Apple Silicon Macs Will Add a New Boot and Recovery Mode →

Jason Snell describes on Six Colors how Apple Silicon Macs will handle boot and recovery modes:

With the advent of Macs running Apple-designed processors, things will get a whole lot simpler. As described Wednesday in the WWDC session Explore the New System Architecture of Apple Silicon Macs, these new Macs will only require you to remember a single button: Power. (On laptops, that’ll be the Touch ID button. On desktops, presumably it’s the physical power button.)

Holding down that button at startup will bring up an entirely new macOS Recovery options screen. From here you’ll be able to fix a broken Mac boot drive, alter security settings, share your Mac’s disk with another computer, choose a startup disk, and pretty much everything else you used to have to remember keyboard shortcuts to do.

The new system is based on iOS’s boot process modified to meet the needs of Mac users. I can’t wait for this change. I don’t use the boot-up key combinations often enough to remember what they are. I expect that as we learn more about Apple’s upcoming Macs, other benefits gained by moving to Apple-designed SoCs will become apparent too.

You can also follow all of our WWDC coverage through our WWDC 2020 hub, or subscribe to the dedicated WWDC 2020 RSS feed.

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The Talk Show Remote from WWDC 2020 with Guests Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak →

Linked By John Voorhees

John Gruber’s annual live version of The Talk Show has become a tradition at WWDC featuring a variety of guests from Apple in recent years. This year, with the conference held online-only, Gruber recorded the show remotely with guests Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak.

Apple crams a lot into a keynote, and it is interviews like Gruber’s that provide additional details, helping paint the bigger picture with interesting insights into the thought that goes into the company’s products.

The wide-ranging interview covers developers and the App Store, the Mac and Big Sur, the iPad and Pencil, iOS 14, and privacy. In response to commentators who believe that Apple is merging iOS and macOS or abandoning the Mac, Federighi rattled off a long list of projects related to the Mac, commenting, “We love the Mac and we’re all in.” Joswiak added, “We’re far from bored with the Mac; it’s in our DNA.”

Federighi also addressed the relationship of Catalyst, SwiftUI, AppKit, and UIKit for developers, explaining that there is no single correct path. He said that the best path depends on where developers start. For example, some developers have invested heavily in AppKit and will probably want to stick with it, while UIKit developers may want to bring their apps to the Mac using Catalyst, whereas a new developer may want to start fresh with SwiftUI.

Gruber also asked about Scribble for iPad, the new feature that recognizes handwriting and adds other flexibility to taking notes with the Apple Pencil. The popularity of apps like GoodNotes and Notability haven’t gone unnoticed in Cupertino. In response to Gruber’s questioning, Federighi explained that the feature is designed to extend the utility of the Pencil when you’re already in a Pencil-centric mode, making it an alternative, but not a replacement, for a keyboard and touch.

The entire interview runs roughly 90 minutes and is worth watching in its entirety on YouTube for the full experience, but it is also available in an audio-only format as part of The Talk Show’s podcast feed.

You can also follow all of our WWDC coverage through our WWDC 2020 hub, or subscribe to the dedicated WWDC 2020 RSS feed.

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AppStories, Episode 170 – WWDC 2020: Widgets Come to the iPhone, iPad, and Mac →

Linked By John Voorhees

Today on AppStories, we consider widgets, the dynamic, but not interactive, extensions available in iPhone, iPad, and Mac apps that provide new ways to deliver quick, glanceable updates to users.

AppStories Episode 170 - WWDC 2020: Widgets Come to the iPhone, iPad, and Mac

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AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

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AppStories - Ep. 170 - 35 minutes

WWDC 2020: Widgets Come to the iPhone, iPad, and Mac

Federico

John

AppStories Episode 170 - WWDC 2020: Widgets Come to the iPhone, iPad, and Mac

0:00
34:31

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AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

In today’s special daily WWDC 2020 episode, Federico and John look at widgets, the dynamic, but not interactive, extensions available in iPhone, iPad, and Mac apps that provide new ways to deliver quick, glanceable updates to users.

AppStories, Episode 169 – WWDC 2020: Keynote Overview and Reactions →

Linked By John Voorhees

Today on AppStories, we cover the highlights of Apple’s keynote, including widgets, the App Library, App Clips, and design changes in iOS 14, system-wide sidebars and Apple Pencil updates in iPadOS 14, sleep tracking and the Fitness app in watchOS 7, and macOS Big Sur’s big redesign, Safari, and the transition to Apple Silicon.

AppStories Episode 169 - WWDC 2020: Keynote Overview and Reactions

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AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

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Apple Highlights the Music of WWDC, Including Federico Viticci’s MusicBot →

Linked By John Voorhees

Today as part of the Discover section of Apple’s Developer app, the company shared three playlists and interviews with developers about the role music plays in their lives. Among the interviews is one with Federico, who was asked about MusicBot, the Apple Music shortcut that he created, and shared on MacStories, last December.

Sam Rosenthal, the developer behind the excellent Apple Arcade game Where Cards Fall, was interviewed too. He explains how his love of music informs his company’s approach to game development:

“A lot of the bands that I really loved… They didn’t stick with one sound,” he said. Rosenthal has carried that philosophy into his work: “Every time we make something, it should be different from the last. It should surprise people.”

In addition to interviews with developers, Apple shared three playlists: WWDC20 Power Up, WWDC20 Coding Energy, and WWDC20 Coding Focus.

With WWDC forced to be held remotely due to the pandemic and other troubles in the world, I really appreciate the sentiment shared by Federico at the conclusion of Apple’s story:

“Music transcends our differences and has the power to unite us,” Viticci said. “To make us feel connected no matter what’s going on in the world.”

Be sure to check out the playlists above, I’ve only had a chance to scroll through them so far, but they look like excellent collections to enjoy as you catch up on the latest WWDC developments.

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The Mac’s Transition to Apple Silicon

By John Voorhees

Echoes of the past were woven throughout Apple’s announcement that it is transitioning the Mac from Intel-based chips to its own architecture. During the keynote yesterday, Senior Vice President of Hardware Technologies Johny Srouji kicked things off by explaining the balance between performance and power consumption, something that drove the transition to Intel chips nearly 15 years go. Then, Craig Federighi introduced Universal 2 and Rosetta 2, software solutions that originated with the transition to Intel Macs.

It would be a mistake to conclude that the transition to Apple Silicon will be just like the last switch, though. The computing world is very different from 2006, and so is Apple’s lineup of products. The transition carries the promise of powerful, low-power Macs, but it also foreshadows a fundamental change in the relationship among Apple’s platforms that began with the introduction of Mac Catalyst, SwiftUI, and related initiatives. Where precisely these changes lead is not entirely clear yet, but one thing is for certain: the Mac is changing dramatically.

Yesterday, I covered macOS 11.0, known as Big Sur, which is as much a part of this transition as the Mac’s new system-on-a-chip (SoC) will be. Today, however, it’s worth taking a closer look at the hardware that was announced. It won’t be available to consumers until later this year, and the transition is expected to take two years. However, within a week or so, developers will begin receiving test kits that will allow them to start working on supporting the new hardware when the new Macs start shipping.

AppStories - Ep. 169 - 42 minutes

WWDC 2020: Keynote Overview and Reactions

Federico

John

AppStories Episode 169 - WWDC 2020: Keynote Overview and Reactions

0:00
41:30

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AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

In today’s first WWDC 2020 episode, Federico and John cover the highlights of Apple’s keynote, including widgets, the App Library, App Clips, and design changes in iOS 14, system-wide sidebars and Apple Pencil updates in iPadOS 14, sleep tracking and the Fitness app in watchOS 7, and macOS Big Sur’s big redesign, Safari, and the transition to Apple Silicon.

macOS Big Sur: The MacStories Overview

By John Voorhees

It was a big day for the Mac. At WWDC’s opening keynote, Apple announced that the platform will transition to Apple-designed chips dubbed Apple Silicon. That switch was highly anticipated, and I’ll cover it in a separate story tomorrow. What was a bigger surprise, though, was the complete makeover of macOS that was revealed.

The latest version of macOS, which has been incremented to version 11.0 and is known as Big Sur, ushers in a new design language that reduces chrome and takes cues from aspects of iPadOS. The design changes to macOS weren’t the only big change announced today, though. Safari got what Apple describes as its biggest update ever, which includes under-the-hood performance enhancements, design tweaks, and all-new features. Big Sur will gain many of the features coming to iOS and iPadOS, too, bringing feature parity across platforms to more apps than ever.