Posts in Linked

Apple’s Emoji Search Is Bad→

Emojipedia’s Jeremy Burge, following a series of tests with emoji search, a built-in macOS feature that still isn’t available on iOS:

Prior to macOS Sierra’s release in September 2016, emoji search for Mac was the opposite: general terms wouldn’t return any results - but if you knew the emoji name you could get it to appear 100% of the time. This is no longer the case.

I do wonder if an internal effort to make these types of search and prediction tools better in the longer term is making them worse for users in the short term.

It’s not just that it’s bad because the results are somewhat lackluster. It’s bad in the sense that typing Apple’s exact description for an emoji sometimes doesn’t bring up the character it belongs to. If someone is in charge of this feature for the Mac, I hope they can take a serious look at whatever is going on.

Permalink

Illustration in the iOS 11 App Store→

Khoi Vinh, writing about one of my favorite aspects of the iOS 11 App Store:

Apple’s dramatically redesigned App Store got a decent amount of attention when it debuted last year with iOS 11, but its unique success as a hybrid of product design and editorial design has gone little noticed since. That’s a shame, because it’s a huge breakthrough.

I myself paid it scant attention until one day this past winter when I realized that the company was commissioning original illustration to accompany its new format. If you check the App Store front page a few times a week, you’ll see a quietly remarkable display of unique art alongside unique stories about apps, games and “content” (movies, TV shows, comics, etc.). To be clear: this isn’t work lifted from the marketing materials created by app publishers. It’s drawings, paintings, photographs, collages and/or animations that have been created expressly for the App Store.

We don’t see this particular flavor of artistic ambition from many companies today, especially tech companies. The predominant mode of product design almost exclusively favors templates and automation, what can be done without human intervention. The very idea of asking living, breathing art directors who need to be paid real salaries to hire living, breathing illustrators who also need to be paid a living wage in order to create so-called works of art that have no demonstrably reproducible effect on actual profits is outlandish, absurd even. The mere suggestion would get you laughed off of most design teams in Silicon Valley. Design in this century has little use for anything that can’t be quantified.

I haven’t seen a lot of praise for the artistic side of the App Store’s Today page. I think it’s remarkable that Apple is commissioning these illustrations and making them instrumental in highlighting apps and developer stories. Don’t miss Vinh’s roundup of his favorites.

Permalink

The Apple Watch Has Found a Surprisingly Useful Home With Everyone That Works on Their Feet→

Speaking of the Apple Watch becoming an essential everyday device, Mike Murphy published a fascinating story at Quartz:

You might’ve noticed that the person who took your order at the bar, brought you the shoes you wanted to try on, or perhaps even patted you down at the airport security line, is sporting an Apple Watch, which starts at $329 for the newest Series 3 watch. And there’s a pretty simple explanation: Many service-industry jobs where employees have to be on their feet all day don’t allow workers to check their phones while they’re on the clock. But that rule doesn’t necessarily apply to a piece of unobtrusive jewelry that happens to let you text your friends and check the weather.

Quartz spoke with airline attendants, bartenders, waiters, baristas, shop owners, and (very politely) TSA employees who all said the same thing: The Apple Watch keeps them in touch when they can’t be on their phones at work. Apple has increasingly been pushing the watch as a health device, and seems to have moved away from marketing it as one that offers more basic utility, as Apple continues do with the iPhone. But given that roughly 23% of the US labor force works in wholesale or retail operations, perhaps it’s a market Apple should reconsider.

While I obviously hope Apple continues to improve the Watch as a health and fitness accessory, I would love to see new ways to triage and customize notifications too – especially when it comes to more granular controls for Do Not Disturb and notification mirroring on the iPhone. I have my fingers crossed for improvements in iOS 12.

Permalink

AppStories, Episode 56 – Controlling The Time Spent on Your iPhone→

On this week’s episode of AppStories, we talk about managing time spent on smartphones, including what manufacturers like Apple and Google are doing to address the issue, what users can do, and how we deal with being on our iPhones too much.

Sponsored by:

  • Techmeme Ride Home – Search for Techmeme Ride Home on your podcast app now.
  • AutoWake - the world’s first haptic smart alarm for your Apple Watch.
    • The first 11 people to tweet at @AutoWakeApp with the code word ‘Espresso’ will receive a free promo code.
Permalink

Connected, Episode 193: They Belong to the World Now→

The future of third-party Twitter apps looks grim, but is it the end of the road? What makes an upgrade worthy of a price tag? Do class action lawsuits even matter? Should you use AirPods on planes? Does anyone like show descriptions written as hypothetical questions?

On this week’s episode of Connected, we talk about changes coming to third-party Twitter clients, the economics of the App Store when it comes to selling new versions of apps as separate purchases, and why you really shouldn’t use AirPods on planes. You can listen here.

Sponsored by:

  • Linode: High performance SSD Linux servers for all of your infrastructure needs. Get a $20 credit with promo code ‘connected2018’
  • Skillshare: Thousands of classes to help you do your best work. Get 2 months of unlimited access to over 20,000 classes for $0.99.
  • Layers: A conference about design and technology. June 4-6, 2018 - San Jose, CA. Get $50 off with the code ‘relay’.
Permalink

Apple Announces ‘Everyone Can Code’ Partnership with Schools for Blind and Deaf Students→

In March, Apple lead a Swift Playgrounds course at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired. Today, which is Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Apple announced that is partnering with schools in California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, and Massachusetts:

Beginning this fall, schools supporting students with vision, hearing or other assistive needs will start teaching the Everyone Can Code curricula for Swift, Apple’s powerful and intuitive programming language.

Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, said:

“Apple’s mission is to make products as accessible as possible,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We created Everyone Can Code because we believe all students deserve an opportunity to learn the language of technology. We hope to bring Everyone Can Code to even more schools around the world serving students with disabilities.”

In addition to existing iOS accessibility features, Apple is augmenting the Everyone Can Code curricula with tools and resources targeted at students with visual and hearing impairments.

Permalink

Apollo 1.2 Is Packed With Redditors’ Feature Requests→

Today a big update launched for Apollo, the Reddit client for iOS that I once said “may just be the best designed social feed app I’ve ever used.” Version 1.2 isn’t focused so much on major new features, but instead a huge wealth of small improvements based on feedback from the Reddit community that make for an even more delightful user experience.

Apollo’s new Jump Button is a quick way to jump between top-level comments and save yourself some scrolling. Progress bars for GIFs and video runtimes on thumbnails provide a better sense of context when browsing. There are new settings options to change which browser links open in, to view videos directly in the YouTube app, and more. And lots of under-the-hood tweaks simply make the app faster and more responsive than ever before.

For a visual peek at these changes and more, developer Christian Selig put together a great video, linked below. The full 1.2 release notes are available on the App Store, and in Selig’s launch post on Reddit.

Permalink

Apple Cancels Data Center Project in Ireland→

In 2015, Apple announced plans to build a data center in Athenry, Ireland. The facility was designed to run on renewable energy like other data centers Apple operates around the globe. However, the Irish project ran into problems from the start.

According to TechCrunch, concerns about the center’s environmental impact and effect on the electrical grid slowed the project down. Then, after Apple received the approval of the Galway County Council to begin building, individual objections were lodged and the disputes wound up in the Irish courts. With the prospect of appeals that would continue to prevent it from commencing construction, Apple decided to cancel the project.

In a statement to TechCrunch, Apple said:

“We’ve been operating in Ireland since 1980 and we’re proud of the many contributions we make to the economy and job creation.  In the last two years we’ve spent over €550 million with local companies and, all told, our investment and innovation supports more than 25,000 jobs up and down the country.  We’re deeply committed to our employees and customers in Ireland and are expanding our operations in Cork, with a new facility for our talented team there,” the company said in a statement provided to TechCrunch. “Several years ago we applied to build a data centre at Athenry. Despite our best efforts, delays in the approval process have forced us to make other plans and we will not be able to move forward with the data centre. While disappointing, this setback will not dampen our enthusiasm for future projects in Ireland as our business continues to grow.”

A second facility in Denmark that was announced at the same time the Irish data center is nearly complete. Apple has not announced any details about its ‘other plans’ referenced in its statement to TechCrunch.

Permalink

The Fragmentation of iOS’s UI Design→

Benjamin Mayo on the state of iconography in Apple’s built-in iOS apps:

My gripe is there is no consistency, no structure or logic to this. Apps introduced later sometimes use rounded icons, sometimes not, sometimes create all-new custom glyphs of their own. Incredulously, you could open flagship apps like Messages, Mail and Safari and have no idea Apple was even playing with bold icons as a conceptual change. These apps adopted the iOS 11 large bold navigation bar title formats, but their icons and glyphs have stagnated for more than four years at this point.

Mayo uses eight examples of Apple’s action icon to emphasize the design inconsistencies.

Since iOS 7, each revision of iOS has felt like a tentative design experiment, with icons in a handful of apps moving in different directions. The trouble is, Apple doesn’t seem to have settled on a clear winner among the several options tested, which has begun to make the UI feel directionless. Although rumors seem to indicate that a design refresh of iOS is at least another year off, I hope we’ll start to see indications of where iOS design is going this year at WWDC.

Permalink