¶ When Alliance Becomes Reliance

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When the iPhone was released, there was a lot of love between Apple and Google. They were like Batman and Robin, a dynamic duo.

Needless to say, since Google started down the path of Android, the alliance has been broken. And now, Apple has developed a reliance on Google for some of its core iOS apps — namely Maps and YouTube.

Of the two of those, Maps is the most prominent. To say iOS would be at a disadvantage without Google Maps would be an understatement. But what is the alternative? Form an uneasy alliance (and another reliance) on Microsoft’s Bing? I don’t think so.

Apple has acquired a couple mapping companies over the past few years. And we’ve seen a trend of Apple pulling things it considers essential a little closer under the umbrella. For instance, designing its own A4 and A5 chips, and iCloud, which is surely pulling some folks off of syncing their data through Google.

And then there are things that are inessential. When a service isn’t essential, Apple seems to have no problem integrating with other services that do something very well. Take the YouTube app, for instance. Sure, it is built-in, but that doesn’t mean it is permanent. That app could easily disappear entirely, be renamed and refocused on Vimeo, or be rolled into the Videos app and offer users a choice of YouTube or Vimeo. It isn’t like Google couldn’t roll out their own YouTube app or just direct people to their mobile site.

We saw more evidence of the breakdown of Apple’s reliance on Google with the OS X Mountain Lion developer preview. As I saw of Daring Fireball, Pocket-lint talked to Apple about the new Share Sheet:

Most interesting of the three is the inclusion of Vimeo over YouTube, a choice that is bound to give the professional video-sharing site a boost in awareness and audience numbers, but also leave users wondering why no Google support from day one?

When asked why there was no YouTube support at the moment in the developer preview, Apple told Pocket-lint: “We have Vimeo, and we don’t have YouTube.”

If you ask me, Vimeo has a much better experience anyway.

It is clear to me that Apple is slowly excising Google’s prominence from their two operating systems. I am confident one of the main features of iOS 6 will be an overhauled Maps app that no longer relies on Google. I expect Maps to become developed fully in-house by Apple.

Mountain Lion is embracing Vimeo over YouTube, and it wouldn’t surprise me if iOS went that way, too.

The alliance ended years ago. Soon, the reliance will be over.

¶ Lion, Refined

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I awoke this morning, reached for my iPhone, and began my ritual of reading some recent tweets to get oriented with the day’s early news. I saw a tweet by Jason Snell that announced he had a hands-on first look of OS X Mountain Lion, coming this summer.

I honestly thought it was a joke, at first. I tapped the link, expecting a Rick Astley video on YouTube, but was met with a very thorough and official looking article at Macworld complete with official looking screenshots. So I got up and went across the hall to my Mac, opened it, and fired up Apple’s site.

Yep, it’s official. OS X Mountain Lion is real. And it’s coming this summer.

iOS-ification, Refined

Apple is a company of habits. And one that is plain to see is their habit of big change, then iterate. Think of the iPhone 3G, then the iteration of the 3GS; the iPhone 4, then the iteration of the iPhone 4S. On the Mac, we can look back at OS X Leopard, which brought big changes, then Snow Leopard, which refined those new technologies; and then Lion, which was, again, a big change, and now Mountain Lion, which is a refinement of those changes.

When we got a sneak peek of Lion in October of 2010, Apple said they were bringing the best of iOS “back to the Mac”. And what we saw was the beginning of the iOS-ification of OS X. We saw things like the Mac App Store, Launchpad, Full-screen Apps, FaceTime, and a slew of new gestures come to the Mac, and they had an iOS scent to them.

Where Snow Leopard gave polish to Leopard’s underlying foundational technologies and some tweaks to newer UI, Mountain Lion is refining and polish the “back to the Mac” features introduced in Lion.

Where Lion brought us some of the way to having many of iOS’s concepts on the Mac, Mountain Lion is bringing us a lot closer.

iCloud

iCloud didn’t make its appearance on Lion until the 10.7.2 update. At that time it usurped MobileMe and took over the syncing functions of email, calendars, contacts, bookmarks, notes, and reminders. But its implementation has felt a little lacking. Documents in the Cloud are present in the backend, but there isn’t a user interface for it. Some apps are rolling their own for now.

Mountain Lion fixes that. Documents in the Cloud are now a new section of the Open/Save Dialog. Click the On This Mac button, and you get the traditional Finder-based file system. Click the iCloud button, and the dialog changes to the same linen and iOS-folder look that you can find in Apple’s iOS iWork apps.

iCloud is also featured prominently when set up a new Mac, or create a new user account. Sign in right at the beginning to pull down Store credentials, contacts, calendars, reminders, notes, email, etc.

Messages

One of my favorite features of iOS 5 is iMessage, which is integrated into Messages, which used to just handle SMS/MMS. iMessage allows iOS users to communicate with other iOS users via text, pictures, or videos, free of charge.

By far, the best part of iMessage is being able to start a conversation on my iPad while at home, and pick right up with it on my iPhone if I need to head out the door, with all the context of the entire conversation present on both devices.

(The worst part is hearing notifications go off on multiple devices throughout the entire conversation).

In Mountain Lion, iChat has been rebranded as Messages and gains iMessage support. It’s awesome. How do I know? Because Apple has released Messages as a public beta for Lion users.

It really is nice to have it on the Mac, other than now I have three devices dinging at me for message notifications.

Notifications

Speaking of notifications, Apple is bringing Notification Center to the Mac in Mountain Lion. Swipe on the trackpad or click a new button in the menu bar to reveal the Notification Center. The desktop slides off toward the left a little to reveal it as a linen layer underneath the desktop. It looks just like it does in iOS 5.

The banner notifications appear over the desktop descending from the upper right, just like Growl does. And let’s be honest, Growl just got Sherlocked.

Notes, Reminders, Contacts, & Calendars

From an article I wrote last month:

I do, however, have one little annoyance about Notes and Reminders — the way they are integrated into the Mac. On iOS, Notes and Reminders get their own apps. On the Mac, they are relegated to being apps within an app. Notes and Reminders are shoehorned into Mail and iCal, respectively.

I would much rather Notes and Reminders have their own apps on the Mac, with similar interfaces to their iOS counterparts. Notes, on its own, could effectively replace the Stickies app on the Mac.

My problem with Notes and Reminders being integrated into other apps is consistency. A great example of consistency between the Mac, iPhone, and iPad is Twitterrific. The app offers the same experience across all three devices. The user never has to question how to do anything on each device. Learn once, apply everywhere.

This is another instance where Mountain Lion refines the iOS-ification that Lion heralded. Notes and Reminders will no longer be shoehorned into Mail and iCal, respectively. They’re getting their own apps that look a lot like their iOS counterparts, with a Mac flair.

Furthering the pursuit of consistency, Address Book and iCal are being renamed to Contacts and Calendars, respectively (and getting a couple usability tweaks in their skeuomorphic UIs).

Sharing

The share button that is prevalent in iOS is going to be more widely used in Mountain Lion. This button will collect appropriate services for sharing content, based on which app you’re using.

For instance, in Safari, you can share a link to Twitter. Twitter, by the way, is also now integrated in OS X like it is in iOS 5. So, when you share something to Twitter, you’ll see the Tweet Sheet.

Another way to share things is via AirPlay. Since my wife & I got an Apple TV last year, there have been a number of occasions where we wished we could mirror our Macs to the Apple TV.

Game Center

Also, Game Center is coming to the Mac, and will allow you to play, on your Mac, against users on other Macs and even iOS devices. I’m not a heavy gamer, so this doesn’t interest me much, but I know a few folks who will love it.

Gatekeeper

Gatekeeper is a new level of security to help protect against malware. It works by only allowing apps that fall within a certain security level to run. It has three levels of security that the user can choose from:

  • Mac App Store: Only apps from the Mac App Store can run. These are the safest apps because the developers are known to Apple and the apps are reviewed by Apple prior to being published to the store.

  • Mac App Store and identified developers: In addition to the Mac App Store, developers who do not want to distribute their apps on the store can obtain a free developer ID from Apple to cryptographically sign their apps.

    Apple’s Gatekeeper site states:

    A developer’s digital signature allows Gatekeeper to verify that their app is not known malware and that it hasn’t been tampered with.

    If an app is discovered to be malware, Apple can revoke that developer’s signature certificate and stop the spread of the malware.

  • Anywhere: This allows apps from anywhere — Mac App Store, signed, or unsigned — to run on a Mac. This is the current behavior in OS X Lion.

This seems to be causing quite a stir among some folks that don’t particularly like Apple. I’ve been seeing a lot of sentiments of “They’re locking down OS X!” and “I’m going to get my data ready to jump ship, just in case”.

I can understand the fear, but I don’t think these people really understand Apple. There are a lot of smart, technologically minded folks who seem to think Apple is going to slowly tighten their grasp on developers until only the walled city of the App Store is left. I’ve also heard the sentiment that once that happens, the Mac is doomed, because developers won’t stand to have 30% of the price of their app gobbled up by Apple.

I couldn’t disagree more with all of that.

The fact that Apple went to the effort to make Gatekeeper at all shows their commitment to indie software development. Albeit, they are committing to secure indie software development. Apple always thinks of its users first, then developers.

One of the most popular OS X software developers in the world, Wil Shipley, seems to think Gatekeeper is the way to go:

(Seriously, go read that article Wil wrote and linked to above).

Simply put, Apple always supports their way, and the standard way. On iOS, they support native, cocoa touch apps via the App Store, and they also fully support (and do the best job at it) web apps. In iBooks, they support their own iBooks format and fully support ePub and PDF. On the Mac, there is the Mac App Store and developer ID and — at the user’s discretion — the old way of unsigned apps.

I firmly believe that Apple’s effort to secure indie app development outside of the App Store indeed secures its existence. If Apple wanted to go Mac App Store only, I don’t think they’d take the “boil a frog” approach. I think they’d just do it, and if you don’t like it, well, so long and thanks for all the fish.

Does Apple prefer that developers go with the Mac App Store? You bet. I’m sure that 30% cut plays a part in the motivation. But I think running a super secure system plays a bigger part. And that in itself will drive the bottom line as more people buy Apple’s technology.

Is there a carrot enticing developers over to the Mac App Store? You bet. Only apps on the Mac App Store can access iCloud and Notification Center.

Is Apple going to shut down indie development outside of the App Store? I seriously doubt it. However, I could see Apple shutting down unsecured indie development on the Mac. Maybe the successor to Mountain Lion will take away that Anywhere option within Gatekeeper, which isn’t a bad thing.

And hey, maybe I’m reading too much into this, but that Gatekeeper icon has one gate closed, and one open. How appropriate.

I have to say, it was an extremely pleasant surprise to be truly surprised by Mountain Lion’s announcement. There wasn’t an inkling of it that I saw in the rumor mill. While the rumor mill can be quite fun, it gets tiring finding out about stuff beforehand and sullies the excitement of when Apple makes an announcement. It was great to see how Apple handled this announcement, which was very different from the past. Be sure to read John Gruber’s account of finding out about Mountain Lion.

I am honestly blown away with how fantastic Mountain Lion looks, and I am going to be one very impatient person until it launches this summer.

¶ A 4-Inch Screen

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I was just looking at this article over at AppleInsider about a patent application from Apple regarding a touchscreen universal remote. There has been a lot of talk since the debut of Steve Jobs’ biography about Apple releasing an actual television set, rather than the current $99 Apple TV. So, in that sense, a universal TV remote would make sense, right? Heck, it even makes sense for the current form factor if you ask me. Right now I have to dig out a separate remote just to turn my TV on.

Now, there’s also been some talk about the next iPhone having a 4-inch screen, which I just don’t see happening. It would either diminish the crispness of the retina display, or, to keep the pixels per inch at retina quality, a new screen resolution would need to be introduced. This would be a nightmare for developers and designers, as they already have to support at least two resolutions for the iPhone. When Apple introduced the retina display, the increased the dimensions by exactly double. This makes it easier to design an interface.

What if the 4-inch screen rumor isn’t destined for the iPhone?

What if it is for a touchscreen universal remote that doesn’t run App Store apps?

Think about that.

¶ A Fistful of Dollars

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Apple PR:

Apple® today announced financial results for its fiscal 2012 first quarter which spanned 14 weeks and ended December 31, 2011. The Company posted record quarterly revenue of $46.33 billion and record quarterly net profit of $13.06 billion, or $13.87 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $26.74 billion and net quarterly profit of $6 billion, or $6.43 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 44.7 percent compared to 38.5 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 58 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

The Company sold 37.04 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 128 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 15.43 million iPads during the quarter, a 111 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 5.2 million Macs during the quarter, a 26 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 15.4 million iPods, a 21 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter.

That’s insane.

This breaks previous company records for all of the following:

  • Revenue
  • Profit
  • iPhones sold
  • iPads sold
  • Macs sold

To say it was a great Christmas in Cupertino would be a gross understatement.

Here are some other tidbits to chew on from various sources.

From MacRumors:

  • Set new records for desktops and portables, up 26% year-over-year versus 0% growth for entire PC industry.
  • iPhone represented 124% year-over-year growth vs 40% growth for industry according to IDC.
  • iPad revenue up 99% year-over-year.
  • 1.5 million iPads are in use across educational institutions.
  • 315 million cumulative iOS device sales. 62 million in December quarter.
  • 85 million iCloud customers signed up.
  • $4 billion to developers cumulatively, $700 million in december quarter.
  • 1.1 million Macs sold vs 851,000 year-over-year.
  • 22,000 visitors per store per week.
  • $97.6 billion in cash and marketable securities.

I picked what I found especially interesting. Their list is much longer (and their graphs paint quite the picture). One more thing from MacRumors’ coverage that I want to point out is this bit from the Q&A:

Q: 4G and larger screens are growing in the market. Has popularity of larger screens on Android phones changed or impacted your view? And 4G, obviously some phones have battery life issues, but what do you think?

A: We just sold 37 million iPhones and could have sold more with the supply. There are a lot of people out there who like what we’re doing.

I still don’t think the rumored 4-inch screen, 4G-enabled iPhone is happening any time soon. First, the 3.5-inch is feels great in your hand, and fits well in most pockets (and certainly better than a larger phone). Second, Apple really cares about battery life, and 4G doesn’t seem up to par yet.

From Farhad Manjoo, via Daring Fireball:

Apple’s profits ($13 billion) exceeded Google’s entire revenue ($10.6 billion).

Surely Google is winning.

And, in related news, Tom Krazit, for PaidContent, via, again, Daring Fireball:

In the first quarter that Verizon Wireless was on board with Apple for an iPhone launch event, the company sold 4.2 million iPhones, accounting for more than half of the 7.7 million smartphones that its customers purchased in the fourth quarter.

That calculates out to 55%. 55% of all the smartphones Verizon sold last quarter were made by Apple. I still get the feeling that Verizon is a little resentful that they needed to carry the iPhone, and I bet that is a burr in their saddle. That number gives Apple a pretty big chip to throw down if they need to.

Also, clearly Google is winning.

MG Siegler:

Every single Android phone that Verizon sells — dozens of models — combined could not outsell the iPhone last quarter. When you consider that Verizon sells plenty of BlackBerrys (and a few Windows Phones here and there) as well, this is even more incredible.

[…]

The only thing not looking good about this post from June of last year is the incorrect assumption that it would take the iPhone 5 to reverse the Android surge. It “only” took the iPhone 4S.

“Only”.

¶ Thoughts on AT&T's Updated Data Plans

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When I switched to AT&T in 2008 to get the iPhone 3G, the only data plan was a $30/month “unlimited” (read: 5GB) plan. In 2010, right when my wife and I were upgrading to the iPhone 4, AT&T tossed aside the “unlimited” plan, and replaced it with two new plans, as such:

  • DataPlus 200MB at $15/month
  • DataPro 2GB at $25/month

MacRumors reports AT&T has updated its data plans again, going into effect this Sunday, January 22nd. Here’s how the new plans shake out:

  • DataPlus 300MB at $20/month
  • DataPro 3GB at $30/month
  • DataPro 5GB at $50/month (includes mobile hotspot/tethering)

And for iPad 3G users:

  • 250MB for $15/month
  • 3GB for $30/month
  • 5GB for $50/month

Right now, my wife is on the 200MB/month plan and I am on the 2GB/month plan. My wife rarely goes over 100MB on her plan each month, but I know that is because she is conscious of her limit and actively tries not to use her iPhone unless she is on Wi-Fi. I usually hover around 300MB per month in my 3G usage. It would be more (much more) if I were not on Wi-Fi the majority of the time. So the 200MB plan has never been for me. Most months, looking at my history, I could get away with this new 300MB plan. But, in months where I travel, I easily go over 300MB, but rarely over 500MB.

I think I’ll stay on the 2GB plan, which is far more than I need. Maybe I’ll move my wife up to the 300MB, so she can relax a little when she’s off Wi-Fi.

A few things about these plans are churning in my mind, though:

  • The 300MB plan, like the 200MB plan before it, are complete rip-offs compared to the other plans. If $30 gets you 3GB, and $50 gets you 5GB, then doesn’t the math say that $20 should get you 2GB, instead of a piddly 300MB?
  • If there were a $15 plan for, say, 500MB, both my wife and I could have that, and I wouldn’t need to be paying for more data than I use.
  • 3GB is a lot of mobile data. My wife and I could share that and never use all of it in a month. Why do we not have family data plans yet? Hey, AT&T, how about you offer that. You could even call it DataFamily to fit into your nomenclature.
  • If AT&T won’t offer family data plans, they should at least offer rollover data. Rollover minutes have long been part of their marketing. With rollover data, my wife and I could both use the lower 300MB plan, and most months we would be filling the rollover bucket. During travel months, like December, we could dip into our little bucket of rollover worry free.

Come on, AT&T, do something for once that helps me save a couple bucks. I know that idea seems foreign to you, but it would help you out, too, because you’d keep my family as a customer, and I would tell others about how flexible your plans are.

¶ App Within an App

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I always try to use a stock app that comes with my iPhone, iPad, or Mac if it can do what I need it to satisfactorily. Hence for quick notes I use the built in Notes app on my iPhone quite a bit, especially since I know, thanks to iCloud, that the note will be on my iPad and Mac if I need it. And when Reminders arrived in iOS 5, I eschewed the other app I was using in favor of Apple’s solution, because Apple’s app performed the same function that I needed. Heck, it provided a little more with location-based reminders, which are awesome.

I do, however, have one little annoyance about Notes and Reminders — the way they are integrated into the Mac. On iOS, Notes and Reminders get their own apps. On the Mac, they are relegated to being apps within an app. Notes and Reminders are shoehorned into Mail and iCal, respectively.

I would much rather Notes and Reminders have their own apps on the Mac, with similar interfaces to their iOS counterparts. Notes, on its own, could effectively replace the Stickies app on the Mac.

My problem with Notes and Reminders being integrated into other apps is consistency. A great example of consistency between the Mac, iPhone, and iPad is Twitterrific. The app offers the same experience across all three devices. The user never has to question how to do anything on each device. Learn once, apply everywhere.

Take a new user, give them an iPhone for a bit. Sit them in front of a Mac, and tell them to find their reminders. I bet they’d hunt for a Reminders app. In fact, they’d probably be confused to learn that Reminders is part of iCal. It doesn’t really make sense.

One of the greatest things Apple did when releasing the iPad was to keep the experience familiar and consistent. Lately, the experience on the Mac has started to feel like a neglected ugly duckling.

¶ Five Years

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Five years ago today at Macworld Expo, Steve Jobs unveiled a device that reshaped our definition of the personal computer. It reminded us of the stuff of science fiction from our childhood.

I remember the first time I actually saw an iPhone. It was a couple weeks after it was released, and I was sitting with my bride in the Denver airport, waiting for our connecting flight to Seattle for our honeymoon. While we were waiting to board our plane, a young woman sat next to me and started browsing on her iPhone. I was about to inquire, but instead admired as she had just received a phone call. That was the first time I saw one.

A few days later my wife and I found our way to an Apple Store in Seattle, where I finally was able to experience the future. I called my parents, who were a little confused when they answered as their caller ID said Apple, Seattle, WA. If I had resided in an AT&T coverage area then I probably would have left the store with one.

One year later we moved to a new city, which did indeed have AT&T, and I bought an iPhone 3G on release day. My son was born four days later. I used the lap timer in the Clock app to time contractions. A couple days earlier, in preparation, I drafted a message to our friends and family announcing his birth, and left blanks for things like time of birth, length, weight, etc. Minutes after he took his first breath, I snapped a picture with my iPhone, sent it to the web, added the link to my email message, filled in the details, and hit send.

A lot of folks mock Apple for describing their devices as magical. Let me tell you, being able to announce my son’s birth to the most important people in my life without having to leave his and my wife’s side, all within moments of welcoming him into the world…it was magical. Truly magical.

Today I own an iPhone 4. It is used daily and it, like its predecessor, is the thing I reach for to record these endearing moments of my life. My son has an old iPod touch of ours, loaded up with games, educational apps, and Pixar movies. He has apps that have helped him learn how to write the alphabet. Not to mention that he is fascinated by the iPad. I often sit back and wonder when he goes to college, if the computer he takes will be more like a MacBook or an iPad. I have my money on the latter.

Even after the past half decade of the iPhone being a part of our culture, I sometimes catch my iPhone 4 out of the corner of my eye, and notice how great it really is. It is a piece of art. I am still fascinated with how photos and apps seem painted on the glass.

In the end, the iPhone is just a device. I could live without it. However, its presence in my household sure seems to bring a lot of joy and delight. The iPhone changed everything. I can’t wait to see what the next five years will bring.

¶ iWork '09 Turns Three

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This day in history, three years ago, iWork ‘09 — the current shipping version of iWork — was announced and released.

That’s quite a long time for a consumer Apple product to go without major revision. My guess is that development of the Mac version of the iWork suite fell behind as Apple built the suite for iOS — first the iPad, then the presumably monumental task of scaling it down for the iPhone & iPod touch.

But iWork on the Mac is really starting to show its age. The iOS apps have iCloud integrated, and it works like magic. But the Mac versions can’t see those iCloud files. In fact, Apple hasn’t updated any of their Mac apps to peer into iCloud document storage. There isn’t an example from Apple of how iCloud documents should be presented in the user interface.

iWork should have been a prime candidate for demonstrating iCloud documents on the Mac. Instead, iA Writer was the first to do it. And though iA Writer does a good job, I think Apple should be setting the bar.

I love iWork, and use it often. I recommend it over Microsoft Office to new Mac owners, as long as they don’t have needs that explicitly require Office. But it’s three years old and hasn’t kept up with the rest of Apple’s ecosystem.

It’s time iWork got a facelift and joined the cloud.

¶ Twenty-Twelve

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2011 was a pretty eventful year for Apple. We saw updates to its core line of Macs, a new iPad, a looks-just-the-same but all-new-inside iPhone, a great upgrade to iOS and OS X, iCloud, a new CEO, and the passing of one of its co-founders. Quite eventful. Many of them great. Some not.

I think 2012 will be not only another eventful year for Apple, but an exciting year. Here’s some of the things I think are on the horizon.

The Pro Goes Air

I’ve been using a 15-inch MacBook Pro just a couple weeks shy of three years. It’s a fantastic machine, and has endured years of use more gracefully than any other portable Mac I’ve owned. The best part is — unlike my previous Mac notebooks — it still feels fast.

That said, my wife received a 13-inch MacBook Air for Christmas. And it makes my MacBook Pro not only look like a cow, but it makes it look like a slow, pokey cow. Some of that, I’m sure, is attributed to the Air’s Core i5 processor versus my Pro’s Core 2 Duo, but I know the majority of that is the Air’s SSD compared to the Pro’s traditional hard drive. Apple knows this.

When Apple introduced the revamped MacBook Air in October 2010, they said it was the future of notebooks. 2012 will be the year the MacBook Pro takes a backseat, much like the Mac Pro did in the desktop lineup. I see the 13-inch MacBook Pro disappearing in favor of the Air, like the 13-inch MacBook did. I also see the 15-inch MacBook Pro going on a diet and changing its name. The Pro will still live on, but only in the 17-inch form, for those who still need SuperDrives and ExpressCard slots.

A little wild card? I think the 15-inch MacBook Air will be equipped with a Retina Display.

Speaking of Retina Displays…

The iPad seems ripe for receiving a Retina Display this year. I do not think anything needs to change with the body of the device. I think the iPad 2 has a great feel to it. There’s also a manufacturing advantage to not changing the design of the iPad, as the assembly line is already set up and optimized for the current body.

There is one metric which I think could warrant a design change of the body: weight. I like the overall feel of the iPad 2, but weight could be better. Less weight would probably mean a thinner body in the iPad 3.

Another thing that has been bouncing around in my head is that Apple may continue to sell the iPad 2 alongside an iPad 3, much like how they sell multiple iPhone models. Imagine an 8GB iPad 2 priced around $299 or $349. What would that do to things like the Kindle Fire?

Also, I say the iPad stays at 9.7-inches. Quit dreaming of a 7-inch iPad, it’d be horrible to type on.

iPhone

Of course, there will be a new iPhone. My guess is we’ll see it in the fall. I think the fall release of the 4S wasn’t because of any outright delays, but that Apple wanted to shift it to being part of their Christmas lineup, since iPod growth has stabilized. Apple already has a lot on their plate each year in the summer with WWDC and iOS. I think it makes sense for them to introduce new iOS releases at WWDC and then release it alongside a new iPhone in the fall.

So what will we see in the next iPhone? My guess is a better processor, better camera(s), a possibly a new body design (though I wouldn’t mind if the iPhone 4/4S design stuck around again. I love it). I’d actually like to see the front camera gain HD quality, as I think FaceTime HD (present in current iMacs and MacBook Pros) would be a great move.

I think the Retina Display screen will stick around at 3.5-inches. Last year’s rumors of a 4-inch screen just don’t sit right with me. Many of those I hear advocating the 4-inch screen rumor say so “because Android phones have larger screens”. Well, bigger does not always equal better. It’s similar to the argument that there will be a 7-inch iPad because everyone else is doing it. I say bulldonkey.

Beyond design changes and spec bumps, I can’t really fathom what else may be in store for the next iPhone. I do like this bit from Shawn Blanc’s predictions:

But the wild card is that in 2007, when Steve Jobs first introduced iPhone, he said that it was 5 years ahead of any other smartphone. It has now been 5 years. I could see the next iPhone being continued iteration because that’s how Apple rolls. But I could also see the next iPhone being something huge, something for the next 5 years.

iOS 6

I see iOS 6 going one of two ways.

  1. iOS will gain a bunch of refinements, just as in years past, and Apple will really tout 10 or so of them. The majority of these will address any extremely vocal shortcomings. Like a do not disturb setting for notifications.
  2. iOS will take a giant leap forward and set the stage for the foreseeable future. Think of this as equivalent to Mac OS 9 and OS X. And I have no clue what that would look like.

I’m not very risk-tolerant, so if I were a betting man on this topic, I’d go with the former scenario.

iCloud

I think iCloud is going to become even bigger in our little Apple universe this year. Maybe around the time we see that 15-inch MacBook Air we’ll also see an update to OS X Lion and the iWork apps that will integrate iCloud’s document storage more plainly on the Mac. Then we’ll really see the hybridization of OS X and iOS start to blossom.

Apple TV

I’m sure Jony Ive has a prototype of an Apple television set in his lab. How long do you think he had an iPad and iPhone in his lab before they were released? I don’t think we’ll see it this year. I do think Apple will update their “hobby” device, the current Apple TV box, this year. I bet it looks the same, gets an A5 or the upcoming A6 chip, and plays back 1080p video.

Sure, we will likely see Apple release a full television some day. I just don’t think it’s the right time or season.

¶ Notifications

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I have been thinking a lot lately about notifications on my devices — both Mac & iOS. Today, after a conversation with some friends on Path, I finally tied it all together in my mind to share with you.

Let’s start with the Mac.

Mac

The Mac’s notifications are all over the place. In the Dock, you can have badge notifications, and apps can bounce up and down like a Jack Russell Terrier for your attention. Badge notifications have also crept into Launchpad, which isn’t easily discoverable. One last place for badge notifications is the apps residing in the menu bar.

Then there are modal notifications that pop up over whatever you are currently working on.

This is the same sort of mess that we had in iOS until banner notifications and the Notification Center came into play in iOS 5.

On top of the frenzy of notification placement, some of these just look plain outdated. For instance, iCal notifications look like this:

iCal Notification
iCal Notification

What era is that clock from? It even annoyingly shakes. It is an eyesore on the beauty of the rest of OS X.

OS X Lion was billed as being the best of iOS being brought back to the Mac. And in many ways, it is. Take full-screen apps, for instance. I use them all the time (like right now, as I write this in Byword). I keep Safari, Mail, iCal, iTunes, & Reeder in full-screen almost all the time.

Notification center and banner notifications would be awesome, especially in full-screen apps. Give me a keyboard shortcut or trackpad gesture to quickly see all my notifications on my Mac, and subtly show me reminders and alerts without demanding an interruption to my workflow.

iOS

I have very little to complain about regarding iOS notifications since iOS 5’s revamp of the system. But there is one.

I do not always have my MacBook Pro with me. And when I am on the go, and at night, it is closed, making notifications impossible. This is not the case with my iPhone. It is always with me, always on, and charges in a little tray on my nightstand. It serves as my alarm clock.

But emails and app notifications roll in throughout the night, making noise and briefly turning on the screen.

There are only two types of notifications I want while I am asleep: the alarm that I set and phone calls (in case of an emergency). Everything else needs to shut up.

Here is what I propose: a global Do Not Disturb setting for iOS notifications. This would prohibit notifications from turning on the display or activating the speaker during hours that I set (like when I am sleeping). There would be a list of exceptions that I could set, such as alarms or phone calls. For everything else, it can stack its notifications in the Notification Center for my review in the morning.

The ring/silent switch works great for things like meetings, where you can be alerted to something via vibration if need be. You’re still active in that situation. It doesn’t work that well for sleeping at night, though.

Being able to tell our apps that we do not wish to see or hear them right now would be great.

Update

on 2011-12-30 21:01 by Chris De Jabet

Just a quick addition to note that Airplane Mode isn’t enough to solve this problem. Some apps, like games, will use local notifications that do not require a network connection. My wife likes to play Tiny Tower, which will use local notifications to update her on when something needs restocking or a new level of her tower is ready (it’s simply using time calculations for all this).

Also, Airplane Mode would disrupt the ability to receive calls. And we all know the moment you disable calls is when the crap will hit the fan.