Posts in Linked

Connected, Episode 245: Totes Ricky→

With less than a week to the WWDC keynote, the guys make their predictions.

On this week’s episode of Connected and ahead of our live show in San Jose next week (we have a handful of tickets left), we share our final WWDC predictions. The results will be adjudicated live at the Hammer Theater next week. You can listen below (and find the show notes here).

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Connected, Episode 245

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AppStories, Episode 113 – Timery for Toggl Plus a Dialog Sneak Peek→

On this week’s episode of AppStories, we talk about one of our favorite new iOS apps: Timery, a client app for Toggl’s time tracking service. We also preview Dialog, a new seasonal podcast from MacStories featuring weekly, in-depth conversations with special guests about the impact of technology on creativity, society, and culture, which debuts later today.

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Connected, Episode 244: This Is Not Propaganda→

Myke keeps dropping his phone, Apple keeps releasing new MacBook Pros for Stephen to talk about, and Federico has published a magnum opus on the state of the iPad and iOS 12.

On last week’s episode of Connected, we discussed the updated MacBook Pros, the themes behind my iPad story, and more. You can listen below (and find the show notes here).

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Connected, Episode 244

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AppStories, Episode 112 – Behind the Scenes of Federico’s iPad Story→

On this week’s episode of AppStories, we discuss the process of creating Federico’s story, Beyond the Tablet: Seven Years of iPad as My Main Computer and some of the topics from the story; later, we are joined by Brian King who worked with Federico on the introductory animation and 3D-rendered images throughout the story.

Sponsored by:

  • Luna Display: The only hardware solution that turns your iPad into a wireless display for your Mac. Use promo code STORIES at checkout for 10% off.
  • Linode: High-performance SSD Linux servers for all of your infrastructure needs. Get a $20 credit.

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(Don’t Fear) The Reaper→

Apple needed to show developers that Carbon was going to be a real and valid way forward, not just a temporary stopgap, so they committed to using Carbon for the Mac OS X Finder. The Carbon version of Finder was introduced in Mac OS X Developer Preview 2, before Aqua was revealed; it acted a bit more like NeXT’s, in that it had a single root window (File Viewer) that had a toolbar and the column view, but secondary windows did not. At this stage, Apple didn’t quite know what to do with the systemwide toolbars it had inherited from NEXTSTEP.

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It had taken Apple four years to find the new ‘Mac-like’, and this is the template Mac OS X has followed ever since. Here we are, eighteen years later, and all of the elements of the Mac OS X UI are still recognizable today. So much of what we think of the Mac experience today came from NEXTSTEP, not Mac OS at all. AppKit, toolbars, Services, tooltips, multi-column table views, font & color pickers, the idea of the Dock, application bundles, installer packages, a Home folder, multiple users; you might even be hard-pressed to find a Carbon app in your Applications folder today (and Apple has announced that they won’t even run in the next version of macOS).

Fascinating read by Steve Troughton-Smith on how Apple transitioned from NeXTSTEP to Mac OS X between 1997 and 2001. The purpose of this analysis, of course, isn’t to simply reminisce about the NeXT acquisition but to provide historical context around the meaning of “Mac-like” by remembering what Apple did when the concept of “Mac-like” had to be (re)created from scratch.

Apple is going to be facing a similar transition soon with the launch of UIKit on the Mac; unlike others, I do not believe it means a complete repudiation of whatever “Mac-like” stands for today. The way I see it, it means the idea of “Mac-like” will gradually evolve until it reaches a state that feels comfortable and obvious. I’m excited to see the first steps of this new phase in a couple of weeks.

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Adapt, Episode 1: Custom Keyboards and the iPad Multitasking System→

Introducing Adapt, a show where Federico Viticci and Ryan Christoffel challenge each other to do new things on the iPad. On this debut episode, Federico investigates being productive using third-party software keyboards, then he and Ryan discuss ways they use the iPad’s multitasking system in everyday life.

In the first episode of our new iPad-focused podcast Adapt – which we launched yesterday - Ryan challenged me to get work done on my iPad Pro using custom software keyboards. No spoilers, but I found the experience surprisingly fun and useful. We also talked about the current state of iPad multitasking and the changes we’d like to see in iOS 13.

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 1.

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Connected, Episode 243: I Win Money Because It’s Green→

This week, Federico floats a conspiracy about iTunes, the crew check in on their 2019 predictions, and Myke makes a huge promise before Stephen shares about his Pixel 3a.

On this week’s episode of Connected, we revisit our Apple predictions for 2019 and discuss a fun variety of topics. You can listen here.

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AppStories, Episode 111 – iOS 13 App Rumors and Wishes→

On this week’s episode of AppStories, we share our thoughts on the latest iOS 13 app rumors reported by Mark Gurman and 9to5Mac and other features and updates we’d like to see Apple implement this year.

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  • Luna Display - The only hardware solution that turns your iPad into a wireless display for your Mac. Use promo code STORIES at checkout for 10% off.
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Designing a Dark Theme for OLED iPhones→

Vidit Bhargava, UI designer for the excellent LookUp dictionary app, details in a Medium post how implementing an OLED-friendly dark theme in an app is more complicated than one might think. For example:

When an interface that uses a black theme for its background starts displaying content on the screen, the pixels needs to switch on before they can display the content. So, when you’re scrolling through the content in a black background, the pixels find it hard to keep pace with your scrolling, resulting in a smear on the screen.

Bhargava uses the following tweet from Marc Edwards to illustrate this smearing issue.

The solution utilized in LookUp was making its black theme not entirely black, but a dark enough grey that it appears black in use.

The rest of the post outlines the impact of black, dark grey, and white themes on a device’s battery life, along with the readability challenges inherent to black themes. It’s a fascinating read, and goes to show that a quality OLED-optimized dark theme requires a lot of thought and care to achieve.

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