Misunderstood→

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We've all been there. The awkward teenager who wants to be left alone at family events. Head buried in whatever our passion is. Family thinks — may even say — "I wish they would just interact with the rest of us."

I've been there. I'm pretty certain you were, too. What we both may have missed out on is secretly doing something amazing in our solitude for the good of others.

It's an ad, but its the best kind of ad. It tells a story that warms your heart and wets your eyes. Time and again Apple seems to be able to use their technology to touch our lives, and truly give us delight.

¶ iOS 7

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To say that I had felt a little underwhelmed at iOS 6's unveiling a little over a year ago would be an understatement. There had been rumors of a visual refresh, of changing the standard interface chrome from a steel blue to a grayish silver, and I was looking forward for some fresh paint on the pixels. But that didn't happen. The biggest interface change was tinting the status bar to somewhat match the chrome of the app running. And it looked pretty awful.

For the first time, iOS had felt stale to me.

This year, the rumors weren't of subtle changes. They were of big changes. Pave the land and start anew kind of changes.

With iOS 7, Apple did just that.

When you install iOS 7 on your device you'll quickly realize that there was not a single pixel of iOS itself that was left untouched. Everything and the kitchen sink went out the door, and every design started on a blank canvas. iOS 7 is unabashedly different.
 More on the design in a moment. There is a lot that did not change. iOS 7 still operates much in the same way as before. If you knew your way around iOS 6, you'll find your way in iOS 7 as very little interaction changed. And what did change is, in my opinion, for the better.

Examples? It used to be that you had to get to your first home screen and then swipe from left to right to do a Spotlight search. Now, from any home screen, just scroll down on the icon area a little and the search field appears. In Safari (and many others apps) you can swipe from the left or right edge of your device to go back or forward a page in the browser, or a level of hierarchy in an app. iOS 7 just feels a bit more elegant in function.

Where iOS 7 really shines in the simplification of its design. Apple has spent a great deal of effort on pushing two things in iOS 7's design: typography and color. Most things that were handled by and icon before are now a simple and straightforward text label. The icons that remain have been redesigned, thinned out, and simplified, yet overall familiar. Color is used everywhere. Icons and labels in Safari are blue, Calendar is red, Notes is yellow, Music is pink, and it goes on.

Design is not the only change in iOS 7, but it certainly is the most apparent. Other features and refinements have been made as well. The lock screen lends itself to being far less cluttered and showing more of the wallpaper image. Also, from the lock screen, you can now pull down the Notification Center, which has been given a new view called Today. The new Today view is really handy. It tells you plainly what is coming up next on your schedule and the weather. It shows a small portion of your calendar for the next few hours, and even tells you want is on your plate for the next day. In the case of an iPhone, it will tell you how long it would take you to drive to your next appointment, if you entered the address in Calendar. And when you are out and about, it will tell you how long it would take to drive home.

While Notification Center is at the top of the screen, the new Control Center is at the bottom. Slide up from the bottom of the screen to show quick toggles for Airplane Mode, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Do Not Disturb and Orientation Lock. You can adjust the brightness, audio that is playing, AirDrop and AirPlay, and then buttons to turn the LED flash on as a flashlight, and quid access to the Timer, Calculator, and Camera.

Control Center has become one of my favorite things about iOS 7. And like Notification Center, Control Center can be accessed from the home screen or from within any app.

One of my other favorite things of iOS 7 is the new parallax effect on the lock and home screens. Tilt your device around, and you will notice the icons and wallpaper subtly shift in opposition to each other, giving an effect that is not quite 3D, but decidedly not 2D. It's one of those little attentions to detail that makes iOS 7 feel so great.

Siri debuted with iOS 5 on the iPhone 4S as a beta feature, and remained that way ever since. With iOS 7 Siri loses the beta label, gets a much better voice (and a male voice), and seems overall more responsive and functional. Siri can even now turn certain components like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on and off. I'm really enjoying the new Siri, and though I still feel it is a little behind Google Now, I think Siri is far less frustrating than in the past.

The last thing I really want to touch on is iTunes Radio. If you've ever used Pandora, you'll quickly understand iTunes Radio. I've been using the heck out of this, and it's really well done. It's impeccably good at finding music that fits with your tastes, and just keeps getting better the more you use it. This is one of those features that is easy to get lost in the shuffle of the new design, but it is truly one of the best features of iOS 7 if you love music.

iOS 7 takes a lot of risks with visual design, and in some areas it is spot on terrific, and other areas it has gone a little too far. I love the overall change, but I also realize that it is far from perfect. iOS 7 is an enormous undertaking, but what it is doing best is laying a brand new foundation to build upon for the future of iOS. As much as I adore iOS 7, I can't wait to see what happens in iOS 8, because it's a whole new ballgame. And even more than looking forward to iOS 8, I can't wait to see what developers do with their apps now that there is a blank canvas to work from.

Apple has made guides for iOS 7 available on iBooks, one for iPad, one for iPod touch, and (presumably) one for iPhone (I'll add the link when it is available).

Apple's Answer on Upgrade Pricing→

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Underscore David Smith on Apple's release of Logic Pro X this morning and how we finally know how to deal with upgrade pricing on the App Store:

Logic Pro X is a Major (with a capital M) update to their professional audio editing suite. It appears to represent a significant investment in both time and resources. So how is it being sold, especially to people who already paid $200 for the previous version (Logic Pro 9)? It is a separate app download with a full cost purchase. No upgrades, no introductory pricing, just straight forward sale.

So, basically, do what we have been doing. Yep.

¶ July 11

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July of 2008 was a busy and significant month for me. Most importantly, I celebrated my first wedding anniversary with my wife, and welcomed our son into the world.

But that month also holds other historical significance, one being recognized by a lot of geeks this week. On July 11, 2008, the App Store launched alongside iPhone OS 2.0, the iPhone 3G, and MobileMe. That morning I woke ridiculously early to drive an hour to my nearest Apple Store and wait in line. In retrospect, it was pretty silly of me to head an hour away from home when my wife was home 9 months pregnant and days away from the due date. I remember standing in line kind of afraid my Motorola RAZR would ring.

The next few hours went by uneventfully. AT&T's activation servers had turned into molten slag, so I was able to purchase my iPhone and head home, where I activated it through iTunes later that day.

Since the prior winter I had been using a first-generation iPod touch, which ran nothing but Apple's stock apps. So July 11 was pretty neat in that the App Store was opening up. My first purchase was Twitterrific, which is now in its fifth version and is still my twitter app of choice. In fact, it has held the same position on my home screen for five years through three different iPhone models I have owned.

The App Store really did unleash the true potential of the iPhone, and later the iPad. The iPhone is essentially my connection to the world at large. Sure, I have my local friends and community, but the advent of the iPhone and the apps people have made have connected me to new friendships across the globe (back int he day those were called pen pals ).

Heck, if it weren't for the booming success of the App Store and iPhone and iPad, I wouldn't be where I am today. I don't think my job would exist without the App Store.

So much has happened in the past five years. I am days from celebrating my sixth anniversary with my wife and my son's fifth birthday. I am coming up on a year of working at the company of my dreams, and Apple's future is shining bright as they prepare to radically re-invent what iOS will be for years to come.

I really can't wait to see where we'll be on July 11, 2018.

End WWDC→

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Daniel Jalkut:

Call it WWDC if you like, but it needs to take place 365 days a year instead of 4. It needs to serve 300,000 developers, not 5,000. And it needs to take place online, not within the cramped confines of a small convention center in San Francisco.

WWDC tickets went on sale and subsequently sold out within 2 minutes today. Two. Minutes. Probably less. It's plain to see that the demand for WWDC has outstripped the supply, and I think Daniel has cooked up the beginnings of a pretty good solution.

¶ Yummy Yummy Chat Heads

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I have to admit, like my friend David Chartier, I am a rare breed of nerd who actually likes Facebook. David talked a lot about Facebook Home and its potential. I want to talk about the new iOS app, Facebook 6.0.

The 6.0 update to the Facebook app streamlines the interface for the better, and beefs up its messaging capabilities. One way it does this is through Stickers, which are fun little pictures you can sling around through private or group messages. They’re cute, because they were designed by the awesome David Lanham.

But the real news here is Chat Heads, which show the avatar of the friend(s) you are currently chatting with in a little circle off to the side of wherever you are inside Facebook’s app. You can simply tap the circle and a conversation expands as a layer on top of where you are at, you send a message, tap the circle again, and it collapses the conversation and you go right back to where you were.

It’s a really enjoyable and nice experience.

On Facebook Home for Android, Chat Heads can appear anywhere on your device, even when you are in another app. Right now, this only works within Facebook on iOS, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it stayed that way.

But here is why I like the concept of Chat Heads, and where I’d like to see them go as a concept.

I like that they are not too intrusive during a conversation when you are doing something else. And I think they’d be the perfect interface for iMessage. Right now on iOS, it is kind of jarring to have an active back and forth with a friend over iMessage when you are also trying to look at or do something else. You switch fully from what you are doing to the conversation, then have to switch fully back.

Let’s say I am writing up a post like this on my iPad. I would much rather an iMessage come up off to the side as a little icon and wait for me to tend to it. I simply tap the icon, a conversation popover appears, I fire off a sentence, and tap back to what I am doing. It is a much less distracting way of giving a few seconds for a reply. Why?

Because even though it is a context switch, it is a very good illusion of a partial context switch (which doesn’t exist). It feels like you are only giving away attention peripherally, instead of having to be ripped from your focus of one app and dumped into another. Because you feel like you only give away quick aside of context, and you can see the task at hand right behind the conversation popover, it is easier to return to what you are doing.

Facebook and Apple seem to have a nice relationship, what with the deep integration with iOS and OS X last year. I hope that relationship could start a collaboration where maybe Apple can use the Chat Heads concept for iMessage and SMS, if they also allow Facebook Messages to be a global deal through it. I think I’d be okay with that, especially if there were a toggle.

Apple's Pessimism Problem→

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Marco on the pessimism that has been surrounding Apple for a couple years now:

A year later, when Apple did release a model named “iPhone 5” that was far better than the 4S and had an external redesign, the inertia of Apple pessimism was so strong and the press had become such petulant children about Apple products that they shat all over it even though it was a huge update that gave them everything they asked for, plus more.

Now, Apple pessimism is even stronger. No matter what they release and no matter how well it sells, they won’t win over the press, the pundits, the stock market, or the rhetoric. Not this year. They could release a revolutionary 60-inch 4K TV for $99 with built-in nanobots to assemble and dispense free smartwatches, and people would complain that it should cost $49 and the nanobots aren’t open enough.

Apple does indeed have a problem here. I still think they should have named what we now know as the iPhone 5 as simply "the new iPhone".