AppStories, Episode 87 – Pick 2: Grocery and HomeRun →

Linked By John Voorhees

On this week’s episode of AppStories, we go in-depth on two apps we’ve been using a lot recently: Grocery, a grocery shopping list app, and HomeRun, an Apple Watch app for triggering HomeKit scenes.

AppStories Episode 87 - Pick 2: Grocery and HomeRun

0:00
29:39

↓

AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

Permalink

AppStories - Ep. 87 - 30 minutes

Pick 2: Grocery and HomeRun

Federico

John

AppStories Episode 87 - Pick 2: Grocery and HomeRun

0:00
29:39

↓

AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

This week, Federico and John go in-depth on two apps they’ve been using a lot recently: Grocery, a grocery shopping list app, and HomeRun, an Apple Watch app for triggering HomeKit scenes.

Q&A

By John Voorhees

Question: I’m a teacher who grades PDFs in PDF Expert. I have a folder called ‘To Grade’ that is in PDF Expert. After I grade files, I move them to a different folder on my iCloud account (but not in PDF Expert) called ‘Graded.’ I can simply drag the files on my Mac, but when...

Apps for Your New iPad Pro

By John Voorhees

John

The new iPad Pros are out and whether you’re new to the device or just looking for some fresh app ideas, here are some apps that show off the iPad Pro’s unique capabilities. GoodNotes A big highlight of the new iPad Pro is the redesigned Apple Pencil. Because it charges inductively and attaches...

Accessing Recents from the Compose Screen in Messages

By John Voorhees

John

This is an incredibly simple but powerful trick that I only learned recently. The list of friends and family I text regularly is far shorter than my entire Contacts database. As a result, tapping the plus button in the ‘To:’ field when composing a new message is rarely what I want. However, there’s an...

App Debuts

By John Voorhees

John

Spark (iOS/Mac) Spark has added templates to its Mac and iOS apps. As the name suggests, templates allow you to create reusable email forms with placeholders that can be completed when composing a message. Templates are accessed from Spark’s settings on iOS and its Preferences on macOS. Adding a template is similar to composing...

Austin Mann: A Photographer’s Review of the iPad Pro →

Linked By John Voorhees

Source: austinmann.com

Austin Mann has published a review of the new iPad Pro for photographers. Mann, a professional photographer, is in Iceland shooting 100-megapixel images with a Hasselblad H6D-100c that generates 216MB RAW files that are a great test of Apple’s new hardware. Mann demonstrates how well the iPad Pro handles those images by zooming in and out and panning around with little lag in a video demo of Adobe Lightroom CC.

Beyond the sheer performance of the hardware though, Mann has been impressed with the versatility and portability of the device. As he explains:

I was working with Mavic Pro 2 in the black volcanic deserts of south Iceland. While sitting in the car (in the middle of the desert, in the middle of nowhere), I decided to offload my images and review them.

I pulled out the iPad Pro and a card reader, and within only a few moments I was reviewing them on screen. Next thing I knew I was editing them with the Pencil in Lightroom CC and then I shared one with my wife—all within just a few moments.

It’s really easy to sit just about anywhere (even with a steering wheel in your face) and not just use it, but use it to its full extent. Another cool feature in this scenario is eSIM. Because the iPad Pro is connected to cellular, even in the middle of nowhere Iceland, I could quickly share the images without even thinking about my connection, WiFi, hotspots, etc. Time wasn’t mission critical on this shoot, but in a scenario where time is of the essence, this kind of workflow could be a game-changer.

That’s a sort of power the iPad Pro brings to bear that can’t be measured in chip speeds or other specs. It’s a flexibility that allows photographers and other creative professionals to work in more contexts and with greater efficiency. It’s hard to quantify but just as important.

Be sure to check out Mann’s review for more on his iPad Pro photography workflow and his beautiful photos of Iceland.

Permalink

Apple Updates GarageBand, Pages, Numbers, iMovie, and Keynote

By John Voorhees

As new iPad Pros are delivered worldwide today, Apple has released updates to GarageBand, Pages, Numbers, iMovie, and Keynote.

GarageBand adds support for keyboard shortcuts for the iPad Pro Smart Keyboard and other Bluetooth keyboards. The app also adds a Wah stompbox pedal and Face Control for the Smart Guitar.

Pages can now publish straight to Apple Books from both the iOS and Mac versions of the app.

iMovie adds support for mirroring and video previewing from the new iPad Pros to external displays. The video previews added to iMovie are not surprising given the press shots published by Apple last week demonstrating the feature and can handle uncompressed 4K output. The Mac version of iMovie also removes the option to publish directly to Facebook. Instead, the app can export to a Facebook-compatible format.

Finally, Numbers and Keynote also received updates, which are described merely as ‘stability and performance improvements.’

Phil Schiller and Anand Shimpi Discuss the iPad Pro’s A12X Chip →

Linked By John Voorhees

Ars Technica interviewed Phil Schiller, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, and Anand Shimpi, from Apple’s Hardware Technologies group, about the new iPad Pro’s A12X system on a chip. The article also benchmarks the iPad Pro against other iOS devices, Macs, and competing products. The results of Ars Technica’s tests are impressive. The iPad is not only the fastest iOS device available, but it also compares favorably with Apple’s pro Mac lineup.

In the interview, Samuel Axon of Ars leads off by asking about the iPad’s CPU. Shimpi explains how the chip outperforms the A10X:

“We’ve got our own custom-designed performance controller that lets you use all eight at the same time,” Shimpi told Ars. “And so when you’re running these heavily-threaded workloads, things that you might find in pro workflows and pro applications, that’s where you see the up to 90 percent improvement over A10X.”

Regarding the GPU, Shimpi says:

“It’s our first 7-core implementation of our own custom-designed GPU,” he said. “Each one of these cores is both faster and more efficient than what we had in the A10X and the result is, that’s how you get to the 2x improved graphics performance. It’s unheard of in this form factor, this is really an Xbox One S class GPU. And again, it’s in a completely fanless design.”

Apple is predictably tight-lipped about the Neural Engine, which powers machine learning tasks. In response to why the company keeps pushing its chip technology forward so rapidly despite its lead, Schiller pointed to Apple’s culture:

We don’t care if they’re doing something that isn’t interesting to us. We don’t care if we’re lapping them. Good. We’ll lap them ten times. It doesn’t matter because it’s in service to the user, not the competition.

It’s not surprising that Apple was unwilling to share much detail about how and why it’s pushing so aggressively with its custom silicon solutions. What’s clear, however, is that the company is well aware of the advantage its custom solution provides and is moving forward as fast as ever to improve it even further.

Permalink