I just came back to my hotel from the media event Apple held earlier today in London at their Battersea Power Station headquarters. I had high expectations for the new generation of iPad Pros that Apple unveiled today – some of which were exceeded by reality (hardware), and others that were, regrettably but unsurprisingly, faced with the reality of the iPad platform (software).
What follows is a loose collection of notes and impressions from the event, where I was able to try both iPad Pro models multiple times and spend some quality time with their accessories.
Let’s dive in.
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This week, Federico and John are joined by Riley Testut for a conversation about the history of AltStore from side-loaded app to official alternative app marketplace in the EU and Delta’s dominance of the Top Free App chart in the US and elsewhere.
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Many years ago when Shortcuts was still called Workflow, I created a simple shortcut called ‘Combine Images’ that allowed me to easily merge two images horizontally. I’ve been using this shortcut for a long time now, but it was only earlier this week that my girlfriend made me realize there was a key issue with...
Jason Snell, writing at Six Colors about the arrival of emulators on the App Store:
So where do we go from here? While Apple’s acceptance of emulators in the App Store is groundbreaking, and should delight many fans of retro gaming consoles, it’s an extremely limited change. Nobody really knows how Apple defines any of the words in that phrase. How old is retro? Is an old computer on which you can play games a console?
I grew up playing games on early computers, including the Apple IIe. Does the ability to open a spreadsheet in AppleWorks disqualify an Apple II emulator that would otherwise let me play Lode Runner and Choplifter? And if so, why?
I continue to be perplexed by Apple’s (intentionally?) vague designation of “retro” consoles for emulators. Perhaps the company is waiting for the market to figure itself out without having to intervene by selectively banning certain types of emulators? Perhaps rejecting requests to use JIT recompilers is Apple’s way of implicitly drawing the “retro” line?
Jason mentions another interesting point: what about emulating old computers that also happened to have games on them, or emulating old iOS games that are no longer compatible with modern iPhones? There are some precedents for old computers on the App Store: a Sinclair ZX80 emulator was recently updated with the ability to load external ROMs, and there appear or be some Commodore 64 emulators too (some of them with… questionable features). In the age of entire vintage OSes running inside a web browser, I think it’d only make sense for Apple to approve them on the App Store too.
As for old iOS games, while I agree with Jason, I’d be very surprised if Apple went down that path rather than cutting deals with developers to remaster old games for Apple Arcade. I’ve always cared about game and app preservation on the App Store, but I’m afraid that ship has sailed.
As you know, lately I’ve been busy ripping my collection of old Nintendo GameCube and Wii games to digital formats that I can play via emulators or, even better, original hardware that loads games from USB storage rather than discs. (This is a story for another time.) Today, I thought I’d offer some tips for...
This week, Federico and John are joined by Susan Prescott, vice president of developer relations, education, and enterprise at Apple, along with 2024 Swift Student Challenge winners Harshitha Rajesh and Roscoe Rubin-Rottenberg to talk about the challenge and the students’ projects. Then, John is joined by Finn Voorhees and Ellie O’Sullivan, past winners of the Swift Student Challenge who share their advice about participating in the program and getting started with Swift.
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As you may have seen on Mastodon, I’ve been trying to collect all my GameCube games from when I was a kid in an effort to digitize them and play them on modern hardware. The details of what I’m going to do are still a secret for a surprise I’m planning, but what you should...
I read this post by Jarrod Blundy a few weeks ago and forgot to link it on MacStories. I think Jarrod did a great job explaining why Apple’s Shortcuts app resonates so strongly with a specific type of person:
But mostly, it just lights up my brain in a way that few other things do.
[…]
But when there’s a little burr in my computing life that I think could be sanded down with Shortcuts, my wheels get turning and it’s hard to pull myself away from refining, adding features, and solving down to an ideal answer. I’m sure if I learned traditional coding, I’d feel the same. Or if I had a workshop to craft furniture or pound metal into useful shapes. But since I don’t know that much about programming languages nor have the desire to craft physical products, Shortcuts is my IDE, my workshop.
For me, despite the (many) issues of the Shortcuts app on all platforms, the reason I can’t pull myself away from it is that there’s nothing else like it on any modern computing platform (yes, I have tried Tasker and Power Automate and, no, I did not like them). Shortcuts appeals to that part of my brain that loves it when a plan comes together and different things happen in succession. If you’re a gamer, it’s similar to the satisfaction of watching Final Fantasy XII’s Gambits play out in real time, and it’s why I need to check out Unicorn Overlord as soon as possible.
I love software that lets me design a plan and watch it execute automatically. I’ve shared hundreds of shortcuts over the years, and I’m still chasing that high.
This week, Federico and John revisit their Obsidian systems, themes, and favorite plugins.
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