Mac OS Catalina: more trouble than it’s worth

October 19, 2019
by Riccardo Mori
Software

Both my main Macs are still on Mac OS 10.13.6 High Sierra, and so far I have no plans to upgrade to Mac OS 10.15 Catalina. I’ll probably upgrade the SSD-equipped MacBook Air to Mojave before the end of the year. I could perhaps do the same with my desktop workhorse, a 2017 4K retina iMac, but it came with a 5400 rpm hard drive as its main internal volume, and if Mojave updates the filesystem to APFS, then it’s advisable to upgrade to an SSD first.

But Catalina is a decidedly controversial upgrade, and in my case I didn’t even have to debate too much whether I should upgrade or not. The answer is no. The reasoning behind it is quite simple, actually, and it boils down to this: what Catalina takes away from me is more than what it gives me.

If you look at Catalina’s list of features, there is a lot of new stuff indeed. But as I scroll down that page, I find entire sections whose improvements are of no use to me, because they improve certain features or areas of the Apple ecosystem I don’t use. Examples include (but are not limited to) Apple Music, TV, Podcasts, Photos, Notes, Reminders, Screen Time, and Apple Watch.

In other cases, like Security and Mail, what Apple considers an ‘improvement’, it’s more of a hindrance for me. (I know some will see this as a small thing, but really, Apple, why mess with Mail’s classic layout? It’s been my preferred layout since Mac OS X 10.0, and that type of layout has basically been the one I have used since I started using email more than twenty years ago).

What I want from a new version of an operating system, especially one as mature as Mac OS, is that it fixes or improves what was not working well in previous versions, and that it leaves tried-and-true features and functionalities as untouched as technically possible. I don’t need and I don’t want disruption for disruption’s sake on a yearly basis. While I understand that today’s tech motto is The show must go on, that also doesn’t have to mean that the show should get painful to watch.

Instead, Catalina has so far proven to be quite the disruptive experience. If you want examples, there’s no better collector and curator than Michael Tsai (and if you still don’t follow his blog, you’re definitely missing out):

As usual, when I’m vocal about something on Twitter, and voice what may be considered unpopular opinions, I promptly receive feedback via email. So when I repeatedly manifested my disappointment about Mac OS 10.15 and my unwillingness to upgrade, I got the most varied responses. Some agreed with me, some said the same things they say when they see me ‘resist change’ (their words) — that I can’t keep on ‘living in the past’, that I should approach these things with a more ‘adaptive mindset’, because I can’t expect technology and software to progress while maintaining the status quo at the same time. While I may agree with this latter point to a somewhat remote degree, I don’t see why I should change the way I work on/with my Mac at the drop of a hat— I mean, Mac OS release.

One thing is ‘resisting change’; another thing is not wanting to mindlessly embrace something just because it’s new. I don’t know why it’s so hard for tech people to understand that not everything new is necessarily, inherently good, or better than what came before.

I remember enthusiastically upgrading to the next version of Mac OS from Mac OS X’s early days until Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks. Then 10.10 Yosemite gave me pause: apart from the many bugs and increased unreliability, I literally couldn’t look at it. I was mostly okay with the revamped visual design, but found the choice of Helvetica as the new system font to be extremely problematic because it didn’t seem optimised for non-retina displays. When I saw Yosemite installed on a MacBook Air at the local Apple Store, there were parts of the system’s UI I had trouble reading. So I decided to wait until things improved. And thankfully things did improve, but I had to wait until Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan was released a year later.

It was the first time I skipped an entire Mac OS release, and… nothing broke. I stayed one year more with Mavericks and everything was fine, everything kept working. Mavericks, especially with its last minor release, was very stable on my MacBook Pro. I didn’t feel I was missing out.

Then came Mac OS 10.12 Sierra. My MacBook Pro (2009) wasn’t officially supported — and I didn’t feel like installing Sierra unofficially. Looking at what Sierra offered over El Capitan, there wasn’t anything in particular I wanted at all costs. El Capitan was, again, pretty stable on my Mac, so I stuck with it one more year. And again, I didn’t feel I was missing out or running behind. Everything I needed kept working just fine. Of course now it was time to upgrade the hardware, and last year I did just that. Both my brand-new 21.5″ 4K retina iMac, and my second-hand 11″ MacBook Air came with Mac OS 10.13 High Sierra preinstalled, and I’ve had no issues whatsoever on either machine so far.

You realise when an operating system has reached maturity, for example, when the next version doesn’t feel all that compelling and it’s just a refinement over the one you’re using. For me that realisation came first when I stayed on Mavericks until El Capitan shipped (thus skipping Yosemite entirely), and then when I stayed on El Capitan until High Sierra shipped (thus skipping Sierra entirely). And every day I realise this when using my still-surprisingly-alive 2009 MacBook Pro with El Capitan next to my iMac with High Sierra. The two Mac OS versions — despite the 2‑year gap separating them — look and feel indistinguishable from one another.

As a consequence, my attitude towards upgrading to a newer version of Mac OS has changed in recent years. The nerdy “This is going to be great, I can’t wait to update and see the new features” approach has turned into a more cautious costs/benefits evaluation: “Okay, say I upgrade, what’s in it for me?” After Mac OS 10.13 High Sierra, I’ve repeatedly asked myself, “What is really better and improved in this new version of Mac OS? What are the truly useful features and improvements that make this a meaningful upgrade for me?” And apart from security (maybe — I’m not even 100% sure about this), I do struggle to find an answer.

The feeling I have, as of late, is that the more we go on, the more we have to roll up our sleeves as users and thoroughly check what the new OS may break, educate ourselves on the ways things may break, and look for workarounds. This because now more than ever Apple doesn’t seem to care much about the quality of their software. So, on the one hand third-party developers have to work much more than before — unearthing Mac OS bugs, and doing everything in their power to adjust their software so that it plays nice with whatever the new Mac OS version breaks or changes. On the other hand, the final users have to face new headaches when something that used to ‘just work’ in Mac OS, now inexplicably does not. Or does, but with puzzling inconsistency.

You may say I’m stuck in the past, but let me tell you: this doesn’t look like progress to me.

The whole idea of ‘making preparations’ before updating is utterly silly when you bring some common sense into the equation. The only preparation one should carry out today is a full backup of one’s data. Because many factors may lead to data loss, and it’s not necessarily the new OS version’s fault. You shouldn’t lose hours of your time checking for possible compatibility issues with apps and services you’ve been using and relying upon — in some cases for a very long time.

But you know, when you complain about things like this, the standard response is that there are always tradeoffs. Sure, sometimes there may be boring technical reasons behind a change, and sometimes the change comes with a tradeoff that’s worth accepting — you get a tangible improvement that outweighs what you lose in the process.

However, something like the loss of 32-bit apps (completely unsupported in Catalina) infuriates me because I see the sheer computational power of today’s Macs and I wonder in what way it would be a hindrance for them to still run 32-bit apps. Architectural issues? 64-bit Macs have been able to run them since 2006. Incompatibilities with new technologies underlying Mac OS 10.15? You’re telling me that it wouldn’t be possible to implement a Rosetta-like system tool to run 32-bit apps on the fly? Or some sort of native emulation like the Classic Environment that let you run Mac OS 9 in PowerPC Macs until Mac OS X 10.4? I believe solutions like these could be implemented, and without any perceivable loss in performance. The obvious benefit would be to retain a vast catalogue of perfectly working apps and games.

But since Apple can’t be bothered to preserve this bridge with the past, and since their only interest when Mac OS is concerned is apparently to streamline and simplify the system because it’s easier to maintain this way[1], the burden is on the users (and the developers, of course, but I’m focusing on the users here). You know, the users, who are supposedly “at the centre of everything we do”, as Tim Cook said.

Look, I get it, we can’t expect to be using older applications forever, especially if said applications need to communicate and interface with sensible parts of the system, or if they can be used as attack vectors to compromise the security of the system. But many are still perfectly fine and innocuous. And again, I’m not saying that workflows have to be set in stone and we should follow them inflexibly without ever trying something new or different. But these changes that tend to have a significant and direct impact on users’ habits oughtn’t to be forced by an OS update. Even if the writing was on the wall.

Sometimes you find an application, a tool, that really fits the way you work; that really makes you faster and more productive when carrying out a specific activity. One such application, for me, is Aperture. Before Aperture, I wasn’t using any kind of unified solution to edit and organise my photos. I simply performed the occasional retouch in GraphicConverter and kept my photos manually organised in folders. I had tried giving iPhoto a go, but the experience felt a bit confusing and underwhelming. When I received Aperture as a gift back in 2008, the way the application worked and its overall flow just clicked for me. Adobe Lightroom never did, instead.

When back in 2014 Apple announced Photos as a replacement for both iPhoto and Aperture, and removed Aperture from sale one year later, it was clear where this was going. At that point, I had accumulated a 6‑year photo library with non-destructive edits. I wasn’t particularly thrilled to start looking for alternatives, and Photos was simply a poor replacement. But I tried a few other apps. I even gave Lightroom another chance, in the hope its flow had become more compatible with how I work with photos. I kept returning to Aperture.

Now I hear that Aperture doesn’t even open under Catalina[2], and the only way to keep using it would be for me to purchase a virtualisation software so that I can run Aperture and other ‘incompatible’ apps under an older version of Mac OS inside a virtual machine. This is the ‘burden on the users’ I was talking about before. In theory, I could do that. I’m expert enough to implement this workaround and hopefully make it work. But what many geeks still don’t get is that a lot of people out there don’t have this knowledge or expertise; they don’t follow tech news as religiously as we do; they’ve just kept using their favourite apps, then updated Mac OS because they heard that keeping the system up-to-date was a good thing to do, and now they’re dearly paying the consequences of Catalina’s disruption.

So when I hear tech people say “You know this was coming; you know older apps would eventually be treated as incompatible and no longer work; you had plenty of time to prepare any needed change or adjustment”, my response is — Yes, I knew, but you have no idea how many regular folks did not. And I don’t think it’s entirely fair to blame them for that.

Today’s culture of waste — where everything is considered short-lived and disposable, and so many things are thoughtlessly made obsolete at an ever-increasing pace — is especially apparent with software, which is already intangible to begin with. The idea is you use whatever’s available for as long as it’s available, and then you move on. You have to move on, because ‘progress’. Adapt or die. (I’m fine with that when discussing human evolution in general, but today’s technology pace is just ridiculous and unsustainable in a truly healthy fashion).

Who cares if you have to drastically change habits and workflows? It’s your fault if you’re not flexible, they say. You have to keep babysitting apps and operating systems, and be constantly aware of changes, bugs, and other disrupting factors. And while, in principle, I agree that today you need to be more aware of what’s going on in tech, I also notice that — for everything to keep working smoothly — you have to do more work than before. It just works, with Apple products, has lost the frequency and consistency it once had. It is a strange progress when you keep feeling the sting of two steps back for every step forward.

I’m getting carried away and rambling. My point is, I’ve been into technology for more than 30 years, and I feel that Apple’s software culture has become progressively more user-hostile than it used to be. Today at times it seems that the user is the last concern when making software-related decisions. In the pre-Web era, end users were even more on their own when it came to dealing with software applications and OS maintenance, but while they did indeed encounter the occasional bug or issue, applications felt more robust; ‘built to last’, if you like. You felt like a well-treated customer; today it seems we’re all beta testers.

One could argue that, at least in Apple’s case, the software-related agenda has changed. Apple seems to be treating its software as if it were just a pawn in the bigger chess game of platforms and services. There is a detachment, particularly with Mac OS, that’s hard to swallow. At Apple’s executive level, it feels like nobody uses or cares about Mac OS. Whatever care there is, it isn’t directed towards users’ needs, but corporate strategy. Someone decides that it would be a good move to implement a set of technologies so that iPad apps can easily be adapted to work with Mac OS. The plan is swiftly (pun intended) moved forward with total disregard for any possible collateral damage. We have to get to this unification goal, one way or another. For this to happen, Mac OS gets subjected to all kind of pruning and grafting, and almost every other aspect of the system becomes a secondary concern. The Human Interface Guidelines? Eh, that’s an old set of rules. Times change! Usability? Eh, users will figure it out.

Security is treated more or less the same way. As a strategic piece. The way it has been implemented in Mac OS recently feels a bit overkill. I know cybersecurity is hard, today more than ever, and that there are security threats at every corner. But the way Catalina locks things down isn’t fine-grained and user-friendly at all. Why? I keep having the same feeling, and I’ve said it before: that Apple (and I mean Apple management here) can’t be bothered. Quick and dirty measures to get the job done, tout about shipping a secure system that protects the users, and move on.

Apple has more or less always said Jump! and users and developers have always been expected to reply, How high? That attitude, We know what’s best for you, was tolerable — at times even welcome — when it was crystal clear that Apple really knew what was best. Whenever I go back to this lecture about the origins of the Apple human interface, I am reminded that there used to be a lot of key figures at Apple who truly fucking cared about the software they produced and how it was supposed to work. As I noted in my commentary on that lecture:

It’s true that nowadays users are generally more tech-savvy than in the early 1980s, but I don’t think that’s a good reason to demote consistency in user interfaces, system software, third-party applications, in favour of an “anything goes, just make it cool” attitude. If you stop enforcing your own Human Interface Guidelines, if you yourself constantly break your own guidelines, developers will feel free to do the same and will get lazier overall.

Oh, and spare me the apologetic excuse that now things are more complicated than they used to be, because now Apple has many more platforms to take care of. Apple has the means and the money to do better by their users, especially Mac users, but they appear to lack the internal organisation to do so. And it’s also clear it’s not high on their list of priorities anyway.

You can’t keep looking at the future and disregard what came before as if it were all utterly useless. To get back to Catalina, I fail to see how it can be considered an improvement over the status quo, and a compelling upgrade. Is it better to have a Mac that can only run 64-bit apps and the worst of both worlds that are Catalyst apps, or a Mac that can essentially run every Mac Intel binary produced since 2006, plus whatever it’s cooking at the moment?

Do you want Mac OS to become bloated like Windows just to ensure backward compatibility? — you ask.

I don’t really think it would have to come to that. Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard was able to run all PowerPC applications that came before, and it certainly wasn’t a bloated system. It was probably the last Mac OS version to deliver what Mac users really wanted, by the way.

All right, I have rambled enough.

So, to conclude, do I plan to stay on High Sierra or Mojave indefinitely? It’s hard to say and too soon to tell. Both my main Macs are really working flawlessly at the moment, and Catalina is beta-quality software that’s likely to give me headaches I don’t need right now. Who knows, maybe down the road I could acquire a cheap used Mac that can run Catalina (something like a 2014 Mac mini) and use it as a test machine. As things are now, I absolutely do not want Catalina to mess with my current setups and data. The cost for me would be higher than getting a second-hand Mac mini.

 

Updates

 

  • 1. But note the irony: all this recent pruning and rearranging in Mac OS has broken so many things in the process, that one could argue that Mac OS has actually become harder to maintain. ↩︎
  • 2. In case you were wondering: Aperture is a 64-bit application since version 3.0. ↩︎

 

App subscriptions: I still don’t like them

October 3, 2019
by Riccardo Mori
Software

Speaking as a customer, this drive towards subscriptions is killing my interest in looking for new apps for my iOS devices. 

A few days ago, Michael Tsai wrote:

Some apps just don’t need a stream of new features, but all apps need maintenance. How do you fund that? Relying entirely on new customers doesn’t seem like a good plan. In theory, a very cheap subscription would be fair to both sides. But I haven’t seen that done. One issue is how to get your installed base to subscribe if you’ve already delivered the features they want. Another is that even if the subscription is cheap, a lot of customers will search for any non-subscription alternative. So the math no longer works, and you need a much more expensive subscription.

This is something I’ve been mulling over as well. And yes, I’m one of those customers who definitely will search for an alternative when an app I already paid for switches to a subscription model as the sole option henceforward, even if the subscription is cheap.

I explained why in an older article, Subscriptions for apps — The uneasy deal, which continues to express my firm stance on subscriptions (so I suggest you read it in its entirety):

Subscriptions demand a mutual dependence: obviously developers present such dependence as a mutually beneficial pact. But the fact is, there is now a dependence where before there was none. And that makes me uncomfortable, because there is now a new, uncomfortable atmosphere: I’m not simply buying your product, I become regularly involved in your support. I become part of your plan to make a living through the development of a software application. […] 

I become involved in someone else’s business problem, hopefully as the continued solution to such problem. And, in a sense, I’m not even a customer anymore, I become a subscriber, a patron. I’m not sure I want this kind of involvement. [I’m not sure I want] to be more actively involved in solving the sustainability problem of someone else’s business.

And I’m not sure it’s even fair to expect this kind of involvement from customers. One of the main reasons developers constantly bring up to justify their switch to a subscription model is that subscriptions are needed to fund the continued development (or maintenance) of their apps. Okay. Do you know what more than a few regular folks have told me about this? That it sounds like a poor excuse. They have been updating the app so far without subscriptions, what exactly has become so expensive all of a sudden? Or, This app has been updated twice in the past year — it works fine — and they now want me to believe it needs ‘regular’ updates?

I know a lot of developers who are genuine people and don’t want to scam anybody by switching to subscriptions, but those reactions I quoted above are by no means infrequent, and are just one small facet of the many-faceted subscription issue.

In a more recent post, Tsai quotes a piece and some tweets by David Barnard. Barnard’s original piece is titled Subscribers Are Your True Fans, and while he makes some good points here and there, I really disagree with other crucial ones — specifically those quoted by Tsai. I will address them one by one.

1. Paying once for an app really only makes sense if the app provides minimal functionality of limited value and won’t benefit from continued improvement.

I find this to be rather disrespectful towards all the developers who have, in the past years, provided great apps with good functionality and good value to the customer. There have been, there still are, many apps priced fairly (i.e. they’re not too cheap but also not unreasonably expensive for what they offer), with well-made and inviting in-app purchases; and the fact that these apps are still around without needing subscriptions means their developers are probably doing something right.

Barnard’s statement, as it is, sounds like it’s coming from someone who dogmatically thinks subscriptions are the only possible way forward and, from that assumption, starts deconstructing the rest.

2. With paid apps, people often end up buying several apps just to figure out which one best fits their needs. Let’s say they spent $3 each on 4 apps, that’s $12 they were willing to pay for a great app, but that great app they settled on only gets $3. Since most subscription apps have free trials, and many even have ad supported free tiers, people can try multiple apps and then only pay for the one they actually use.

But the fact is that a lot of apps embracing the freemium model already offer free trials or ad-supported free tiers. There are plenty of apps that are offered in separate ‘Lite’ and ‘Pro’ versions. If Barnard is trying to ‘sell’ the benefits of subscription apps here, I find this specific example to be a bit weak and unconvincing. Counterexample: what if, in my search for a good photo editing app, I end up buying two that are equally great for me for different reasons? (i.e. one has extremely refined filter effects, and the other has really professional retouching tools.) I end up paying $5 for one and $5 for the other, maybe I even do some in-app purchasing down the road, and get to support more than one developer. 

Paid apps — apps you pay up-front, no subscription — allow people to potentially be happy customers of more developers. Those $3 spent here and there in Barnard’s examples may end up being a total of $12 badly spent, but — even if in a small way — have benefited four developers in the process. Subscriptions — exactly because you cannot support every developer out there — push people to choose wisely first and commit later. And not everyone likes that. Sometimes people just like to shop around, even when they occasionally waste a few dollars for a goofy app. Because there are no strings attached. As I said in an older article, I prefer purchasing two good apps each priced at $3.99 rather than investing $7.98 for sustaining a single app with a $0.99/month subscription for approximately 8 months. Your mileage may vary, naturally.

3. Sure, some potential customers (or existing customers if you transition from another business model to subscriptions) are going to complain about the subscription model. It’s hard to hear someone tell you that they don’t value what you’ve built, but the smart thing to do is focus on the people who are subscribing, your true fans. Figure out who they are and look for ways to reach more people like them instead of focusing on the vocal minority that complain.

First, notice that rhetorical conflation: if someone complains about the subscription model, that doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t value what you’ve built. Maybe they just don’t like that you’re pulling the rug from under their feet and switch to subscriptions as the only way to pay for your app when so far you’ve been following the ‘paid up-front’ or ‘paid update’ routes. 

But here comes the point I disagree most with Barnard: the smart thing to do is actually to stop discriminating between ‘customers’ and ‘fans’. The smart thing to do is to focus on the damn product you’re building. You need to make a good app first, not smile at those in the audience who are smiling back at you and ignore the critical voices. ‘Fans’ may come later, but you can’t rely on fans. People are fickle when it comes to these things. The wrong update, the wrong app redesign, the feature you think it’s awesome and needed and groundbreaking but it turns out to be an unwelcome change — and you lose a lot of fans. (Hello, Dropbox.)

In 2017, Oliver Reichenstein wrote a fantastic post in iA’s blog, sharing his musings about the next version of iA Writer. I already quoted this bit in my older article, but I feel it’s still relevant (emphasis in bold type is mine):

The elephant in the room is: Who will pay for this? Will there be a paid upgrade? Do we ask for subscriptions? Talking to other devs you can get tough guy advice like:

“People always complain, they don’t understand technology, you need to live, you have tons of fans, you lose some, win others, who cares?”

Trust is earned in drops and lost in buckets. Yes, we need to live. But that’s our problem. Explaining that dev costs and comparing software to coffee, sandwiches or cars is not convincing. The only ones that will feel you are friends, family and other indie devs. Friends don’t count money. Customers do. To own, we pay more. To rent, we pay less. Strangers don’t genuinely care about our wellbeing — they compare prices and pick the best value. Subscriptions are tough. They are not bad or impossible, but they need to meet real life expectations:

a) Renting is less expensive than buying

b) Expensive products hold longer than cheap products

c) Buying vs renting should be a fair choice 

 

4. I don’t think most people realize how much most indie developers sacrifice to keep the lights on. In 11 years, I’ve probably only been cash flow positive 48 months. With paid apps, I’d build up a war chest with a big launch/update/sale, then spend it down working on the next.

I’ve even gone into debt to squeak by until the next big update. People seem to think all developers are rich & greedy. But it’s like any other small business. Most struggle, some do well, a few really well.

Well, a lot of people don’t realise how much time and effort and mental energy a writer puts in his work. Especially someone who writes (tech stuff and fiction) in a language that is not even their native language. When I used to complain about this in the past, and about my not-really-successful attempts at ‘monetising’ my efforts, more than one person cheekily suggested, Maybe don’t quit your day job just yet.

Again, businesses small and large have (should have) a business model and a business plan with which to operate. App subscriptions are different from magazine or newspaper subscriptions. They’re not about distributing information and content in an alternative method which can be more convenient for customers. The app subscription model involves, among other things, considering customers as patrons or ‘fans’. As I said, to me this feels awkward. I want to be able to buy your product — or, yes, subscribe to your service when it is, in fact, a service — and that’s it. I don’t want to be involved in the process of you figuring out how to make your business viable and sustainable for yourself. And even if I wanted, it would simply be unsustainable for me as a customer, because I couldn’t afford it, and I couldn’t afford to think this way for every developer that makes an interesting app. In other words, while I can be a customer for multiple parties, I can’t be a patron for everybody.

Autocorrect and predictive text have regressed since iOS 10

September 27, 2019
by Riccardo Mori
Software

Yesterday, John Gruber posted an intriguing piece called iOS 13 Autocorrect Is Drunk in which he argues that autocorrect on iOS 13 and 13.1 has got worse than before. This reminded me of something I started noticing last year when I upgraded to an iPhone 8 (with iOS 12) from an iPhone 5 (with iOS 10); something I had meant to investigate further but ended up postponing for the usual lack of time. What I had noticed is that autocorrect and predictive text appeared to be worse on iOS 12 than on iOS 10.

I wasn’t entirely sure about it, and for a while, a bit like Gruber, I thought that maybe it wasn’t a real issue but an ‘anti-placebo’ effect, as he called it. Perhaps it’s a matter of retraining the new iPhone to have suggestions and corrections more relevant to my writing style, I thought. But between yesterday and today I made some time to explore this thing in more detail, and after countless tries with my iPhone 5 and iPhone 8 side by side, I think I have pinpointed the main issue: while it seems that in iOS 12 autocorrect and predictive text have generally worsened compared with iOS 10, they have regressed specifically when using an iOS device with multilingual keyboards.

On my iPhones I usually keep three different keyboards: English, Italian, and Spanish. These are the languages I’m fluent in, and when using apps involving text entry (chat apps, social network apps, email clients, etc.), I often switch from a language to another. I communicate with my mother and closest friends in Italian; I exchange messages with my wife and her family in Spanish; I tweet, do most of my email, and generally communicate with the rest of my international contacts in English. What happens on a daily basis is that I launch e.g. Telegram, start writing something to my wife, but I realise mid-word that the keyboard is set to another language. And that’s when things get bad on iOS 12 (and I presume iOS 13 as well): autocorrect and predictive text don’t consider the whole word I’m typing, but start making suggestions from the point I resume typing. This behaviour didn’t happen under iOS 10, which was smarter enough to embrace the language change and adjust its suggestions accordingly.

Let me clarify this with an example. Follow this process closely:

1. I open Telegram. I want to write something in Spanish. I start typing Espero [meaning, “I hope”] but I realise I have the English keyboard selected. This is what I’m seeing on iOS 10 (left) and iOS 12 (right) after typing “Es”:

10v12 01

For starters, note how much more pertinent predictive text is under iOS 10, while under iOS 12 suggestions just look all over the place.

2. At this point, I tap the Globe button to switch keyboards. On both phones, the keyboard first switches to Italian, then to Spanish:

10v12 02

10v12 03

Note here how iOS 10 adapts to the new languages selected, while iOS 12 doesn’t appear to have a clue, at first.

3. Here’s the kicker now: when I resume typing with the newly selected keyboard, and proceed to type “pe” (the second syllable of espero, the Spanish word I meant to type from the start), iOS 12 starts suggesting words that begin with “pe-” instead of “espe-”. In other words, when in iOS 12 I start typing a word using one keyboard, and switch to another keyboard mid-word, the predictive engine starts making suggestions without considering the word I was writing as a whole, but from the point I switched keyboards (in this example, after typing “Es”). This makes no sense, and is the cause of constant friction, as I’ll show later with another example. Note instead how iOS 10 behaves more logically here:

10v12 04

4. Here’s another example: I wanted to type the English word “Estimation”. After typing “est”, I realised the keyboard was set to Spanish. I switched to English and continued typing “ima”. iOS 10 adjusted on the fly and correctly started suggesting English words beginning with ‘estima-’.

iOS 12, instead, started suggesting words beginning with ‘ima-’:

10v12 06

 

Above I said that this maddening behaviour under iOS 12 is cause of constant friction. That’s because, when you switch keyboards mid-word, finish typing the word, and hit Space, autocorrect will often insert a suggestion based not on the word you meant to type, but based on whatever you typed after switching keyboards. This happened earlier today when I wanted to send a tweet using Tweetbot; the tweet was meant to start with “This morning”, but I soon realised I had the keyboard set to Spanish, so I switched to English after typing “This mo”. Look what happened (click to enlarge):

 

So, autocorrect starts suggesting English words when I continue typing “-rning”. Its best suggestion, as you can see, is toning. It completely ignores what I have typed before (“mo-”), therefore, when I tap Space to write the next word, it autocompletes to “motoning” instead of “morning”. When I backtrack with backspace, the replacements proposed again make no sense — or rather, they’re just useless in this case.

That’s why after switching from my iPhone 5 with iOS 10 to the new iPhone 8 with iOS 12, my initial impressions were that autocorrect was simply worse and felt ‘untrained’. I didn’t realise that what messed things up was the keyboard switching while writing a word.

But even within a single language, autocorrect under iOS 12 does indeed feel less smart than under iOS 10. Here’s another example: I wanted to write “through” but intentionally mistyped the word and started writing “trhou-”. Both predictive engines suggest “through” as the possible word, but in iOS 10 it is the preferred choice, while iOS 12 thinks I want to write “Thou”, which is an archaic word I certainly don’t use on a regular basis and it’s definitely less probable than the more common “through”:

10v12 05

Final notes:

  • I don’t know if this behaviour changed with iOS 11, because I went from iOS 10 to iOS 12. Both iPhones are updated to their latest available updates — iOS 10.3.4 and 12.4.1.
  • I haven’t tested iOS 13, so I don’t know whether autocorrect still behaves as it does under iOS 12 (I assume it does, though).
  • If you think these examples are not exhaustive, you have to understand that I couldn’t possibly upload fifty different comparative screenshots. My results are consistent and, as far as I could observe, reproducible.

 

It’s all about the camera…

September 23, 2019
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

Part 1: Some geeks are going to have a fit

Local Apple Store. Tasty and telling exchange between a middle-aged man and one of the employees. The man is enquiring about the new iPhone 11 and 11 Pro models. By the looks of it, he appears to be a prospective iPhone upgrader. He also doesn’t seem someone who keeps himself up-to-date with tech news much.

It’s not that I enjoy overhearing conversations, but I was just there trying out the devices, and this man and the store clerk were basically by my side all the time — and they were talking loudly due to the noise and the crowd in the store. I’m quoting by memory (and translating from Spanish to English in the process) but I swear I’m not making any of this up.

– My daughter told me the new iPhones would be on display today…

– Yes, this here is the iPhone 11, and these two are the iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max… [the clerk starts blurting out technical specifications, then instantly realises he’s going nowhere with that, so he changes approach]. What would you like to know about them? I can show you the differences between them, help you decide.

– [The man reacts as if he were talking with a car salesman] Well, the first thing I’d like to know is: what’s the big deal about them?

– W‑What do you mean, sir?

– [The man takes out his phone] You see, I have this. It works great.

– Oh, a 6s Plus, yes.

– …Battery was starting to show its age, so a few months ago I got it replaced by you people. It’s fine now. Like new. So… what do these new models have that’s worth putting my phone in the drawer and get one of them?

– Ah! Well, the ‘big deal’ about these phones, as you can see [the clerk shows the back of the iPhones to the man] they have really great multiple-camera systems. The cameras and the way the iPhone processes photos and videos have improved so, so much. I think you’ll really notice the difference compared with the 6s Plus you currently own.

– [The man’s reaction at this moment is so point-blank I have to keep my cool and avoid bursting out in laughter] Okay. But what if I don’t care about the cameras?

– Huh?

– What if I don’t care about the cameras? What else is new here?

– [The clerk clearly didn’t see that coming, and it takes a brief moment for him to answer] Ah! Oh, well, these new iPhones have more powerful chips… Much more powerful than your iPhone. They’re four generations newer. You’ll certainly feel the jump in performance. [The clerk gives a brief demo, I can’t see exactly what he’s doing, but it looks as if he’s showing gestures, animations, applications…]

– That’s certainly nice, and I see this one has a bigger screen [the man points at the iPhone 11 Pro Max], and its display looks really great.

– Definitely. It’s 6.5 inches, while your 6s Plus is 5.5. It’s denser, more contrasty, it’s an OLED panel, has TrueTone [briefly explains what it is; the man nods in understanding], Wide Colour Display…

– Where’s the button?

– Uh, sorry?

– [The man points at the Home button of his iPhone 6s Plus]

– Ah, no, that button is gone. Now you get more screen real estate, and you can quit applications and get back to the Home screen by swiping like this…

– Looks awfully awkward.

– Well, yes, at first I suppose it does. But really, after a few days you get accustomed to this.

– Hmm. So, no button, no fingerprint scanner either?

– No. Let me explain how FaceID works.

[Halfway into the explanation, the man stops the clerk]

– Ah yes, now I remember… My daughter showed it to me. I don’t like it. It really seems a bit cumbersome, less immediate, you know… especially for paying stuff.

– …

– Look, how about you show me the last iPhone that still has a button, a fingerprint scanner, and a screen at least as big as the iPhone I have? [The man now looks at me, and adds My ageing eyes, you know…] I’ll take that.

– That would be the iPhone 8 Plus.

– Do you still sell it?

– We do, yes.

– So it’s not very old.

– It’s a model from two years ago. It’s not very different from yours, size-wise… Here, let me show you.

– Excellent.

At this point, the man and the clerk went to another table, and I didn’t follow them, although I admit that that exchange had left me very intrigued indeed. However, as I was moving to another table to take a look at the Apple Watch, I saw another clerk carrying a few packages (clearly what some of the customers had ordered) and there was an iPhone 8 Plus box among them.

Upgrading from an iPhone 6s Plus to an 8 Plus might seem utterly unthinkable to many of the folks who are probably reading this. And for the smug geeks out there who are perhaps laughing at that man, I’ll say that this is part of what happens when you descend from your ivory towers into the land of ‘regular people’. You may spend time gushing about new powerful smartphone camera arrays, improvements in display technology, the marvels of 5G networking. Then you hear people in stores asking questions like “Does it do Whatsapp?”, “Can I send photos to other people directly?”, “Do I have to recharge it every night?”, etcetera.

It’s not that people are ‘dumb’. A lot of them simply don’t care about certain technological aspects as much and as obsessively as you do. That’s why I felt an incredibly exhilarating sensation when that man in the store replied, matter-of-factly, But what if I don’t care about the cameras? These are simple questions or statements that just pull the rug from under your feet, so to speak.

Part 2: Some observations about smartphone photography

You see, in a sense, I don’t care about smartphone cameras all that much, either. My investment in smartphone photography has been on a declining curve for a while. Mind you, I find all these new advancements truly interesting from a theoretical standpoint. I love what Apple has been doing with image processing and camera technology in recent years. Computational photography is really something. Smartphone cameras have undoubtedly made noticeable progress with regard to image fidelity, and as I said in my previous article, soon we’ll reach a point where our smartphones achieve WYSIWYG — or rather, What You Get Is Exactly What You Saw — photography. But that’s not the photography I’m personally interested in.

I’ve read many reviews of the new iPhones, I’ve watched as many video reviews on YouTube. I’ve seen many sample photos taken with the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro. And previously, same thing with the Samsung Galaxy S10, the Google Pixel 3, the Nokia 9 Pureview, and so on. And what I’ve seen are often great snapshots, with great lighting, impressive dynamic range and colour science. Every time a new iPhone comes out, I take a look at Austin Mann’s reviews to have an idea of how a professional photographer uses the iPhone as a tool. And well, in the vast majority of cases, I find smartphone photography lacking. Sometimes it’s depth, often it’s that je ne sais quoi I could call ‘mood’. Smartphone photos taken with the best phones out there — and straight out of the phone’s camera — all tend to have (at least to my eyes) a sort of clinical, precise, documentary look. Or also a glossy, slick look, if you like. (Many of the ‘Shot on iPhone’ photos I saw on Apple’s site last year after the contest was over looked like aspiring images for Apple posters and billboard ads.)

When they look more punchy, when they have a touch of mood, when they start to really transmit something to me, it’s usually because they have been post-processed and ‘made imperfect’ through the use of filters and other retouching techniques (ah, the irony). Image fidelity is important, just as sound fidelity is. But just as a lot of people still prefer the sound of vinyl records to the sound of CDs and digital music files despite these being technically superior, image fidelity is not necessarily — or not always — what makes great photography.

The technology behind Google’s Night Sight and Apple’s Night Mode is indeed impressive. Like me, you’ll surely have seen a lot of with/without Night Sight and with/without Night Mode photo comparisons by now. And when you’re truly interested in capturing a night scene in a way that you can actually show people what was there, instead of a mostly-dark frame, these Night modes are fantastic tools. But when your intent is less documentary and more… emotionally driven? artistic? — you may want to render a night scene in such a way that visual impact becomes more important than the minute portrayal of what was actually there. Just like when a grainy black & white photo just hinting at certain details turns out to be more gripping and memorable than a perfectly-rendered noise-free colour snapshot.

I’ve been a photo enthusiast since I was a teenager; over the years I’ve taken photos with the most varied gear — 35mm film cameras, medium format film cameras, point-and-shoot compact cameras, digital cameras of different sizes and formats, feature phones and smartphones — and again, I certainly appreciate all the technical advancements we’ve all been witnessing in photography in the past couple of decades. And in a sense I even agree that the smartphone today is the best camera you have with you. It’s the first thing I reach when I want to capture a certain moment. Today’s technology is making it the fastest, most accurate tool for this task. I have indeed captured many otherwise uncatchable moments, and accumulated a series of scrapbook memories. And sharing some of these has been easy and fun. But for me — for me — smartphone cameras are not enough when I want to try capturing something in a truly memorable way, when I try capturing something with any kind of artistic intent or purpose. This is why I very often carry a camera with me.

Additional closing notes:

  • While I can’t help raising an eyebrow every time Apple or other smartphone manufacturers talk about ‘Pro cameras’ in their phones, when it comes to video it’s a completely different story. I really think that the flagship smartphones released in the past few years can be used to shoot video at a professional level, and the iPhone 11 Pro demos at the latest Apple event have indeed impressed me.
  • So far, the only smartphone I’ve handled whose camera experience and results have felt like handling a ‘real’ camera has been the Nokia Lumia 1020 (a phone from 2013). Photos taken with this smartphone have always had something about them, a distinctive quality, or look, or mood, right straight out of the camera. Very rarely I felt the need to adjust things afterwards.
  • I remember a time when I was definitely more attracted by the iPhone as a camera to try stuff and experiment with. It was roughly from the iPhone 3GS to the iPhone 5 era. I remember when folders in iOS still had an app limit, and I ended up filling three different folders with photo-taking and photo-editing apps. I kept wanting to take snapshots everywhere I went, to then import my snaps in this or that app to apply a vintage filter, or a ‘grunge’ effect, or convert them into fake polaroids. When I finally updated from my aging iPhone 5 to my current iPhone 8 last year, I thought that the better camera and processing power of the new iPhone would rekindle this impulse to keep shooting and experimenting, but somehow it did not happen. I mean, I still use apps like Hipstamatic to experiment with different effects, but it’s just not like before. I’ve tried to rationalise this, and the only explanation I’ve come up with is that the iPhone 8 is so effortless in taking generally good shots that I don’t feel compelled to further bother with them. Previous iPhone cameras were good phone cameras for the time, but their limitations kind of urged me to be more creative after the fact. Another factor may be that some years ago there was a huge wave of great, diverse photo apps for iOS. While today there are indeed a few excellent apps worth having, the rush feels over and the landscape saturated.
  • We have amazing cameras in our smartphones today, but then I look at the photos regular folks show me every now and then and yes, they’re as crappy as ten years ago. But it’s fine — not everyone cares about the cameras…

 

A few brief observations after Apple’s “By Innovation Only” event

September 13, 2019
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life
  • The introductory animated video was fun. I liked that it was just that, an intro video, without trying to drive home some grandiose stance. As time goes by, though, every time I watch the videos Apple makes for these keynotes, I’m constantly left with the feeling that they’re 20–30 seconds longer than they should.
  • There’s something Jon Prosser (of Front Page Tech) has been saying repeatedly in recent times: The market does not need innovation right now; it needs compromise. And I absolutely agree with this. Compromise means acknowledging that you can’t play the innovation card over and over, especially in times when there’s clearly more iteration than groundbreaking new technologies and devices. Like Prosser, I too think that Apple has finally got the memo about this, and it showed during the event.
  • In fact, in my opinion, the true highlight of the whole event were the prices of most of the offerings. Quite a lot of bang for a relatively little buck. (‘Relatively’ because it’s always Apple we’re talking about). I’m not interested in subscribing to Apple Arcade or Apple TV+, but pricing each subscription at $5/month is a very good deal. Offering one year free for purchasing a new Apple product is another good deal. The new 7th-generation iPad, the regular entry-level model, features very nice improvements and it retains its great $329 price tag. The new Apple Watch Series 5 again starts at $399, but the killer move is to keep selling the still very good Series 3 at the reduced price of $199. That is another great deal.
  • Similarly, the positioning of the new iPhones has finally struck the right tone. In 2017, the ‘cool new innovative’ iPhone was the iPhone X, and it came with a $1,000 premium price tag. But hey, you could have the regular, ‘boring’ iPhone design by getting the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus at more affordable prices. In 2018, the premium XS and XS Max were the iPhones to get, while the XR was positioned as the fun colourful cheap alternative ‘for the rest of us’, the ‘poor man’s iPhone’. Finally Apple has switched positions: the evolution of the XR is now the standard iPhone 11, a very capable, all-round iPhone. You start from there, and if you want to go deluxe, you can choose the more expensive and feature-packed iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max. It’s subtle, but it sounds right this time.
  • During the event, I didn’t tweet as much as I usually do, and the usual snark I’ve been reserving for Tim Cook’s Apple in recent years was reduced as well. It’s not that I’ve changed my mind — Apple still deserves criticism and still deserves absolutely no slack cutting — but the thing is, I liked a lot of what they introduced the other day. Plain and simple.
  • What I didn’t like was how the event was organised and how products and services were presented. The pace was terrible. Each presenter talked about how excited they were, but this excitement was just words — it didn’t show at all. And all this passing the baton around… I understand that Apple wants to communicate they’re serious about diversity, etc., but that’s starting to look a bit too much on-the-nose. In any case: do you want to fragment the event by putting a dozen people on stage? More power to you, but at least have them prepare and rehearse thoroughly to avoid sleep-inducing technical explanations that distract people and make them lose interest. It feels amateurish.
  • (On stage, Steve Jobs embodied that famous intersection of technology and the liberal arts. He could get into technical details while never forgetting the theatrical part of a keynote. He communicated intent, his excitement could be very contagious and it very often felt genuine. These keynotes feel designed by committee; Cook communicates via platitudes and slogan-sounding phrases. I have no doubt that he’s excited as he says, but he sounds contrived nonetheless.)
  • The software side is getting increasingly messy. As usual, you’ll find the relevant links and contributions on Michael Tsai’s blog (Apple’s Fall Release Schedule). If Steve Jobs were still alive™, I imagine he would be incredibly pissed about all this. And sorry for sounding yet again like a broken record, but I still think Apple should hire more talent for their Software division, so that they can actually deliver on what they promise; or at least they should reconsider this self-imposition of a yearly schedule they clearly can’t cope with anymore. I know exactly zero people who would be bothered if Apple hypothetically decided to ship iOS 13 or Mac OS Catalina next spring; especially if the delay meant better, less rushed software. This obsession with ‘keeping the pace’ seems particularly absurd when the next major OS updates introduce drastic changes at a fundamental level, like in the case of Mac OS Catalina. You can’t plan and design an effectively disruptive new OS version, and have it in such beta stage this late in the schedule — In the schedule you arbitrarily made up (because tech has to move fast or because market or because investors or because what-have-you.)
  • Today, innovation in smartphones is 95% focused on their camera technology. And every iPhone introduction has increasingly been about its camera(s). I understand and appreciate all the research, development, and innovation Apple has built inside such a tiny space over the years; but I keep thinking these incredible devices are so much more than point-and-shoot cameras and selfie-takers. Even if computational photography is bringing us to a point where, with a smartphone, we basically achieve WYSIWYG photography, I feel these devices end up being under-utilised, especially by regular people. More and more people upgrade their phone at a slower pace and hold on to previous models not only because they’re more and more budget-conscious, but also because smartphones are getting so saturated with regard to features and capabilities, that people don’t really notice a significant performance gap or capability gap when they go to a store and try out the new phones.
  • And speaking of cameras… these new camera arrays on the back of the new iPhone 11 and 11 Pro do look ungainly from an industrial design standpoint. If one wants to be pragmatic, sure, look at what these camera systems can do — who cares about the back of the phone? Well, lately I’ve been looking at a lot of Android phones with multiple cameras on the back, and let’s say that Apple’s doesn’t strike me as the best design out there. Samsung’s S10 and Note10 lines have better-designed backs. The Nokia 9 Pureview has five cameras, but they’re arranged in a more pleasing way and, most importantly, they don’t protrude. The new iPhones have camera arrays that look as if they have been hastily bolted on the chassis of last year’s iPhones.
  • One More Thing — .

     

  • (I might be adding new observations in the next days; if I do, I’ll inform you of any updates via Twitter.)