Riccardo Mori

Another period of tech fatigue

November 18, 2022

It’s been almost a month since the last update here. Not that I usually update this blog with great frequency, but this has been another period of ‘low tide’ for me. Just like it happened four years ago, as I wrote in Tech’s high speed, and my low tide. If you don’t want to read that piece before proceeding with this one, make sure you read it afterwards. Nothing has changed in four years. As I re-read that piece myself before starting to write this, I realised it’s something I could have written today.

In that piece I wrote, As for technology, it’s one of those periods when I’m feeling overwhelmed by everything revolving around it. Debates are exhausting. Debates are exhausting indeed. You see, on 28 October I started a draft in iA Writer with this working title: ‘My next Mac might be the last’ follow-up: discussing feedback and a few notes on User experience homogenisation. The idea was to talk about the many email messages I have been receiving since publishing that article (I haven’t replied to anybody privately, my apologies; work and personal stuff got in the way).

And also to talk about one particular aspect — User experience homogenisation — that was touched on in Episode 841 of MacBreak Weekly, when Leo Laporte quoted my article, which seems to have resonated with him, blowing my mind in the process. As I was watching the episode, I feared the worse, like These veterans are going to make fun of me or something like that. They didn’t, but they also didn’t give much importance to my observations. This was the part Laporte quoted for discussion:

I actually quite like most of what Apple is doing with the Mac, hardware-wise. The problem is I just can’t stand the software anymore. The problem is that I feel there is a troubling ungluing going on between Mac hardware and Mac OS, a substantial difference in quality between the two components, that doesn’t make me feel what I used to feel in previous versions of Mac OS X: seamless integration.

I think it all stems from Apple’s desire to simplify things for themselves, architecture-wise — Apple Silicon is quite innovative in bringing the advantages of iOS devices to Macs (performance + power efficiency). The terrible decision, in my view, has been to also want to bring the iOS look and feel to the Mac. It was unnecessary, it has broken so many tried-and-true Mac interface guidelines, and it has delivered a massive blow to the whole operating system’s identity. Just to make the Mac what, more fashionable?

The consensus among the MacBreak Weekly regular guests was that actually what Apple is doing to Mac OS is a good thing, that maybe some UI changes go a bit too far, but that typically Apple corrects them afterwards in case the pushback is strong. That a more visually cohesive look between the various Apple platforms is good for the ecosystem.

What I originally planned to write in the follow-up article, then, were a few observations stemming from this core question: Should the user experience on Mac OS be as similar as possible to iOS for the Apple ecosystem’s sake?

But then I dropped everything. This nagging voice inside me kept repeating: Is it worth it? Will anyone care? And I know that someone somewhere would care, but then I was overcome with the feeling that whatever I say, I will end up being treated like that famous Simpsons meme — “Old Man Yells At Cloud”.

This is where we are today in the ever-exhausting tech debate: either you happily embrace whatever kind of shit tech throws at you, or you’re an Old Man Yelling At Cloud. I may be wrong about this, because it’s based on personal, subjective experience, but more and more I end up feeling like these debates go nowhere. I still think it’s worth criticising and pointing out what I think is wrong — especially, crucially, when it comes to Apple — but there are periods just like this one in which it all feels so tiring and pointless. My observations and criticism will resonate with like-minded people, we’ll talk about them for a bit, and then everything will be business as usual. At the beginning of November, I blurted out this tweet: Funny how so many people tell me in private how they enjoy my blog and my tech commentary, but they so often forget to mention it in public when sharing recommendations on who to read in tech. 35+ years of experience in this stupid field and [I’m] still made to feel not good enough. “teknisktsett” replied that Some people don’t dare to agree on “hot topics”, publicly. I received a similar, longer response, via private email: “Don’t expect prominent writers and figures in tech to amplify your (always excellent and on-point) criticisms. They may agree with you ‘at home’, but ‘at work’ they’ll keep their facade because it’s counterproductive for them to agree with you”.

So here we are.

By the way, of course my answer to that question — Should the user experience on Mac OS be as similar as possible to iOS for the Apple ecosystem’s sake? — was going to be No. The short, simple example is that Mac OS and iOS have coexisted for years without problems, each interface taking advantage of each platform’s strengths and user interaction paradigms, and people didn’t seem to protest. Mac sales didn’t wane because Mac OS was sooo unfamiliar when coming from iOS. Macs didn’t sell well whenever there was something more immediately wrong with them, like Touch Bars replacing an entire row of useful keys, or MacBooks with keyboards that broke down on their own due to atrocious design decisions, or Macs with poorly-designed thermal management.

I’m not entirely against the spirit of bringing a more unified look to all the different operating systems within a bigger ecosystem like Apple’s, mind you, but I find worrying and incompetent to just cut certain parts (or certain visual aspects) of the UI of iOS and paste them onto Mac OS. The user interaction on a traditional computer with mouse/trackpad and keyboard is different from the interaction you find on a touch-based and Multi-touch interface. What severely annoys me about Mac OS Ventura’s new System Settings is that

They don’t solve what was supposedly a problem with the earlier implementation of System Preferences, i.e. making settings easier to find. In my opinion, things have actually worsened on this front. If you removed the Search feature in both the older System Preferences and the new System Settings, I’m pretty sure you’d still find stuff more quickly in the older System Preferences.
The interface of System Settings is just ‘off’ and inadequate on a traditional computer. Since it’s copy-pasted from iOS, the whole look & feel of it invites you to navigate it by touch, suddenly making interactions with mouse + keyboard more awkward. I saw with my own eyes someone at the local Apple Store trying to change the system appearance from light to dark by directly touching the MacBook Air’s display. Yes, for a moment one smiles at things like this. Then you realise just how bad the UI/UX situation has become on Mac OS.

There, I said it. This will have zero impact on anything, naturally, but it’s out of my system now.

Aside 1 — In After WWDC 2020: bittersweet Mac, written in July 2020, I said:

I’d hate to see a progressive oversimplification of the Mac’s UI that could potentially introduce the same discoverability issues that are still present in iPadOS.

I’ve always considered the look of an operating system to be a by-product of how it works, rather than a goal to achieve, if you know what I mean. If something is well-designed in the sense that it works well, provides little to no friction during use, and makes you work better, it’s very rare that it also ends up being something ugly or inelegant from a visual standpoint. How it works shapes how it looks. If you put the look before the how-it-works, you may end up with a gorgeous-looking interface that doesn’t work as well as it looks.

Or, as it’s happening more frequently now, a gorgeous-looking interface that misleads you because it’s made to look and feel like another user interface which was designed for an entirely different kind of device.

Aside 2 — In What about the M1 Macs?, written in December 2020, I said:

So, what about the M1 Macs? They’re unbelievably good machines, and everything that is genuinely good about them and future Apple Silicon-based Macs — sheer performance, astounding power-efficiency, and great backward compatibility with Intel software thanks to Rosetta 2 — will also allow Apple to get away with a lot of things with regard to platform control, design decisions, and so forth.

Guess what happened.

I’m just tired of seeing this passive attitude a lot of people seem to have towards tech companies and Apple in particular; the constant excuses made in Apple’s defence even when changes to the interface design break or interfere with their workflow. So much so that when you point out all those changes for change’s sake, they look at you as if you were the weird one; as if you were less smart for not wanting to adapt every single time and at every Apple designer’s whim.

I’m tired of hearing the same old song, Apple keeps beating financial records at every quarter, so they must be doing something right. Yes, yes, they make desirable products. Yes, the hardware is still attractive enough to make enough people want to purchase Apple’s products. And yes, Apple Silicon is groundbreaking, an undeniable innovation — but as I’ve kept saying for a while now, this groundbreaking technological advance is used to do the same things we used to do before, only faster and more efficiently. For some, this is enough progress. For me, it’s wasted potential.

I’ve already said it — I’ve never seen such stagnancy in software like in the past decade or so. What I do on my 2020 eighth-generation iPad I can do on my 2012 third-generation iPad. And sure, the eighth-generation iPad is faster and more efficient, but its sole software advantage is that a lot of the services behind certain apps work on iOS 16 but are deprecated on iOS 9. What I do on my 2015 13-inch retina MacBook Pro running Mac OS Monterey is essentially the same that I can do on my 2009 15-inch MacBook Pro with OS X 10.11 El Capitan. Here, some things are faster on the more recent MacBook Pro with Monterey, but from an interface standpoint in many situations I just work better under El Capitan on the older MacBook Pro.

Where’s the innovation here? Instead of researching and pushing out new software ideas to truly make people’s lives better, the latest Mac OS release’s highlights are… yet another way of working with application windows, redesigned System Preferences, and some other minor things I’m having a hard time recalling. But even if I’m forgetting a cute new feature, or the new Freeform app, my beloved pedants, what matters here is the big picture. And the big picture is that there simply is no real vision behind this technology. Even with something as big as Apple Silicon. What’s the plan? What I see from here boils down to, Let’s make these devices faster and more efficient. Okay, and… That’s it. Let’s make their operating systems look more homogeneous, too. It’s like watching an artist who has basically exhausted their inspiration or creativity and just keeps touching and retouching their last artwork.

That’s why, when people take the time to email me to tell me I’m an Old Man Yelling At Cloud because I don’t want things to change in tech, I laugh out loud in the privacy of my studio. What change!? Nothing has fundamentally changed in tech for a good while. I see ‘faster horses’ everywhere. What irritates me are the unnecessary changes inflicted on things and designs that were provably already working well, just to make them look different and behave differently; just to have the excuse that you’re now offering something ‘new and improved’ where in reality in most cases your lack of ideas and vision is making things worse.

I’m tired of seeing sloppy, borderline incompetent design work. I’m tired of seeing lowering standards when it comes to the user interface. (Jeff Johnson said it well back at the beginning of 2021: The selling point of the Macintosh was never the hardware, it was the user interface. So if the selling point now is the hardware, that’s a damning indictment of the current user interface. I cannot emphasize enough how everyone seems to have lowered their standards with regard to the user interface. He was right then — inspiring me to write The reshaped Mac experience — and he’s right now). I’m also tired of all these pundits and tech journalists who don’t want to openly criticise Apple for fear of ‘losing access’ with the company. Where’s the journalistic ‘speaking truth to power’ here?

Anyway, this is just the tip of the tech fatigue iceberg I’ve been experiencing as of late, and all these things do tire me, but they also make me mad, and that’s why I ultimately keep writing. I probably care more than I should, really.

Another period of tech fatigue was first published by Riccardo Mori on Morrick.me on 18 November 2022.

My next Mac might be the last

October 24, 2022

by Riccardo Mori

Tech Life

I’m aware that the title of this article could be viewed as clickbait. Sorry about that. It is, however, a very sincere snapshot of how I’m currently feeling about the Mac and Mac OS platform.

Ever since the misguided visual redesign of Mac OS when it transitioned from 10.15 Catalina to 11 Big Sur, and the questionable UI choices embedded in such redesign, I’ve been disheartened to see my favourite environment for work and leisure enter a downward spiral. And while engineering-minded folks like Howard Oakley have been praising certain security-related underpinnings of the latest three versions of Mac OS, I simply feel they’re over-engineered solutions that make things needlessly more intricate for the end user. I’m not going into details here not because I don’t know what I’m talking about, but because, more pragmatically, the list of examples would constitute an article on its own, and would definitely exceed the scope and focus of this piece.

Before you think I’m going to say things like Apple can’t innovate any more, again, no. It’s not that. I actually quite like most of what Apple is doing with the Mac, hardware-wise. The problem is I just can’t stand the software anymore. The problem is that I feel there is a troubling ungluing going on between Mac hardware and Mac OS, a substantial difference in quality between the two components, that doesn’t make me feel what I used to feel in previous versions of Mac OS X: seamless integration.

I think it all stems from Apple’s desire to simplify things for themselves, architecture-wise — Apple Silicon is quite innovative in bringing the advantages of iOS devices to Macs (performance + power efficiency). The terrible decision, in my view, has been to also want to bring the iOS look and feel to the Mac. It was unnecessary, it has broken so many tried-and-true Mac interface guidelines, and it has delivered a massive blow to the whole operating system’s identity. Just to make the Mac what, more fashionable?

The new System Settings and Stage Manager in Mac OS Ventura, to put it bluntly, are a fucking joke. They look and feel like implementation attempts you would see in an early beta release of Mac OS X, to be quickly scrapped or rectified in a subsequent release. And they sadly mirror the way Apple software & UI engineers think about this stuff. And this, in turn, sadly mirrors what Apple seems to prioritise when it comes to Mac OS. Instead of working on new ways to make the system more powerful, more versatile, taking advantage of the unbelievable performance of the M‑class processors, they’re retouching — and terribly so — certain parts of the system in a way that’s little more than cosmetic. And they’re fixing or adding to what was never broken: multitasking. To me, Stage Manager is as useful and practical an addition to Mac OS as putting a USB numeric keypad inside the packaging of a new MacBook Pro.

With this (and more) in mind, you can see how difficult and painful upgrading to a new Mac becomes for me. On the one hand, the hardware is great and so is the performance. On the other, getting a new Mac today means it comes with Ventura or Monterey preinstalled, which is unfortunate, and of course there is no downgrade path.

I still haven’t decided if my next Mac is going to be a laptop or desktop machine. If I choose desktop, I may bite the bullet and go for a Mac Studio, which should be future-proof enough for my needs. As a laptop solution, the M1 MacBook Air is what I find most appealing at the moment. Not only for the excellent price/performance ratio, but also because the M1 Air’s display doesn’t feature the stupid notch of the M2 Air and the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros. And it’s a model that originally came with Big Sur which, while still not being my favourite Mac OS version, at least it’s not Ventura, and I’m not forced to live with it from the start. Yes, you heard me well: I have no intention to go past Big Sur, unless some specific work-related reasons ultimately force my hand.

But why? — If you’ve read this far, you should have understood it by now, but in case I haven’t been clear enough: I loathe what Apple is doing with Mac OS now. The visuals, the UI… I simply don’t enjoy it. I tolerate it. Whenever I need to test a Mac OS app that has system requirements higher than Mac OS 10.13 High Sierra or 10.14 Mojave, and I switch to my 2015 13-inch retina MacBook Pro with a more up-to-date Mac OS version, my session doesn’t last one minute more than it needs to. It’s the same feeling an Apple fanboy would feel if they were forced to use Windows at work.

But what about security? Are you sure you want to stay on an older version of Mac OS? — Thankfully I’m tech-savvy enough to know what I’m doing. The two Macs I use most are still on High Sierra and Mojave, and haven’t received security updates in quite a while. I haven’t had any security-related problem whatsoever. Let me be clear: I’m not suggesting you shouldn’t care about security. I’m simply sharing what I’m doing, my choices, and my preferences. As it is, I currently much prefer to work and have fun in an operating system environment (High Sierra and Mojave) I love and enjoy using. An environment in which I am fast and productive. An environment which still reflects good UI and usability decisions that make it consistent, predictable, and a pleasure to use. And at the moment, I’m honestly more concerned by third-party apps dropping support of these older system versions rather than vague security threats. And if the worst happens, well, I’ll shoulder the consequences of my decision.

You’re weird / averse to change / just don’t get it — Feel free to think so. I’m not trying to convince anybody that my personal preferences are the way to go. But the point I’ve been repeatedly trying to present here and on social media in recent years is that Apple has done a profound disservice to Mac OS. In a misguided effort to ‘modernise’ it, they have made it more disjointed, more brittle, buggier, with baffling UI regressions that have often made me wonder whether there’s still a conductor on this Mac OS train(wreck). The decrease in overall quality is worrisome enough, but I also keep feeling a lack of focus and direction that keeps Mac OS functionally stagnant.

And as a result I, as a long-time Mac user, feel a bit left to my own devices — pun intended. Mac OS is a platform that’s deserving of going from mature to exceptional at this point. Yet I feel that the software tools Apple wants me to use today are getting worse and shallower, created or modified according to an equally shallower design concept that prioritises eye-candy over pretty much anything else. And pretty, ‘designer’ tools are great to showcase, not so great for those who need to use them for several hours every day and clash against their puzzling quirks. Then we wonder why so many people are nostalgic about Mac OS X Snow Leopard. I’m sure that, if a hypothetical ‘super-patch’ could be issued to bring Snow Leopard up-to-date with regard to Internet protocols and the like, many would gladly go back to use it. The fact that it could still be used to do 95% of the things a Mac does today should tell you enough about how much Mac OS has truly evolved in the past eleven years or so.

When I say that my next Mac might be the last, in the end, it means that unless Mac OS starts getting better — a process that would require making a few steps back and a serious course-correction — I don’t plan to invest more in this platform. That trepidation and sinking feeling of What are they going to break this time? every time the WWDC’s date approaches, has been wearing me down in the past few years. What one should feel, instead, is: Apple got this. I’m in good hands. I see no reason not to upgrade straight away. And I haven’t felt this in a long time.

Still, don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying I’m dumping the Mac and switching to Windows or Linux. I had stopped being Mac-only circa 2016 anyway. I’ve already been using Windows (and some Linux distro) with other hardware for a while now. What I plan to do is simply to get one more Mac that is new enough to ‘keep me in the loop’ for a while longer, while I keep using the Macs I have with the Mac OS releases I prefer working in. After that, I’ll keep investing in the Mac only if I find that Apple is moving in a direction I feel more compatible with and more in tune with my needs. In the tech world, we don’t owe loyalty to anyone.

My next Mac might be the last was first published by Riccardo Mori on Morrick.me on 24 October 2022.

EU mandates USB-C as standard for charging ports. Good.

October 10, 2022

by Riccardo Mori

Tech Life

Josh Centers at TidBITS:

It’s finally official. After years of discussion and failed attempts to get the industry to standardize, the European Union has mandated that new rechargeable electronic devices sold in the EU must have USB‑C charging ports by the end of 2024. The law applies to mobile phones, tablets, digital cameras, headphones and headsets, handheld videogame consoles, portable speakers, e‑readers, keyboards, mice, portable navigation systems, and earbuds, and it will extend to laptops in early 2026. The new law’s’ goal is to encourage more reuse of chargers and reduce electronic waste.

I have been loving the controversy about this in the tech sphere. If you follow me closely on Twitter, I apologise in advance for rehashing stuff I already wrote there. Sometimes I use this space to collect thoughts also to the benefit of those who just read my blog and don’t care about following people on social media.

I find sadly ironical how so many people seem to be just fine with whatever tech (and Big Tech) companies impose on them and on their experience as customers and users of their products, but the moment the EU mandates USB‑C as charging standard, this becomes a scandal.

Of all the silly arguments I’ve heard against this mandate, the silliest is perhaps the one that goes like, This stifles innovation, implying that tech companies — and Apple specifically — should be left free to decide what’s best for their customers.

Should we take a look at a few decisions Apple took in recent years to offer a ‘better’ experience in the name of innovation?

Starting from the release of the iPhone 7 in 2016, Apple arbitrarily decided to remove the headphone jack from iPhones, forcing people to either get wireless headsets or use wired headsets via a Lightning-to‑3.5mm jack adapter; or resort to a different adapter in case they want to use headphones while charging the iPhone. I’m sure Apple is otherwise pleased with the success of their AirPods. The AirPods’ design doesn’t allow for the tiny internal batteries to be replaced, which means more e‑waste at the end of their relatively short life-cycle.
In their effort to make thin laptops for thinness’s sake, Apple introduced a new type of keyboard with a redesigned key mechanism called butterfly mechanism. The idea was to improve things, but it turned out to be a poorly-designed solution that resulted in a high rate of failing keyboards, with many many customers having to bring their MacBooks to get their keyboard replaced at least once — but I know of many instances where people had to have their MacBook’s keyboard replaced two or even three times, and sometimes even out of warranty. This of course for customers meant additional expenses, not just headaches.
With the new MacBooks introduced in 2016, Apple dropped any port that wasn’t USB‑C/Thunderbolt, leading users to resort to USB adapters for anything — the infamous ‘dongle life’: want to connect a flash drive? Use an adapter. Want to read the SD or CF card of your camera? Use an adapter. Want to connect the MacBook via Ethernet to a wired network? Use an adapter. Want to connect a video projector for a presentation? Use an adapter. And so forth.

Some technophiles are quick in labelling the EU politicians as being idiots, ignorant bureaucrats that don’t know how technology works. Given the examples above, are we so sure tech companies really know what’s best for their customers?

And what sort of benefits would bring keeping Lightning around, exactly? What’s the ‘innovation’ there? In theory, the Lightning specification would allow for more uses than just charging, but even Apple itself has been under-utilising Lightning. So, if Lightning is essentially reduced to just being an alternative, proprietary charging solution, then I think it makes pragmatic sense to want to standardise charging solutions. Let’s don’t forget that mandating USB‑C will also make Micro-USB connectors and cables hopefully disappear. Along with all those cheap AC adapters (Lightning or Micro-USB) that come with non-detachable cables.

But anyway, what kind of innovation in charging technology this EU mandate is impeding? The only bit of innovation I’ve seen in this field in recent times is wireless charging and fast charging. With fast charging, we’re at a point that a smartphone is mostly recharged in little more than half an hour. Wireless charging still has room for improvement, in my opinion, but mandating a USB‑C port on the device won’t certainly impede progress in perfecting how wireless charging is implemented.

In other words, I think charging isn’t exactly a fast-moving aspect of technology that warrants being immune from standardisation attempts. If it were for the Silicon Valley types, people would have to change their power plugs and outlets every 5 years or so because ‘innovation’.

But even if we embrace the innovation argument, consider the following scenario: one year from now, Samsung comes out with a new charging technology and a new charging port. A proprietary port, of course. The astounding performance of this technology is touted as yet another feature to convince people to switch to Samsung devices. Now we have yet another charging port to deal with. Imagine those professionals who — either for personal or work reasons — are typically multi-device and multi-platform. When travelling they would have to deal with Lightning cables, USB‑C cables, different AC adapters, and the new Samsung cables on top of all that.

Having only USB‑C to deal with simplifies things a lot, and if some people bothered to look beyond their personal use cases, they would understand this. Having only USB‑C means that if you’re travelling with a MacBook, an iPhone, an iPad, and a modern camera, you’re most likely fine by just taking two USB‑C cables with you, and not even additional adapters other than the MacBook AC adapter, if you really want to travel light.

The reduction of e‑waste is something that isn’t admittedly apparent straight away; and that’s why, I assume, many people complain that this EU mandate solves next to nothing in this regard. The efficiency of having only USB‑C for charging starts being noticeable over time, though. When a device or appliance that uses Micro-USB, Lightning, or even other proprietary cables for charging, fails or you get rid of it otherwise, you’ll have to throw the corresponding cable or adapter as well (unless you find a way to reuse it with something else). If a device or appliance that charges via USB‑C fails or get thrown away or sold, both the cable and the AC adapter can be reused with every other USB-C-powered device. You don’t have to throw away proprietary cables/chargers, and you don’t have to buy new ones either. This, over a certain amount of time, and at scale, could be compelling. Less wasteful. Responsible.

Perhaps even innovative, in a sense.

EU mandates USB‑C as standard for charging ports. Good. was first published by Riccardo Mori on Morrick.me on 10 October 2022.

Not a great strategy

September 30, 2022

by Riccardo Mori

Handpicked

Via Nick Heer, I’ve learnt that a third-party Instagram client that launched as recently as a week ago was removed from the App Store.

TechCrunch:

Last week, a startup called Un1feed launched an Instagram client called The OG App, which promised an ad-free and suggestion-free home feed along with features like creating custom feeds like Twitter lists. The app raked up almost 10,000 downloads in a few days, but Apple removed the app from the App Store for violating its rules earlier this week.

Separately, Un1feed said that Meta disabled all team members’ personal Instagram and Facebook accounts.

[…]

“This app violates our policies and we’re taking all appropriate enforcement actions,” a Meta spokesperson told TechCrunch. The company also pointed to a blog post about clone sites.

Nick Heer:

Thereby illustrating the difference between what some users value about Instagram and what Meta values. Users want to view friends’ photos and videos on their own terms; Meta wants them to watch suggested Reels and shop.

I’ve titled this brief post Not a great strategy because it’s what I would say to both the Un1feed guys and Facebook/Meta.

Launching a clean Instagram third-party client that actually makes the Instagram experience better, is praiseworthy; but expecting that Facebook/Meta would be okay with it, that’s naïve. By the way, in an update to the story, TechCrunch adds:

Apple told TechCrunch that it removed The OG App as it was accessing Instagram’s service in an unauthorized manner, which violated the Meta-owned platform’s terms. The company cited section 5.2.2 of its App Store review guidelines, which states that if an app is displaying content from a third-party service, it should do it in accordance with the service’s terms of use.

So yes, this client wasn’t bound to last for very long.

But what about Facebook/Meta’s strategy? They have been progressively morphing Instagram into something, some thing that wants to keep being relevant by mimicking what a more successful competitor — TikTok — has already nailed.

It’s very unlikely that those who are already addicted to TikTok decide to drop it and switch to Instagram. Maybe they’ll watch a reel or two if it’s from one of their friends (which isn’t super-easy in itself, given just how much Instagram pushes content created by people you don’t know), but that’s it. And it’s very unlikely that someone wanting to express themselves and create stuff in TikTok format would favour Instagram over TikTok. It’s simply too late to think you can beat TikTok at what it does best.

Meanwhile Facebook/Meta is leaving behind what Instagram has done best for quite a long time: a place to share photos and moments from everyday life, and also a place to even showcase your work in a more professional and commercial manner.

No one among my friends and acquaintances likes Instagram now. And it’s not just early days nostalgia. It’s that the experience within the platform has become confusing and user-hostile. A friend commented that it’s like watching a TV channel where the contents are 5% movies and 95% TV commercials, and you never know when you’ll be able to watch the movies.

Sometimes I think that all the extraneous suggested reels and promoted content and non-linear timeline are a way to keep users doomscrolling so that they spend much more time within the platform that they normally would. The problem is that the ratio is wrong — the extraneous content is simply too overwhelming, and as a consequence people get frustrated and exit the app.

Or stop using Instagram altogether. I used to be a heavy Instagram user until Facebook acquired it. At the time, I didn’t want to delete my account, but I stopped uploading photos and kept my account active so that I could continue to comment and connect on other friends and follower’s photos/videos/stories. But even this kind of activity has become difficult and unpleasant simply because Facebook/Meta have decided to throw unwanted content in my face as I scroll the fucked-up timeline in the hope of finding a friend’s photo or moment to react to. As a result, I’m finding myself accessing Instagram more and more infrequently. And I’m definitely not alone in this.

Tech companies today are obsessed with evolving because the idea of keep doing what you do best doesn’t seem viable in the long run. But I disagree. Of course I’m not saying that one shouldn’t change anything at all and stay still, but deviating too much from the formula that made you extremely successful isn’t a great strategy either, as we can see in Instagram’s case. Despite its missteps and flaws, Twitter has done a better job at this. Twitter today is very different from what it was in 2006, it has certainly become richer and more complex, but the core idea is the same. Twitter, too, has been adding intrusions to the timeline and has pushed for a non-linear timeline, but the non-linearity is fortunately still optional, and the intrusions aren’t overwhelming to the point that you stop seeing tweets from your friends and people you follow.

Instagram on the other hand has made insecurity its instability and volatility.

Apple’s Far Out event: a few observations

September 17, 2022

by Riccardo Mori

Tech Life

1. Enrich people’s lives

Yet another presentation where Tim Cook has used the expression, Enrich people’s lives. I know it’s Apple’s mission, but the man is really starting to sound like a broken record in his introductory speeches.

2. Save people’s lives

The first segment was about the Apple Watch. Those testimonials with ‘regular people’ recounting how their Apple Watch ‘saved their lives’ felt so off to me, so contrived, and ultimately lacking taste. Yes, yes, Apple, you desperately want people to think of the Watch as a useful tool first, luxury gadget second, but sometimes it’s enough to let the device speak for itself.

Those testimonials were meant to sound gripping and moving, but turned out to have almost the opposite effect for me — they sounded artificial, they felt more docu-drama than documentary, and in some cases borderline ridiculous: if my heart rate spiked to 187 beats per minute, I would notice there’s something wrong without having a smartwatch tell me it’s better I call emergency services. I had a terrible, frightening panic attack in early 2004 triggering an episode of tachycardia I had never experienced before or after. When the paramedics coming to my apartment checked my heart rate and told me it was 178, I was already feeling a little calmer thanks to their very presence, therefore my heart rate must have been even higher when I decided to call them earlier that night. I didn’t have a smartwatch telling me my heart was racing; I felt it myself.

3. Useful, boring, not for me

Keep in mind I’m not particularly interested in the Apple Watch as a product. I’m glad it exists and I’m glad many people love it and find it useful in their daily lives. It’s not a product for me, though. Despite my previous observation, I don’t question its usefulness for fitness and health. It’s simply a device that does too much, throws too much information at the user, has a complex user interaction design (too complex for what I want in a watch) and — last but not least — I just don’t like its visual design.

Speaking of visual design, the main Watch Series keeps looking iterative, and I joked on Twitter, 2015–2022: seven years of Apple Watch looking essentially the same. The Apple Watch Ultra, on this front, feels fresher finally.

4. Push those boundaries harder

Someone high in Apple’s hierarchy must really love this stupid naming scheme based on Pro, Max, Ultra because they’re surely sprinkling these suffixes like stardust across their product lines. Apple Watch Ultra just sounds ridiculous to my ears. Anyway.

Considering the Watch Ultra’s target audience (explorers, athletes, scuba divers, rugged outdoor adventurers), I’m a layperson, and as a layperson its set of features initially felt very cool and useful. But my friend Alex Roddie, an experienced outdoorsman, is not impressed. He shared his first impressions with me on Twitter as the event was unfolding:

As someone who has tested countless GPS watches actually designed for mountain use, I’m not impressed by it. 36 hours battery life is pathetic. 65 hours would be just about competitive these days.

And by 65 hours I mean 65 hours of full-burn GPS tracking. I doubt that the Watch Ultra can cope with even a third of this, which makes it years behind the competition.

It’s so painfully obviously a device designed by urban people who want to ‘disrupt’ a market they don’t understand.

I look for a device that will last at least 13–14 hours of full-burn GPS tracking in a day, and then do this day after day without charging, offline, in sub-freezing or wet conditions, and with zero babysitting.

If I need to charge it more than twice a week, or go online more than occasionally, then I’m not interested! Just like every other Apple Watch, this requires too much babysitting for serious mountain/trail use.

Admittedly, for a watch that is designed to ‘push the boundaries’, 36 to maybe 60 hours of battery life doesn’t feel like a lot of pushing. Which makes me wonder, why not design the Ultra in a different way, removing every possible battery-draining feature in the first place, instead of having that huge, bright OLED display? Maybe they wanted to guarantee maximum readability, but again Alex Roddie chimes in:

Almost every serious outdoor GPS watch has a transflective display, perfectly readable in sunlight, with a backlight that’s off by default and sips power. A power-hungry OLED is the wrong choice.

And adds:

I also saw nothing in that presentation about backcountry mapping software. Yes, you can install WorkOutDoors, but that’s a third-party app, depending on the work of a single developer. Where’s the first-party topo mapping support?

My guess is that the Apple Watch Ultra will be a success, overall, but its sales will be mostly driven by a less extreme audience — Sunday hikers, recreational divers, and people who want to look cool with the more ‘rugged watch’. I’m not in the market for an Apple Watch, but if I were, I’d probably get an Ultra just because the regular Apple Watch design is so iterative and boring that the Ultra’s looks quite fresh in comparison.

I have the feeling that many of those people who really push the boundaries, the people Apple wants to market the Ultra to, have already realised that this watch is too limited — or simply inadequate — for their needs, and will keep relying on their Garmins, Suuntos, and Casios. Sure, the Ultra may have potential, but you don’t purchase a tool that must have your back in highly dangerous situations based on what it may be capable of in a future iteration or software update.

5. Small earphones, short observation

New AirPods Pro. Hard pass. I’m sure they’re great at what they do, but I simply cannot use this type of in-ear earphones. I’ve tried several, from many brands, but they simply don’t stay put in my ear canals. If I had to choose an ideal model of true wireless earphones, the third-generation regular AirPods would be my pick. They’re not in-ear, and their stems are short enough as not to be ridiculous like the first AirPods. Though I’m not sure I’d spend €200 for a product whose life cycle coincides with the one of its tiny, non-replaceable battery.

6. The fourteens

Ah, the new iPhone 14 line. As all rumours anticipated, the iPhone mini form factor is no more. There is a regular iPhone 14 with a 6.1‑inch display. Then there’s a new, bigger regular model — the iPhone 14 Plus with a 6.7‑inch display. Both these models feature the same notch and the same A15 Bionic chip of last year’s iPhone 13 line. There are subtle differences if you read the tech specs carefully. Probably the most notable (i.e., the least insignificant) difference is that the A15 Bionic chip of these two iPhone 14 models has a 5‑core GPU, while the A15 in the iPhone 13 models has a 4‑core GPU. And of course the newer iPhones have the new emergency features touted at the event — Emergency SOS via satellite, and Crash Detection.

If you don’t like big phones, you’ll have to hold on to your iPhone 12 or 13 mini for a bit longer (or there’s always the SE). Pro or not, the new fourteens only come in two sizes — big (6.1″) and bigger (6.7″).

The iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max are of course the more interesting devices. They do feature a new chip, the A16 Bionic, and a more sophisticated and capable camera array on the back. At this point, several professional photographers have already chimed in, explaining and showcasing what kind of improvements you should expect, and how everything compares to last year’s iPhone 13 Pro. I liked Ted Forbes’s first impressions video and the obligatory annual in-depth feature by Austin Mann. Check them out, they can surely guide you through the details better than I could.

My takeaway is that if you’re a hardcore iPhone-only photographer, and you’re constantly looking for the best camera experience in an iPhone, you’ll probably want to upgrade from your 13 Pro. If you just use the iPhone as the quickest shortcut to take a photo, and want to take the occasional good-looking photo, I suspect a regular 14, and even the previous 13 and 12 models will be enough (13 mini and 12 mini if you, like me, prefer smaller phones).

And if you, like me, don’t really care about camera specs and performance in an iPhone, because you still prefer using traditional cameras, you’ll end up saving even more money. If you also hate big-ass iPhones with notches, then you’re welcome to do as I did — purchase a third-generation iPhone SE.

7. Dynamic Island, the place where fanboys get high

If you’ve been following me for a while, you know I’m really passionate about user interfaces, and in fact many readers have already contacted me and urged me to share my thoughts on that new mix of hardware and software feature of the new iPhone 14 Pro models — the Dynamic Island.

I generally agree with everyone else: it’s a clever feature and an intriguing execution to solve an otherwise annoying design detail iPhones have had for 5 years now: the notch.

Despite the mantra You get used to the notch pretty quickly that everyone and their dog and perhaps even Apple themselves have been chanting since the iPhone X debuted, the unquestionable thing with the notch is that it was there, in all its ugliness, taking up most part of the very top of the display, disrupting the status bar’s usefulness, and generally being an intrusive element and a sore sight æsthetically.

Physically, this new Dynamic Island is detached from the upper bezel and is smaller than the notch we’ve seen on iPhones since the X. And as I tweeted during the event, my first impression is that at least with the Dynamic Island, Apple has found a way to embrace this minor notch in such a manner that makes people look at it instead of making them try to ignore it.

Look at it and also actively interact with it, because it’s been transformed into something that’s indubitably useful, and with an interaction model that finally seems to have been designed by people who know something about what they’re doing.

Of course, however, now we have all the geeksphere and fanboyland cheering Apple as masters of genius design and interface innovators, meanwhile my eyes have been rolling so much they hurt. Even John Gruber dared to cast this fireball with a straight face (emphasis mine):

I don’t think an iPhone-style Dynamic Island will ever come to iPads, either. For one thing, I’m inclined to think iPad bezels will never shrink to the point where the sensor array won’t fit behind them. For another, iPads now have mouse pointer support when connected to a trackpad and the same illusion-ruining factor I mentioned about the Mac would apply. But here’s an idea: perhaps the Dynamic Island would come to the iPad purely in software. The iPad hardware sensor array would still be hidden in the bezel surrounding the display, but iPadOS could render a pure software Dynamic Island on screen. That, I think, would work completely. You could rotate the iPad and the Dynamic Island would always be at the top. The mouse pointer wouldn’t disappear under any actual hardware sensors. It’d just be a black stadium rendered entirely by software. It could actually be more elegant than the iPhone’s Dynamic Island because there’d be no sensors to disguise.

Yeah, let’s draw a persistent black spot in an otherwise clean user interface because why not. Because now apparently there is no other way (more elegant, more device-appropriate) to replicate the functionality of the Dynamic Island. Instead of working towards eliminating all kind of display intrusions, let’s literally go draw these intrusions where there’s no reason to. By the way, I suspect that if Apple really did that to iPads, the Dynamic Island won’t be “more elegant than the iPhone’s” because it probably would have to be bigger for usability reasons — I doubt that the notifications and animations on a Dynamic Island that’s kept at the same iPhone size on an 13-inch iPad Pro would be as useful, enjoyable, and readable.

So while I agree that the Dynamic Island is a clever bit of UI, it still remains a workaround to make a hardware design weakness become a software and UI strength. And I’ll say it’s great work, indeed. No snark here.

But also…

8. Mac OS, the castaway on an island bereft of ideas

What are these same clever Apple designers doing on the Mac? As I watched the Dynamic Island being illustrated and demoed during the event, I kept thinking about how this design cleverness has been sorely lacking on Mac OS for years. And I am, once again, left with the impression that the software designers at Apple today have generally a better understanding of iOS than Mac OS. New features that are iOS-first or iOS-only feel certainly more organic, more fitting, more ‘right’ for lack of a better term.

What they’ve been doing on Mac OS — or rather, to Mac OS — are repeated attempts at a visual and functional iOS-ification that leave many long-time Mac (and computer) users baffled. And not because these users are “afraid of change”, or “don’t understand Apple’s innovation”. But because this general dumbing-down of Mac OS and the Mac’s UI shows the incompetence of UI designers who don’t get basic UI principles of traditional computers’ operating systems, and are arrogantly trying their new coats of paint because “it’s time to touch things up otherwise they feel too stale”. They keep fixing what isn’t broken. The result is the needless and badly-executed redesign of System Preferences in Mac OS Ventura. The result is shoehorning yet another multitasking interface layer — Stage Manager — that is entirely not needed on Macs because what was there already worked well enough; Stage Manager looks and feels like a last-minute bolt-on that complicates the multitasking UI instead of making it more efficient and streamlined.

It’s like Apple’s mission with the Mac’s UI has become to take by the hand all these poor users coming from iOS devices who might find the Mac soooo difficult, soooo complicated to use, and need its UI to be as close to the iPhone and the iPad’s otherwise they’re utterly lost. At times I even suspect that many of those interns at Apple working on Mac OS are all iOS-devices-first people.

All the clarity about the direction iOS has to take, along with the iPhone; the way iPhone/iOS features are thought out, developed, and implemented, appears almost nonexistent on Mac OS and the Mac. Where is, in Mac OS, that solution that is as clever as Dynamic Island on the iPhone 14 Pro models? Where is, in Mac OS, that attention to detail, that innovative thing that makes you utter, Hah, they clearly know what they’re doing and where they want Mac OS to go — where is it?