. My phone no longer clings to its charging cable like it’s a hospital drip, and the battery itself has stopped taking surprise nosedives from 40 percent charge down to zero when I have the temerity to go outside in the cold. (Yes, cold weather kills batteries.) The trust is back in my relationship with my phone, but as a result, I trust Apple a lot less.

I’m angry too.

As an admitted fan of Apple I won’t lie, this is bullshit. I’ve always known, always, that performance degraded on my previous iPhones when I upgraded to the latest version of iOS. I didn’t need an official statement from Apple or any other company to confirm or deny my suspicions.

And now here we are getting new, discounted batteries from Apple.

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Business, Technology

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Confirmed: Apple Slows Down Older Devices

Ever notice – like I have – that your iPhone gets slower when you update to the latest version of iOS? A comment thread on Reddit started a few weeks ago on this topic and it hit the tech news sites this week.

Apple has since responded (via iMore):

Our goal is to deliver the best experience for customers, which includes overall performance and prolonging the life of their devices”, Apple told iMore. “Lithium-ion batteries become less capable of supplying peak current demands when in cold conditions, have a low battery charge or as they age over time, which can result in the device unexpectedly shutting down to protect its electronic components.

Last year we released a feature for iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE to smooth out the instantaneous peaks only when needed to prevent the device from unexpectedly shutting down during these conditions. We’ve now extended that feature to iPhone 7 with iOS 11.2, and plan to add support for other products in the future.

This is a shitty way for Apple to get busted doing something they claim is by design.

I agree with what Marco Arment said on Twitter yesterday:

For years, we’ve reassured people that no, Apple doesn’t secretly slow down their older iPhones to make them buy new ones.

If this must be done, it should be a setting. If it’s on by default, the user should be alerted the first time it happens.

I have a 6-year-old Retina iPad 3 running iOS 9 and it’s for this very reason I haven’t updated it. And it’s also for this reason that it’s performance is still fairly snappy.

I’ve never needed confirmation from Apple that my devices were slowing down when I updated them.

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Technology

A Coke is a Coke

Low-cost Android One phones reportedly coming to the US:

Google’s Android One platform was originally designed to provide low-cost Android devices to developing markets without the stuff that usually comes with low-cost Android devices: bloatware, competing services, and a crippling lack of software and security updates. Now, according to a report from The Information, the program is about to make it’s way to the US market to help solve those problems.

And on regular software updates:

Google also has a stake in ensuring that as many Android devices as possible are upgraded on a regular basis, not just for features but also for security updates.

Imagine that: It’s 2017 and there exist a whole market of shitty, low end Android devices that can’t be updated on a regular basis, filled with bloatware.

This has never been a problem with any of the iPhones I’ve owned.

It reminds me of this great quote from Andy Warhol:

What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.

When you buy an iPhone 7 it’s the same iPhone 7 your favorite actress owns and it’s the same one the cashier at the grocery store owns. When you buy an Android phone, it could lie anywhere on the spectrum of Amazing to Crappy.

This distinction between iPhones and Android phones can’t be overemphasized.

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Product, Technology

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‘Less & Better’ Not ‘More & Shitty’

Apple is going to remove abandoned apps from the App Store:

It’s cleaning time in the App Store. Apple sent an email to its developer community indicating that there will be some upcoming changes in the App Store. If an app no longer works or is outdated, it’s going to get removed from the App Store. And it’s about time.

“We are implementing an ongoing process of evaluating apps, removing apps that no longer function as intended, don’t follow current review guidelines, or are outdated,” Apple wrote.

And:

And Apple is not going to stop at abandoned apps. The company will also fight spammy app names. For instance, if you search for “Instagram” on the App Store, one of the first results is an app that is called “[app name] Photo Collage, Picture Editor, Pic Grid, F…” and then it gets cut off.

It’s about time. I’d rather have less & better than more & shitty.

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Product, Technology

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Interface Details

In 2015, Moleskine released a calendar app for iOS (yes, the company that makes notebooks and journals).

The app is called Timepage. I’ve been using it since it came out and it’s really good. As with all great design, it’s beautiful, but design is about how it works, not how it looks, and it works great. It much easier to use than Apple’s native Calendar app for iOS.

I’m not going to give a full breakdown of the app, I just want to highlight one detail I love. When you have no appointments on a day, instead of showing you nothing, it displays a historic event:

If you’re the kind of person searching for great calendar apps try it out, it’s $2.99 and if that’s too expensive for you, how about you skip your over-sugared and over-priced Starbucks latte.

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Interface

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Adroid or iOS, You Pick

The decline and fall of Windows Phone is more tragic, because for several years the OS was making headway. It had an app problem, sure, but Windows Phone 8 and 8.1 brought the OS itself up to the level of iOS and Android, and the low-end Lumias provided an excellent value for the money. But soon after buying the Lumia division from Nokia, Microsoft seemed to stop pushing. Windows Phone 8.1 has been left to rot while Microsoft takes its sweet time finishing a continually delayed Windows 10 update. To be an existing Windows Phone 8.1 user is to sit by and watch while Microsoft ports every selling point of Windows Phone as a platform to iOS and Android. Embracing iOS and Android unquestionably gives Microsoft’s apps and services a wider audience, but there’s no reason why it had to be done at the expense of the company’s existing user base.

The remains of these platforms aren’t really viable as general-purpose smartphone ecosystems. Diehards can (and will) disagree, and Microsoft at least has given Windows Phone acolytes a gift in the form of the Lumia 950 and 950XL. But if you’re recommending a smartphone to someone in 2016, Android and iOS can do pretty much anything that anyone needs to be able to do. Windows Phone and BlackBerry 10 cannot, and they’re best left to people who care more about brand loyalty than functionality.

The fight for a third-best smartphone OS has been lost. By everyone.

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Technology

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Apple Responds to the FBI

The FBI is asking for Apple’s help unlocking the iPhone 5C of San Bernardino terrorism suspect Syed Rizwan Farook.

Tim Cook responded:

The government would have us remove security features and add new capabilities to the operating system, allowing a passcode to be input electronically. This would make it easier to unlock an iPhone by “brute force,” trying thousands or millions of combinations with the speed of a modern computer.

The implications of the government’s demands are chilling. If the government can use the All Writs Act to make it easier to unlock your iPhone, it would have the power to reach into anyone’s device to capture their data. The government could extend this breach of privacy and demand that Apple build surveillance software to intercept your messages, access your health records or financial data, track your location, or even access your phone’s microphone or camera without your knowledge.

Opposing this order is not something we take lightly. We feel we must speak up in the face of what we see as an overreach by the U.S. government.

No way, Jose. This would set a horrible legal precedent.

I’m happy to see Apple standing up for the privacy of their customers.

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Law, Technology

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The future of Sketch

Geoff Teehan interviews Sketch founder Pieter Omvlee and asks him if he’s ever been tempted to take on outside investment:

No. I’ve never been tempted. We are self-sufficient and profitable. If I were to take on an investment it would mean handing over a sizable portion of the company to an outside investor who would understandably expect a large return on their investment, maybe via avenues I might not agree an in the broader best interest of Sketch. I want to keep growing the company in a way that I see fit, and I don’t want to have the added pressure from someone who might expect more from it than I may even myself. Plus, with that money, I’d probably be expected to grow at a rate that I might not agree is best in the longer term. Similarly, I don’t want to be forced to hire so many people that we’re not profitable, and then only to be forced to take on more funding. We would probably quickly be expected to go from 6 developers to 20 or 30 — and that’s something that I don’t think is wise at this point in time. So in short I don’t currently see the benefits of taking outside funding.

This is great if Sketch can maintain independence, but there’s also a lot to be gained by taking on outside investors. Money doesn’t solve all problems, but with the right leadership and processes in place, you have the potential to make a lot more progress, and make it more quickly.

As Goeff reminds us in his interview, Sketch is eating into Adobe’s lunch and now Adobe has released a Sketch competitor called Comet. Time will tell if Comet gets traction in the marketplace, but Adobe can put hundreds of developers on Comet to make Sketch go away.

To build world class design software with a current team of 6 developers (!) seems untenable, but I’d love to be proven wrong.

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Product

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