Just before the WWDC

June 4, 2018
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

iOS apps on Macs?

Brent Simmons writes:

I’ve heard more than once that at WWDC we’ll learn about how we can run iOS apps on Macs.

I’m worried, of course, that this will lead to the further degradation of the Mac UI, and even less incentive for developers to write Mac apps.

I’m [against] it. But, also, I don’t know if it’s true and I don’t know any details — so maybe it would be awesome? We’ll see.

Nick Heer responds:

I completely understand where Simmons and others with similar skepticism are coming from, but I think the other side of this coin is more interesting and positive. What if easier cross-platform development is less about bringing iOS apps to the Mac, and more about making it easier for developers to bring Mac-grade apps to iOS?

I don’t know, but either way wouldn’t be great for the Mac. 

The first attempt at bringing some of iOS ‘back to the Mac’ happened with Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, and UI-wise we saw the debut of a few hideous things. 

  • Launchpad.
  • iOS-style autocorrection: your mileage may vary, but I remember having to disable it on day one because it was constantly in the way.
  • “Scrolling is reversed by default, to act more like a touch screen computer, so that content moves in the direction of finger movement on touch-pad or mouse (with the scrollbar moving in the opposite direction), rather than the scrollbar moving in the direction of finger movement (with the content moving in the opposite direction). Also, like in iOS, scrolling ‘bounces’ when the scroll bar hits the top or bottom of the window” [Source: Wikipedia]. Thankfully there is still a preference setting in both the Mouse and Trackpad panes to keep the scrolling direction as it always was before.
  • Also, like in iOS, the scroll bar is hidden when there’s no interaction with the content, which is annoying.

Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion introduced other things borrowed from iOS. Most notably:

  • Notification Centre: I’m mostly neutral about it. I don’t find it to be an essential addition, but at least it remains out of my way most of the time.
  • The Notes app as a standalone application.
  • The Reminders app, separate from Calendar. I don’t find this separation particularly necessary, more like a way to mirror things further between Mac OS and iOS.

Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks didn’t introduce anything from iOS that was particularly disruptive. Its Wikipedia page notes that “Some skeuomorphs, such as the leather texture in Calendar, the legal pad theme of Notes, and the book-like appearance of Contacts, have been removed from the UI.” Mavericks was introduced along with iOS 7, and here began the flattening treatment of corresponding Mac apps.

The system-wide flattening of the UI design arrived in full with Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite. I actually found the flat UI redesign more interesting on the Mac rather than on iOS, but the decision to drop Lucida Grande as system font in favour of the thin Helvetica Neue was terrible (and I explained how I felt about it when it was just a rumour, before WWDC 2014).

Also, in Yosemite:

  • Notification Centre gets even more similar to iOS’s, functionally, with the added Today’s View and widgets, like in iOS 8.
  • Photos (introduced with OS X 10.10.3) replaces iPhoto and Aperture, and it’s the most glaring example of the ill effects of the process of iOS-inspired simplification of Mac OS.
  • From Wikipedia: “The green ‘zoom’ button on windows now has a different function in applications that support full screen mode. Instead of simply enlarging the window, the button now enters full screen mode, eliminating the full screen button at the top right corner of windows that has been present since Mac OS X Lion. However, holding the Option key (⌥) while clicking the zoom button or double-clicking on the window chrome continues to invoke the original behavior.” I remember finding this change unnecessary and confusing at the time. Now I’ve grown accustomed to it, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good interface decision.
  • Spotlight receives its iOS-isation too. You might like it, you might not. My impression is that it’s once again a matter of looks before function. UI-wise, I’m still of the idea that the best Spotlight interface in the history of OS X is the first one, introduced with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. (I discuss this at length in The first Spotlight interface is still the best).

In OS X 10.11 El Capitan, we find:

  • From Wikipedia: “OS X El Capitan introduces new window management features such as creating a full-screen split view by pressing the green button on left upper corner of the window or Control+Cmd+F keyboard shortcut, then snapping any supported other window to that full screen application.” I think this feature (introduced in iOS 9) makes more sense on iPads — if you’re using two apps and making a lot of back-and-forth between them, with Split Screen on iOS you don’t have to jump from an app to the other all the time, and deal with each one sequentially; you can view them side by side. On the Mac, multitasking is more versatile; screens are usually bigger; apps don’t take the whole screen by default, so you can easily arrange two or more application windows however you see fit and however you need. I guess the Split Screen feature on Mac OS X may have some sense on Macs with smaller displays, such as the 12-inch retina MacBook or the 11-inch MacBook Air.
  • Again, from Wikipedia: “OS X El Capitan adds multi-touch gestures to applications like Mail and Messages that allow a user to delete or mark emails or conversations by swiping a finger on a multi-touch device, such as a trackpad.” I wish there were a way to disable this, as I still happen to delete messages accidentally when I use my MacBook Pro on the go. When it’s in desktop configuration I use the Magic Mouse, and swiping on it does nothing, thankfully. (Come to think of it, this is also an inconsistency; those who like using the trackpad gesture to delete messages in Mail cannot enjoy the same touch feature when using the Magic Mouse. But I’m digressing.)

With Mac OS 10.12 Sierra, the most notable iOS feature introduced on the Mac is Siri. My current Mac doesn’t go past El Capitan, so I don’t know firsthand how Siri behaves on the Mac, but I have no reason to believe it performs better than on iOS. In other words, I don’t know how really useful Siri is on the Mac. I had a few thoughts on Siri on the Mac back in 2016, when it was still a rumour. Have a look at that article for a couple of examples of the ways a digital assistant on the Mac could be actually useful to me. It all revolves around the usual core problem — reliability + consistency. As long as Siri’s responses continue to be hit-or-miss, Siri’s usefulness will always be compromised.

Now, zooming out and looking at everything that has been brought to Mac OS from iOS over the last seven major releases of OS X, the really useful features are perhaps those behind the scenes, features that improve the integration between the two platforms. 

With regard to the user interface, I find that iOS has acted as a distraction and an interference in the evolution of Mac OS X’s UI. While I understand the intention behind the ‘back to the Mac’ concept of 2010, what I’ve seen happening on Mac OS X from then on has been a constant import of features and ideas first originated in, or conceived for, iOS; some useful, some less so; but in such a way as to suggest that Mac OS can’t basically go anywhere without its iOS crutch. I’m tired of seeing this sort of codependency. I want to see Mac OS brought to a new level of power and flexibility, outside iOS’s growing shadow. I want to see an operating system that can truly make the Mac’s powerful hardware shine. Not dumbed-down systems that have to behave more like iOS because apparently the Mac is not user-friendly anymore on its own and needs iOS’s friendliness to be perfectly usable and absolutely idiot-proof. 

And I’m getting carried away once again.

So, if it’s true that soon it will be possible to run iOS apps on Macs, will that make the Mac OS stronger and more versatile, or possibly weaker than before, a sort of final cop-out from a company that seems basically out of ideas on how to evolve Mac OS and create new paths and directions for it?

Again, perhaps the ability of running iOS apps on a Mac is a way to further facilitate iOS development. As I wrote in Speculation and dread for the next transition:

Imagine being able to develop and test an iOS app running natively on a Mac instead of inside a simulator. Or imagine playing that iOS game on the Mac directly, taking advantage of the more powerful Mac hardware. Or the benefits of the Mac/iOS integration, where the Mac can run iOS widgets and little utilities as extensions that, for example, can directly interface with another iOS mobile device. If this were 2011, the narrative would probably be, Here’s what iOS can do for the Mac.

This wouldn’t be a total loss for the Mac, but it would certainly reinforce the impression that the Mac is kind of lost without iOS.

In that article, I continued by adding:

But it’s 2018, and seeing where things are going, I worry that the narrative is going to turn out as this: Here’s what iOS will do to the Mac. Because I have the distinct feeling that if iOS is allowed to run on Macs, it will be the end for Mac OS. Maybe not entirely, maybe not overnight, but who’s going to develop Mac OS apps when one can develop a iOS universal app that can work on iPhones, iPads, and Macs? Sure, the Mac version will have to adapt to the non-touch, keyboard + mouse (or trackpad) user interface and interaction, but perhaps it will be less of a headache than having a separate SuperGroovy Text Editor for iOS and SuperGroovy Text Editor for Mac OS.

In this perspective, I find difficult to be as quietly optimistic as Nick Heer. While I desperately hope he’s right, looking at how Apple has been prioritising iOS over Mac OS in the past few years, my gut reaction is more similar to Brent Simmons’.

WWDC 2018 wishlist

The WWDC will start in less than a day at this point, and I have no wishlist to share. I used to get excited before this kind of Apple event; now I’m just trepidatious. Once I used to look forward to the next thing Apple would introduce, I used to wonder What are they going to show us? Now I anxiously wonder, What are they going to break this time? The list of things I wish Apple would fix is getting longer and I won’t bore you once again with my complaints, so I’ll condense everything into a single wish — I would like for Apple to reassure me as a long-time user and customer. Reassure me that they have a plan, that they have the most important things under control, that they’re not like one of those motorised toy cars that keep crashing against obstacles at maximum speed, then change direction randomly until they hit the next obstacle, and so forth.

Apple is eroding the trust of a lot of long-time Mac users, with decreasing software quality, decreasing hardware reliability, and in the way the company is treating customers when (not) addressing such issues. I’ve been reading a lot of articles and blog posts, and watching a good amount of tech-oriented YouTube videos, and I’ve never witnessed this degree of widespread disappointment. Not even in 1995–1997 — the only time when Apple was really doomed (because of poor management, no less). What I wish from this WWDC 2018 is to catch a signal, a clue, however small, that Apple has been truly listening and is willing to course-correct for the better.

Follow-up: The iPad 1 as daily driver

May 21, 2018
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

IPad 1 + Logitech keyboard

The experiment is over. Now the actual, everyday use has begun.

As I’m sure you remember, one month ago I received a very nice gift from David: a first-generation iPad. After ten days spent customising it, downloading old versions of apps I had already purchased to see which still worked, and even looking for new ones that had been on the App Store long enough to have an old version still running under iOS 5, I wrote an extended overview and report about my experience.

If you don’t want to read it in full — though I suggest you take a gander at least at the screenshots and at the section titled Interface considerations — the gist of it is more or less this paragraph towards the conclusion:

In short — this iPad 1 has turned out to be more useful than anticipated, also thanks to the careful app setup I’ve assembled. On a personal level, the fact that I can go back and enjoy certain apps I had been missing (such as Posts, the WordPress client) makes the iPad 1 possibly more useful than my iPad 3 in certain areas.

When I say I love to put older devices to good use, I mean it. It typically isn’t the kind of short-lived experiment of other ‘throwback reviews’ or ‘retro reviews’ we’ve all happened to read or watch on YouTube. When I do a similar experiment — especially if I have the luck of getting a device that fascinates me for some reason — I tend to spend more time with the device, trying to make it work at its best, putting it through its paces to evaluate its behaviour under regular, daily usage (which I find a better indicator of a device’s usefulness than its pure performance measured in benchmark scores). 

And again, I’ve been definitely impressed by the iPad 1’s overall performance — or rather, usefulness — as I brought it with me out and about these past weeks. My early findings have been repeatedly confirmed when using the iPad 1 as my daily driver. It is indeed more responsive than my third-generation iPad with iOS 9.3.5. Animations, transitions, going in and out of apps, even the banal orientation change from portrait to landscape and vice-versa was smoother than on the iPad 3. When typing inside an app with either the virtual keyboard or the external keyboard, I didn’t generally notice any significant lag. There was lag, here and there, mind you, but it was nothing compared to the frequency and the degree of annoyance it has been happening on the iPad 3 under iOS 9, and as iOS apps have become more optimised for faster devices.

When I started using the iPad 1 after it arrived, I assumed that I would be disappointed by four main factors:

  1. CPU — I don’t own many faster iOS devices to make a comparison. The fastest for now is my iPhone 5, with a dual-core A6 chip at 1.3 GHz. The iPad 1 has a single-core A4 at 1 GHz, two generations older. I thought: It’s going to be slow.
  2. Memory — The iPad 1 has only 256 MB of RAM. I thought that it would cause the iPad to choke often, with apps shutting down, and with a laughable multitasking experience.
  3. Non-retina display — I remember wanting an iPad since the day it was introduced, but patiently waiting two generations before getting one because I wanted a retina display. The iPhone 4 made such a positive impact on my eyesight when I upgraded from an iPhone 3G, that I honestly didn’t want anything to do with non-retina displays from that moment on, as far as iOS devices were concerned.
  4. Another non-trivial thing was the software. Eight years and six iOS releases have passed since what an iPad 1 can offer. I was pretty sure the software landscape would be a graveyard.

As I said in my original article, after a few days of use I was rather astonished to realise that those fears were unfounded. CPU performance has been great so far. The iPad 1 has handled every task I’ve thrown at it. Only in a couple of situations I’ve noticed I was pushing a bit, but the iPad 1 handled difficulty more gracefully than my more recent iPad 3, whose favourite sport in similar circumstances is self-rebooting. Same with the RAM. Sure, when switching from an app to another and back, apps have to reload content basically all the time; but, as I explained previously:

[G]iven the small amount of RAM, when switching from an app to another the iPad 1 had to reload more content than the iPad 2 and iPad 3, but somehow it was also faster at doing so; while my iPad 3 was quicker at presenting me an app’s state when returning to it, I also had to wait a bit before the app was actually ready to accept taps and interactions. This creates a frustratingly stuttering pace when multitasking. On the iPad 1, such transition felt more organic and homogeneous, for lack of a better term.

Again, I expected to be more bothered by the non-retina display, but as I said in my previous piece, this too ended up being a non-issue. And I’m quite sure the æsthetics of the pre-iOS 7 user interface help a lot in making the low-density 1024×768 iPad 1 display feel more tolerable. iOS 5’s UI elements and typography are clearly optimised for non-retina displays, while anything past iOS 7 on the iPad 2 with the same display clearly isn’t.

As for software, well, you can take a look at the extensive list I’ve assembled in my other article. It definitely helps having started early in the iOS ecosystem, because you may be able to install certain apps that have been later removed from the App Store and that now only live in your iTunes library (I’m on iTunes 12.6.3, so I can still use it to manage iOS apps, of course). Another trick I’ve discovered recently is this:

If you are attempting to download the app for the first time, the App Store will not offer the download of an older version. You must already own the app for the older version to be offered (see [below] for iOS devices if you don’t). 

NOTE: The following will only work in iTunes versions prior to 12.7, as later versions do not have an iOS App Store section. To check your version, go to File > About iTunes (Windows) or iTunes > About iTunes (Mac).

If you do not already own the app, one workaround is to purchase/download the app from the iTunes Store on a Mac or PC using the same Apple ID you are using on your iOS device. The app will then be associated with your account and you should then be offered an older version if you attempt to download the app again on the iOS device. Do not try to install the copy downloaded in iTunes, as it is the newer, incompatible version. That step is only necessary to attain ownership of the app. You will need to access the App Store on your iOS device to be offered a compatible version.

[Source]

And if you can’t use iTunes on your computer, an alternative is to purchase/download the app on a more recent iOS device first, then go to the App Store app on the older device, enter the Purchased section, and install the app from there. If all goes well, you should be offered to install an older version.

Assembling a good and extensive-enough set of apps on my iPad 1 took some time and a bit of patience, required by the trial-and-error process, but the end result was not disappointing. Naturally, you have to expect a certain lack of variety in some departments (for example, I searched in vain for a third-party email client that could work under iOS 5, but Apple’s Mail works well after all), but at the moment my iPad 1 has a total of 77 third-party working apps installed, and it’s still a surprisingly capable tool for several tasks. Browsing the Web, managing email, editing photos, exchanging documents (thankfully Dropbox, Box, CloudApp, and Simplenote’s sync services still work — iCloud too, of course), viewing and editing PDFs, listening to music in Spotify, listening to podcasts and Internet radio stations, watching videos, checking the weather, writing (including publishing blog posts directly), drawing and painting, taking handwritten notes, managing calendars and to-do lists, reading my RSS feeds and the news, using the iPad as a remote trackpad/keyboard (so glad I still had an older version of Edovia’s TouchPad) or to connect via SSH to another computer or server, playing some casual games, making music (and using it in combination with the iPad 3 has been quite fun — with Propellerhead’s Figure open on one iPad, and GarageBand on the other)… 

My iPad 3 has still the advantage of the retina display, and the selection of working/available apps is much wider. If I want to edit and retouch photos, on the iPad 3 I have an entire screen of apps to choose from (and more). But as crazy as it may sound, I’m finding the iPad 1 more appealing simply because iOS 5 runs better on it than iOS 9 does on the iPad 3. I know I said it a few times already, but it’s really the case where you can see how a well-designed operating system software can make the hardware shine — and this is iOS 5 on the iPad 1 — or can make the hardware show its limits and age at every turn — and this is iOS 9 on the iPad 2 and iPad 3. I noticed this in the responsiveness and memory departments, especially. Using apps under iOS 5 on the iPad 1 I often thought, Wow, it’s amazing how well it’s handling everything considering the iPad has only 256 MB of RAM. While lately, using apps under iOS 9 on the iPad 3, I often feel as if the 1 GB of onboard RAM is never enough.

Full disclosure: some apps on the iPad 1 did seem to use all the RAM they could, and when switching to other apps, I noticed a brief moment when the iPad was getting its bearings, so to speak; but the occasional procedure to free up RAM (press and hold the power button until the Slide to Power Off screen appears, then press and hold the Home button until such screen is dismissed) seemed to work its magic. And again, emphasis on ‘occasional’.

An aside on planned obsolescence

When you’re trying to use an older device today, especially one whose app ecosystem updates at a breakneck pace like iOS, you soon realise that in certain cases it’s not the hardware what really makes the device obsolete, but the software. In Ten days with the first-generation iPad, I wrote:

This iPad 1 is definitely slower and can’t keep up where processor-intensive operations are required, no doubt, but the biggest blow to its usefulness today comes more from the dropped software and services support.

Now, I can understand dropping support of older hardware or older OS versions when there are objective, technical reasons to do so. A service may need higher system requirements to keep running securely and protect your data in transit, for example. An app may have been updated to provide new functionalities that only a better processor or graphics chip can handle. You get the idea. What I don’t understand is making an app cease to function from one day to another for no real reason. The device is clearly capable of running that app; then one day the developer or the service provider decide to make the app stop working with just a vague message along the lines of, You’re using an older version of the app. You need to upgrade. Why, exactly?

I’m looking at you, YouTube, eBay, and iMDB. These have all one thing in common: they are essentially containers. They fetch the same content you can access through their websites using a browser. The advantage is that the native app usually offers a more comfortable experience where everything is at your fingertips and you can perform searches and other actions more quickly and efficiently. I’m not aware of recent major changes in how these providers deliver their content, and yet this is what’s happening and my related observations: 

  • The eBay app has stopped working under iOS 7 and earlier. When you launch it, a modal dialog appears that says: Update required. This version has expired. Please update your app now. The only choices are Exit and Update. If you tap Update, you’re directed to the App Store, but you can’t update, of course, because you’re running the last compatible version of the app on your iOS 7 or iOS 6 (or earlier) device.
  • The iMDB app doesn’t work anymore under iOS 6 and earlier. When you launch it, you only see a skeleton of the various sections, but no content at all. When you try to search something, a dialog appears: Network Error. We couldn’t connect to iMDB right now. Please try again. The only choices are OK and Retry. Retrying, of course, does nothing. I know what you’re thinking because that’s what I thought at first — iMDB has changed something in the connection between app and service. Maybe there are different internal servers, and older versions of the app simply can’t know how to find them and just ping the old addresses. But then why does the iMDB app still work under iOS 7? Sure, iOS 7 is running a newer version of the app, but the point is: the iMDB app has been running fine on both iOS 6 and 7 until sometime recently. Then it stopped working under iOS 6 and there hasn’t been an update released for iOS 7 to make the app keep working.
  • The YouTube official client was working fine under iOS 5 until a few days ago. Then, overnight, stopped working. Again, one wonders why an app that’s still perfectly capable of playing videos suddenly cannot play them anymore. When I vented my frustration on Twitter, Angelo came to my aid suggesting a smart little hack you can perform to make the app work again. It basically involves spoofing the app version number from 1.3.x to something greater than or equal to 9.x.x. It would appear that the app version number is checked at launch, and if it’s too old, then the app doesn’t work. And in fact, as soon as I was done with the hack, the app got back to working exactly like before.

My suspicion is that there’s a similar app version check involved with eBay and iMDB as well. That older versions of an app are simply considered obsolete and are made to stop working, even without a real technical reason. It’s simply absurd that my fourth-generation iPod touch — which runs on the same processor as my iPhone 4 — can’t display iMDB content in the app just because it’s running iOS 6.1.6 instead of iOS 7.1.2, but the same content can be accessed and viewed in the browser on the same iPod. And as for eBay — funny how the app can’t be launched or used anymore on iOS 6 and iOS 7, but its push notifications still work perfectly.

It’s planned obsolescence, pure and simple. What drives me crazy about these particular examples is the arbitrariness of it all. The iPad 1 is still absolutely capable of handling YouTube videos, and yet YouTube doesn’t want you to use the site through the app if you’re doing it with an older device. And the excuse of not delivering the best experience is misplaced. You’re using an old iPad: you know you’re not looking at the best experience — but if that’s all you have, you’d like to keep that experience, however limited, rather than suddenly finding yourself with a non-functional app. 

Closing thoughts

Hopefully I’ll soon purchase a 6th-generation iPad, so I’ll have a more up-to-date, and certainly much more powerful and responsive iPad. In the meantime I’m truly enjoying taking this iPad 1 out and about as a ‘road warrior’. I’ve even managed to find a couple of nice accessories for it. The first, as you can see in the opening photo, is a Bluetooth keyboard. Specifically, it’s the Logitech iPad Keyboard and Stand Combo (you can see it in more detail on Amazon). I was looking for solutions that weren’t tied to a particular iPad model but that were also compatible with the iPad 1 (I had read somewhere that not all Bluetooth keyboards would work with the iPad 1). This Logitech came out when the iPad 1 was in production, so it’s of the appropriate vintage; it’s elegant and rugged enough; it’s pleasant to type on; it has a few nice dedicated keys (Home, Search, media keys, even a key to lock the screen without reaching for the power/sleep/wake button on the iPad); and it can be used, together with its accompanying stand, with other iOS devices as well. I got it new-in-box on eBay for $20 plus shipping. Not bad.

The other accessory was, surprisingly, harder to find than expected. At least locally. As a general rule, I give precedence to local, brick-and-mortar shops when I want to buy something. Sometimes it’s cheaper online, but once you add the shipping costs, what started as a bargain isn’t anymore. I wanted to get a protective sleeve for the iPad 1. You know, a simple neoprene zippered affair not dissimilar from what you’d buy for a MacBook. And it was nowhere to be found. Granted, I didn’t roam the city for days trying every possible shop, but went to the usual places that had never let me down before, which typically provide a lot of variety with this kind of accessories. Apparently, the trend today in iPad cases is either the case with integrated keyboard or a type of case derived from Apple’s Smart Cover, with one side enveloping the iPad, and the cover folding onto itself so that it acts like a stand. It’s a practical design, but not what I was looking for.

So I first checked old product reviews in tech magazines I translated back in 2011–2012, and that’s when I remembered that Booq used to make nice bags and cases to carry tech devices around. Sadly, when it comes to protective cases and sleeves, it seems that today Booq is more focused on covering laptop computers; but after being directed to their European site and checking the Sales section, I found what I was looking for: the Taipan Spacesuit XS, selling at a discounted price of €10 instead of €30. I quickly placed an order for the red variant, and after a few days it arrived. It’s really beautiful and well made:

IPad 1 + booq sleeve

Like the Logitech keyboard, this sleeve was originally made when the iPad 1 was in production, so it safely accommodates its thicker size. I’m glad I could find accessories that were specifically designed for the iPad 1 without having to resort to used products. And without having to spend a lot of money.

You may find my fascination with this ‘old’ iPad a bit silly. And I’ve noticed how it’s somewhat okay to be into vintage Macs but being into older iOS devices makes people smile that kind of condescending “Dude, what’s the point?” smile. People obsessed with the latest and greatest often forget that just because a device stops receiving OS or app updates, it doesn’t mean it stops working or being useful. 

The eye-opening aspect of going back to this first-generation iPad has been this: given a set of still-functioning apps, this iPad can still carry out all the tasks it was created for, with surprising responsiveness. Of course a current iPad is better, and if you’re a fan of the flat design introduced with iOS 7, a current iPad will also have better-looking software, not to mention more system features, et cetera. But this iPad 1 really turned out to be less slow and sluggish than anticipated; again, thanks to its tight integration between iOS 5 and the iPad’s hardware. I remember many people being upset back then when iOS 6 came out and Apple decided the iPad 1 couldn’t go past iOS 5.1.1. With hindsight, it was probably a good decision. Because if anything, during the past month the iPad 1 has shown me how slow and sluggish my iPad 3 actually is, in comparison, and how demanding iOS 9 is for both the iPad 2 and iPad 3.

Finally, I’m grateful to all those iOS developers who haven’t retired older versions of their apps from the App Store, and to those who haven’t removed their old apps even when it’s clear their development stopped years ago. Kudos also to those developers who, after introducing a paid update to their apps, have decided to keep the old version around as a separate ‘legacy’ app. I wish more developers did this — they’d certainly make owners of older devices very happy.

A useful approach to carry out my extensive search for older, compatible apps, has been to read old app reviews (thanks again, appstorm.net!) and it’s been a bit sad to realise just how many good apps have vanished from the App Store. In a few cases, I even managed to contact the developer and ask whether it was possible for them to send me the old .ipa file, but apparently it’s not that easy.

Anyway, this is getting much too verbose. I reiterate every word I wrote when wrapping up my previous piece: setting up this iPad 1 to work as a daily driver today, eight years after its introduction, has been a fun and oddly rewarding experience. Despite its obvious limitations and dated hardware specs, the iPad 1 has demonstrated a degree of usefulness that exceeded all my expectations. And once again I’ve been reminded that, sometimes, obsolete is just a label that is slapped on a product out of convenience, and it doesn’t mean that such product has suddenly stopped being useful.

The iMac turns 20 — a few assorted bits

May 9, 2018
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

The most dramatically new Macintosh iMac 1998

These days, in my spare time, I’ve been almost completely absorbed by the astonishingly positive experience I’m having with a first-generation iPad that’s been recently given to me. I’ve talked about it at length in my previous piece, and there will soon be a follow-up in case you were interested. And that’s why, until my RSS feeds were flooded with articles and mentions on the subject, I was nearly forgetting about the iMac’s twentieth anniversary. I really don’t have an organic article to talk about the iMac, so here are a few notes, in no particular order of importance.

The Future of the Internet iMac G3

Internet at home

That the Web was going to be a big deal, it was globally acknowledged pretty soon. But having Internet at home as a ‘normal’ thing took time, and some countries got there before others. In Italy, where I lived at the time, I remember using computers to access the Web to search information online around 1995 at the university, but it wasn’t until 1997–1998 that being able to just go online from home became a more common, widespread phenomenon. I’m talking about this from memory, so I don’t claim perfect accuracy on the matter, but I seem to recall that one of the major factors delaying the process was that telecom companies were slow to adapt to the trend, so there was a distinctive lack of affordable connection options. Connecting to the Internet via modem meant using the telephone landline to call a dedicated number, so that the call was billed as if it were a local call. Still, if you stayed connected for, say, three hours straight, even a local call would end up being rather expensive.

I like to believe that the introduction of the iMac helped to improve this situation — it was certainly much better when I finally could afford to purchase an iMac in late 1999. By that time, the iMac was already at its third round — the so-called ‘slot-loading’ model, an improvement over the previous five-colour offering, with a slot-loading optical drive, better processors, better graphics, more RAM. I got the entry-level 350 MHz blueberry model, which lasted until sometime in 2003. I had been using Macs for about ten years at the time, but that was the first Mac I actually purchased brand-new. All the Macs I had owned previously were second-hand purchases. It was also the first Mac with which I went online.

Headphone jack? We have plenty!

Dual headphone jacks in iMac

As far as I know, the iMac G3 is the Mac with the most headphone jacks ever offered. As you see in the picture (an excerpt from a 1998 brochure), the iMac G3 had two jacks on the front, but also a third one on the side. I remember using the side jack to connect a couple of external speakers, while having jacks on the front of the machine was useful when using headphones or earphones with particularly short cables.

The round mouse: a contrarian opinion

In A brief retrospective on failures (my, my, I wrote that more than 10 years ago!) I talked about the infamous round mouse that came with the iMac:

I don’t quite understand the general bashing — perhaps it’s nicknamed ‘hockey puck’ not for its shape, but after all the bashing. Perhaps it’s just me and my slim, long-fingered hands, but I’ve been using one for 9 years without a problem. It has to be handled slightly differently than a more elongated mouse (like the Apple Pro Optical Mouse or the Mighty Mouse, for example), and you can’t expect to be resting your hand on it. The way I hold it — putting my thumb and little finger at either side of it and using the forefinger and the middle finger to press the button — has made it the most comfortable mouse I’ve ever had, believe it or not. Before using that mouse I frequently ended my day with an aching wrist. That issue disappeared after using the rounded mouse.

The round mouse is probably the most hated Apple peripheral, and I know that a lot of people can’t stand its design; just like they can’t stand the design of the current Magic Mouse. I’ve used every mouse Apple has made since the first Mac, and while I find other designs undoubtedly comfortable (the Pro mouse, the Mighty Mouse), if today I don’t have the slightest symptom of RSI is thanks to the iMac’s round mouse and, later, to the Magic Mouse.

Chic. Not Geek.

The mother of all bold moves

When it comes to demonstrating Apple’s boldness, the original iMac has become the tritest of examples. It’s been 20 years of “They point-blank dropped the floppy drive, along with other legacy connections, and introduced a new standard, USB”. And yes, it’s true, it was a bold move, it was a gamble. It could have backfired. Customers and third-party manufacturers could have resisted, kept on with their floppies, rejecting USB, and turning to other solutions. The iMac could have been a total flop. Turns out it wasn’t.

You see, I don’t really believe Apple ‘got lucky’ with the iMac and the accompanying technology and design decisions. The 1.44 MB floppy certainly had its usefulness. Sometimes today I talk with (younger) people about this, and for some it seems crazy that, at the time, many users held on to the floppy, given its small capacity. In 1997–1998, Macs were usually equipped with 1.2 up to 6 GB hard drives, for comparison, and there were already higher-capacity removable media around, such as Iomega’s Zip and Jaz drives, which used 100 MB disks and 1 GB cartridges, respectively; and of course magneto-optical disks — long-time pro Mac users will surely remember SyQuest’s 44, 88 and 200 MB cartridges, rather popular at the time. 

But floppy diskettes retained a degree of inexpensiveness and practicality which, combined with their ubiquity, made them difficult to let go. They were often used for quick document exchanges in the same way today we may use an 8 or 16 GB USB thumb drive. At the time, basically every computer had a floppy drive. But Zip, Jaz, or other magneto-optical solutions? Not so much. It was more likely among Mac users, but if I had to deliver some files to a client, I was often asked to deliver them on floppies, even when recordable CDs were already getting traction.

And yet the lack of a floppy drive in the iMac was more of a problem on paper, or in the tech debates of the time. This ‘transition’ turned out to be smoother because — and I’m reading this from a 1998 issue of MacFormat magazine — companies like Imation and NewerTech had already announced external USB floppy drives. Imation’s SuperDrive, for example, could “read and write standard floppy disk formats as well as Imation’s own 120 MB format”. Iomega would “also be bringing its popular Zip drive to iMac” [with a USB connection].

In other words, if you decided to get an iMac in 1998, and you wanted to keep using floppies, the period of discomfort didn’t last very long. When I got my iMac one year later, the landscape had already changed so much that I didn’t even buy an external USB floppy drive. Whenever I needed to exchange stuff via floppy diskettes, I would resort to any of the older Macs I still had around, like the Classic or the PowerBook 150 or the Quadra 700. For the rest, it was email, or even recordable CDs. But if I absolutely had the need for a USB floppy drive for my iMac, by 1999 the options to choose from were plenty. 

Sure, not putting a floppy drive in the iMac had its risks, but the iMac was also a compelling computer with a very strong identity and purpose. Apple (Jobs) had a very clear idea of the iMac’s target audience, and that is reflected in the articles dedicated to the iMac in this October 1998 issue of MacFormat magazine I have in my hands. Lindsay Bruce writes: 

The home remains a place of critical importance to iMac’s success. As good as Apple’s Performas have been — especially the most recent Creative Studio minitower model — they have failed to appeal to a wider audience beyond the traditional Mac constituency: they’ve been too expensive, or too slow, or simply not accessible enough. 

iMac reverses these trends, and it does so spectacularly. […] Its speed is certainly impressive, running the legs off last year’s Performas, and in many ways it’s faster than any Pentium PC you can buy, for the home market or for business use. In short, iMac is the fastest sub-£1,000 computer currently available by miles.

And concludes:

Those who criticise iMac’s undoubted limitations compared with other Macs, such as the notable absence of a SCSI connection port or a floppy disk drive, miss its point: this is a Mac for people who need a computer just to do the simple things most of us do most of the time — word processing, playing games, learning to use or exploring the Internet and so on. But it does these tasks considerably better than anything else available at the price.

It’s all there: the genius in the iMac’s proposal was to provide a computer with a unique signature and personality which, combined with good (or good-enough) technical specifications, a very defined target audience, and an extremely competitive price, resulted in such an appealing package that regular people didn’t really mind certain limitations or omissions. Or at least they were willing to accept the tradeoff because what they got in return was a capable, fast, and — why not? — iconic machine. 

Who s supporting USB on the iMac

And third-party manufacturers agreed: there was both a rush to adopt the USB standard and offer products that could work with the iMac as soon as possible, and to fill the void left by the lack of a built-in floppy drive by making external USB drives. It’s easy to dismiss the colourful shape and the cartoonish, whimsical design of the iMac now that most computers have become æsthetically as boring as in the beige era (I hear you, Peter Cohen). But the iMac’s unique organic design and colour made such an impact that a lot of third-party USB peripherals produced for the iMac at the time were built with a similar choice of materials, colours and translucency. And soon after, copycats started to produce PCs with a sheath of coloured plastic thrown over decidedly ugly designs.

Getting a couple of things straight

I was a bit amused by Matt Birchler’s Living that #DongleLife all the Way Back in 1998 but I politely disagree on how he frames his comparison. He quotes a rather terrible review of the iMac by the New York Times. On the absence of a floppy drive and the introduction of USB replacing ADB, Serial, and SCSI ports, Matt quips:

Yup, even back in 1998, Apple was breaking hearts by removing ports “before their time.” And since I can already hear you countering “but it was different then, USB was clearly better and was the obvious replacement.”

and takes this excerpt from the New York Times article to finish his statement:

Others in the industry have doubts about the decision not to include a floppy drive. ”Those silly little floppy drives still perform a useful function…People still use floppy disks to move files around between home and office, between members of a work group and to make copies of documents and projects.”

Ray A. Meifert, director of the Superdisk…said his company sold between 600 million and 700 million 1.44-megabyte disks last year, out of a total worldwide production of more than 4 billion disks.

When Steve Jobs says the floppy is dead, I’d take that statement cautiously,” Mr. Meifert said.

I think that citing the opinion of a floppy disk seller on the future of the floppy disk is, well, awkward at best. We can hardly expect Mr. Meifert to reply, “Yeah, the floppy disk is history now. I advise you to stop buying floppies as soon as you can.” (This is a fault of the original author of the article, who evidently needed appropriate bits to fit his narrative). 

The fact is that the floppy drive was dead in Steve Jobs’s mind because he thought about what came next, not about the status quo. Of course there were still hundreds of thousands of floppies around — every other computer that was not the iMac had a floppy drive, including all other Macs. But documents and projects were already getting bigger, and I remember (again, to please a client who didn’t have a Zip drive and whose email provider didn’t allow big attachments) having to compress a project into a StuffIt archive, then split the archive in four parts and use four floppies to deliver it to the client. Floppy disks were getting progressively annoying to use, exactly because their capacity was obsolete for the time.

USB was indeed superior than the connection technologies it replaced. From MacFormat again:

USB has three central advantages over its predecessors, though. The first is simply that it’s much faster than either ADB or Serial. […] The second advantage is that USB is ‘hot-pluggable’ — you can unplug one device and plug in another without switching iMac off. […] USB is an invention of Intel, the firm behind most of the processors used in PCs. Some may view Apple’s adoption of USB as siding with the enemy, but prosperity in the computer industry is based upon exploiting good technology standards. USB works well and is set to become a standard on PC as well as iMac (USB software is a core part of the new OS upgrade Windows 98). So its third advantage is that you can expect far more USB devices for iMac than you could choose from for other Macs.

Back to Matt Birchler:

Yes, even 20 years ago we were living that #donglelife.

Now I’m not saying what Apple was doing in 1998 with ports is exactly the same as what they are doing today, but those paragraphs feel like they could be pasted into a review of the current MacBook line and all you’d have to do is swap out the nouns.

Dongles and adapters aren’t a recent invention (and annoyance). I remember using them ever since I started working with Macs and PCs in the late 1980s. There were network adapters, ADB dongles, SCSI terminators, SCSI adapters (when you needed to hook up an external peripheral using DB-25 SCSI connectors to a Mac laptop using the smaller, square HDI-30 SCSI port), and so on and so forth. But the so-called ‘dongle life’ wasn’t really a problem when you were on a desktop workstation that had several peripherals permanently connected via different adapters. All connections were cabled anyway, so whether it was direct or through an adapter, nobody cared. You looked for the right adapter, you installed it, then it was there. It worked. 

But today’s ‘dongle life’ with MacBooks and MacBook Pros is another thing altogether. In 1998 with the iMac, Apple was able to get away with those drastic changes because the company managed to attract such attention to a perfectly marketed and inherently interesting machine that of course third-party manufacturers wanted to jump aboard. USB was an emerging standard with obvious technical advantages. Connecting peripherals could become and would become a simple affair (bye bye, SCSI terminators, SCSI chain configurations, or having to connect things before turning them on for fear of breaking something). And third parties could provide the iMac with everything it lacked, making money in the process.

Today’s USB‑C has certain advantages over the connections it wants to replace, and the ability to provide different types of data and power over the same physical connection is indeed noteworthy; but aping the same boldness of 1998 in 2015 with the 12-inch MacBook, and in 2016 with the MacBook Pro line, hasn’t produced the same results. Why? I can’t say exactly. In my opinion, while going USB in 1998 was part of a plan focussed on the possibilities that the new standard could bring to the table (faster, simpler connections, and more Mac/PC interoperability), going USB‑C — and USB‑C only — in 2015–2016 was more a decision dictated by design constraints than anything else. A decision that, paradoxically, has turned the MacBooks into systems that are more ‘closed’ than the iMac was in 1998. 

As I said above — again, going from memory here — the ‘period of discomfort’ for owners of a new iMac in 1998 was relatively short. If you look at the table in the previous section, you can see that third-party USB offerings were already a fair amount less than two months after the iMac’s availability. And the situation got better quickly. I don’t have similarly hard data at hand, but after the MacBook and MacBook Pro introduction I don’t recall the ready availability of, say, a USB‑C scanner or printer. Or even a USB‑C keyboard or mouse or drawing tablet, if you’ll forgive a bit of hyperbole[1]. Nothing but dongles. Even to connect other Apple products like an iPhone. A year after the iMac’s introduction the choice of USB peripherals was staggering compared with today, three years after the introduction of the 12-inch MacBook, and two years after the introduction of the latest MacBook Pro design. The ‘period of discomfort’ for many MacBook Pro owners seems to be longer in comparison. Check this post on Michael Tsai’s blog and the many links it contains to have an idea of the debate surrounding USB‑C.

Today we’re still stuck with having to get a dongle for connecting a regular USB thumb drive or an SD card reader, or an external display, or… many other devices, really. And that’s what’s ridiculous about today’s ‘dongle life’: featherweight, ultra-thin portables that quickly become cumbersome because you have to bring a bunch of adapters with you in case you have to work off-site and you may want to interface your sleek machine with the rest of the world.

iMac - Let's talk about you

 

  • 1. The idea of a wired USB‑C keyboard or a wired USB‑C mouse isn’t that far-fetched. I know that today most people choose to go wireless with these input devices, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. But there are certain users who also use a laptop in desktop configuration, and may want to use, say, a wired mechanical keyboard, or a wired mouse, which I hear is strongly favoured by gamers due to its higher responsiveness. While a dongle isn’t really a big deal when using a Mac at a desk, having to resort to dongles even for basic input devices is, at best, an inelegant and not entirely cheap solution. ↩︎

 

Ten days with the first-generation iPad

May 2, 2018
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

IPad 1

Spoiler: I’ve been having more fun than expected.

I can’t resist. When certain devices start being called ‘vintage’ or just plain ‘obsolete’ and ‘useless’, something clicks inside me. Little by little, there’s this urge to take a closer look at such devices: Let’s see how useless they really are. In the case of the first-generation iPad (which I’ll henceforth refer to as “iPad 1”), my interest came mainly from a UI investigation perspective. I’m still doing research for a little project on iOS’s user interface, so I’m looking for iOS devices where I can see past versions of iOS directly in action. I already had a third-generation iPod touch running iOS 5.1.1, but I wanted to see it on a bigger screen, and the iPad 1 can’t go past iOS 5.1.1. So this was the main reason. I was also intrigued by the hardware design: like the first iPhone, the first iPad is different from all the models that came after. It’s thicker, with a slightly curved aluminium back. It has no cameras, not on the front, not on the back. I think it looks beautiful and clean:

IPad 2010 Wi Fi

Well, my excellent mate David was so kind and generous as to send me an iPad 1 about ten days ago. I was excited and really looking forward to exploring this eight-year-old model; I wanted to see whether I could get some use out of it. As I often say, I don’t like collecting stuff just to put it on a shelf and show to friends and acquaintances. I try to give a purpose to (almost) every device I own, and this iPad 1 was no different. 

A quick refresher before I proceed, so that you can have an idea of my starting point. 

  • The iPad 1 was announced at the end of January 2010 and discontinued in March 2011.
  • It is the heaviest of the 9.7″ iPads: it weighs 680 grams. The cellular version is even heavier: 730 grams. For comparison, the current 6th-generation iPad weighs 469 grams. The only iPad that’s heavier than the iPad 1 is the 12.9″ iPad Pro, which weighs 713 grams (Wi-Fi only model) and 723 grams (Wi-Fi & cellular), and both variants are still lighter than the cellular version of the iPad 1.
  • It has a single core Apple A4 CPU. 256 MB of RAM. Wi-Fi 802.11n. Bluetooth 2.1+EDR. Display resolution is 1024×768. Pixel density is 132 ppi. It came in 16 GB, 32 GB, and 64 GB storage capacities. (Mine is a 16 GB, Wi-Fi unit)
  • Original system software was iOS 3.2. Maximum is iOS 5.1.1.

Very first impressions

When I took the iPad 1 out of the padded envelope and bubble wrap in which it came (from California to Spain in two days — this iPad is fast), and held it in my hands, I was immediately surprised by how well it handled. I expected something heavier and a bit more cumbersome than my third-generation iPad; instead, the chunkier design of the iPad’s chassis makes for a steadier, stronger grip when you hold it. Also, the iPad 1 feels oddly lighter than the iPad 3. On paper, the weight difference between the two is negligible (according to the specs sheet, the iPad 3 is 28 grams lighter). When handling, the iPad 3 is certainly thinner but has the heaviness of a single block of material, if you know what I mean. It feels denser. On the other hand, the iPad 1 doesn’t necessarily feels hollower, but you get the impression that there’s more breathing room inside its chassis. The result is that the iPad 1 feels better to handle than the iPad 3 when you compare them without any protective case.

After taking the iPad 1 out of the packaging material, I pressed the power switch without really expecting it to turn on, but it still had 25% battery charge left, so after a few moments I was staring at a fresh installation of iOS 5.1.1, very similar to the stock iPad image you saw above. And here’s when I noticed another thing. Accustomed as I am to retina displays, I thought the iPad 1’s low screen resolution and pixel density would bother me. Strangely, that didn’t happen. This, I think, is due to the combination of two things: 1) the pre-iOS 7 user interface, and 2) holding the iPad at a normal reading distance. Because sure, if I move much closer I clearly see pixels everywhere and blurred fonts, etc., but when using the iPad normally, both the text and the interface elements are fine; nothing really different than staring at a non-retina external display when using the Mac. For comparison, when I take my wife’s iPad 2 — which has the exact same display as the iPad 1 — and look at the screen, the UI and text under iOS 9 look blurrier. This is a clear example of how unfit both the San Francisco system font and the flat design of iOS 7 and newer versions are for non-retina devices. 

Making it useful: a journey of discovery

After charging the iPad, and doing some basic customisation, I started my adventurous journey in search of third-party apps still working under iOS 5. So far, it has been a journey of unexpectedly positive surprises, alternating with “Oh, I really thought this would work” moments. But overall, I really can’t complain. 

One feature that’s been undoubtedly useful comes from the App Store itself, providing you with the ability of installing a previous version of the app you want that’s still compatible with the iOS version your device is running. Of course you’re out of luck in at least two cases:

  1. The app you’re trying to install was first introduced under iOS 6 or later versions (duh);
  2. The app developer decided to remove the old version of the app after a major update. In this case the response you get from the App Store app is something along the lines of This application requires iOS 8.0 or later. You must update to iOS 8.0 in order to download and use this application.

I’ve also run into a funny third case, where I could download a previous version of an app, but although it was listed as ‘compatible with iPad’, when I launched it I found myself staring at the not-iPad-optimised, tiny 1x iPhone interface. My guess is that in this case the app was fully optimised for the iPad’s bigger screen sometime after iOS 6 was out. And believe me, you don’t want to use the 2x magnified version of an app optimised for the old 320×480 iPhone display resolution. 

In my app hunt, I’ve also had a bit of luck. For even though some apps don’t have their iOS 5‑compatible versions available anymore through the App Store, I did have the old .ipa file stored locally, so I managed to install it anyway. To get into more detail, for those interested: Back in 2011, when I upgraded from my old iPhone 3G to the iPhone 4, I didn’t want to lose the ability to reinstall apps that worked under iOS 4.2.1 in case I had to restore the iPhone 3G. So I cloned the Mobile Applications folder of my main iTunes Library and transferred it to one of my PowerBook G4s. From then on, I used said PowerBook to manage apps and backups for the iPhone 3G and all the other older iOS devices I’ve been acquiring over time, being very careful not to update the apps from iTunes (though I have a full backup of the Mobile Applications folder with the older .ipa files, just in case).

While having its frustrating moments — the trial-and-error “Let’s see if this app can be installed/does work on the iPad 1” approach can be tedious — the journey has been fun overall. So let me just show you what I’ve managed to install on this iPad in the past ten days:

Screen 1

Screen 2

Screen 3

Screen 4

 

Some comments related to the apps:

1. Every app you saw in the above screenshots works, except for the iMDB app, which doesn’t fetch contents from the iMDB servers.

2. The apps that do work typically retain a 95–100% functionality. What does that mean? It means they work well for the most part, but may have some non-working features due to their age. For example, if they offer Dropbox sync, it may not work anymore because of deprecated APIs (iA Writer Classic is one of these apps, but local document storage and iCloud sync still work, so the app is still largely functional).

3. As mentioned previously, some of the apps you see come from installing the old .ipa file I still own and that I have kept in my archives. Surprisingly, though, the majority are apps I could install via the App Store thanks to the “Download last compatible version” option.

4. Something beautiful happened as I was searching my local app archive for suitable apps. I happened to unearth some discontinued apps, and apps that I had stopped using after a terrible redesign. What I didn’t expect is that they still worked. For example, in the second screen, you can see an app called Posts. This was a very nice WordPress client which at some point stopped working, maybe around the time iOS 7 came out (I honestly don’t remember), and was removed from the App Store. 

I had hoped the official WordPress app would improve (especially after acquiring the excellent Poster client) so I could use that to blog from my iPad, but its interface never clicked with me; I’ve always found it better for just reading my blogs’ WordPress statistics and little else. Left without viable alternatives, I basically stopped using the iPad to write and publish posts on my blogs — in this regard, it was reduced to a note-taker. I would write my posts on the Mac using MarsEdit.

Imagine my surprise when, after installing Posts on the iPad 1 and entering the credentials to access my System Folder blog settings, the app started syncing and working as if time hadn’t passed:

Posts main UI

Now, you may not like the interface guidelines for iOS versions prior to 7, or even the general look of older apps before iOS 7 came and flattened everything. I could write a book about how the pre-iOS 7 user interface was more consistent, better conceived, more user-friendly, but I guess in the end it’s all a matter of personal taste, so I won’t argue. But trust me when I say that Posts was really a nice, functional WordPress client. Now that I realised I can still use it on this iPad 1, I may even go back to writing more on the iPad. That I had to go back to move forward in this regard is, well, pretty incredible.

Another favourite app that stopped working under iOS 7 is Planetary, which is one of the most original takes when it comes to designing a music player interface. But since this is iOS 5, the app works perfectly (and its interface isn’t dated at all, by the way):

Planetary

Another pleasant surprise was having Penultimate’s old design back. Penultimate was my absolute favourite handwriting note-taking + sketching app back then (read this review on AppStorm from 2011 to get a better idea), but then Evernote acquired it, and later launched a rethought version which made the app lose a lot of its usefulness and charm. Again, you may disagree with me, and you may think that all the old, skeuomorphic apps deserve good riddance. I actually think that there are many, many examples of skeuomorphism done right that make the overall experience nicer and more fun. The old design for Penultimate is one of these examples:

Penultimate overview

Penultimate welcome notebook

 

5. As you can see, I’ve ended up with a good mix of still useful apps, which manage to cover a surprisingly wide range of tasks:

  • Cloud services — The Dropbox, Box, and Simplenote apps still work and sync correctly. Let’s hope it lasts. ClouDrop is a CloudApp third-party client, and it still works too.
  • Music apps — The official Spotify client still works, and I even like its UI better than the current version (more on this later). Planetary and Groove are two very nice music players. Groove is one of the rare apps with a good pre-iOS 7 interface, and a good post-iOS 7 interface. But even if you stick with Apple’s own Music app, it’s simpler, cleaner, more pleasant to use than the current iteration. And for making music, while I was disappointed that I couldn’t download an older, suitable version of Apple’s GarageBand, I was pleased to find out that older versions of Novation Launchkey and Propellerhead’s Figure do indeed work.
  • Podcast apps — So far, I haven’t made many attempts at finding a third-party app that still works under iOS 5. Apple’s own Podcasts does the job, and if you, like me, loved the tape reel interface, it’s back in all its glory. Finding a good app to listen to Internet radio stations has proven to be harder than anticipated. So far, the old Tuner app seems to work, but a lot of streams return errors.
  • Video-related apps — The official YouTube client still works. There is a reminder that the app is obsolete and ‘may stop working in the near future’, but for now it works. Same for VLC. (The YouTube app Apple used to include in the first iterations of iOS is now useless, instead).
  • Writing and Productivity — Let’s see, there are iA Writer Classic, TaskPaper (for notes, documents, tasks, etc.), WriteRoom (from the same developer of TaskPaper — I haven’t installed it yet, but it should work), Documents by Readdle (still one of my favourite document viewers), Phraseology and Terminology (a writing app and a dictionary, both from Agile Tortoise, both very nice apps with a clear, friendly interface); the already mentioned Posts and Penultimate; and Dragon Dictation, which works surprisingly well and understands me better than Siri.
  • RSS feed readers and related apps — Newsify and Slow Feeds (which is now called Web Subscriber) both work great, and now that Feedly has fixed an issue with the authentication page, a lot of older apps with Feedly integration have regained functionality. Instapaper, too, works without problems.
  • News — Flipboard works, and while the old interface isn’t that much different from the current one, I was surprised at how responsive it is, especially when compared with Flipboard on my iPad 3 under iOS 9. The old AP Mobile app from the Associated Press works as well. There are probably other apps in this category out there that still work, but I haven’t searched much, admittedly.
  • Weather — Finding working apps that also look decent was unexpectedly difficult. Usual suspects like AccuWeather or The Weather Channel or Weather Underground — apps I knew have been around for a long time — all required more recent iOS versions to work. The three apps you see in the screenshots above — Weather 2x, Weather Motion HD, and Weather HD Classic (both display as “Weather HD”) — are pretty much all I could find after a bit of searching. Weather HD Classic is my favourite of the three, and it also seems to be the most accurate.
  • Web browsing — Safari is decent, but it’s old. Sometimes it doesn’t handle modern, bloated websites very well. Other two working alternatives are Chrome and Opera Coast. Chrome seems to be the best and most stable option.
  • Maps — The original Google Maps that came built in iOS 5 still works fine, but doesn’t display transit information (at least in my area): you only get walking and driving directions when you want to investigate how to reach some destination. Maps+ has nicer touches, but offers little more than Google Maps, feature-wise, and doesn’t have transit information either. I’m still searching for a good solution here, but these two apps are a decent starting point to find your way around (no pun intended).
  • Utilities — For communications, it’s great to see that Scotty and Panic’s Prompt still work. Scotty can be used to wirelessly transfer files between iOS and Mac devices, and between iOS devices (if you’re using an older version of the app; this feature was sadly removed in the last update); it’s simple, fast, and does its job well. Prompt is a SSH client by the good folks at Panic. They have released Prompt 2, so you won’t find the older version on the App Store. I had it stored locally, since I had purchased it a long time ago. Speaking of Panic, I didn’t expect Status Board to work, probably because I mistakenly thought it was a much more recent app. It’s an old iteration of the app, but it appears to be working well. I was also very happy to be able to install an older version of Edovia’s TouchPad, because it’s quite useful to be able to use an iPad as a big Trackpad and as a wireless keyboard/media remote for the Mac if necessary (i.e., when all USB ports are in use, and I can’t resort to other wireless input devices). WolframAlpha is another good addition, though I had to look at a suitable version for the iPad 1 in my locally-stored apps.
  • Graphics — For sketching, drawing, retouching, editing, I’ve assembled some essentials which should cover basic needs: Penultimate, Skitch, Snapseed, Adobe Photoshop Express, Paintbook, Brushes, and Pix. I was able to install an older version of Diptic, too, which I typically use to create photo compositions or to show screenshots side by side.
  • Social Networking — This has been, by far, the most disappointing experience; but given how fast social networks and related services move today, it was also expected. I don’t care about Facebook, so I don’t know whether its client and apps work or not on the iPad 1. As for Twitter, its official client doesn’t work (it doesn’t load anything). Using a browser to check the mobile version of Twitter is doable, but for some strange reason Twitter seems to be serving a crappier-looking Web interface when it detects you’re using an old device (or an old browser).

    The only viable option for me was to resort to Twitterrific, which still delivers a great experience, but with some limitations: 280-character tweets are not supported in this older version of the app (and when you read the timeline, tweets longer than 140 characters are truncated and displayed with a link to the original tweet); and it appears you cannot add more than one photo when you tweet. Other third-party clients don’t seem to work (e.g. Echofon, as something goes wrong during authorisation). I wish I had the old Tweetbot 2 to try out, but it’s no longer on the App Store, and I don’t have an old copy of the file in my archives. At the moment, Twitterrific looks like the only option for a good Twitter experience on an iPad 1.

  • Games — I’m such a casual iOS gamer that I still haven’t explored the options in this category, also perhaps because ‘Games’ is by far the biggest category of iOS apps. So far I’ve only installed Drop7, which was one of the first puzzle games I got addicted to back in the day. I’ve been told that Kometen is a beautiful, inexpensive game that only requires iOS 3.0 or later; and that an older, compatible version of Machinarium can still be installed (hat tip to Nicola and Angelo, respectively). Another classic is Deep Green Chess: it now requires iOS 7, but you can install an older, compatible version via the App Store without issues. I’m sure there are many other good games out there: feel free to send suggestions on Twitter if you still use an old iOS device for gaming.

The iPad 1 and iOS 5 experience in 2018 — further observations

Performance

This is where I was most blown away by the iPad 1. Of course, everything is relative. If my daily driver were any iPad model newer than an iPad Air, how this iPad 1 behaves would be nothing to write home about. But since my main iPad is a third-generation iPad with iOS 9.3.5, when it comes to responsiveness, animations, transitions, even switching from an app to another (yes, iOS 5 had multitasking), the iPad 1 felt noticeably snappier than the iPad 3. And where it wasn’t actually snappier, it definitely felt… less overwhelmed. 

On paper, this shouldn’t be possible: the iPad 3 has a dual-core A5X processor, while the iPad 1 has a single-core A4. The iPad 3 has four times the amount of RAM (1 GB vs. 256 MB). Evidently it’s all in the software optimisation, and how well the two iPads manage their memory and resources. Once again I was reminded of how wrong Apple was in allowing the iPad 3 to update to iOS 9. Not to mention the iPad 2 which, in this informal comparison, was noticeably the most sluggish of the three and the worst performer.

Sure, given the small amount of RAM, when switching from an app to another the iPad 1 had to reload more content than the iPad 2 and iPad 3, but somehow it was also faster at doing so; while my iPad 3 was quicker at presenting me an app’s state when returning to it, I also had to wait a bit before the app was actually ready to accept taps and interactions. This creates a frustratingly stuttering pace when multitasking. On the iPad 1, such transition felt more organic and homogeneous, for lack of a better term.

Another performance-related detail worth mentioning: this iPad 1 still has a tremendous battery life. I’m certain that how well a device fares in this department depends on how it has been treated, and I guess this iPad has been treated very well. Still, my iPad 3 on a full charge and in normal daily use lasts one day and the following morning. This iPad 1 under the same conditions lasts two full days and then some. One thing I’ve noticed is how well the battery behaves while the iPad is in standby. One day I left it on the table with the battery at 47%. When I picked it up again a few hours later, the battery indicator was at 46%. My iPad 3 loses more percent points of battery life while idling. 

Interface considerations

The deep, system-wide UI redesign that came with iOS 7 in 2013 gave a lighter feel to the whole interface. Lots of white space, a thinner variant of the Helvetica system font, and a flatter look for all graphic elements. I remember how polarised pundits and users were at the time. Some hated the iOS 7 look right away. Some couldn’t stand to look at iOS 6 and earlier anymore. I instantly loved the interface refresh, but I also recognised its immaturity in a few places where its usability left a bit to be desired when compared to the iOS 6 æsthetics. In short, I loved iOS 7 at once; but I still loved iOS 6 and earlier. 

Again, when it comes to visuals it’s ultimately a matter of personal taste, but one thing iOS’s user interface possessed before iOS 7’s flattening treatment was consistence and more robust, coherent, stricter interface guidelines. Guidelines that were followed by third-party developers more closely, and the result was that under iOS 6 and earlier versions, third-party apps presented a user interface that was cleaner, more predictable, easier to navigate than what came afterwards, update after update. After iOS’s UI got flatter, when it came to designing apps, things got out of hand, in an ‘anything goes’ fashion.

There are apps today with poor discoverability, ambiguous controls, UI elements whose state or function isn’t immediately clear — i.e. you cannot tell whether they’re tappable or not simply by looking at them; whereas before iOS 7, a button looked like a button right away, and you didn’t have to explore an app by tapping blindly here and there. Spotify is the first example coming to mind: its early iOS and Mac clients were more usable and had a better interface. Look at the Playlists view under iOS 5:

Spotify - Playlists

The visual architecture of panes and the element hierarchy are clear. Every control is immediately recognisable and you know where to tap just by glancing at the UI. The colour scheme is more thoughtful. The various panes and sections are more clearly defined, which helps when navigating the app. The typography — while being more ‘boring’ and adherent to the OS default — is also more efficient and legible.

Look at the Search Results page now:

Spotify — Search results

It takes cues from the pre-iOS 7 Spotlight search interface. The various fields — Artists, Albums, Tracks — are well separated by subtle dividers and background colour changes. The artwork is big enough to be easily recognisable. Overall, yes, the interface has a utilitarian character and isn’t quite imaginative or edgy, but that’s the whole point of an app which basically consists of music discovery: it has to be user-friendly and help users find things. Over time, Spotify’s UI has become more complex — in most areas, unnecessarily so.

I could make other examples, but they wouldn’t be much different. During my trip down Interface Memory Lane these days with the iPad 1, I’ve stumbled on many other cases, and the result was always more or less the same: I found the old version of an app to have a more usable interface and a clearer interface language than its current counterpart. Despite all the pre-iOS 7 skeuomorphism, for many app interfaces of that time design was truly ‘how it works’. Today, more and more often (and it’s not only with iOS) I see examples where design is simply ‘how it looks’; attractive apps, but with ambiguous interface controls, poorly-designed UI architecture, and sometimes even with little to no accessibility, disregarding users with disabilities.

Usefulness

I’ll be honest: I didn’t expect much from an eight-year-old iPad in the usefulness department. I expected it to be severely challenged performance-wise. I expected it to be sluggish, laggy, unable to play modern videos, and so on. The iPad 1 completely caught me by surprise on practically every front. I was able to find many more working apps than I could have imagined. The iPad’s responsiveness was unexpected. I’ve watched a few YouTube videos with the official client, and playback was excellent (the only problem was with subtitles, which couldn’t be displayed). Even the iPad’s speaker sounded louder and clearer than my iPad 3’s. 

But the best test to prove whether the iPad 1 could still be useful eight year after its introduction, was also the simplest: I’ve brought the iPad 1 with me while out and about, leaving the trusty iPad 3 at home, and tried to accomplish the same things and carry out the same tasks I do on the iPad 3. It turns out that I didn’t miss the iPad 3 or iOS 9 that much. I could check Twitter, read my feeds, handle emails, browse the Web, check the weather, take notes, edit and annotate a few screenshots (Skitch is another example of ‘How great the UI was before’), upload some documents in Box and Dropbox, listen to music… Sure, I missed having an updated Google Maps for transit information, I missed certain specific apps, and a more complete Twitter experience, among other little things; but if I have to quantify this iPad 1’s usefulness at the end of the day, it still gets a solid 70–80% — which is awesome when you don’t expect more than 40%.

Another thing that struck me has been how very little I missed all the stuff Apple has added to complicate iOS’s user interface. Notifications were so few that I checked Notification Centre maybe twice in ten days (I know, push notifications have stopped working in some older apps, but still); Control Centre was missed more, but I quickly remembered how to reach the controls in the old way, and so its absence didn’t bother me that much. Today View… who cares? The uncomfortable truth is that iOS 5 had a great balance of simplicity and efficiency, a degree of straightforwardness in gestures and navigation, that got lost iteration after iteration. Today, you can do more with iOS 11 on an iPad, but the OS has become more complicated, less immediate, with a more complex (and at times opaque) gesture language, and a more stratified user interface. The tradeoffs of progress, I presume.

But for me, the most striking thing is this: if you look at this graph Apple showed when introducing the iPad Pro, you can clearly see how exponentially the CPU and GPU performance has grown in just a few years: 

CPU performance

Yet, what I’ve realised these past days while using the iPad 1 as my main iPad, is that if I had to draw a similar graph to indicate how much its usefulness has grown in the same time interval, the curve wouldn’t be equally dramatic. Really, the range of applications (in the sense of use cases) hasn’t expanded that exponentially, despite the increase in raw processing power and the better specifications of every iPad that has come after the first one these last eight years. This iPad 1 is definitely slower and can’t keep up where processor-intensive operations are required, no doubt, but the biggest blow to its usefulness today comes more from the dropped software and services support. And yet, whenever you find an app or service that still works under iOS 5 the same way it works on a modern iPad, then the iPad 1 suddenly gains usefulness points. Maybe the ‘Megahertz myth’ can be applied to iOS devices too?

In short — this iPad 1 has turned out to be more useful than anticipated, also thanks to the careful app setup I’ve assembled. On a personal level, the fact that I can go back and enjoy certain apps I had been missing (such as Posts, the WordPress client) makes the iPad 1 possibly more useful than my iPad 3 in certain areas.

Conclusion — It’s fun

Despite the sheer length of this piece (my apologies, folks), the message I wanted to convey is that it’s been a fun experience so far, and continues to be fun. It’s fun to rediscover the thrill of the first iPad. It’s fun to get back to that rabbit hole that is hunting for apps, quality apps that could still work on this iPad under iOS 5. In fact, I’ve never browsed the App Store this much in recent times. An even better resource has been Appshopper (even its old iOS app still works fine), and I’m also truly grateful to all the people who contributed to the AppStorm network for keeping online the archives of published articles and reviews. It has been a helpful resource for finding older, but still useful apps — if not for the iPad 1, at least for my other vintage iOS devices running iOS 6 and iOS 7. But most importantly, it’s fun being able to put this eight-year-old iPad to good use.

And last but not least, thanks again to David for gifting me the iPad 1 in the first place!

Speculation and dread for the next transition

April 22, 2018
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

Andy Ihnatko’s article for Fast Company, The Fifth Age Of Macintosh: What Happens If Apple Dumps Intel?, is perhaps the best I’ve read on this particular subject. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, the first paragraph of Ihnatko’s piece should be enlightening enough:

Apple uses its own purpose-designed CPUs for its iPhones and iPads, built around the ARM architecture. An article reported by Ian King and Mark Gurman, published by Bloomberg yesterday [2 April], says that the company wants to do the same for Macs and could start shipping computers with the new CPUs instead of Intel chips as soon as 2020.

The core section of the article is called “True Disruption”; Andy’s analysis and observations are lucid and I can hear that ‘sound of inevitability’ Agent Smith mentioned to Neo in The Matrix:

See, disruptive change is an opportunity to consolidate a lot of unrelated pain into a single, horrifying ball and get it all over with at once.

Which is why I can easily picture a plan to build ARM-based Macs that’s part of a bigger plan to change the whole character of the Mac. For years, MacOS has looked decidedly frumpy and unloved, and its few significant improvements (such as TouchID) have been iOS’s hand-me-downs. Maybe that’s because Apple has been sitting on some huge and wonderful ideas that’ll boost the Mac into a higher orbit, and they’ve put off rebuilding MacOS until they had a good reason to tear it all down first.

Or…maybe Apple’s longterm goal isn’t to transition MacOS into the next decade (or, hell, even just our present one). Maybe its goal is to transition Mac users to iOS. Apple’s obsessive love for the iPad has been made clear to me by both my observations of the product line and my conversations with people inside the company (present and former). It doesn’t seem ridiculous that Apple might push the Mac much closer to the character of the iPad, with the iPad Pro picking up enough of the Mac’s character and functions that the whole consumer Mac line would become redundant.

As you may have guessed, it’s this last paragraph what most concerns me. It’s something I’ve been pondering as well since reading that Bloomberg article, but Andy — amazing tech writer as he is — was able to put it all down in such a way as to actually fill this veteran Mac user with dread.

I’ve experienced all the transitions the Mac has gone through. The first one in 1994 — from the Motorola 68K architecture to PowerPC — was perhaps the most painless for me as a user. The Mac-oriented businesses I was collaborating with at the time had upgraded most of their machines, so I was always given rather up-to-date Macs to work on — and in 1994–95 they were all PowerPC Macs (I remember a Power Macintosh 7100 and an 8500). My personal Macs were still 68K machines, instead: a Macintosh Classic and a PowerBook 150. But they were still capable machines for my needs, and I had plenty of 68K software to choose from that was still working well. 

I remember that in those years (at least in my corner of the world) the 68K-to-PowerPC transition felt like something that was mandatory for professionals who needed the cutting-edge Macs, the latest and greatest, and most importantly who could really afford the upgrade ($4,000 for a Power Macintosh 8500 in 1995 was already a lot of money, something like $6,500 today, and in Europe Macs were sold at even higher prices). While home users weren’t really pushed to upgrade as it would happen nowadays. Even the ‘affordable’ Macs of the mid-1990s weren’t exactly affordable; peripherals and software applications used to cost much more; a Mac ecosystem was a much more pondered investment in general, and for consumer/prosumer users in particular. I remember purchasing that PowerBook 150 second-hand, and I paid a lot of money for it nonetheless, not to mention the investment for a StyleWriter, a scanner, an external SCSI hard drive and CD-ROM drive. I wasn’t about to drop everything and get a PowerPC Mac. I finally upgraded in late 1998, when PowerPC Macs had been around for four years already, and somehow I didn’t feel I was late to the party. The pace was slower at the time, kids.

The second transition — in 2001–2002 — was an operating system transition, from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X. This I remember to be more of a bumpy ride for some friends, mostly because certain software they depended on wasn’t yet being ported to Mac OS X and they were forced to either configure their Macs to dual-boot in Mac OS 9 and X, or to open those applications in the Classic environment. But again, this transition took long enough not to be abrupt, despite how some people felt at the time. Mac OS X 10.1 (Puma) was released in September 2001, the last update for Mac OS 9 came out in December 2001, and in 2003 there were still Macs capable of booting into Mac OS 9. On the software side, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, introduced in April 2005, was the last release to include the Classic environment; and since Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard was introduced in October 2007, those few users who still relied on very few, very specific tools not updated to Mac OS X, could still run them in Classic as late as 2007, six years after the first usable iteration of the new operating system.

The third transition — in 2006 — was again a CPU architecture transition, from PowerPC to Intel x86; and again, it wasn’t smooth for everyone. I was concerned at first: my then main machine was a somewhat recent PowerBook G4, and I worried that maybe it was already time to save my hard-earned money for yet another Mac with an Intel CPU. Thankfully, by focussing on my needs and being patient, I was able to make that PowerBook last for much more than anticipated. It also helped that in 2007 I was able to acquire a Power Mac G4 Cube for a really low sum: having a second Mac that was powerful enough to take care of secondary tasks, I managed to hold on to my PowerPC setup until 2009, three years after the transition. 

From a software standpoint, I still contend that the PowerPC-to-Intel transition was undoubtedly smooth. In the 2006–2009 period, Universal Binary apps were plenty, and when Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard came out in August 2009, it was indeed an Intel-only software, but thanks to Rosetta, Intel Macs running Snow Leopard could still run PowerPC applications. That was particularly useful because it helped extend the life of a few software suites I had regularly purchased, which weren’t exactly cheap: Adobe CS2, Microsoft Office 2004, and Quark XPress 6. PowerPC software was definitely left behind with the release of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, which didn’t contain the Rosetta interpreter, and Lion was released in July 2011, giving to PowerPC software a five-year grace period. (Even more, since a lot of people preferred to stay on Snow Leopard rather than update to Lion right away).

All these major transitions have common characteristics:

  1. They were all rather user-friendly and customer-friendly.
  2. They weren’t particularly rushed: there was both preparation and confidence on Apple’s part, and they unfolded over a long period of time and at an acceptable pace. Users had to update eventually, but they were given plenty of time to do so.
  3. All these transitions were for the better. PowerPC Macs (except maybe the first generation) displayed a noticeable performance leap compared with 68K machines. Mac OS X had a more robust foundation than Mac OS 9, and especially from Mac OS X 10.3 Panther to 10.6 Snow Leopard, its stability was remarkable. After the initial growing pains, it was clear that Mac OS X would turn out to be much better than Mac OS 9. And Intel Macs were simply much better performers than PowerPC machines almost from the start. Even the 1.5 GHz Intel Core Solo CPU in the Early 2006 Mac mini was twice as fast as the 1.5 GHz PowerPC G4 in the Late 2005 Mac mini. Added benefits of having the same Intel x86 architecture as PCs allowed installing Windows on Macs and configuring dual-boot Mac OS X/Windows Macs via Boot Camp; people who needed to work with both systems were quite happy about that. Oh, and the Mac became a better gaming platform, since more PC titles were more easily ported to work on Macs. (These are just the first things off the top of my head).

This rumoured next transition — from Intel-based Macs to ARM-based Macs — is once again for the better, at least on paper. In his piece, Andy Ihnatko rightly points out that having custom, Apple-designed chips inside Macs could bring the same beneficial effects we’ve all seen in iOS devices: stellar performance, great optimisation of the internal components, even tighter integration between hardware and software. But things have changed in the meantime. For one, today Mac OS evidently isn’t the primary focus of the company. Those past transitions were all done to benefit the Mac; the idea was The Mac shall advance. We’re changing and improving things under the bonnet, but the Mac is still the Mac and its identity won’t change. Instead, this theoretical Intel-to-ARM transition doesn’t feel as such. It feels as there are impending changes to the Mac operating system and platform that are clearly influenced by iOS. This makes me uneasy.

Let me tell you a couple of things straight away: One, there is nothing wrong with the Mac platform, except what Apple has been doing to it in recent years. Two, since Steve Jobs’s passing, my impression is that Apple has been progressively unable to properly handle their two major platforms, Mac OS and iOS. It’s like they can’t keep a balance of resources, development, and attention between Mac OS and iOS. Instead of envisaging a plan where the two platforms progress in parallel, and flourish by making the most of their respective strengths, what I’ve seen is a clear preference for iOS, and a clear progressive neglect of Mac OS. As a Mac user, this frustrates me. Apple’s secrecy, mixed with vague statements from the company’s top executives, is making me more and more anxious about the Mac’s future.

The signals couldn’t be more mixed. Apple seems interested in pleasing again their pro users (the iMac Pro, the new Mac Pro hopefully next year, the Pro Workflow Team, etc.). Tim Cook recently said in an interview that We don’t believe in sort of watering down one for the other. Both [The Mac and iPad] are incredible. […] And if you begin to merge the two… you begin to make trade offs and compromises. So maybe the company would be more efficient at the end of the day. But that’s not what it’s about. […] So this merger thing that some folks are fixated on, I don’t think that’s what users want.

And yet this doesn’t fully reassure me. It’s like watching someone nod vigorously while also saying “No.” Cook’s words tell me that the Mac is not going away. Good. But in what state the Mac is going to stick around — that’s my concern. For both the hardware and the operating system. The ideal scenario for this possible Intel-to-ARM transition could be a new generation of powerful Macs that can run both Mac OS and iOS applications. 

Now, this can run both Mac OS and iOS apps is something that can take many forms and directions. If the year were 2011, for example, such new direction would probably be framed as an advantage for the Mac, essentially. Imagine being able to develop and test an iOS app running natively on a Mac instead of inside a simulator. Or imagine playing that iOS game on the Mac directly, taking advantage of the more powerful Mac hardware. Or the benefits of the Mac/iOS integration, where the Mac can run iOS widgets and little utilities as extensions that, for example, can directly interface with another iOS mobile device. If this were 2011, the narrative would probably be, Here’s what iOS can do for the Mac.

But it’s 2018, and seeing where things are going, I worry that the narrative is going to turn out as this: Here’s what iOS will do to the Mac. Because I have the distinct feeling that if iOS is allowed to run on Macs, it will be the end for Mac OS. Maybe not entirely, maybe not overnight, but who’s going to develop Mac OS apps when one can develop a iOS universal app that can work on iPhones, iPads, and Macs? Sure, the Mac version will have to adapt to the non-touch, keyboard + mouse (or trackpad) user interface and interaction, but perhaps it will be less of a headache than having a separate SuperGroovy Text Editor for iOS and SuperGroovy Text Editor for Mac OS.

The only cases where I see Mac OS development survive is a) thanks to the tireless work of long-time, die-hard Mac developers; b) to make very complex Mac professional applications that take advantage of the sheer power of the Mac family of pro machines, and whose tasks and UI design require the non-touch desktop paradigm of a Mac instead of the iPad’s multi-touch interface and relatively small screen real estate. And so maybe Ihnatko is not wrong when he predicts:

I can see a near future in which the only Apple hardware that behaves anything like what we’d recognize as a Mac today are the Mac Pros. These are the pricey workstation-class machines that benefit the most from Intel’s top horsepower; I don’t want to even take a guess as to how long it would take for Apple to build CPUs strong enough to do what an iMac Pro does. So if you use Macs for making movies, apps, visual effects, and machine learning models, rest easy: I think your Macs are safe from the red banner of revolution.

The rest of us are in an itchy spot. The functions of a basic laptop such as the MacBook Air could easily be met by an ARM chip, I reckon. And the latest generation of consumer MacBooks already look like iPads (and involve painful sacrifices, at least if you aren’t a fan of their almost-zero-travel keyboards). Why wouldn’t Apple make them act like iPads, too? In the absence of any visible sign of Apple’s eagerness to make great consumer Macs, it’s a tough question.

Going back to the afore-mentioned three main common characteristics of the previous major transitions — they were customer-friendly, they weren’t particularly rushed, they were all for the better ultimately — while I think the possible Intel-to-ARM transition will be for the better, I sincerely hope it will also be customer-friendly, and that Apple won’t rush things, or approach this transition with the attitude I’ve seen too often in recent times, the “let’s try this and see if it sticks”, make-it-up-as-we-go-along kind of plan. I can stomach another transition, provided it’s done properly.

As a closing consideration, I have to reiterate just how silly and disheartening all the recent treatment of the Mac has become. That it’s inadequate, and has to be phased out, is just empty talk by all-too-eager iOS-only pundits. Obviously, everyone is free to use what’s best for them and speak about their preferences, but things like The Mac is too cumbersome and difficult to use, or that it’s inadequate for modern tasks, or that iOS is a superior platform are very subjective opinions, and not statements of facts. It’s also a bit hypocritical to invite Mac users to be more open-minded towards iOS as a professional tool, while iOS-only proponents aren’t similarly inclined to maybe get to know the Mac better before dismissing it as inadequate and awkward. As I’ve previously, repeatedly said, this iOS vs. Mac OS debate is toxic; Mac OS doesn’t need to be put aside to make iOS shine. It’s not a zero-sum game.[1]

This insistence that, between iOS and Mac OS, ‘only one shall prevail’ is so misplaced. Both platforms have a specific kind of versatility and a specific set of strengths. If you ask me, the smart position is Better both worlds than the best of both worlds — but both worlds need to be taken care equally. Currently, that doesn’t seem to be happening, with the Mac losing ground, and Apple executives not giving very strong signals that they love the Mac as much as they say they do. This rumoured next transition will be crucial and revealing in this regard. As Ihnatko concludes, either Apple has a big, revolutionary plan in store for the Mac, or it’s preparing for the last season of Mac OS. 

Never before has a rumour made me so anxious, though.

 

  • 1. After reading and appreciating Jason Snell’s feedback on Twitter, I have decided to revise this paragraph, eliminating a couple of particularly snarky comments. I’ve been having a lot of private conversations with too many folks who don’t seem to know Mac OS all that well, yet they’re happy to criticise it to promote their message iOS is the future. Adapt or perish. I wrote this piece after another recent conversation of this kind that got me even more frustrated and irritated, and so the first version of this paragraph contained my embittered reaction to all this nonsense. But the tone was gratuitous and out of line. I had no intention of insulting anyone’s intelligence. ↩︎