Well technically old Edge is still around, and obviously this was referring to previous years. It's true that in the future the Edge route won't work, but thankfully now they're streaming to youtube so that's a moot point.
This is tradition. Pretty much all of the events shown in the background during WWDC keynotes are silly things. One of Craig's reminders today was "Competitive Meditation". It's just a silly thing to amuse people who are paying attention.
Also, I wish they wouldn’t do the “trendy” side-of-head camera swaps. There is nothing useful about looking at someone’s ear while they appear to be talking to someone else and not to you.
How would that be going "spectacularly wrong" with mentions? It would have been said in a group chat John is in, so it's not like he'd be seeing a message he shouldn't have.
Yes, but hopefully iOS widgets will not introduce the same issues Android widgets had.
Also, I don't see how mentions will "go wrong". When you type a name, I believe you can convert it into a mention but it's not necessary. Additionally, mentions are conversation-specific, so you're only tagging people who are in the current conversation. Same thing you see in Facebook Messenger, I think.
What's wrong with widgets? I first used Android, then switched to iPhone, later I used both (personal and business phone) and all the time I missed Widgets on iOS.
When I still commuted by bike I used a weather radar widget to check if I better hurry or wait to not get (too) wet. And I used a widget to control my Sonos.
At least when I used Android (quite a while ago), a lot of widgets were implemented poorly and led to impeded performance and rapid battery depletion, as well as confusing or cluttered interfaces because there was no consistency among the various implementations. Traditionally, Apple has simply not provided features that end up with downsides like this. Although iOS is less customizable, I tend to find that I actually prefer this restriction because I don't waste my time being bothered by things I could fix if only I could get the settings right. So I hope the new iOS Widgets strike the right balance of customizable, but not too customizable, and with a uniform implementation that prevents the Android problems I mentioned.
New iOS features so far look like Android parity catchup. Finally, a way to remove apps from the home screen without uninstalling them, and an "all apps" view so you can still find them. And real home screen widgets. And picture in picture video. New Siri overlay design seems similar in function to the new Google Assistant overlay design. On device voice recognition for keyboard dictation, like GBoard on Pixel. Maps guides, bike directions, like Google Maps. App Clips, like Play Instant Apps. Incoming calls as notifications, like the Google Phone app.
I always thought widgets were a huge deal and then I realized... and I played with them all the time but inevitably ... I used them less and less and less.
My phone as a sort of dashboard just doesn't work, I suspect it would require too much customization to really create to work for me and probably anyone else. Usually I want to just open a specific app anyway.
Widgets can definitely be overused. But I like having a calendar, a data usage meter, music player controls, and quick access to my top couple of contacts.
My android phone home screen has contained a weather widget and a music player widget for the past 7 years. I love having both of those things instantly viewable and interactive.
The ideal way for most "control something" widgets to work is the way the iOS "Apple TV Remote" app already works, when added as a Mission Control button.
It's 1. a regular app; plus 2. a shortcut to get into that app that can be accessed with one swipe from the lock screen; plus 3. a lock-screen widget that displays if the phone fell asleep while the app was in the foreground; and finally, 4. a separate "lock-screen embedded pseudo-app" (sort of like the Camera one you get to by swiping left on the lock screen), which you get to if you tap the "Remote" Mission Control button without first unlocking the phone. This last view allows people to still use your locked phone to pause the Apple TV it's controlling, if you're not there to unlock it for them.
It's too bad that no third-party app on iOS can achieve this same level of integration.
I wouldn't say that's ideal because it's predicated on seeing & using the lockscreen, which is itself not ideal.
Ideal is the device is instantly unlocked when I pick it up - which is also the reality I have as an Android user, but you can experience this on iOS as well with jailbreak mods. And with widgets it's then zero swipes to get to my lightbulb controls, which is just sweet.
Ideally there would just be a button that could turn on the lights in the room (to the level I want). In olden times this button was mounted to the walls of said room, but in these modern times, it would be awesome if that button was a real button, on my phone, like the volume up/down buttons, and would just turn the lights on/off in the room the phone is in. That Apple's got this hacky solution thats suffciently functional shouldn't be taken as the end-state on what an ideal solution is.
I enjoyed widgets when I used Android. Being able to keep a few key contacts 1 tap away, the weather and calendar always visible, and being able to single tap to create a new todo, another single tap to open my groceries note, etc. was pretty cool.
With the latest iphones being as fast as they are it's not a game changer to not have widgets, but I definitely found them extremely convenient.
I have never heard anyone ask for a way to remove an app without uninstalling it. Seems like weird feature creep to me. Edge case, just stick the app in a folder...
Speak for yourself. I use widgets heavily on Android and keep a clean app-less home screen. Every app is just in the drawer. As well, there are many things that one can do on Android that are simply not possible on iOS, such as using git to interface with files and querying a remote server. That's just me, though, I know the vast majority don't care about this functionality.
Yeah, totally, I get that for some people they'll see Android like that and for people like yourself the "mini computer" paradigm makes total sense.
Just not for the gigantic market that Android has.
I've always found Android's design to be really weird compared to iOS or Windows Phone, but seeing it as a "mini computer" explains why their design doesn't make sense to me - because I see phones as a separate form factor that fundamentally changes how it is used [by most people].
I would love that. Extensions (ad blockers, keyboards, etc) in particular are super awkward because they install a full app. I also have a couple regional apps that I use every couple of months they really don't deserve home screen space even if its in a junk folder.
Nearly every iOS user has a folder called called "junk" to deal with apps they don't want on their home-screen but also can't uninstall. This isn't an edge case at all...
Often times the "junk" app is a third party app that the OS allows them to uninstall but they can't uninstall because they need to have it once a year for checking something.
There's also apps you just want for the integration they may provide (for example, a keyboard app) but don't want to install the entire app.
I have the Pocket app installed on my iPhone, because I want to be able to share stuff to Pocket, but I don't ever actually use the Pocket app to read stuff.
Then there are utility apps, such as the app that I used to setup my wifi, that I rarely open but still want to keep around in case something goes wrong.
There's all sorts of reasons to have apps installed but not showing in the most prime real estate in the world.
Nah, I have (for one example) a collection of apps that just exist to power the real version on my watch.
Note that these apps actually do something in some cases, like I have a Twitter app (Chirp) where I'm pretty sure the heavy lifting happens on my phone and the watch just does the display.
What? This is a complaint I hear often from ios users. "I know you don't want to see this app, too bad just stick it in a folder you don't want to see either" is not the kind of super slick UX that made ios popular.
I have six apps on my Android homescreen: browser, mail, sms, clock, notes and maps. That's all I always use every week. I definitely need my TOTP app, Duo for work, the calculator and of course camera and phone apps, but I don't use any of them frequently enough to want them on the homescreen.
I haven't seen that part yet, but to me the iOS app list was a killer feature.
I always hated Android's desktop, it feels redundant when there's already an app menu, and I can't stand the fact that newly installed apps decide to show up on the desktop. Never used widgets either, they have never made my daily workflow easier at all. YMMV
How can you simultaneously state that you prefer an app list (where all apps are listed and thus added automatically) and complain about how apps are automatically added to the Android home screen (which I presume is what you're referring to as desktop)?
And the thing you never used never made your daily workflow easier? That sounds... obvious? Try using it for a while and then decide if they're worth it.
> How can you simultaneously state that you prefer an app list (where all apps are listed and thus added automatically) and complain about how apps are automatically added to the Android home screen (which I presume is what you're referring to as desktop)?
Presumably because, if your primary "default" view was already the app list, then it'd be redundant for the home screen to have apps on it. If the "home screen" was secondary, it'd become more of a "widget screen" (like the iOS "widget page", but with the ability to add shortcuts to documents/bookmarks as well.)
Just like a PC desktop (which is secondary in function to the OS apps menu/launcher) is essentially a "widget page" + shortcuts to documents, bookmarks, and common locations.
If you're the kind of person who is really picky about how your desktop behaves, but you also can't be bothered to spend 5 minutes configuring it, Android is not for you.
This is great, having every app, unsorted by default, on the homescreen/desktop was one of the most annoying things to me about iOS. I have a regular habit of running General->Reset->Reset Home Screen Layout to get an alphabetical list.
Auto creating homescreen icons is one of the first things I turn off when first setting up an android device.
And what id argue is even a better implementation. For times when you want to interact with an app, with some kind of an account, but dont want the app on your phone. No need to create an account, setup payments.
I’ve been getting annoyed lately, configured iOS to “offload” rarely used apps - but it means that I stop getting expected notifications.. and don’t realize it until I try to open the app.
Yeah, with Covid, a ton of apps were offloaded for me, and once I started to safely venture out into the world again, a bunch of things were missing (Starbucks, Lyft/Uber, etc).
I dont believe android has anything quite like sign in with apple, that lets you make an account at a service with only your name, and provides you a one time use random email address as a forwarder to your real email.
I've only seen things like parking meters and transit terminals, in which case you just pay with google pay or something. I'm not sure what the purpose of signing up for an app you don't even install is.
Presumably for services beyond parking meters and transit terminals. The keynote showed cafés, and maybe other food ordering places, too. Having an account with the establishment could be used as a loyalty rewards programme or something, like at Subway where you have a card that you scan at the till.
having a mobile browser that syncs your history and bookmarks over from your desktop browser of choice is arguably more important than having a choice in browser engines.
as a developer i get it, i would like to choose a different browser engine too, but that's mostly for philosophical reasons, not actual utility.
> having a mobile browser that syncs your history and bookmarks over from your desktop browser of choice is arguably more important than having a choice in browser engines.
This isn't an either/or scenario. Firefox and Chrome support this on Android. Apple blocking third party browsers has nothing to do with desktop sync.
The importance of real browser choice on iOS is not just "philosophical". It's not about bookmarks. It's about control of the web itself.
All major parts of the web now allow users to freely choose their browser with one glaring exception: iOS. Unfortunately, iOS is big enough that it has veto power over the entire web platform. If it won't work on iOS, it won't work on "the web". It's just like the old days of Internet Explorer or Java before it, where a proprietary platform maker had the precious ability to sabotage its open platform competition.
Without iOS enforcing Safari, Google will own the web. Safari being a requirement adds "test in other browsers" to the requirements list of any web app. If you can just tell iOS users to install Chrome, that development step goes away, and the incremental work to support for Firefox will also go away. And then we will have the real Internet Explorer web again, where it is owned by one company.
Unfortunately, iOS is big enough that it has veto power over the entire web platform.
This is so untrue. Google goes ahead and implements stuff regardless of what Apple does or doesn't do.
Any major feature gets worked out by Google, Apple and Mozilla—like Flexbox and Grid.
All of these companies operate on what's in their interest vs. what makes sense for the web.
Folks should be somewhat satisfied with Apple’s Safari/Webkit announcements today:
General
New Features
* Added Safari Web Extensions support for macOS.
* Added Webpage Translation (Beta) for English, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, French, German, Russian, and Brazilian Portuguese. Safari will automatically detect if a translation is available based on your Preferred Languages list.
* Added support for HTTP/3.
* Improved Web Platform Tests pass rate for WebDriver, XHR+Fetch, Service Workers, CSS, and SVG.
Removed Features
* Safari no longer supports Flash.
Performance
New Features
* Supported incremental loading of PDF files.
* Implemented asynchronous scrolling for overflow: scroll, and <iframe> on macOS.
* Improved tab closing performance.
* Improved IndexedDB performance.
* Improved JavaScript cookie access performance.
* Improved for-of performance.
Privacy
New Features
* Added a Privacy Report that shows the trackers that Intelligent Tracking Prevention prevented from accessing identifying information.
* Enabled full third-party cookie blocking, and the Storage Access API in Private Browsing mode.
Authentication and Passwords
New Features
* Added a Web Authentication platform authenticator using Face ID or Touch ID, depending on which capability is present.
* Added support for PIN entry and account selection on external Web Authentication security keys.
* Added notifying users when one of their saved passwords in iCloud Keychain has shown up in a data breach; requesting a password change uses the well-known URL for changing passwords (https://example.com/.well-known/change-password), enabling websites to specify the page to open for updating a password.
* Added support to Security Code AutoFill for domain-bound, one-time codes sent over SMS; in the following 2FA SMS, Safari only offers to fill the code on example.com, and no other domain. Your Example code is 123446. @example.com #123446
JavaScript
New Features
* Added support for the BigInt data type.
* Added support for creating custom instances of EventTarget.
* Added logical assignment operator support.
* Added public class fields support.
Media
New Features
* Added WebP image support.
* Added HDR video playback support.
* Changed to derive <img> aspect ratio from size attributes.
* Support for the Picture-in-Picture API is now available in iOS on iPhone.
CSS
New Features
* Updated image-set() to support all other image functions including image(), -webkit-canvas(), -webkit-cross-fade(), and -webkit--gradient().
Added :is() pseudo-selector support as a synonym for :matches().
* Added :where() pseudo-selector support for specificity adjustment.
* Added support for image-orientation.
Web Inspector
New Features
* Added support for a bootstrap script.
* Added a Sources Tab that combines the Resources tab and Debugger tab.
* Added an HSL color picker with P3 support.
* Added information about Web Animations, CSS animations, and CSS transitions to the Timelines tab.
Apple don't 'catch up', they 'invent', 'craft' and 'hone'.
They let others prove a market and then they move in and throw vast resources at doing a better version, honestly it's a smart move if you have the cash.
I find it some what ironic though given how friendly they pretend to be to developers.
There's always a great cycle where they cherry pick the best from each other and Android adopted a bunch of things recently like gesture navigation but it's definitely seeming like it's a major catch up from Apple this time with things like on device voice dictation and the general layout / widgets. Less so for the simpler items but for various of these cutting edge items it's been a shame they've been so narrowly deployed on Android where they've mostly been for Pixel only.
What is it with every messaging platform/app becoming reddit-style lately? First twitter did it, then a bunch of sites copied that, now Apple's messaging app is shifting to it? Weird! I think it's probably a good thing, but it's still jarring to see.
"Allow Apple to control who can unlock your car" seems to very quickly lead to "Congratulations, law enforcement will literally never knock, ask or notify when breaking into your car going into the future." I could just be cynical though.
Something probably unintentional that they're highlighting with this particular presentation style (frequent female presenters, infrequent male presenters) is that seemingly every role that they require someone in a position of power talking for, it's male, while the grunt work doesn't seem to have been at all. Personal progressiveness mixed with systemic sexism?
"You all have trouble sleeping so we're going to make your phone teach you yoga and meditation" is a very weird thing to do automatically instead of just blue-light reduction (which they already have a feature for) seems weird, but they know the market better than I do I guess.
Kind of mundane. Apple's chips trump many desktop chips, so I imagine the Mac might get an edge on performance again, which would be interesting. They're probably going to blow it though.
All their chips have a Secure Enclave, so yes. That doesn't mean Linux won't be able to run, it just means Linux won't be able to use any of the Secure Enclave's secrets.
When I read the Foundation books a few years back, I was thinking about what it would take to film them and the biggest challenge I saw was the overwhelming sexism in the storytelling and characterizations. That part of Asimov's writing has not aged well. Not sure how the puzzlebox plots would translate to the screen.
Although the presentation video seemed to skip ahead on the car key part on Firefox, I noticed they said the key will be stored only locally on the phone, unless you share it with someone else. Guess we'll see next year when cars equipped with the feature actually start to show up.
It really isn't too hard to think of ways to do this that involve "iCloud" for key transfer, but keep the locus of control at the car/primary-drivers-phone nexus. Doing it differently would only introduce liability that Apple would rather not have.
iCloud is a service that Apple holds users' encryption keys with, and gives up control of to other organizations (which is what they did in China, for example). Given their focus on privacy is almost purely superficial, it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't.
I agree, although I doubt it will have anything to do with Apple. The automakers will just build in a "lawful access" feature and the hundreds of law-enforcement adjacent agencies will have remote access to that feature w/o any meaningful oversight.
When I wrote that, they were talking about many non-improvements and slight adjustments to iOS. I'd say the bikeshedding peaked at the AirPods segment.
I don't think they should be focusing on anything in particular; they know their market better than I do, and it seems plausible that consumers prefer bikeshedding rather than major change. I'm just saying it bores me.
This is the first time in a long time where the Mac segment has been the most interesting thing, and I'd say that they should probably start doing what they're doing to the Mac to iOS. Even if it's not necessarily things I think that are positive, it's exciting.
> I'd say the bikeshedding peaked at the AirPods segment.
Algorithmically translating spatial audio to correspond with head position is fundamental to AR. It's also cool that it will improve watching movies in the meantime, but you're missing the point if that's all you saw.
I thought their changes would bring iMessage closer to the feel of Slack/Teams/(insert chat app here). It won't be multiple-channels-in-a-server style, but it may be close enough...
"curly line that doesn't match the rest of design style, indicating a reply" is cloning exactly how twitter announced they were copying reddit's threads.
The overproduction on this presentation is jarring.
Given that so much of Apple's success is based on "simple" and "familiar" things, having Craig Federighi hover of an ominous greenscreen'd floating keynote outside of Steve Jobs theater just feels off.
Surely the best way to make virtual events feel familiar is to have actual humans interacting, touching, etc? Instead here you have isolated individuals floating in computer generated environments. Why aren't we just watching memoji's talk to us if that's the case?
It's so well-rehearsed and body language coached that it feels like watching an infomercial. I mean, it is an infomercial, but it's still annoying and distracting.
It's so high-stakes and painstakingly precise that it reminds me of watching the mass games in Pyongyang.
I can't speak for anyone else by myself but for the last several years most of the presenters sounded like they were well dosed with beta blockers before presenting. Not at all natural, or at ease, or relaxing to watch.
They've been trending that way even at the live events. Last few years the obviousness of all the coaching and rehearsal has been extremely distracting. I mean it was there before but not quite so intensely. They all come off as robotic or like someone's holding a gun on them.
In all likelihood, insufficient coaching and rehearsal is why it feels coached and rehearsed.
A perfect presentation, which has been extremely well practiced and rehearsed, comes off as natural. Because they havent practiced it enough (and probably because many of them are simply not very good presenters, unlike say Jobs) it falls into the uncanny valley and appears unnatural.
Yeah, you're on to something. I'd guess it's intense and precise coaching paired with people who don't do this sort of thing very often. It seemed to get a lot worse soon after they started trying to get a bunch more presenters involved, some years back. My guess is they didn't think the first couple of those were polished enough, so cranked up the prep, which, when applied to people who haven't developed outstanding presenter-talent, gives you a really fake and awkward effect. I think the somewhat rougher early ones were nicer, personally.
To their credit, I guess, most other events I've seen like this since everyone started trying to ape Apple's announcement style have the same problem, and usually worse.
> Surely the best way to make virtual events feel familiar is to have actual humans interacting, touching, etc? Instead here you have isolated individuals floating in computer generated environments.
To be fair we are still in the midst of a pandemic and should be practicing social distancing. Having Craig and co giving high-fives as they hand off to each other is not appropriate currently. Sure it is weird but it is how the world is right now. If they didn't do it people would say "omg Apple staff think they are better than everyone and are not socially distancing, so irresponsible."
Honestly I don't have an issue with the production. They are going over the top with the transitions but it isn't really a problem.
Not sure why there are complaints about something that looks fine. Or should it look like a Zoom session where he sits in their home to satisfy this complaint?
To each their own. I found the keynote to be engaging and it was different from the usual same kind of presentation that we've had with Jobs for decades.
As an update; only Apple Watch and iPad had male presenters. The rest were women, out of all the presentations 80% were done by women. I wonder this related to the garbage quality in their software. As if they’ve left meritocracy for popularity instead?
Also, not a single Indian? I mean the CEO of both Google and Microsoft are Indians but Apple doesn’t have a single Indian in a leadership position? Not sexy enough for some voices?
Some people will find that worth thinking about, others will silence any discourse about it.
Not sure if you're just making a joke, but I believe the feature you're referring to is called "App Clips" for anybody else who sees this and is curious.
App Clips seem like they would be very convenient and useful if you're visiting a medium-large city and doing things you didn't know there was an app for.
Forced requirement of <10mb, so it's actually more like gopher than it is modern web pages, but given the max is still 10mb, it's...not exactly wonderful.
Stand directltly in front and align your phone just so. Opens browser, downloads a huge JavaScript framework with ads up the wazoo, final page doesn't render good on the phone, have to scroll around to see everything, tiny text have to zoom into to read correctly.
I have nothing against QR codes, but no one uses them well. Obviously would have been nice though. I was excited about QR codes too.
That's what Apple is good for, see Palm Pilot vs iPhone. I'm hoping by making a good clean version of the QR code functionality that gets popular, it will make people create proper QR codes when they see how it's supposed to be done.
I'm quite sure that's not the average QR experience. Sounds like your phone really sucks at doing QR and those websites they point at haven't been updated in 15 years.
with the covid rules to ban shared items (napkin holder, big sauce bottles and restaurant menus), many restaurants have put an sticker with a QR code pointing to their menu on a website or even a pdf, and it works flawlessly both on android and iphone.
I was at a restaurant this Saturday and they had a QR code on the table for a menu. It was great and delighted the group.
App Clips would also let me seamlessly "retain my identity". I can just order quickly, and pay instantly. No extra details needed from me. Fast, easy, and private!
> Making these without providing Android support just feels mean
You want Android to be able to run mini versions of iOS App Store apps? That seems completely unreasonable. If that's not what you mean, then I don't understand what you think they could do here to "provide Android support".
QR codes just map to a URL/string. They could make these an open platform, and let developers define what they map to on other OSes. Instead they have gone full lockin. I dont expect them to be that successful, past experience tells us things with one OS lockin rarely succeed.
I suggest everyone attempt to understand what their customers value. Rather than judging them try to make them happy and/or solve their problems (depending on the context).
It’s just that this is WWDC. Why is this conference about “what customers value”? Why can’t this one be the one where they go trough the serious features and talk to those folks.
It seems to me they just ignore devs nowadays and focus on pushing the product to consumers.
I thought the vast majority of the WWDC schedule was devoted to more specialized talks? IIRC this year they are posting prerecorded sessions online with access to engineers in the forums and additionally doing 1-on-1 labs.
((Edit - linked last year's schedule by mistake woops))
I would normally agree, but the "customers" for WWDC are developers who want to get business value out of producing apps for the Apple ecosystem, no? It's not an "industry" presentation, an E3 or CES-like event, where the goal is to feed PR to reporters to trickle down to consumers; the final audience for the presentation are the very people watching it, and that audience doesn't necessarily even use Apple devices as their primary devices—they just sell into the Apple software market, potentially as one market among the many they target.
Any talk at a WWDC keynote about e.g. new hardware, isn't because new Apple hardware is fundamentally exciting to these people; it's for the sake of reassuring them that Apple is keeping the market for their software thriving by giving the demand side of their market [hardware] reasons to buy into the ecosystem, or stay in the ecosystem. (It's also for the sake of talking about new software features enabled by hardware changes, e.g. the touchbar translating to an additional interaction paradigm for apps, or ML cores translating to ARKit.)
I don't really see how talking about emoji achieves the same goal of reassuring developers, given that consumers don't really make buying decisions based on the availability of emoji within one ecosystem but not another. (In fact, in my observation, the reverse is true; people usually avoid using new emoji until the people they text with can see them, meaning that a new emoji only becomes useful when both iOS and Android support it.)
Because even though it's supposed to be about developers, every news site and tech blog is listening in as well. These bits and pieces are for them, because everyone wants to be ahead of the game. They are just throwing a bone to scavengers keep them in the press and in front of people's eyeballs.
Semi-installed Apps with more privileges than a website, requiring the usual iOS dev workflow with a paid plan of course (seems like App Clips are part of a regular App, so you have to write a regular app anyway). Oh and it supports Apple Pay and Login.
I’m convinced that this is another sign that PWAs are never going to be really capable on iOS.
It's an answer to one of PWA's advantages, the install friction. It's also a feature thats existed on Android for a while, although I don't see much uptake.
This is used so rarely, in my experience, that it's jarring on first use but overall a good experience. Usually I find the web interface fine or good enough for how often I use it and move on.
Once I liked the Instant version so well I got the actual app. For things I do regularly and can be 100% via web, it is nice to see a better implementation via an app and install it.
I wouldn't say it's the answer - it's a different take, and I suspect it will be executed really well. The UI looks intuitive.
App Clips will potentially be revolutionary in terms of app adoption. It's hard enough to get people to install your apps.
Now if you have a real life item pushing you in that direction, offering you a light weight app to start off with, it's SO much easier. I'm super excited about App Clips.
It seems like a way to let people not install an app. If there's always an app clip available, why bother installing? Many apps don't need to keep the audience engaged all that time - that's what apps are good at - with annoying notifications and all. If you are a parking meter provider, you don't care about that. You just want people to be able to pay you quickly.
What's stopping me from putting a PWA in a webview and call it a app clip? Is that possible? From the app clip docs it seems like they didn't prohibit that.
Of all the things presented, I'm most excited by App Clips. Between Sign-In with Apple, Apple Pay, and this, I think it's going to take real world digital commerce to another level.
Written Chinese is an incredibly difficult language for handwriting recognition because there are literally hundreds of thousands of symbols, and they are not all amalgamations of smaller symbols as you might be tempted to think. Showing support for Chinese is impressive.
Additionally, the speaker may have actually been learning how to write Chinese (it's not exactly unheard of), so it could have been a case of "We need to showcase this technology that support handwriting in multiple languages. Since I'm learning Chinese, maybe I'll use that!"
Not everything is a nefarious corporate-state conspiracy.
It astounds me that Apple is still pushing privacy as a big differentiator when most of the iCloud data (such as all of your photos and notes) is not end to end encrypted, and the iCloud Backup provides every single piece of information on your phone to Apple effectively unencrypted, including all of your previously-end-to-end-encrypted iMessages (in the chat history).
Until this is fixed, Apple's privacy messaging is just lip service. Do they think people just won't notice or care?
The additional iOS privacy protections (camera & mic use, and Safari tracking sounds great). The developer self-reporting of data use is great, but can we trust self-reporting? What's to dis-incentivize the developers from lying?
Monitor outgoing network traffic via mitmproxy/Charles Proxy. It's currently very transparent where and what kind of data leaves a given app, if you look for it.
They can remove the app from the App Store at will. We need to wait to know the details, but it's very likely this will be one of the reasons the will use.
This is why I don't get why people want the AppStore to be like Play Store
In the AppStore if you are a bad actor you get kicked out and need to consider if you want to pay to get another developer license to keep publishing garbage
Compared to Play Store, the AppStore feels a lot cleaner. I don't need a hundred crappy low effort apps hoping I install them so they can steal my data.
I mean, no one is forcing you to buy an iPhone. People act like Apple is ripping your Thinkpad with Arch Linux from your hands and forcing you to use Apple hardware.
I have a laptop running Ubuntu. Fact is I trust my iPhone for online banking more.
>In the AppStore if you are a bad actor you get kicked out and need to consider if you want to pay to get another developer license to keep publishing garbage
If that is good for the Apple's App Store, shouldn't we want that in other stores? If so, why isn't that policing work done democratically so we can call it "law + law enforcement"?
I like having the option of a closed wall "curated" market, and an open install anything market.
I can do my banking on my iPhone and have the password saved on it, while having an Android running F-droid running whatever I want that will never touch my banking info.
What's wrong with having MORE choice. iPhone are no where near market monopoly.
378 comments
[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 266 ms ] threadEdit: also, mentions could go spectacularly wrong... "John is a real idiot!" -- oops.
Also, I don't see how mentions will "go wrong". When you type a name, I believe you can convert it into a mention but it's not necessary. Additionally, mentions are conversation-specific, so you're only tagging people who are in the current conversation. Same thing you see in Facebook Messenger, I think.
My phone as a sort of dashboard just doesn't work, I suspect it would require too much customization to really create to work for me and probably anyone else. Usually I want to just open a specific app anyway.
Shameless plug, I've recently made an app for this, to create custom widgets: https://www.wowidget.com/
It's 1. a regular app; plus 2. a shortcut to get into that app that can be accessed with one swipe from the lock screen; plus 3. a lock-screen widget that displays if the phone fell asleep while the app was in the foreground; and finally, 4. a separate "lock-screen embedded pseudo-app" (sort of like the Camera one you get to by swiping left on the lock screen), which you get to if you tap the "Remote" Mission Control button without first unlocking the phone. This last view allows people to still use your locked phone to pause the Apple TV it's controlling, if you're not there to unlock it for them.
It's too bad that no third-party app on iOS can achieve this same level of integration.
Ideal is the device is instantly unlocked when I pick it up - which is also the reality I have as an Android user, but you can experience this on iOS as well with jailbreak mods. And with widgets it's then zero swipes to get to my lightbulb controls, which is just sweet.
With the latest iphones being as fast as they are it's not a game changer to not have widgets, but I definitely found them extremely convenient.
Suddenly a lot of Android makes sense - they’re trying to build a little computer that fits in your pocket! Aha! I see!
I am not sure that’s a good model for designing something that is fundamentally not a little desktop computer.
Just not for the gigantic market that Android has.
I've always found Android's design to be really weird compared to iOS or Windows Phone, but seeing it as a "mini computer" explains why their design doesn't make sense to me - because I see phones as a separate form factor that fundamentally changes how it is used [by most people].
I have the Pocket app installed on my iPhone, because I want to be able to share stuff to Pocket, but I don't ever actually use the Pocket app to read stuff.
Then there are utility apps, such as the app that I used to setup my wifi, that I rarely open but still want to keep around in case something goes wrong.
There's all sorts of reasons to have apps installed but not showing in the most prime real estate in the world.
Note that these apps actually do something in some cases, like I have a Twitter app (Chirp) where I'm pretty sure the heavy lifting happens on my phone and the watch just does the display.
Because I also can make definitive yet unsubstantiated claims about the entire iOS community.
Fact is nobody (likely including Apple) knows whether users are putting apps into Junk folders or not.
> Finally, a way to remove apps from the home screen without uninstalling them
You're talking about a different problem.
The solution in your case is surely to allow the apps to be uninstalled!
I always hated Android's desktop, it feels redundant when there's already an app menu, and I can't stand the fact that newly installed apps decide to show up on the desktop. Never used widgets either, they have never made my daily workflow easier at all. YMMV
And the thing you never used never made your daily workflow easier? That sounds... obvious? Try using it for a while and then decide if they're worth it.
Presumably because, if your primary "default" view was already the app list, then it'd be redundant for the home screen to have apps on it. If the "home screen" was secondary, it'd become more of a "widget screen" (like the iOS "widget page", but with the ability to add shortcuts to documents/bookmarks as well.)
Just like a PC desktop (which is secondary in function to the OS apps menu/launcher) is essentially a "widget page" + shortcuts to documents, bookmarks, and common locations.
That is an option that you can disable
Auto creating homescreen icons is one of the first things I turn off when first setting up an android device.
Scan something, pay for it, move on.
as a developer i get it, i would like to choose a different browser engine too, but that's mostly for philosophical reasons, not actual utility.
This isn't an either/or scenario. Firefox and Chrome support this on Android. Apple blocking third party browsers has nothing to do with desktop sync.
All major parts of the web now allow users to freely choose their browser with one glaring exception: iOS. Unfortunately, iOS is big enough that it has veto power over the entire web platform. If it won't work on iOS, it won't work on "the web". It's just like the old days of Internet Explorer or Java before it, where a proprietary platform maker had the precious ability to sabotage its open platform competition.
This is so untrue. Google goes ahead and implements stuff regardless of what Apple does or doesn't do.
Any major feature gets worked out by Google, Apple and Mozilla—like Flexbox and Grid.
All of these companies operate on what's in their interest vs. what makes sense for the web.
Folks should be somewhat satisfied with Apple’s Safari/Webkit announcements today:
General New Features
* Added Safari Web Extensions support for macOS.
* Added Webpage Translation (Beta) for English, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, French, German, Russian, and Brazilian Portuguese. Safari will automatically detect if a translation is available based on your Preferred Languages list.
* Added support for HTTP/3.
* Improved Web Platform Tests pass rate for WebDriver, XHR+Fetch, Service Workers, CSS, and SVG.
Removed Features * Safari no longer supports Flash.
Performance New Features
* Supported incremental loading of PDF files.
* Implemented asynchronous scrolling for overflow: scroll, and <iframe> on macOS.
* Improved tab closing performance.
* Improved IndexedDB performance.
* Improved JavaScript cookie access performance.
* Improved for-of performance.
Privacy New Features * Added a Privacy Report that shows the trackers that Intelligent Tracking Prevention prevented from accessing identifying information.
* Enabled full third-party cookie blocking, and the Storage Access API in Private Browsing mode.
Authentication and Passwords New Features
* Added a Web Authentication platform authenticator using Face ID or Touch ID, depending on which capability is present.
* Added support for PIN entry and account selection on external Web Authentication security keys.
* Added notifying users when one of their saved passwords in iCloud Keychain has shown up in a data breach; requesting a password change uses the well-known URL for changing passwords (https://example.com/.well-known/change-password), enabling websites to specify the page to open for updating a password.
* Added support to Security Code AutoFill for domain-bound, one-time codes sent over SMS; in the following 2FA SMS, Safari only offers to fill the code on example.com, and no other domain. Your Example code is 123446. @example.com #123446
JavaScript New Features * Added support for the BigInt data type.
* Added support for creating custom instances of EventTarget.
* Added logical assignment operator support.
* Added public class fields support.
Media New Features * Added WebP image support.
* Added HDR video playback support.
* Changed to derive <img> aspect ratio from size attributes.
* Support for the Picture-in-Picture API is now available in iOS on iPhone.
CSS New Features * Updated image-set() to support all other image functions including image(), -webkit-canvas(), -webkit-cross-fade(), and -webkit--gradient().
Added :is() pseudo-selector support as a synonym for :matches().
* Added :where() pseudo-selector support for specificity adjustment.
* Added support for image-orientation.
Web Inspector New Features * Added support for a bootstrap script.
* Added a Sources Tab that combines the Resources tab and Debugger tab.
* Added an HSL color picker with P3 support.
* Added information about Web Animations, CSS animations, and CSS transitions to the Timelines tab.
* Improved VoiceOver support.
yes, that's exactly what i mean by philosophical.
They let others prove a market and then they move in and throw vast resources at doing a better version, honestly it's a smart move if you have the cash.
I find it some what ironic though given how friendly they pretend to be to developers.
There's always a great cycle where they cherry pick the best from each other and Android adopted a bunch of things recently like gesture navigation but it's definitely seeming like it's a major catch up from Apple this time with things like on device voice dictation and the general layout / widgets. Less so for the simpler items but for various of these cutting edge items it's been a shame they've been so narrowly deployed on Android where they've mostly been for Pixel only.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/26/17052802/apple-icloud-enc...
I don't think they should be focusing on anything in particular; they know their market better than I do, and it seems plausible that consumers prefer bikeshedding rather than major change. I'm just saying it bores me.
This is the first time in a long time where the Mac segment has been the most interesting thing, and I'd say that they should probably start doing what they're doing to the Mac to iOS. Even if it's not necessarily things I think that are positive, it's exciting.
Algorithmically translating spatial audio to correspond with head position is fundamental to AR. It's also cool that it will improve watching movies in the meantime, but you're missing the point if that's all you saw.
Given that so much of Apple's success is based on "simple" and "familiar" things, having Craig Federighi hover of an ominous greenscreen'd floating keynote outside of Steve Jobs theater just feels off.
Surely the best way to make virtual events feel familiar is to have actual humans interacting, touching, etc? Instead here you have isolated individuals floating in computer generated environments. Why aren't we just watching memoji's talk to us if that's the case?
It's so high-stakes and painstakingly precise that it reminds me of watching the mass games in Pyongyang.
A perfect presentation, which has been extremely well practiced and rehearsed, comes off as natural. Because they havent practiced it enough (and probably because many of them are simply not very good presenters, unlike say Jobs) it falls into the uncanny valley and appears unnatural.
To their credit, I guess, most other events I've seen like this since everyone started trying to ape Apple's announcement style have the same problem, and usually worse.
To be fair we are still in the midst of a pandemic and should be practicing social distancing. Having Craig and co giving high-fives as they hand off to each other is not appropriate currently. Sure it is weird but it is how the world is right now. If they didn't do it people would say "omg Apple staff think they are better than everyone and are not socially distancing, so irresponsible."
Honestly I don't have an issue with the production. They are going over the top with the transitions but it isn't really a problem.
Also, not a single Indian? I mean the CEO of both Google and Microsoft are Indians but Apple doesn’t have a single Indian in a leadership position? Not sexy enough for some voices?
Some people will find that worth thinking about, others will silence any discourse about it.
(Applets are a Java thing from yesteryear.)
https://xkcd.com/1367/
"Find it on Maps... No website link"
"K, open a browser... new tab... let's search by name"
"No.. Not the one in Oralando"
"No.. Not the band"
"Ah, this looks correct"
"Oh god, it's using flash"
Versus
"Tap"
"Pay with Apply Pay"
Scan QR code*
* on any device.
Stand directltly in front and align your phone just so. Opens browser, downloads a huge JavaScript framework with ads up the wazoo, final page doesn't render good on the phone, have to scroll around to see everything, tiny text have to zoom into to read correctly.
I have nothing against QR codes, but no one uses them well. Obviously would have been nice though. I was excited about QR codes too.
App Clips would also let me seamlessly "retain my identity". I can just order quickly, and pay instantly. No extra details needed from me. Fast, easy, and private!
Making these without providing Android support just feels mean, but I assume they are planning on making the Apple specific from the talk.
You want Android to be able to run mini versions of iOS App Store apps? That seems completely unreasonable. If that's not what you mean, then I don't understand what you think they could do here to "provide Android support".
It seems to me they just ignore devs nowadays and focus on pushing the product to consumers.
((Edit - linked last year's schedule by mistake woops))
Any talk at a WWDC keynote about e.g. new hardware, isn't because new Apple hardware is fundamentally exciting to these people; it's for the sake of reassuring them that Apple is keeping the market for their software thriving by giving the demand side of their market [hardware] reasons to buy into the ecosystem, or stay in the ecosystem. (It's also for the sake of talking about new software features enabled by hardware changes, e.g. the touchbar translating to an additional interaction paradigm for apps, or ML cores translating to ARKit.)
I don't really see how talking about emoji achieves the same goal of reassuring developers, given that consumers don't really make buying decisions based on the availability of emoji within one ecosystem but not another. (In fact, in my observation, the reverse is true; people usually avoid using new emoji until the people they text with can see them, meaning that a new emoji only becomes useful when both iOS and Android support it.)
Semi-installed Apps with more privileges than a website, requiring the usual iOS dev workflow with a paid plan of course (seems like App Clips are part of a regular App, so you have to write a regular app anyway). Oh and it supports Apple Pay and Login.
I’m convinced that this is another sign that PWAs are never going to be really capable on iOS.
https://developer.android.com/topic/google-play-instant
Once I liked the Instant version so well I got the actual app. For things I do regularly and can be 100% via web, it is nice to see a better implementation via an app and install it.
App Clips will potentially be revolutionary in terms of app adoption. It's hard enough to get people to install your apps.
Now if you have a real life item pushing you in that direction, offering you a light weight app to start off with, it's SO much easier. I'm super excited about App Clips.
https://developers.google.com/pay/spot
https://youtu.be/-YAy4M8ZiR8
I know they’re such a big and important country for corporate success, but it honestly feels like they’re pandering to Chinese consumers.
Yes, I suppose if that’s your definition of pandering, they’ve been prioritizing China for a few years now.
Showing features your customers would like isn't really the same thing as pandering.
Additionally, the speaker may have actually been learning how to write Chinese (it's not exactly unheard of), so it could have been a case of "We need to showcase this technology that support handwriting in multiple languages. Since I'm learning Chinese, maybe I'll use that!"
Not everything is a nefarious corporate-state conspiracy.
Until this is fixed, Apple's privacy messaging is just lip service. Do they think people just won't notice or care?
https://sneak.berlin/20200604/if-zoom-is-wrong-so-is-apple/
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...
also true for google-backup.
Edit: seems I’m wrong
In the AppStore if you are a bad actor you get kicked out and need to consider if you want to pay to get another developer license to keep publishing garbage
Compared to Play Store, the AppStore feels a lot cleaner. I don't need a hundred crappy low effort apps hoping I install them so they can steal my data.
I mean, no one is forcing you to buy an iPhone. People act like Apple is ripping your Thinkpad with Arch Linux from your hands and forcing you to use Apple hardware.
I have a laptop running Ubuntu. Fact is I trust my iPhone for online banking more.
If that is good for the Apple's App Store, shouldn't we want that in other stores? If so, why isn't that policing work done democratically so we can call it "law + law enforcement"?
I like having the option of a closed wall "curated" market, and an open install anything market.
I can do my banking on my iPhone and have the password saved on it, while having an Android running F-droid running whatever I want that will never touch my banking info.
What's wrong with having MORE choice. iPhone are no where near market monopoly.
This is sadly still a problem on the App Store :(