Why ‘Minimum Viable Product’ Falls Short ‘Minimum Viable Product’ is one of the most over-used, least useful terms that gets thrown around the development community. The problem is that too often, people emphasize ‘minimum’ at the expense of ‘viable.’ It’s as though there’s a viability line that you will recognize when you cross it, and...
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If I want to watch WWDC session videos on the go and I know I’m going to be offline or have a bad connection, I download the sessions to the WWDC app in advance. But Safari is quickly becoming my favorite way to watch session videos in all other circumstances. Last Saturday, Apple added...
Razer Launches Mechanical Switch Keyboard for iPad Pro
Razer, best known for making mice and keyboards for gamers, announced a keyboard case for the 12.9” iPad Pro that features mechanical backlit keys with twenty levels of brightness and a kickstand that allows for multiple viewing angles. Razer’s keyboard, dubbed the Razer Mechanical Switch Keyboard, connects over Bluetooth and includes what Razer calls an Ultra-Low-Profile Mechanical Switch that it says delivers ’the exact same performance and feel as a full-fledged mechanical keyboard.’ With backlighting enabled, Razer estimates you will get 10 hours of battery life. With backlighting turned off, however, Razer says its keyboard will last a whopping 600 hours. Razer’s keyboard is available for purchase in the US for $169.99 with other countries to follow.
Eddy Cue on Apple TV and Apple Music→
Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services sat down with The Hollywood Reporter to talk about Apple TV and Apple Music. In response to questions aimed at understanding Apple’s place in Hollywood and its media ambitions, Cue focused primarily on media distribution and the role Apple can play to improve it for consumers:
The problem with it is the way that we end up consuming it — generally a cable box. A satellite receiver is, to me, nothing more than a glorified VCR. And so I think there’s huge opportunities in that space because people now want to watch on their phones, they want to watch on their iPads, and they want to watch on their TVs.
Cue also threw cold water on the notion that Apple is getting into the business of creating TV shows like Netflix, Amazon, and HBO do:
We’re not in the business of trying to create TV shows. If we see it being complementary to the things we’re doing at Apple Music or if we see it being something that’s innovative on our platform, we may help them and guide them and make suggestions. But we’re not trying to compete with Netflix or compete with Comcast.
Finally, in comments reminiscent of the interviews with playlist curators at Apple Music published by BuzzFeed yesterday, Cue explained that Apple Music:
… can’t be about a service that’s just providing the songs, because anybody can do that. It starts by the level of integration that we have within our product. Second of all, we do a lot of curation. Third is radio.
As a hardware manufacturer first and foremost, Apple’s approach to Hollywood content makes sense and reminds me in many ways of its approach to third-party app developers.
The Enormity and Precision of Apple Campus 2’s Glass Structures→
The scale of Apple Campus 2 is hard to comprehend. Built on 176 acres in Cupertino, California that was previously owned by Hewlett-Packard, Apple Campus 2 will have a circumference of one mile and accommodate around 13,000 employees.
Just as hard to grasp is the level of precision and detail that has gone into building Apple Campus 2. Apple Insider takes a look at the thought and care that has gone into one aspect of Apple Campus 2 – the glass.
The vast glass façade panels surrounding the exterior Spaceship Ring are 46 foot (14m) long and more than 10 feet (3m) tall, while the interior, courtyard-facing panels are just under 36 feet (11m) long. Both sets of panels are precisely curved to form the iconic building’s cylindrical glass curtain.
Apple Insider explores the process by which sedak, a German glass manufacturer that has worked on projects like the glass staircases in some Apple stores, built hundreds of giant curved-glass panels to within 0.8mm of Apple’s specifications, which is a substantially closer tolerance than standard glass panels. Once completed, each panel weighs up to 2 tons and was shipped across the Atlantic Ocean, through the Panama Canal, and then trucked to Cupertino in 20 ton bundles.
While the story behind the enormous glass installation at Apple Campus 2 is impressive in its own right, I agree with Apple Insider that:
Apple’s ability to design and implement products ranging from the microscopic A10 [chip] to the massive Campus 2 to the human scale of Mac Pro—and its ability to partner with both leading, global giants and groups of smaller, local businesses—suggests incredible potential for the company in other new markets, ranging from clean energy to automotive to new cloud services and advanced new computing devices.
Profiles of Playlist Curators at Apple Music, Spotify, and Google Play→
BuzzFeed has a fantastic feature post by Reggie Ugwu that goes inside the teams that create playlists for Apple Music, Spotify, and Google Play.
Ugwu explains that:
In the two years since the Beats acquisition, three of the largest services, including Apple Music, Spotify, and Google Play Music (and smaller ones like Tidal and Rhapsody, too), have increasingly relied on these playlists to accomplish two important goals at once: 1) helping users inundated by a catalog of more than 30 million songs more easily find the ones they actually want, and 2) creating difference in a market where everyone has more or less the same goods.
That’s a tall order. Discovery of digital media, whether it’s music, apps, or something else, is tough when many people are browsing vast media collections on their phones. Early attempts to curate music focused heavily on algorithmic solutions, but increasingly, streaming music services have invested in building editorial teams of music experts to create hand-picked playlists for subscribers.
One of the earliest champions of curated playlists was Jimmy Iovine, co-founder of Beats Music, which was acquired by Apple in 2014. Scott Plagenhoef, head of Apple Music’s editorial team of about a dozen employees, explains Apple’s Iovine-inspired approach to music curation:
“It’s not about us projecting our personal opinions on people, it’s about us kind of being good shepherds and stewards and cutting through this entire vast catalog,” he says. “What’s important isn’t just the most popular artists, or the sort of soft center that’s going to be palatable to a lot of people. It’s finding the artists people are going to either love or have intense reactions to, the ones that are going to mean the most and have the biggest impact.”
Music fans, Plagenhoef argues, echoing Iovine, can smell the difference between a service where much of the product is dictated by algorithms or charts and one that is guided by more knowledgeable but equally passionate versions of themselves. By building its house on a foundation of experts, Apple Music has bet that it can be marginally more trustworthy to users than the competition, and that that margin could make a tie-breaking difference.
As a life-long music fan, I don’t find this as particularly surprising, though maybe I would if I were approaching music curation from a purely technical standpoint. There are lots of clever things you can do algorithmically to group similar songs, but the human element makes a difference.
Recapture Time with Moment
It’s easy to get lost in whatever you’re doing on your iPhone or iPad and become oblivious of your surroundings – just ask anyone who’s tried Pokémon GO. I don’t have a problem doing that occasionally to blow off steam, and the reality is that a lot of my work gets done on iOS, but there’s a time and a place for everything. What I don’t want is for my device use to take away from time I spend with friends and family.
If you feel the same way, but have a hard time putting your iPhone or iPad away, Kevin Holesh’s app Moment can help. By tracking your iPhone or iPad usage, you can get a handle on how much time you spend on each device, and even how much time you spend in individual apps. What’s more, if you purchase the Pro version of Moment, you can take advantage of its full Phone Bootcamp course and other tools that can help you find ways to reduce your device usage.
An In-Depth Look at Apple’s Approach to Accessibility→
Mashable published a profile of Jordyn Castor, a 22-year-old Apple engineer on its accessibility design and quality team. Castor, who has been blind since birth, joined Apple full-time last year after interning there in college. As she explains to Mashable:
“I realized then I could code on the computer to have it fulfill the tasks I wanted it to,” says Castor, whose current work focuses on enhancing features like VoiceOver for blind Apple users. “I came to realize that with my knowledge of computers and technology, I could help change the world for people with disabilities.
In addition to speaking with Castor, Mashable interviewed Sarah Herrlinger, senior manager for global accessibility policy and initiatives, who explained Apple’s approach to accessibility:
a notable part of the company’s steps toward accessibility is its dedication to making inclusivity features standard, not specialized. This allows those features to be dually accessible — both for getting the tech to more users, as well as keeping down costs.
Mashable’s piece is a must-read for Jordyn Castro’s inspiring personal story and its insight into the unique way Apple approaches accessibility. Instead of treating accessibility as a special, add-on feature that is purchased separately, it’s built into the operating system itself. That, combined with the work Apple has done to make accessibility features easy for developers to adopt, reveals a pragmatic approach designed to encourage broad-based adoption, making Apple’s accessibility innovations available to as many people who need them as possible.
Game Day: Neon Drive
Neon Drive by Fraoula is a devilishly difficult 80s-themed driving game that immediately reminded me of the campy short film, Kung Fury. The unapologetic, over-the-top style of Neon Drive is a big part of its charm and adds to the fun of the game, which is available for OS X and iOS. The mechanics of Neon Drive are incredibly simple, but the mastering the game requires precise timing. Well-placed checkpoints provide just enough of a sense of progress though, to make Neon Drive more fun than frustrating.
Neon Drive is part endless runner, part rhythm game. The controls are about as basic as they could be – on iOS you steer your car across lanes by tapping the left side of the screen to move left and the right side to move right. On the Mac, you can accomplish the same thing with the left and right arrow keys or other preset key combinations. Each of Neon Drive’s levels is accompanied by an 80s synth soundtrack that adds to the game’s atmosphere as you dodge obstacles. The first time you hit an obstacle, your car is temporarily slowed down with the screeching sound effect of a needle scratching across a record that distorts the soundtrack. Hit a second obstacle and it’s game over. Fortunately, if you cross a checkpoint, you don’t have to restart from the beginning.
Neon Drive features seven very difficult levels. Getting past the first level felt like a major accomplishment even in normal mode. I’m not great at games that require perfect timing, so your mileage may vary, but despite the difficulty, I found Neon Drive fun and addicting in the same way a game like Canabalt is.
I played Neon Drive on my iPhone 6s Plus, iPad Pro 12.9, and 2015 Retina MacBook Pro. The games are virtually identical on iOS and OS X, but I’d give the edge to the iOS version because there’s something about tapping the screen directly that makes Neon Drive a little more immediate and fun. On OS X, Neon Drive got my laptop’s fans roaring almost immediately, which detracts the game some. My one wish for Neon Drive is for Fraoula to bring it to the Apple TV, where I think its simple mechanics would work well with or without a controller.
Despite being frustratingly difficult to master, Neon Drive is a blast to play and does a fantastic job of making you feel like you are playing a real 80s arcade game.
Neon Drive is available for $3.99 on the App Store and $9.99 on the Mac App Store.