On this week’s episode of Adapt:
Conversational shortcuts make Siri a programmable assistant, and Federico details how that works. Then Ryan commends Federico with a (symbolic) trophy for his creation of a Mac-like desktop environment on the iPad, complete with file and folder launchers.
You can listen below (and find the show notes here), and don’t forget to send us questions using #AskAdapt and by tagging our Twitter account.
Adapt, Episode 12
On this week’s episode of Connected:
Federico and Myke break down the new features of iOS 13.2 and watchOS 6.1, before giving their first impressions on the AirPods Pro.
You can listen below (and find the show notes here).
Connected, Episode 267
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Sebastiaan de With, part of the team behind the camera app Halide has published part 1 of a multi-part breakdown of the iPhone 11 camera. It’s a fantastic analysis of what makes the new camera different from past versions and goes into great depth while remaining accessible, even if you have only a passing familiarity with photography.
To put this year’s camera into perspective, de With recaps what Apple did with last year’s iPhone cameras explaining how Smart HDR works and its shortcomings. The iPhone 11 features Smart HDR too, but as de With explains, Apple has significantly improved how it handles the dynamic range of an image.
Another aspect of the improvement is in the camera sensor hardware. Despite its diminutive size, the iPhone 11’s image sensor can resolve more detail than any iPhone camera before it.
However, many of the iPhone 11’s camera improvements come down to better software. The new camera post-processes each component of an image differently, applying different noise reduction to the sky, a face, hair, and clothing, for example. Apple calls the feature Photo Segmentation, and it’s aided by machine learning.
One of my favorite features of the new camera is Night Mode. As de With notes:
In the iPhone 11 Night Mode, you can also see detail vanish in some areas. Except that it really seems to only affect parts of the image that you don’t really care that much about. Night Mode has a remarkable if not uncanny ability to extract an image that is sometimes even sharper than the regular mode, with strong sharpening and detail retention occurring in areas that are selected by the camera during processing.
The iPhone 11’s camera is also the first one de With thinks rivals standalone cameras:
In the past, iPhones made great photos for sharing on social media, but blown up on a big screen, the shots didn’t hold up. It’s why I frequently still pack a ‘big’ camera with me on trips.
With these huge improvements in processing, the iPhone 11 is the first iPhone that legitimately challenges a dedicated camera.
There are many more details in de With’s article, including a close look at the iPhone 11’s ultra wide lens. Every section of the post has photos and side-by-side comparisons that illustrate the analysis too, which makes the full post a must-read].
On this week’s episode of AppStories, we talk about GameClub, the classic iOS game service that launched last week, and some of the shortcuts we’ve been working on lately.
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Benjamin Mayo, reporting for 9to5Mac:
Apple today released the Apple TV app for Amazon TV devices, starting with the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K and the older HD model. Support for Amazon Fire TV Cube, Fire TV (3rd generation penchant design) and some other models is coming soon.
The TV app experience on Amazon’s platform mirrors the functionality of the Roku app, which launched last week. Users can watch their purchased iTunes movies and TV shows, access Apple TV Channel subscriptions and watch Apple TV+ content when the streaming service launches on November 1st.
This isn’t a surprise, as the impending launch of Apple TV+ meant all previously-announced TV app platforms were likely to arrive before November 1st. Now that the app is available on Roku and Fire TV devices, plus Samsung TVs, the only platforms still waiting for support are smart TV sets from LG, Vizio, and Sony.
On this week’s episode of Connected:
Stephen got into an eBay bidding war with someone he knows and Federico helps his friends with Catalina, before coming clean about his new iPhone case. The group also considers Apple’s expanding line of audio products and Myke reviews the iMac Pro.
You can listen below (and find the show notes here).
Connected, Episode 266
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On this week’s episode of AppStories, we interview James Thomson, the creator of PCalc and Dice, for a developer’s perspective on Mac Catalyst and go behind the scenes of Federico’s iPhone 11 Pro camera story, Eternal City, Modern Photography: The iPhone 11 Pro in Rome.
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On this week’s episode of Adapt:
Federico walks through one of the biggest changes to Shortcuts in iOS 13: parameters. Afterwards, Ryan shares his experiences using Microsoft Word to write a MacStories article.
You can listen below (and find the show notes here), and don’t forget to send us questions using #AskAdapt and by tagging our Twitter account.
Adapt, Episode 11
On this week’s episode of Connected:
Apple has revealed its new emoji set, so it is time for Federico to guess their names as Stephen and Myke listen and keep score. After that, Myke shares his thoughts about his Galaxy Fold.
You can listen below (and find the show notes here).
Connected, Episode 265
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