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Connected, Episode 249: Federighi Snapped His Fingers→

Myke resumes his role as the tvOS guy and Federico’s Memoji have all been killed. Apple’s Public Betas have arrived, as have new rumors of a future small iPhone. Stephen preaches the good news of Carbon.

On this week’s episode of Connected, we discuss Apple’s latest public betas and the future of Catalyst apps. You can listen below (and find the show notes here).

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Connected, Episode 249

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CNBC Reports New Details About Apple’s App Review Team→

App Review has been a black box for over a decade now, with virtually no details leaking out of Apple. That’s begun to change in 2019. Earlier this year, Mark Gurman interviewed Phillip Shoemaker, a former head of App Review, on Bloomberg’s Decrypted podcast where Shoemaker described what app review was like before he left the company around 2016.

Now, CNBC has additional and more recent details about App Review from unnamed sources within the organization. Many of the tidbits in CNBC’s report were previously shared by Shoemaker, but there are new details sprinkled throughout the piece about the organization and how apps are reviewed. For instance, CNBC reveals that:

Apple recently opened new App Review offices in Cork, Ireland, and Shanghai, China, according to a person familiar with the matter. The department has added significant headcount in recent years, they added.

CNBC also learned that:

The department has more than 300 reviewers and is based out of a pair of offices in Sunnyvale, California….

The report contains new details about the review process too:

Reviewers have daily quotas of between 50 and 100 apps, and the number of apps any individual reviewer gets through in an hour is tracked by software called Watchtower, according to screenshots seen by CNBC. Reviewers are also judged on whether their decisions are later overturned and other quality-oriented stats.

App Review is part of Apple’s developer relations organization run by Phil Schiller, the company’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing. Like other developer problems raised with front-line developer relations personnel, App Review decisions are escalated through the organization when an appeal is made:

Developers who disagree with a decision made by App Review can appeal to a board called the App Review Board, which can change the decision from a lower-level reviewer and is partially composed of reviewers with good track records, people who worked as reviewers said. Sustained appeals can bring an app in front of the Executive Review Board.

CNBC reports that the Executive Review Board, of which Schiller is a member, also handles sensitive app decisions like the decision to reject the Infowars app in 2018.

It’s curious that after years of almost no information about the App Review, details are beginning to emerge now. However, other than the size of the organization, which is smaller than I would have guessed, and revelation that App Review now operates in Ireland and China, the review process is about what I thought it was given that Apple has said in the past that each app is reviewed manually.

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Connected, Episode 248: There Will Be Consequences→

Federico and Stephen are joined by David Sparks to talk about the state of Apple’s current betas, the updated Files and Shortcuts apps and the ever-growing system of rules that form Connected’s drafts.

On this week’s episode of Connected, we had a great conversation with David Sparks about some of the key improvements coming to iOS and iPadOS later this year. You can listen below (and find the show notes here).

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Connected, Episode 248

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Apple to Revise Mojave’s Catalyst Apps in macOS Catalina→

When Apple launched macOS Mojave last year, it included four built-in apps that had been ported from the iPad using what we now know as Project Catalyst. Home, Voice Memos, News, and Stocks have been regularly criticized for not being very Mac-like, and some users assumed they would be updated in the forthcoming macOS Catalina, since it includes a newer, more feature-rich version of Catalyst that’s powering new apps like Podcasts, which does feel more Mac-like.

However, until now there’s been no sign of Apple giving its first wave of Catalyst apps a second pass. They haven’t changed in the first two developer betas of Catalina, and Apple’s software chief Craig Federighi, in our interview with him on AppStories, diverted blame for those apps from the Catalyst technology on to intentional design decisions Apple’s team had made.

While Federighi still stands by that message, he also, in a new interview with Jason Hiner at CNET, has shared that Home, Voice Memos, News, and Stocks will in fact be getting updated in Catalina.

Craig Federighi confirmed that the four iOS apps for Mac released last year will get major updates based on the new technology in Project Catalyst. But he also revealed that the apps will get new designs to make them more Mac-like.
[…]
“We’ve looked at the design and features of some of those apps and said we can make this a bit more of a Mac experience through changes that are independent of the use of Catalyst, but are just design team decisions,” Federighi said. “When I read some of the initial reviews of those apps, people were saying, ‘Obviously this technology is causing them to do things that don’t feel Mac-like.’ Honestly, 90% of those were just decisions that designers made … People took that as ‘this feels iOS-y’ and therefore they thought it was a technology thing. Actually, it was a designer preference. So part of the upgrade is we said we’ve got to co-evolve with our user base around the aesthetics of the Mac experience. And so we made some adjustments to the apps.”

It’s unclear how extensive changes will be, or if they will bring new functionality where it’s currently missing – such as the ability to open News articles in separate windows – but Federighi told CNET these upgraded Mojave apps will be available in the public beta of Catalina. If that means the first public beta, we should expect to see them next month.

WWDC this year clearly demonstrated that Apple listens to feedback from the broader community of users, so it makes sense that the company would give its Mojave apps a second pass. As long as they exist in their current form, they’ll be used as a punching bag to denigrate the merits of Catalyst. But if the updated apps truly do offer a better Mac experience, then combined with the new Podcasts app they’ll make a strong case for developers to get on board bringing their own iPad apps to the Mac.

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Apple Stores Showing Signs of Change Under Deirdre O’Brien’s Leadership→

Michael Steeber reports for 9to5Mac on some interesting developments he’s observed in certain Apple Stores recently:

Apple is evolving its in-store shopping experience with signage and display fixtures that remove ambiguity and encourage increased hands-on interaction with products. New designs that have been spotted in multiple locations reflect the changing requirements of busy stores and appear to address common customer needs.

He mentions things like signs indicating checkout zones, a new table guide spelling out differences between iPhone XR, XS, and XS Max, and more customer-friendly Watch displays.

The new retail design language Apple began rolling out in 2015 brought visual simplicity by deemphasizing signage, logos, and extraneous store fixtures. While more aesthetically pleasing, some customers have found contemporary stores challenging to navigate. These new fixtures and signs show that Apple is willing to fine-tune the balance between appearance and function.

Normally these changes might go overlooked, particularly since they’re currently only in a handful of stores, but they’re noteworthy for reasons of timing. Apple’s former head of retail, Angela Ahrendts, was recently succeeded by Deirdre O’Brien, and while all signs point to Ahrendts’ departure being amicable, one common complaint regarding her tenure is that Apple Stores became less functional shopping places despite growing unquestionably more beautiful and lavish in design. These few scattered signs of change spotted by Steeber indicate an early priority shift coming from Apple’s new SVP of Retail.

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AppStories, Episode 116 – Notes in iOS 13 and macOS Catalina→

On this week’s episode of AppStories, we start a series of episodes on the new and updated apps coming to iOS and macOS Catalina in the fall starting with Notes.

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Connected, Episode 247: You Never Want the Egg→

With the dust settling from WWDC, the boys go through Apple’s major platforms and talk about what they are excited about seeing in these releases.

On last week’s episode of Connected, we went over our favorite announcements from WWDC. You can listen below (and find the show notes here).

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Connected, Episode 247

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Adobe Previews New iPad Drawing and Painting App, Fresco→

Last year around the time Adobe began detailing its forthcoming Photoshop for iPad, the company also shared word of another iPad app it was working on, then called Project Gemini. Today in a blog post, Scott Belsky of Adobe announced Adobe Fresco as the official name of the new drawing and painting app, and detailed one of the features that will make the new app special:

The result is Live Brushes, which use the artificial intelligence of Adobe Sensei to recreate the behavior of oils and watercolors in an amazingly lifelike way. When you paint with a watercolor Live Brush, you’ll see the color bloom into adjacent areas of the paper. Use red and yellow next to each other and they’ll naturally blend into orange at the border. You can even recreate painting with water to dilute some colors and encourage tints to mix.

With an oil Live Brush, you can slather on a thick coat of paint and see the ridges and brush strokes that give the painting dimension. And you can mix different oil colors together to create a varied swirl of color that no digital color wheel could ever provide.

Live Brushes can be seen in action in the video embedded below. Adobe’s aim with Fresco is to provide a tool that scales well in serving users who want a simple drawing tool to those who need the power of features like layers, masking, brush creation, and more. While it’s expected that Creative Cloud subscribers will receive full access to Fresco’s full feature set, Adobe seems to be considering its full spectrum of target users when it comes to pricing. In today’s announcement Belsky notes “anyone with the right hardware will be able to draw and paint in Fresco for free.”

No update was given on Fresco’s release date, other than that it remains “later this year.” With iPadOS 13, Fresco, Photoshop, and the iPad app improvements that are hopefully to come alongside Catalyst projects, it’s going to be an exciting end of the year for iPad.

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Adapt, Episode 3: iPadOS First Look and Voice-Only Computing→

Before diving into the newly announced iPadOS 13 and its Files improvements, Ryan shares how he cheated on his challenge using a powerful new iPadOS feature.

In this week’s episode of Adapt, Ryan explains how he tackled my dictation challenge and we start discussing the changes in iPadOS. 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.

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Adapt, Episode 3

We’ve got a lot of ground to cover with iPadOS and the new Shortcuts app on Adapt this summer, and it’s going to be a fun ride. Make sure to subscribe to the show using one of the links below so you’ll never miss an episode when it drops.

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