How to Shoot on iPhone 7→

Apple built a terrific page on its website with a variety of short videos showing how to take better photos with iPhone 7. Each of the 16 videos focuses on one brief lesson, demonstrating a photography tip in 3-5 steps.

The videos are produced well, fun, and above all practical. I think there is at least one technique everyone with an iPhone will benefit from in these videos.

Many of the videos illustrate the use of exposure control, which is a technique I think many people don't know about on iPhone. It is easily one of the best things for anyone to learn to make their photos better, and these videos explain the benefits very well.

My favorites of the videos are How to shoot without flash and How to shoot with street light. They both show how a great photo can be taken in low light without using the obnoxious flash.

Check out the videos and then put them into practice. If you shoot something you are especially proud of, let me know on Twitter.

Apple's Classic Hotrod→

I have yet to use the new iPhone SE, which was released today, but everything about it sounds like a winner in my book for many folks. I always loved the design of the iPhone 5 and 5s, and the SE uses that with most of the guts of the latest and greatest iPhone 6s. So far I've recommended it to a few friends who are either considering their first smartphone or finally upgrading from an iPhone 5.

I read a couple reviews and so far my favorite has been Jim Dalrymple's.

Look at the iPhone SE like this.

Pick your favorite classic car. An old Corvette or Mustang—whatever your favorite car is. That design will always be classic, no matter what has happened in the automobile industry in the last 40 years, those 1960s designs will always be classic.

Now, take that classic car design and replace the engine, drive train, and everything else you can think of. What do you have? A hotrod. An incredible classic design with the most advanced technology that you could put in it.

That is the iPhone SE. A classic design with a lot of the newest and greatest technology.

The iPhone SE is Apple’s classic hotrod.

I've always been a latest & greatest kind of person myself, but I certainly can appreciate a timeless classic.

¶ The Hunchback of Cupertino

This morning Apple released the iPhone 6s Smart Battery Case. While it says 6s in the name it works fine with iPhone 6 as well. Sorry Plus-sized iPhones, your extra-hugeness has enough battery inside it to not need one of these cases.

I get it. There’s plenty of folks out there who burn through their iPhone’s battery by mid-day and need an extra charge or two to make it to bedtime. Thankfully, I’m not one of those people. It’s a rare day when I dock my iPhone at night with less than 30% on the battery meter.

But we need to talk about this case for a moment. It is well-intentioned to solve a real problem that many people experience. Well-intentioned, but hideous. Just look at that hunch on its back.

That just doesn’t look good to me. It’s like George Costanza’s wallet has been shoved into one of Apple’s lovely Silicon cases. Ged Maheux makes a great observation that this case could have used the new terraced battery tech in the MacBook to smooth out that bump a bit. Missed opportunity.

If the iPhone 6 and 6s have such small batteries that they warrant a first-party battery case, maybe it is time to say the iPhone is thin enough for a while. Not to mention the additional annoyance of having the camera stick out a bit from the back.

Instead of chasing thinness, I think it is time to shift gears and focus on extending battery life and making the camera flush with the back again.

In the meantime, if you need a battery case and like to keep things in the Apple family, $99 will cure what ails you.

Pedometer++ 2.3→

Today Underscore David Smith released an update to Pedometer++ that I've been waiting a while for. Thankfully, I've been beta testing it for a while.

Version 2.3 is entirely focused around building a rich and robust integration between the Apple Watch and iPhone. Letting you track your steps and reach your step goal in a much more complete way. The update focuses around 3 main features: data sync, complications and a workout mode.

David has created a clever system that intelligently merges step count data between the Apple Watch and iPhone based on which device is giving the best data in a given moment. This is in contrast to how Apple does it, where the Health app goes by device priority, falling back to the second device in a list only if the first is unavailable.

In my testing, David's approach seems to paint a terrifically accurate picture of overall step data in a day.

The watch face complications can be nice, but I find I prefer other complications and still don't mind swiping up the app's Glance to get a peek at my progress.

Finally, Pedometer++ adds a workout mode as an alternative to the Watch's included Workout app. It works well, and the only thing I'd like to see added is a mileage goal, as I use that in the Workout app to receive a tap at the halfway point, so I know when I should turn around and head home.

Pedometer++ is free on the App Store and is ad-supported, but David includes a tip jar with varying price points in the settings to remove the ads. Any tip amount will remove the ads. I suggest going for the Amazing tip, because the app is just that good.

¶ Bigger than bigger

The anticipation before last week's Apple event was at the highest since the 2010 iPad announcement. The hype in the air was palpable, and everyone knew this was going to be a big event.

The event itself was amazing, but it wasn't without its hiccups for the folks watching from home.

The Livestream

As if there wasn't enough hype surrounding the event from the media alone, Apple fanned the flames a bit higher by tossing up a giant countdown to the beginning of the event showcasing a lifestream of the event. In recent years, Apple has done these lifestreams more and more, so I usually dispense with following a couple liveblogs in favor of just catching it live.

This year was a disaster on this front. The lifestream kept crashing, then showing a test image with the media team's schedule. When it did seem to work, you could hardly hear Phil Schiller because of the translator being piped into the same audio stream. Things didn't start coming together until we were well past the iPhone announcement.

Issues with the livestream aside, the event it self was great. Especially if you went and re-watched it later after the proper fit and finish of production quality we know and love was added.

iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus

The first 10-20 minutes of a keynote are usually dedicated to talking about the health of the retail stores and the various other numbers Wall Street is interested in. Not this time. Tim Cook dispensed with the pleasantries and 7 minutes into the show the new iPhones were revealed.

As all the rumors suggested, Apple brought out larger iPhones. 4.7" and 5.5". The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, respectively. The two phones are identical in features in every way except two:

1. The iPhone 6 Plus has optical image stabilization, instead of just digital stabilization like the iPhone 6.
2. The iPhone 6 Plus has a nifty landscape mode that is similar to the iPad, where apps like Mail and Messages will have a split column appear.

Pre-orders went live yesterday and I promptly ordered two, one for my wife and one for myself. We both went with the iPhone 6, space gray, 64 GB on Verizon. I was really glad to see the mid-tier price point jump from 32 GB to 64 GB this year. The high end went to 128 GB. I am baffled as to why Apple kept the low end at a paltry 16 GB instead of bumping it to 32 GB.

The one thing I always love the most about a new iPhone is the camera improvements. In that regard, I was bummed that the iPhone 6 did not get the optical image stabilization, but I do not want a 5.5" phone. That is so big you could serve a lunch on it.

Speaking of the iPhone 6 Plus, every non-techy person I have talked to this past week is flat out excited for it, and declared they will be getting the 5.5" phone. I do think the iPhone 6 Plus will prove insanely popular. It turns out people really want a really huge phone. It certainly isn't in my taste, but it is clearly the preferred trend.

And the pre-orders backed that up. The iPhone 6 Plus sold out just about everywhere very quickly. While I do think it likely had more limited quantities than the iPhone 6, I really think it is the preferred device among the masses.

Apple Pay

Another great feature of the new phones is the built-in Near Field Communication (NFC) chip and antenna. NFC is the standard for contactless payments. If you have a credit card with the little pay wave symbol on it and you can just wave it close to the checkout terminal, it is the same technology.

Apple is integrating a new service into the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus called Apple Pay. The idea is that you enter your credit or debit card into Passbook (by taking a picture of it). Apple verifies it is indeed your card. You then see one of these pay wave enabled terminals at a store, and you hold the top of your phone up to it and rest your thumb on the Touch ID sensor. The iPhone authenticates it is you authorizing it to pay, and does the payment.

What is neat about Apple Pay is the security behind it. The merchant never sees your card number, your name, nor your address. Instead, the iPhone generates a one-time payment code, and that is used to reference your card with the bank for the payment. Apple also never sees where your purchase was made, what you bought, or how much you spent.

And if the merchant is ever compromised (think Target and Home Depot in the past year) all the thief gets is the one-time code, not your card info. So you don't have to get your cards re-issued.

And if your phone gets stolen, you can disable it for payments from Find my iPhone on the web or another device. Even if you can't get to that right away, the phone can't authorize a payment without your fingerprint.

All around this seems like a welcome improvement to making secure payments to a system that is rife with insecurity. I mean, come on, when you hand a check or your credit debit card over to someone else for payment, everything needed to make fraudulent transactions is right there printed on the check or card.

Apple Pay also has a component that can be used in-app to make easy payments using Touch ID.

Apple Watch

I cannot tell you how glad I am that I don't have to be typing iWatch for the years to come. Honestly, Apple Watch isn't much better, and it is more to type, but I just thought the iWatch name sounded weird.

Apple's first intentional take at a wearable device comes in the form of a watch. There are three different models, with two sizes each, and 6 different bands (in two sizes each). That makes for quite a few different combinations.

The Apple Watch has a color touchscreen, a single button reminiscent in appearance of the iPhone's sleep/wake button, and a new Digital Crown, which is used for zooming and scrolling depending on context, and as the home button when pressed.

The Apple Watch doesn't do much different from other smart watches already on the market. It tells the time (obviously), displays notifications from your iPhone, allows brief interactions and responses largely using voice, and has some app integration. But it appears to do all of those much better than other attempts at smart watches. The smoothness of interaction is fluid.

One thing the Apple Watch is adding in that I haven't seen a great deal of in other smart watches is the health & fitness aspect. Essentially, it has all the hallmarks of a Fitbit that is enhanced further when paired with your iPhone. I think the fitness aspect will be huge for the Apple Watch.

From a looks department, it is a handsome timepiece. The digital crown really helps to give it the watch look & feel. And it is certainly the best looking smart watch yet. However, to me it does look extremely 1.0. I can't help but be reminded at the drastic difference in aesthetic, style, thickness, and weight between the original iPad and the iPad 2. It was night and day.

I am planning to hold off on the first crack at the Apple Watch and see what Apple does with a second go at it. I am certainly excited by the concept of the Apple Watch, but at the same time I have questions about how yet another device fits in my life.

U2

As is normal with Apple's big Fall event, they close it out with a musical performance. This year was the band U2, who I actually like. I grew up listening to their albums as my parents had them.

After the performance, Tim Cook and Bono had a very rehearsed , sometimes awkward, exchange about U2's upcoming album, and after beating around the bush, announced that the album would be a free gift to every iTunes account holder for through mid-October.

Tim and Bono did a little countdown from 5 and then Tim said that it just went live. Amazingly, for as many technical issues as the livestream had, the album was in my purchase history within a moment and I had it downloaded a moment later.

As odd as the whole exchange on stage was, I have to hand it to Apple for giving away an entire new album to so many people so quickly. It was a pretty neat experience.

Only Apple

This event was simply jam-packed with great announcements. Not one, but two new iPhones, the new iOS 8, a new, secure payment service that looks like it will be fantastic to use, the Apple Watch becoming a reality, and the largest and fastest rollout of a new album in music history.

Tim Cook has said at the close of the last few events "only Apple" could accomplish all that it does. And I think that is incredibly true. Apple makes the hardware, software, and the services that bind all of its products together into a way that makes experiencing technology almost life-enriching. It is because they sweat the details of all those areas that only Apple could pull all this off.

iPhone 5 Battery Replacement Program→

From Apple:

Apple has determined that a very small percentage of iPhone 5 devices may suddenly experience shorter battery life or need to be charged more frequently. The affected iPhone 5 devices were sold between September 2012 and January 2013 and fall within a limited serial number range.

If your iPhone 5 is experiencing these symptoms and meets the eligibility requirements noted below, Apple will replace your iPhone 5 battery, free of charge.

If you have an iPhone 5 that falls within that date range, it's not a bad idea to follow the title link above to check your serial number. Both mine and my wife's iPhones were fine and within the range. Your mileage may vary.

Go, you chicken fat, go!→

Apple released a new iPhone ad tonight focused on fitness apps & accessories, titled "Strength".

What just kills me about this ad is that it is set to the tune of "Chicken Fat".

The song has an interesting history. It is also one of my dad's favorite workout songs.

I about fell over when the music started playing.

¶ iPad Second

In the early days of iOS app development, there was one screen size to worry about. A simple 3.5-inch screen at 320x240 pixels. The retina display in the iPhone 4 was the first added complexity to designing iOS apps, as the resolution doubled to 640x480 pixels, but stayed at that 3.5-inch screen.

The original iPad is what really shook things up. A much larger screen at 9.7-inches, and a different aspect ratio with 1024x768 pixels. While an existing iPhone app could be run on it, it wasn't pretty. Apple's solution was to have either apps that ran only on the iPad, or to have what they called universal apps, where the iPhone and iPad interfaces were bundled into a single app.

This was a great opportunity for app makers to reimagine their apps for a new class of device, however, those who wanted to be first to the iPad only had weeks to completely redesign their apps for a device they had not yet held.

Everything was experimental.

Naturally, this was a little risky for app makers. I recall many of my favorite apps coming to iPad as separate apps from their iPhone counterparts. It made sense, as no one knew whether the iPad would be a runaway success¹, or if would be derided as "just a giant iPhone."²

As time has gone on and the iPad has found its place in the world, many apps that had separate releases for iPhone and iPad released major updates as universal apps.

There were inevitably some apps which targeted the iPad first. There is even a site dedicated to celebrating apps that ship for iPad first, though it doesn't appear to have been updated recently. One app that comes to the forefront of my mind is iA Writer. The iPad app shipped first, and an iPhone interface was added later.

These days I can't say I see too many apps debuting as iPad first. Most are universal at launch, or start out on the iPhone first.

What is more interesting to me is not the initial launch, but rather the order in which features are added. For the rest of this article, I want to focus on universal apps.

I prefer universal apps. I switch between my iPhone and iPad constantly, however the mood or situation strikes me. One thing I enjoy is that when an app is universal, it is simply there for me no matter which of the two devices I pick up. This leaves me with a certain expectation that the feature set between the iPad version and iPhone version of a universal app should be pretty on par.

Unfortunately that rarely seems to be the case. Too often these days I see universal apps gain new features and designs and layouts on the iPhone first, and the iPad side of it just lags behind.

Let's call out some apps that do this. Twitter is one of the biggest offenders. They consistently roll out new features to the iPhone first, and maybe someday bring them to the iPad side. I've seen Twitter drastically overhaul the interface of the iPhone before, and leave the iPad interface to languish for months.

Facebook is another one. They usually roll out design and feature updates to iPhone first, and iPad sometime later.

Even some apps I love dearly do this. Day One, as much as it pains me to say, has done this. They will roll out a feature on iPhone, then bring it to iPad. Thankfully, they are usually quick to bring things back into feature parity, but sometimes I'd rather just wait a couple extra weeks for a truly complete update to a universal app, rather than a staggered rollout.

I don't think this practice would bother me so much if the app in question were not universal. To me, universal does not just convey that I pay once to install on both device types. It conveys that the two interfaces should be maintained in parity.

Apps that have done this right the past couple years have been Twitterrific, Paprika, Byword, 1Password ³, and others. These apps continually release feature parity as universal apps across the two interfaces, without feeling like the iPad version is "just a bigger version of the iPhone".

I am delighted that many smaller development companies sweat the details to make sure their universal apps always feel universal in every way. My fear, though, is that some of the bigger companies like Twitter and Facebook are setting a trend where the iPad is an afterthought for universal apps, and that the iPad will become a second class citizen in app development, instead of a joint-heir with the iPhone.

---

1. Spoiler alert: It was. ↩

2. That happened, too. ↩

3. Disclosure: I work for AgileBits. ↩

Misunderstood→

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.

iPhone 5s M7 coprocessor and the Fitbit Zip→

Marc Edwards tracked his step counts with both his iPhone 5s (using the M7 motion coprocessor) and his Fitbit Zip. I have to say, those results are pretty close.

I wear a Fitbit One every day to track my activity. I wonder if I will even need it with the iPhone whatever-they-call-it-next. (I'm not up for a new one until next fall). Presumably the M8(?) will be even better, and my iPhone is almost always with me.

I can see the one area I'd lose stats in is the Fitbit One tracks my sleep activity. I could go without it, but I have been able to determine when I am in a more active state of sleep in the morning by studying my sleep habits, and adjusting my alarm accordingly has resulted in a better me.