Riccardo Mori

Ulterior motive

June 20, 2014

Dieter Bohm at The Verge, writes:

The phone’s rear camera has a lot more work to do than just taking photos. It also facilitates one of the Fire Phone’s key features: Firefly, a way to scan and identify products and media around you just by pointing a camera at something. Amazon wants you using this a lot, and it’s put a dedicated button on the side of the Fire Phone that’ll send you right into Firefly mode.

This lets the Fire Phone do a number of different things. For one, you can pull up more information about TV shows or paintings, you can look at a record to start a new radio station based on it, or you can scan in text, like a phone number. More important for Amazon though is Firefly’s ability to identify products, like food and books. You can guess exactly where this feature is going: once you scan a product, you’ll have the opportunity to buy it from Amazon. It’s a clear shot at brick-and-mortar retail stores, giving shoppers an incredibly fast way to compare prices. And usually, there’s a good chance that Amazon will win out. There simply has never been a better device to help you indulge in impulse purchases — a prospect that has us both intrigued and terrified in equal parts.

This is precisely what makes me uncomfortable about the new Amazon Fire Phone. Since it was unveiled, this smartphone gave me a bad vibe, but I didn’t know exactly why. After thinking over it a while, maybe I’ve found the reason. The Fire Phone doesn’t feel like a personal device, it feels like a consumer tool, a purchase enabler, and little more. Something that reminds you all the time how very directly it is linked to the business of the company that made it.

You may say “Duh, but of course it is,” and you may also say that it’s how Amazon takes care of its ecosystem, just like Apple does. The difference between the Fire Phone and the iPhone, however, is that when I’m using my iPhone, I don’t feel like I’m holding a device designed to make Apple rich with every 1‑click purchase I may make. Sure, Apple takes its 30% cut with every purchase in its various Stores; and sure, Amazon and Apple offer different things and services; but I hope you understand what I mean.

More importantly, the Fire Phone is a customer tool that’s also designed to make you a potential accomplice of Amazon in screwing its competition. With Firefly, the Fire Phone is the best possible device to engage in that practice I despise — entering a shop, scanning an item, and purchasing it online at Amazon instead of buying it from the very shop you’re in. As Bohm writes, often that item’s price will be lower on Amazon, but I’d like to think that, by spending a little more (and sometimes it’s really a matter of a few Euros) you can have the item right now and you can support local businesses.

I know, the Fire Phone is mostly targeted at Amazon customers, and if you read Farhad Manjoo’s conversation with Jeff Bezos on the New York Times, you’ll see Bezos singing his usual tune, that Amazon is doing what it’s doing to help customers, that the device is designed to be “different constrained by customer caring,” et cetera. And it’s not that I don’t believe that, but — on a purely emotional level — I feel more respected as an Apple customer than as an Amazon customer. I’m not comparing the quality of the service, but the approach. With Amazon, I always have the feeling there’s some ulterior motive at play, like I’m constantly being enticed and nudged towards the purchase of goods. From what I’ve seen so far, the Fire Phone is Amazon’s best device to offer that kind of user experience, which I don’t find appealing at all.

On a final note, as soon as the Fire Phone was introduced, I asked a friend of mine — who does a lot of shopping at Amazon and owns an old Kindle and a Kindle Fire — whether he was interested in getting the phone as well and going ‘all in’ with Amazon’s ecosystem. He promptly replied that no, he wasn’t interested and found the phone “a bit perplexing and kind of creepy.” He added: “And all that tilting and auto-scrolling, no thanks, I’m already seasick as it is.” He’ll keep shopping at Amazon from his Kindle Fire and he’ll definitely keep his iPhone, he says, because he can shop Amazon from there just as well if he wants, and because of the “superior app offer.” The iPhone, he said, is the best of many worlds, while the Fire Phone is just one world — Amazon’s.

Why you should read me

June 14, 2014

by Riccardo Mori

Tech Life

Today, more than ever, it seems that everyone is writing; everyone has an opinion on everything, and apparently everyone’s mission is to let the world know about it. The amount of noise, online, is disorienting. That makes building an audience difficult. And even when the occasional article is mentioned or linked by prominent writers or websites, people will come — perhaps even a lot of them — but few will stay.

In The post-traffic-spike chill, I wrote:

In other words, people don’t seem to stay or at least willing to explore more when they arrive on a blog they probably never saw before. I’m surprised, and not because I’m so vain to think I’m that charismatic as to retain 90% of new visitors, but by the general lack of curiosity. I can understand that not all the people who followed MacStories’ link to my site had to like it or agree with me. What I don’t understand is the behaviour of who liked what they saw. Why not return, why not decide to keep an eye on my site?

The other day I was thinking about this subject again and I figured I could address it from another perspective.

As I was saying, there’s a lot to read online these days, lots of interesting voices, but we can’t read them all. When we find someone new, there’s a question going through our minds while we’re deciding whether to add this someone to our feeds or not. The question is, essentially: Why should I add this person? What makes him/her special or otherwise worthy of my attention?

So I’m going to try to offer you an answer here. I might sound immodest here and there, but I’m simply being honest with you.

The short answer

I know how to write, I’m good at what I do, I do my homework, I publish an article only when I have something to say, I respect my audience and welcome constructive feedback, and I also write fiction if that’s more your thing.

If you want a more articulate answer, keep reading.

A few reasons why you should read me

I know how to write — As immodest as this sounds, it’s something you can readily judge for yourself. Feel free to explore my site and read my articles. While you do that, think about this: English is not my first language. (I’ve studied it since I was 4, and I’ve been writing fiction in English since the 1990s.)
I know my stuff — I’ve been passionate about technology since my teens. I was involved in Desktop Publishing when I was 18. I know computers. I’ve researched the subjects of design, user interfaces and usability for years. I’ve read a lot about the most diverse subjects because I was born curious and eager to learn. If I write about something, it’s because I’ve had experience of it; before writing about something, I do my homework.
I write only when I have something to say — Growing up I was taught to give an opinion only when I really had something to say — something useful to bring to the table — and to shut up otherwise. And it’s what I do here, that’s why you won’t necessarily find ‘new stuff’ every day. I’m usually up-to-date when it comes to the latest tech debate, but if I feel I don’t have much to contribute to the discussion, I won’t write about it.
I respect my readers — If I keep my site updated and my projects running, it’s not because I’m hungry for pageviews. It’s not because I somehow make money out of it: there are no ads here, and no annoying social media widgets either. I want this to be a pleasant place to visit, I want to contribute something useful and to provide articles that can retain some value over time, not just spur-of-the-moment pieces that are bound to lose their relevance as soon as a certain discussion is over. And although comments are disabled, I’m always, always interested in constructive feedback and criticism. As I said above, I know my stuff, but if you know more or have more experience on the topic I’m discussing, I’m always ready to stand corrected if I make some mistakes or provide incorrect information.
I don’t rehash, reblog, or do one-line commentary — The vast majority of what I offer here is made of original articles. I don’t like ‘linked-list’ or ‘parasite’ blogs maintained by people who evidently have little to say and to offer apart from a quip or a few words of commentary; people who basically have something to say always in response/reaction to someone else, but rarely — if ever — contribute to the debate with something personal, original, genuine. I never wanted my website and blog to be like that. I don’t like the idea of using a link and a one-line comment just to create filler content for when I have little to say — you know, just to keep the place updated. I respect my readers too much to do that.

I also write fiction

Here on Morrick.me I mostly write about technology, software, design, user experience, usability, and then I have a section — Et Cetera — that I use to publish articles and writings about other subjects I may occasionally cover, like creative writing, translation, or even thoughts and musings of a more personal nature.

But before being a tech writer, I’m a writer — period. I’ve been writing poetry and fiction since the late 1980s/early 1990s. It’s been hard work. I started in Italian, of course, then for a while I wrote stories both in English and Italian, and in recent years I switched to English-only.

I have published the first volume of short stories of a series called Minigrooves, and you can purchase it on the iBookstore. If you want to know more about the book and the project, read this article. As I wrote there, The 42 stories are quite varied and should appeal to a wide audience. Each of them has its particular ‘groove’, each of them has its mood, and since each story is self-contained, you don’t even have to read them sequentially. Some stories are longer and more complex than others (they were published in parts when they first ‘aired’ online), and therefore you’ll likely enjoy them more when you have more time to read.

If novels are more your thing — especially sci-fi novels set in a dystopian near future — then you may be interested in Low Fidelity, the novel I’m currently publishing in serialised form inside Vantage Point Magazine (a compact digital magazine I’ve launched on Apple’s Newsstand platform).

If you want to know more about Low Fidelity — to have an idea of the project, the world of the novel, etc., you can also check out the Crosslines//Low Fidelity website.

If you want to know more about Vantage Point Magazine, read this article or visit Vantage Point’s website.

You can support my writing by purchasing Minigrooves and/or subscribing to Vantage Point Magazine. I strive to offer quality content and good fiction, and I think I’m not asking that much in return.

WWDC 2014 keynote: iOS 8

June 13, 2014

by Riccardo Mori

Software

iOS 8

As a general introductory observation, with regard to iOS, the amount of new things showcased at the keynote has left me positively thrilled. I’ve read a lot of articles discussing iOS 8 in the past week, and the overall vibe seems to be: I had more than a few complaints about iOS 7 and iOS in general, but Apple appears to have addressed most — if not all — of them, and that’s great.

Honestly, I didn’t have many complaints about iOS 7. It’s funny how certain things, that are major peeves for others, don’t really bother me that much. I guess it all depends on the way we use our devices and the features we’re most dependent on. But still, I’m glad iOS 8 introduces so many improvements and fixes. I particularly like the fact that most of the innovation is implemented in a rather subtle way. Visually, iOS 8 doesn’t appear much different than iOS 7, it’s what Snow Leopard was to Leopard on the Mac. But once you wrap your head around what iOS 8 will add to your devices, you realise just how powerful a release it’s going to be. (It’s a huge release, Cook said emphatically, and he’s right.)

A better Notification Centre

The first area of the UI to be addressed is Notification Centre. Now we have interactive notifications: for example, you get the notification that a new SMS has arrived; you pull down, and you can reply to the message right there where you are, without even entering the Messages app. It works for all kinds of apps, and it works on the lockscreen: you swipe and you can act on a notification. When you see a notification you don’t want to deal with at the moment, you just flick it away.

Gestures and shortcuts

Many little interface improvements seem to revolve around the idea of accomplishing more by moving around less. For instance, now in the Multitasking interface you can also have access to the people you communicate with most frequently. I must say that, while I like this feature on principle, the device’s screen looks a bit crowded now.

In Mail, now there are more actions that can be accomplished with a single gesture, like marking a message as unread, flagging or deleting it. And when you’re composing a new email, now you can pull down the message to access the rest of your email.

Safari on the iPad gets a similar Tab view as Safari in OS X Yosemite. And Spotlight gives you suggestions like in OS X Yosemite, both when you’re using Spotlight alone or within Safari. Again, the idea is to ‘get there faster.’

QuickType

In iOS 8, QuickType supports predictive typing suggestions. So, as you type, you get suggestions for the next words you might want to type. It’s smart and context-sensitive. It learns how you type to different people in different apps. Apple isn’t forgetting the user’s privacy, either: all that learning happens locally on the device and none of your keystrokes leaves the device.

Here’s one feature who got a huge sigh of relief from many users and developers who were annoyed by iOS’s limitations when compared to Android. I’m pleased, of course, that Apple has introduced more versatility for the virtual keyboard. But I must say, I didn’t have many complaints about iOS’s keyboard. Since I use three different international keyboards to communicate (English, Italian, Spanish), I’m curious to see the efficacy of QuickType under these conditions. I’m a slow typist on the iPhone, I can’t fast-type using two thumbs like many people do, so these predictive typing suggestions for me are simply a ‘nice to have’ addition. If they end up speeding my typing a little, fine; otherwise it’s not the end of the world. What I hope, though, is that QuickType doesn’t end up getting in the way like Autocorrect does every now and then.

Messages

Lots of new touches for the Messages app and experience. If you usually do a lot of group messaging, now you can name a thread; add and remove people; activate the Do Not Disturb feature on a per-thread level, and leave a thread whenever you want. You can share your location with people in a conversation (and you can choose if you want to share it For one hour, Until end of day, or Indefinitely). You can have a nice overview of all the pictures and attachments shared in a thread.

I use Messages rarely, and I’ve never done any group messaging, so again I understand these new features will be a welcome addition for other people, but won’t change my experience much. Something that will, though, is the new Tap to Talk feature: now you can hold your finger down on the Microphone button, and then you can just swipe up when you’re done talking and send what you said. Even better: you can actually listen to audio messages and reply to them from the lockscreen simply by raising the iPhone to your ear. You lower the iPhone, and your audio message in reply is sent. This is a very cool touch, and a great example of Apple design and usability.

Finally, audio and video messages are set to automatically expire after a few minutes (you can choose to keep them if you want). A snapchat-like feature that has the added benefit of saving storage space, considering the bigger size of audio and video files.

iCloud Drive

I’ve already discussed iCloud Drive in the Mac OS X part of this recap, but I really like how it can be a great way to work across apps on iOS as well. As Federighi explains, you can bring up your iCloud Drive panel and open documents directly from other apps (e.g. in Sketchbook you can open a compatible document that is located inside of GoodReader). And when you edit that document, changes are automatically saved back to their original locations. I like how transparent this all feels, interface-wise.

Enterprise

I’m guilty of paying less attention to features that don’t affect me directly. Enterprise features are among these. The Device Enrollment Program seems cool. Federighi: “You can get your iPhone/iPad new, and when you open it up it’ll immediately configure itself for your enterprise, setting up mail, getting your messages, setting up calendars, and automatically downloading your enterprise apps.” Take a look at the other Enterprise features coming in iOS 8 on Apple’s website.

Health

Federighi: HealthKit provides a single place that applications can contribute to a composite profile of your activity and health. It comes with a corresponding app, Health. With it, you can monitor all of your metrics that you’re most interested in your activity. You can use third-party apps and you can decide which of those apps have access to your healthcare information.

You can read more about Health and HealthKit on Apple’s Health page. There’s a lot to like about this. I’m sorry for not providing more insightful observations, but I’m really not into this recent ‘quantified self’ trend. One thing I’ll say, though: some see Health and HealthKit as the unmistakable proof that some sort of ‘iWatch’ is coming — but I don’t know. Perhaps I’m reading the whole thing wrong, but to me, at this stage, Apple seems more interested in providing a good ‘connective tissue,’ a reliable platform (much in the same vein as HomeKit — see below) where different health-tracking devices can exchange data between one another, and where all the data collected end up in the iPhone’s Health app.

Sure, Apple could also release a smartwatch / smartband / smart-something to do the same thing, but wouldn’t that be just redundant? And if it doesn’t do the same thing (where by ‘same thing’ I mean collecting health-related data and metrics), it would be interesting to see which features this smart-something is going to have to make it appealing a) to those who already have an iPhone, and b) to those who could potentially be interested in entering Apple’s ecosystem via such a device. It’s the same old iWatch debate.

Family Sharing

This is another nice feature. Federighi: Once you set up your family as a family unit in iOS, you can share photos with the Shared Photo Stream, share calendars, reminders, configure Find My Friends, find your kid’s devices, etc. With Family Sharing you can get not just your purchases, but the purchases of all the members of your family — up to 6 family members who all share the same credit card. Kids can make purchases with your credit card, but when they try to make a purchase, they get prompted to ask you for your permission — and you get messaged on your device about what’s happening.

In my household in particular, I guess the most used feature will be the shared calendar.

Photos

Federighi: We’re bringing together Photos + iCloud, so that every photo you take is available to you on all of your devices. We’re not only preserving the common organisation edits you do to all of your photos for your consistent iCloud photo library, but your device actually has access to more photos in the cloud that it can physically store locally, so you can get them all, wherever you are.

As I noted in the Mac OS X part of this recap, this is iCloud done right and put to good use. What I like most in the new Photos app is Smart editing: now there are smart controls for Light and Colour, and also for things like auto-straightening and cropping. Both the Light and Colour smart meters are nice because they give you an instant preview of how the whole photo will look like. And you can also fine-tune the single parameters if you like.

Also nice: Search suggestions to find photos (locations, time, and also on albums you set up).

Federighi: What about the Mac? We are working on a new grounds-up photo solution for the Mac built with iCloud in mind. It’s going to be shipping early next year.

It appears that the app is called simply “Photos” and at the moment it looks more like a reimagined/redesigned iPhoto rather than a mix of Aperture and iPhoto (it appears it lacks Aperture’s pro features). Some say that the new Photos app for OS X will replace both iPhoto and Aperture. I think it makes more sense to keep both apps and keep targeting the different audience of beginners and professional photographers. Personally, I’d love to see a separate, revamped Aperture that could be a more up-to-date competitor to Adobe’s Lightroom. But who knows, maybe Apple will be able to provide a single photo app with a smart interface that stays simple for beginners and enthusiasts, but that can also reveal powerful and versatile pro controls for power users who know what they’re doing.

iCloud storage new pricing plan

First 5 GB free
20 GB for $0.99/month
200 GB for $3.99/month
Tiers available for up to 1 TB

While I think Apple could have easily offered 10 GB free, the new plans are actually very affordable, especially the 20 GB option (it’s like buying a $0.99 app each month). On the whole, though, I agree with Nick Heer when he writes:

Upgrading to substantially more storage is now very reasonable, but the free tier just feels so stingy to me, and the $0.99/month price for 20 GB of storage also feels a little nickel-and-dimey. I understand that there are loads of people that will pony up a buck a month for increased storage,1 and that Apple generates revenue by asking people to exchange money for goods and services, instead of exchanging their searches for “green wart on pinky toe” for ad money. I appreciate that. But 5 GB of storage just feels so weak in 2014.

From one perspective, it’s just a dollar a month to quadruple your storage. But from another, it’s “Really? You’re going to charge a dollar a month for enough storage to back up only up to a 16 GB iPhone?”.

While Federighi is recapping iOS 8, behind him there’s a slide with a dense list of iOS 8 features. I only managed to catch a few of them, which I find intriguing: DuckDuckGo support in Safari (yes!); Battery usage per app; Panoramic photos on iPad; Separate focus and exposure in camera; iBooks built into iOS; See your books as series in iBooks; Braille keyboard …

New Siri-related features

“Hey Siri” to invoke Siri without touching the device (useful in the car).
Shazam song recognition
Purchase iTunes content
Streaming voice recognition (As you talk you can see what Siri is recognising.)
22 new dictation languages

iOS 8 for developers

New App Store features

Explore Tab to further help users find the app they’re looking for.
Top trending searches.
Continuous scrolling list to help you search faster.
Related searches.
New Editors’ Choice logo.
Giving developers the ability to form App bundles so users can buy multiple apps at a discounted price with just one tap.
App previews: developers can add short videos to the app’s screenshots. This is an excellent addition, and I think it’s going to be a nice deterrent against fake apps and various app scams. (Sure, some shady ‘developers’ will probably go as far as uploading fake videos next to the already fake screenshots, but I don’t know if it’s worth the trouble, generally speaking.)
TestFlight: New beta test service. Developers can invite users to beta-test their app and get the results right in TestFlight, and it’s all free.

Extensibility

Federighi: Apps from the App Store will be able to extend the system and offer services to other apps. Now, in iOS’s security model, apps are isolated inside of sandboxes where they can access their own data, but can’t get at your personal information or mess with other apps without your permission.

Extensibility builds on the same sandboxing model: extensions live inside an app’s own sandbox with access to its own data, but other apps can reach out by way of iOS’s security mechanisms, and talk to that extension; and that extension can even project UI right back into the originating app.

This enables nice things:

Sharing — In addition to the system’s built-in sharing options, an app like Pinterest can offer its own share sheet to Safari.
Actions — An app like Bing could offer translation right inside of Safari, accessing the webpage’s content right there.
Photo filters — Third-party photo filters inside the Photos app. (See below)
Documents — Apple will enable third parties to define their own document providers that work within the iCloud Drive-enabled application.
Widgets — Finally, Apple is enabling third-party apps to define widgets that can now go in Notification Centre.

In the related Demo, we see Craig Federighi edit a photo in Photos. In addition to the options at the bottom of the screen, there is an Extension button at the top left. He taps the button and the available extensions are displayed — from the Waterlogue and VSCO Cam apps in this case. After selecting Waterlogue, we can see that the extension is able to run in the context of Photos to directly manipulate the image in Photos, but through Waterlogue’s UI. After all changes are applied, you’re back to Photos’ UI.

For a photo app addict as myself, this is fantastic, and again it’s part of Apple’s plan to focus on shortcuts in iOS 8 more than ever, making users accomplish more without having to jump in and out of different apps all the time. It’s the same principle behind widgets and extensions: we can see existing widgets in Today’s View in Notification Centre, and adding a widget is very easy. On the iPad, Federighi shows how he can easily place a bid using the interactive eBay widget right from within Notification Centre. Similarly, in Safari, Federighi illustrates an example of a translation performed directly in a webpage via Bing’s translation extension.

Then there’s another kind of extension: the ability to install system-wide third-party keyboards, though within a very strict sandbox with no network access so as to protect your privacy. You can, of course, grant permission to such extensions if you want to be able to use all the features provided by a third-party keyboard. Again, many users and developers are rejoicing because they’ll be able to take advantage of third-party solutions such as Fleksy and SwiftKey. I admit that after trying such input methods (on my wife’s Android phone and in Wordbox for iOS, a text editor that integrates the Fleksy keyboard), I haven’t been able to get accustomed to either of them. My typing speed and accuracy decreased while using them, and I was happy to return to the traditional iOS keyboard. However I’m eager to try something like Minuum on the iPhone. Go to this post on Minuum’s blog if you want to sign up to be among the first to try Minuum on iOS.

Touch ID API

Now third-party apps can take advantage of Touch ID as well. Touch ID:

Protects logins and user data
Unlocks keychain items
Identifies successful matches
Protects fingerprint data

Federighi: Touch ID always keeps the fingerprint data itself completely protected inside of the Secure Enclave in the A7 processor. The fingerprint information is never exposed to third-party apps, or to the rest of the system for that matter.

I’ve seen Touch ID in action at my local Apple Store when the iPhone 5s was introduced, and I was struck by its speed, responsiveness and general accuracy. Opening the technology to third-party apps is smart, and there are so many use cases where Touch ID could make things both easier and secure for the user. I’m thinking security apps that rely on master passwords, or apps like TimeLock that pretend to be a simple alarm clock but can actually store photos and files you want to keep hidden and secure in case someone else handles your device. With all the passwords we have to create and memorise today, having a reliable fingerprint sensor and a technology like Touch ID can really improve matters. (Case in point: after not using TimeLock for a while, I had forgotten the unlock code to access my files. Thankfully I recalled it after a few attempts, but what if I couldn’t? Having Touch ID as a failsafe would be nice under similar circumstances.)

Camera APIs

Federighi: For manual control of exposure, white balance and focus, we’ve enhanced the PhotoKit API with faster performance, the ability to read & write to the library (the photo library that’s now your cloud photo library) and perform non-destructive edits.

Little by little, the iPhone’s camera is becoming a serious photography tool: the hardware and optics get better at every iPhone release, and the software is getting so powerful and flexible that the amount of in-camera editing is simply impressive. I still like shooting with compact cameras because they have better ergonomics and they’re easier and more stable to handle, but it’s easy to see how their category is getting increasingly less important.

HomeKit

The current situation with home automation devices is that each one has its app. Lights, door locks, webcams, thermostats, garage door, etc. — and each one ends up defining its own network, its own security mechanisms. Federighi: We thought we could bring some rationality to the space. We started working with the leaders in home automation devices and we came up with HomeKit, with a common network protocol.

Locks, lights, cameras, doors, thermostats, plugs, switches
Secure pairing (only your iPhone can open your garage door or unlock your door).
Control individual devices
Group devices into scenes
Siri integration (You can say “Get ready for bed” and make sure that your garage door is closed, your door is locked, the thermostat is lower and lights are dimmed.)

I find HealthKit and HomeKit’s approaches to be similar. In both cases, Apple wants to provide a platform where different apps controlling different things can coexist and communicate. And again, the iPhone seems to take a prominent central position in this digital hub. At this point, to those who think that HealthKit is a ‘clear indicator’ that an Apple smartwatch is coming, I’d like to ask whether the same can be said for HomeKit. Will Apple launch some sort of home automation wearable remote? Will there be a new line of Apple wearables with different designs and functions, a bit like the iPod family of products? Will there be just one jack-of-all-trades wearable that interfaces with HealthKit and HomeKit? Or will HealthKit and HomeKit remain software platforms, conduits, and everything will revolve around the iPhone?

In my opinion, any of these outcomes is possible. If you asked me which of these scenarios I like the most, I would say the ‘no wearable device’ one. It’s a playing-safe kind of innovation: Apple would still innovate by providing a strong, coherent infrastructure built on HealthKit and HomeKit, and would avoid the risk of launching a new device that might interest fewer people than expected. But then again, what do I know? Maybe everything is already planned at the hardware and design level, and all will be revealed this autumn.

CloudKit

As Federighi explains, currently a developer has to take care of both the client side and server side of an app:

Client side	Server side
App client code	App logic, Authentication, Asset storage, Database storage, Search, Push notifications…

CloudKit takes over the cloud part and provides the developer with a client-side programming model that lets the developer access iCloud authentication, storage, search, and more.

Client side	CloudKit
App client code, App logic	iCloud authentication, Asset storage, Database storage, Search, Push notifications…

Federighi: CloudKit is free — with limits. CloudKit scales the data allocated to an app and bandwidth based on the number of users using that app. And this goes all the way up to providing a developer with:

1 PB of assets
10TB database
5TB/day asset transfer
50GB/day database transfer

Note: here begins the part of the keynote where things start getting rather technical. I’m no developer, so I have little to no insight to offer. (It would be presumptuous on my part to offer opinions on things I don’t fully understand, would it not?) I’ll just offer a quick recap of the basic things mentioned by Federighi. Refer to Apple’s website for more detailed information. On a general note, these are all improvements that are making developers happy — at least, that’s what I gather after reading around on the Web. And if developers are happy, we Apple customers are going to be even happier in the end, because we’re going to get even better apps and a richer experience on iOS devices.

Metal

Federighi: OpenGL is the standards-based way for high-performance 3D graphics on iOS, giving you access to the power of the A7 processor, but often it ends up being a thick layer between what a game wants to accomplish, and the hardware.

Metal dramatically reduces OpenGL’s overhead, giving the game near bare-to-the-metal access to the power of A7. The results are stunning: up to 10x faster Draw call rates.

In addition to these dramatically reduced overheads, developers get access not only to the graphics but to the compute power of the GPU.

Metal supports Precompiled shaders and efficient multithreading.

(I was astounded by the EPIC Games demo of Zen Garden. I was having a bit of a hard time believing that such fluidity and responsiveness of the simulated environment were possible on an iPad.)

SpriteKit and SceneKit

SpriteKit has been enhanced from last year. Added support for:

Light sources
Field sources
Per-pixel physics
Inverse kinematics

SceneKit is a 3D scene renderer designed for casual games.

Physics engine
Particle systems
Scripted actions

Swift

Federighi: What would it be like if we had Objective‑C without the baggage of C? We did more than think about it: we have devised a new programming language called Swift:

Fast, Modern, Safe, Interactive
Completely native to Cocoa and Cocoa Touch
Build with LLVM compiler
Optimizer and Autovectorizer
ARC memory management
Same runtime as Objectve‑C

Conclusion

Tim Cook: Perhaps, more importantly, you’ve seen how our operating systems, devices, and services all work together in harmony. Together, they provide an integrated and continuous experience across all of our products. …

Apple engineers platforms, devices, and services together. We do this so we can create a seamless experience for our users that is unparalleled in the industry. This is something only Apple can do.

During the entire keynote, and as new features after new features were introduced, I couldn’t help thinking about Phil Schiller’s famous quip at WWDC 2013 when he was presenting a first peek at the new Mac Pro: Can’t innovate anymore, my ass!

A lot of commenters stressed the importance of this WWDC 2014 keynote because, above all, Apple is conveying a kind of confidence that had yet to be witnessed after the passing of Steve Jobs in 2011. And it’s true. It’s the confidence of a company, of a group of people, who just know they can innovate. And every time, after a keynote, when I read the various reactions on the Web and social networks, I’m always appalled and — kind of amused — at how many people still fail to understand Apple and its methods. And how many people just don’t get the fact that for Apple, when it comes to innovation, the big picture is more important than the single product. Sure, sometimes it begins with a product, but it’s never the product alone.

The success and the impact of the iPod wouldn’t have been so huge without the music ecosystem created around it. The success and the impact of the iPhone weren’t produced in a vacuum. The iPhone, in a certain sense, was a giant upgrade of the whole iPod platform and ecosystem. The product itself did indeed contain innovative technologies and features, but what kept fuelling its sales and diffusion, and what produced the whole innovation was the sum of the product and the possibilities: what it could do, what it could be used for. The applications.

Other times, innovation begins with tools. Not with ‘magical’ products pulled out from a hat, deus ex machina-style. This is, I think, the message (or one of the messages) behind this amazing WWDC 2014 keynote and conference. Tools to build a coherent and cohesive user experience. Tools that stimulate the creativity of Mac and iOS developers, who can come up with ideas and solutions Apple probably hasn’t even thought about at this stage. Solutions that end up building in detail an ecosystem for which Apple is offering general blueprints and inspiration. Together with the confidence of knowing they can innovate, now we’re also seeing an open attitude of humility — as if to say: We know we can innovate, but we and you developers can do so much more by collaborating together. This rings a bit differently from the previous attitude under Jobs’s leadership, which always felt a bit like: We’re Apple, we are charting the course of innovation, and you developers can ride along if you like.

WWDC 2014 keynote: Mac OS X

June 11, 2014

by Riccardo Mori

Software

It was amazing

For me, that was easily the second best Apple keynote after the introduction of the iPhone in January 2007. With so many new things introduced, I needed a few days to process everything. And I decided that it would be worthwhile to rewatch the keynote and take extensive notes in the meantime, so that I could present some sort of ‘critical recap’ interspersed with my observations. Considering the length of this, I thought it would be better to split it in two parts — one about Mac OS X Yosemite, the other about iOS 8.

Introduction

Tim Cook is getting a better speaker event after event, keynote after keynote. He looked more confident, more spontaneous and more relaxed than in previous appearances. He looked excited, and not just reciting his speech. Then Craig Federighi — the ebullient senior vice president of Software Engineering — stole the show.

Name is Yosemite. OS X Yosemite.

I hope they’ll get to OS X Weed further down the line, though. That version could have a choice of Dalmatian and Flower Power desktop themes. (I guess only long-time Mac users will get the joke.)

OS X’s new interface

As easily predicted, Yosemite sports a flattened UI. Yosemite is to Mavericks what iOS 7 has been to iOS 6. The funny thing is, I loved iOS 7’s interface from the very first moment Apple showed it, but a lot of people didn’t, and had to get used to it over time. With Yosemite, it seems the reaction is the opposite from what I’ve been reading so far. A lot of people are loving it already, and I guess I’ll have to get used to it, because for the moment it raises a few concerns. There are some things I do like, while for other visual choices the impression I have is that Apple has put stylishness over usability (or at least Apple’s idea of elegance over usability). The impression is that, at this juncture, for Apple the more important thing is that OS X looked visually more like iOS. And that has come with some tradeoffs.

My main concern is the choice of leaving Lucida Grande behind as system font, and opting for a custom Helvetica Neue variant that has been tweaked to be more suitable (and readable) for the task. I’ve already voiced my concerns about this matter here and here and I won’t bore you further. I’m not using a beta version of Yosemite, but according to those who are, it seems that the new font is better in person than on screenshots. I guess I’ll have more to say when using OS X on a daily basis, in a few months.

Another detail I’m not particularly sold on is the insistence on translucency in the new UI — especially in Finder windows. I have the desktop wallpaper set to change every 30 minutes, and some of my favourite wallpapers are rather busy images. I also typically have at least 7–8 Finder windows open at all times (I’m not a big fan of Finder tabs). I really am curious to see how these two things combined with Yosemite’s translucency effects are going to impact the overall clarity of the interface for me. During Federighi’s demos I had the feeling (or maybe he even said it) that Apple sees this translucency as a way to ‘give depth’ to the interface. I think that works better on iOS, though. On a computer’s interface, I think it’s important that the user focuses on what’s in the foreground, instead of continuously getting hints of what is in the background. Federighi, about the translucency effects: “All in all they come together for a gorgeous and more usable version of OS X.” We’ll see, won’t we?

I love the new Dock, though. They finally got rid of the 3D shelf look for a glassy 2D look that I believe really works great on OS X. I also like most of the new icons. I’ll have to get used to the happier, more cartoonish Finder, and I find peculiar that — while the overall trend is towards abstraction — Mail’s icon actually feels even more realistic than on Mavericks and earlier OS X versions. I also love the new Dark Mode for the interface, and I have the feeling it’ll be my default mode.

Notification Centre: It gets a new Today view, like on iOS, and the contents of this Today view can be extended by using widgets from apps downloaded from the App Store. I think this is a brilliant way to make widgets become something actually useful, and makes more sense than having a Dashboard space where widgets are gathered all there a bit isolated. (Yes, in Mavericks you can have Dashboard overlay the screen, but overlaying the whole screen breaks the workflow more starkly than invoking this new Notification Centre.)

Spotlight: The new interface looks a bit like Alfred: now the search field and results window appear more prominently in the centre of the screen, instead of being confined in the sort of interactive menu we’ve seen from Tiger to Mavericks. Search has also been extended, including external results from Bing, Wikipedia, Maps, etc. As it says on Apple’s site, Spotlight now “gives you richer, more interactive previews of your results. So you can read a document, send an email, or make a phone call by clicking a result.” The new Spotlight interface is a modernised version of the good old Show All panel that was first implemented under Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger to then disappear in Leopard, much to my chagrin.

Spotlight interface on Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger

Spotlight interface on OS X Yosemite

Of course this new Spotlight is an improvement, especially for people like me who don’t rely on any other third-party app. I hope the new interface behaves like the current Help Viewer — i.e. it remains always on top no matter how many Finder windows and application windows are littering the screen. I also hope it’s Desktop-agnostic, meaning that if I trigger Spotlight on Desktop 4 and then jump to Desktop 1, I should be able to find the Spotlight panel there as well, without having to hunt for it among Desktops and open windows via Mission Control.

Like others said, these more powerful search options in Spotlight, coupled with its instant availability, are an interesting jab at Google — it’s certainly easier to perform quick searches without even opening a browser tab or window, especially if you can readily act on search results (e.g. maps results or movie information).

iCloud Drive: With iCloud Drive, Documents-in-the-Cloud folders are easily accessible in the Finder. You can get contents that are not stored on your Mac, namely documents created on your iOS devices; and you can organise these documents however you want, with folders and tags, and keep them synced across Macs, access them from iOS devices, and even from Windows devices. I really like the direction Apple is (finally) taking iCloud. For how I work with files, this new Dropbox-like approach is certainly a step forward and will make me use iCloud more.

Mail Drop: Mail Drop is an ingenious way to send large email attachments (up to 5 GB). Apple best explains how it works: When you’re signed in to iCloud, Mail Drop lets you send large files like videos, presentations, even a folder of images without having to worry about your service provider’s limitations. With Mail Drop, when you send a large attachment, it’s automatically uploaded to iCloud. If your recipients use Mail, they’ll receive the attachment just as they do today. If they use another app or webmail, they’ll receive a link to download it. These past years my ‘attachment policy’ has always been to upload any file bigger than 3 MB on my server or on Dropbox, then send my recipient a link to the file. I like how Mail Drop makes this process automatic and makes you save time when you have to send lots of emails with attachments.

Markup: With Markup you can annotate photos directly within Mail, and you can also handle PDF documents (e.g. filling forms and signing PDFs on the spot). Two observations here: 1. Even with this simple feature we can see how Apple is really focusing on the user’s workflow: instead of doing the annotation work separately on a third-party app and then sending the annotated document, now the process is made quicker and more straightforward because it can be done all from inside Mail; 2. I like how you can mark up an image by using the Mac’s trackpad as a touch interface and this, in turn, makes me wonder: how long before a similar feature appears on iOS? I think it’d be great to have, especially on the iPad.

Safari: As expected, Safari gets the full iOS treatment in Yosemite. From a GUI standpoint, some details don’t convince me much. I’m not sure I like the reduced width of the unified address bar. In the screenshots it reminds me of iTunes’ LCD panel a bit (which is not a compliment). Also, I’m not really sold on Safari’s translucent chrome. It may have some sense on the smaller screen of an iPad, but on a Mac I don’t know if I want to see webpage contents scrolling behind the address bar. I also share Min Ming Lo’s concerns when he writes in his Mac OS X Yosemite Under the Magnifying Glass:

A couple of things in the new Safari do not sit well with me. The toolbar UI elements do not fit nicely into a grid. The traffic light buttons are not perfectly middle aligned but sit somewhere between middle and top aligned. The new tab button is also quite annoying because its placement and size does not fall into a proper grid.

Another important change in the new Safari is that you only see the top level domain of the site you’re on. This change does not affect most people but I personally would like to see the full URL at all times.

Nitpicking apart, Safari brings new features I quite like: smart suggestions; the fact that RSS in the address bar is back (sort of: now you can Subscribe in Shared Links); and the new Tab view is really well done (by the way, the first Web browsers to implement such feature — granted, not this elegantly — were Shiira and Camino a few years back). I remain neutral on the new progress bar, which is now a thin line appearing at the bottom edge of the address bar when a website is loading: on the one hand I find it quite coherent with the general UI; on the other, I still think it should be a little more visible than that.

Continuity

This is the moment in the keynote where things start getting really interesting. First, AirDrop now works between iOS and OS X. I really look forward to using it in a few months, when I’ll hopefully upgrade to an iOS 8‑capable iPhone. So far, I haven’t even been able to use AirDrop at all, because it’s not supported on the iPhone 4, and AirDrop on my Mac is useless since I don’t have any other Macs with Mavericks apart from my main MacBook Pro. When I’m able to exchange files via AirDrop between iOS and OS X, I’ll finally get rid of a number of iOS apps I’ve purchased over the years that let me accomplish the same task. (I won’t get rid of all of them, though, since I’ll still need apps like Scotty and Air Sharing to send photos to and exchange documents with my PowerPC Macs wirelessly.)

Then, Handoff: when Federighi introduced this, I really cried Brilliant! out loud. With Handoff, you can pick up on the iPhone or iPad what you were doing on the Mac, and vice-versa. And with Instant Hotspot, the Mac can connect automatically to the iPhone’s personal hotspot when you’re out and about and there isn’t a public Wi-Fi access point available. I like that, when you’re connected to the iPhone, you can see the iPhone’s signal strength and battery indicator right in the Mac’s Wi-Fi menu. Back to Handoff, I really like how the feature is implemented visually. In the demo, when Federighi is composing an email on his iPhone, there is a new ’tile’ appearing on the far left of the Mac’s Dock, a sort of addition with Mail’s icon and an iPhone badge over it. When Federighi switches to the Mac to finish the message, he clicks on that icon and enters Mail, which displays the email at the exact point he left it on the iPhone. When he is on the Mac browsing in Safari, the iPad nearby is aware of the activity, and a little Safari icon appears on the bottom left of the iPad’s lockscreen. To continue browsing on the iPad, Federighi just performs a swipe up, and enters Safari.

Text messages: Currently, when you receive messages from people who are using non-Apple devices (Federighi calls them the “Green bubble friends”), you can see those messages only on your iPhone. Until now. Thanks to OS X Yosemite and iOS 8’s integration, you’ll be able to receive those messages on your Mac, too. Same goes for phone calls: when you receive a phone call, explains Federighi, your Mac gives you the caller ID, and you can even answer using the Mac. And you’ll be able to make a phone call from the Mac as well (e.g. you’re browsing the Web for a restaurant, and when you find it, you can click on their phone number in the search results, and a contextual “Call [phone number]” menu will appear.

Conclusion

Features like these are what makes me love Apple the most. Again, there isn’t anything exactly new under the sun. The first thing that came to mind while watching Handoff in action was webOS’s Touch to Share, but of course what Apple has done is much more advanced and seamless. What’s more, Apple is going in what I believe is the best direction for OS X + iOS. This kind of integration, this focus on ‘continuity’ and workflow means really putting an ecosystem of devices at the user’s service. Some have said that the new centre of today’s digital lifestyle hub is going to be the iPhone. After this WWDC 2014 keynote I’d like to think that the centre is the users themselves, surrounded by (Apple) devices working as assistants and as a team. This makes much more sense than, say, merging OS X and iOS in one single hybrid OS, something that wouldn’t work because operating systems work best when they’re device-specific.

Note also how a lot of this is made possible by finally putting iCloud to good (and full) use. Since its inception, I couldn’t help but think of how crippled iCloud felt, at least from the perspective of someone like me who heavily relies on services like Dropbox, Box, and CloudApp and Simplenote. And not only that: so far iCloud has felt ‘unpredictable’ and ‘obscure,’ to the point that I rarely used it to sync files, and I haven’t even activated iCloud Photo Sharing. So far, I’ve always considered iCloud more like a MobileMe 2.0, if you know what I mean. But when Federighi started talking about iCloud Drive, I knew things were finally looking up.

And this is only the beginning of a new course. I think I can see a common denominator that indicates, more than anything, the nature of Tim Cook’s leadership and style as CEO of Apple: collaboration and cooperation. It started with the company’s internal reorganisation at the executive level. Remember the reasons given for Scott Forstall’s ousting:

So the changes — it’s not a matter of going from no collaboration to collaboration. We have an enormous level of collaboration in Apple, but it’s a matter of taking it to another level. You look at what we are great at. There are many things. But the one thing we do, which I think no one else does, is integrate hardware, software, and services in such a way that most consumers begin to not differentiate anymore. They just care that the experience is fantastic.

(Source: Bloomberg Businessweek)

A lot of developers have already noted how all the new features and tools introduced at the WWDC clearly indicate more openness on Apple’s part, and Apple’s intention to create a more collaborative environment with developers. I think this collaborative attitude ultimately reaches the final users through the synergy of OS X Yosemite and iOS 8. I agree with Eric Jackson, Apple Isn’t A Hardware Or Software Company — It’s An Ecosystem Company, and I think that before long, Apple will be able to provide users with more than a simple ‘digital hub.’ After all I’ve seen introduced at this keynote, the level of user experience Apple is building may become what I like to call a ‘personal infrastructure’ — where applications, services, devices all work (and ‘just work’) in tight integration all the time. Sure, it’s the ultimate lock-in, but if it works great, respects my privacy, and makes me work better, why not?

Preliminary notes on some of OS X Yosemite’s UI elements

June 6, 2014

by Riccardo Mori

Software

Thanks to this post by The Typist, I’ve enjoyed Min Ming Lo’s first look at some details of OS X Yosemite’s redesigned user interface. Take a look at his Mac OS X Yosemite Under the Magnifying Glass, with various annotated screenshots and thoughtful commentary. This article has been really useful to me because it shows parts of Yosemite’s interface I hadn’t seen yet. I generally agree with Min Ming Lo’s observations, but I wanted to add some personal notes to a few specific details I’ve noticed, so I borrowed 5 images and added my remarks right there. (My notes are written in a bolder font weight that should make them distinguishable from Min Ming Lo’s contributions.)

Lucida Grande vs Helvetica

Okay, bear with me here, but I have to insist: Helvetica Neue, however tweaked, is still a poor choice as system font compared to Lucida Grande. You may like it more for personal reasons, but look at the image and tell me, honestly, which font is more legible at 12 pt.

Dock

The lighter tooltip may look more elegant, but I wonder what happens when you have an application window or a Finder window with a white or very light background right above the Dock. Currently, the darker tooltip along with the embossed Lucida Grande makes for a very noticeable label in any situation (which is the main purpose of these tooltips). That thin font and that light coloured tooltip? I don’t know.

Translucent notification badges: again, cool-looking for sure, but a bit fainter than on Mavericks. This is, admittedly, a minor peeve.

Simple dot for indicator light: a real step back, in my opinion. Compared to Mavericks, these dots are barely visible. People who keep a lot of application icons in their Dock, like me, need to have better indicators for active apps.

(Click to enlarge)

The song remains the same: these UI elements all look more stylish than their Mavericks’ counterparts, but from a usability standpoint they should be clearer. This look may work on iOS because you keep your devices closer to your eyes and can appreciate the finer details. When you’re working with a non-Retina monitor that is roughly 50 cm away from you, I’m not so sure.

Controls

Also, consider that ‘Done’ button: sure, on Yosemite it looks ‘more highlighted’ than on Mavericks, therefore it should be more noticeable. On the other hand, the use of white Helvetica for the button text makes the word(s) less legible than Lucida Grande in black on Mavericks.

Sidebar

While I don’t particularly mind the colour scheme for the Finder window sidebar in OS X Yosemite, I still find the current situation under Mavericks to be better overall. Better typography, better contrast, better legibility.