Quick-take: Apple wants you to spend all your life looking at one of their devices, it doesn’t really care which and soon neither will you.
Guide to my notes:
Q = a question I’m hoping an Apple expert can help me with
italic = a personal aside
(vlog review to follow on Monday, final feature on FirstWeek LightPhone review)
iOS 15
Comms
FaceTime takes on Zoom
Audio: Noise Isolation vs. Wide Spectrum
Video: Portrait Mode - auto-blur background
FaceTime Links: Apple tries to get in on Calendar integration. Available for non-Apple users. It will now be my 2nd choice after Signal.
Music: SharePlay
Remember when Apple & Mozilla bragged that picture-in-picture makes you more productive? Now they’re bragging about picture-in-picture-in-picture:
AppleMusic feature: what does “Add to Library” actually even do? I’m so confused by Apple Music (reluctant Family user!).
Sharing online is “meaningful” lol!! Good segue to Focus:
Focus
Notifications
Summary delivery 👍 I will do after email time.
DND call features extended to Messaging.
FocusMode
Taking on RescueTime
Q: Does it integrate with ScreenTime? We need that data to empower users!
Intelligence (AI)
Live Notes : text surfaced
Nabs CamScanner ComputerVision features
’Deep Neural Network’ phone call was actually quite endearing!
Spotlight
Rich results takes on Google + Wikipedia
Memories
AppleMusic cut to the beat automatically
Great low-filter authentic social content: could become M.b’s answer to Stories?
Q: Craig made sure to say “on-device” before “intelligence”, but does it really stay on-device? As I’ve raised before with Ben Evans parroting this, surely it links data with iCloud?!
Wallet
Don’t use. Stay analog as long as you can for high-importance stuff.
Weather
Integrating DarkSky for hyper-localised stuff. When is iPad getting an app though?
Maps
City-dwellers: really no excuse not to jump from g00gle Maps now! I’d also jump from CityMapper, given crisis there about need to monetize data to run the business.
AirPods / Siri
this guy is fighting his nerd instincts in presentation hard! Must smile, must smile
I really don’t want my whole 20-item shopping list read out when I walk past Tesco.
FindMy App beefed out: will delete “Wunderfind”
Some big artists including Ariana, doing Spatial Audio release.
Q: How hard is this to engineer?
iPad OS 15
As I predicted on iOS14, iPad catches up a year later. Let’s hope they get it right first-time this time.
Goes beyond: hide entire pages!
Where TF did that iPad go he chucked up?! Very cool effect
New UI
Split-view. I wouldn’t use unless 13in.
Notes
Brit’s smile is painful to watch
Q: Do QuickNotes only work on Safari?
Translate
Why is iPad getting Translate before Calculator?
Swift Playgrounds
You can build apps. I’d love to tutor this.
!Privacy!
My big-picture question here is:
a) is data truly ‘on-device’? What about iCloud
b) even if it is, how can it be exploited?
Mail Privacy Protection
they’re going after pixel tracking. Just after I quit AppleMail (via Bridge) to native ProtonMail.
Q: are Proton still ahead of Apple Mail on this?
App Privacy Reports
the 3rd party domains are pretty unintuitive (e.g. ‘doubleclick’ for Google). They need make it as user-friendly as Markup’s Blacklight
Siri
On-device speech recognition
Super fast!
iCloud
jack my black tee swag. He wouldn’t fit in mine tho. Wouldn’t fit through arms
Account
Legacy contacts 👍
Private Relay
Q: what tech is this?
a) VPN: if so how no speed loss?
b) more like Cloudflare 1^4 which I’m still tryna understand!
Health
I’m blessed with good health so haven’t tried to tech-enhance. I do think meds need to communicate with patients more like Apple.
Health-Sharing 👍
Watch
vulgar product. I doubt I’ll bother with wearables until ~2023. Probs more likely Glass 2.0, because I’m only interested in enhancing iRL. So many of these apps are virtual-only. Like why need Photos-mosiac on an inch-screen?!
Breathe App: I recommend doing meditation bookended the day when your tech is off
Home
Why emphasis on ‘at home’. “We’re all popping out 6 (twenty, twenty, twenty) 21” (‘621’)
Interoperality: new standard: “matter”
Q: is it actually competitive?
lol at the eager beavers who couldn’t wait for these features so sold out their home privacy to Amazon & Google
MacOS Monterey
“Idolise the rich and their vulgar fashions | Zooming round in you Ferrari | It ain’t hard to see | Where you got that Patagonia fleece shiny blue shirt” (’Monopoly: England’)
Q: is it a place or the sea??
Universal Control
Q: has it replaced Sidecar?
Again: can’t believe they are claiming this “improves focus”. There’s more screens!
AirPlay to Mac
Can it easily play to others Macs?
Shortcuts!
Uses I’ll use:
Quick opens
Finder automations: e.g. Convert HEIC to Jpg
Safari
Mozilla needs to jack Tab Groups. It’s a bit like SessionSync. Very cool link sharing. I’ve recommend to Cutt.ly to allow opening multiple tabs: this might actually be technically feasible now.
Q: Can I customize Mozilla to jack that tab color = page Background color ??
Devs
Aazam & I are tryna get DinnerSpinner.FastFeedApps.com out this summer, cos there’s never been a better time to try new eateries!
Screen Time API !!
Q: if someone technical sees an opportunity to exploit this to make a screen time recorder app, please “warner me”
Swift
Concurrency
tip to dev comms, don’t use the phrase “race conditions” in release notes, like Jean said it will not be understood!
AppStore
Go on then: convince me you deserve 15% of all payments, even though Stripe only takes 2%.
Better ASO: A/B test custom Product Pages
In-app Events: could be fun to do Food Holidays on DinnerSpinner
XCode Cloud
Apple’s least user-friendly product, maybe gets improved?
Look forward to being able to collaborate more with Aazam.
Q: does this mean we don’t have to install full tens-of-gigs Mac app?
Full rollout in the Fall. Might have a price?!
so weird she said it was better when she switched from a human video to a memoji. Does she really wanna become an emoji?
Biggest Absences
ScreenTime
Device longevity: no mention of anti-obsolences, or anti-theft (e.g. lockdown in FindMy)
Tech enhancing real-life events, e.g. restaurants or live music
(edit: immediate Markdown reformatting)
