Today, Federico published his iOS and iPadOS 15 review. The review has become the centerpiece of what is always a busy fall season at MacStories. It has also become a tradition that we release a wide variety of perks exclusively for Club MacStories members alongside Federico’s review.
iOS and iPadOS 15 Review Extras: eBooks, Shortcuts, Making Of, Obsidian Plugins, Safari Extension Beta, and AppStories Live
iOS and iPadOS 15: The MacStories Review
A quieter release for even stranger times.
Credits
This review wouldn’t have been possible without the help, feedback, and existence of the following people, animals, beverages, and apps:
- My girlfriend Silvia, for her patience, love, incredible design skills, wisdom, and supporting me this summer
- John Voorhees, a friend and amazing colleague. I couldn’t have chosen to run MacStories with a better person.
- Alex Guyot, for working his magic dev skills with MacStories, Club MacStories, and Calliope
- Zelda and Ginger, for putting a smile on my face every day
- Finn Voorhees, who listened to my Obsidian ideas and made them all happen
- Brian King, for bringing this review to life once again with his amazing animations and 3D graphics
- Myke Hurley
- Stephen Hackett
- Obsidian, Working Copy, Timery, Shortcuts, and Todoist – essential apps that helped me create this story
- Every app developer who sent me betas during the summer
- Every engineer at Apple who always makes reviewing iOS and iPadOS each summer fun
- @TiccisEspresso – this summer more than ever
- Every Club MacStories, Club MacStories+, and Club Premier member
- Our Discord members, for encouraging me in the final stretch of the review
And finally, every MacStories reader, for allowing me to keep doing what I love and pushing me to do my best every summer. Thank you.
DetailsPro: A Design Tool Made for SwiftUI [Sponsor]
DetailsPro is the accessible, graphical tool for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac that brings your app designs to life with SwiftUI. The future of modern app design on Apple’s platforms is SwiftUI, and with DetailsPro, you can be up and running immediately, designing UIs without typing a line of code.
DetailsPro uses a drag and drop interface to make designing app interfaces, widgets, and screens a completely graphical, natural experience. There are no multi-gigabyte downloads or any of the complexity you find in a tool like Xcode. Instead, DetailsPro focuses on your design first. The app is a fantastic way to learn core SwiftUI concepts in an environment that provides immediate feedback. There’s also a terrific DetailsPro community that offers in-app downloadable templates to learn, remix, or use as starting points for your own projects.
When you’re happy with your design, simply export it to SwiftUI code to Swift Playgrounds or Xcode. That’s the sort of design pipeline that makes handing your work off to your developers simple while ensuring that the fidelity of your designs is preserved in the process.
Built in SwiftUI itself by a former Apple Design Prototyper, DetailsPro is trusted industry-wide by designers at companies like Apple itself, Starbucks, Microsoft, Nike, and Porsche, and it’s easy to see why. DetailsPro brings sophisticated SwiftUIs to life quickly and easily in a way that feels like magic.
If you’ve been looking for a way to get into designing with SwiftUI, your search is over. You can download DetailsPro today for free and use it with five files, but you can unlock unlimited files and upcoming features like versioning, reusable components, MapKit maps, and more for just $9.99/year or with a one-time payment of $29.99. That’s a fantastic price for an app that will save you time and simplify your design process.
So, download DetailsPro today, and get started designing with SwiftUI.
Our thanks to DetailsPro for sponsoring MacStories this week.
MacStories Weekly: Issue 290
MacStories Unwind: Apple Event Roundup, Epic Versus Apple, and Shazam
Sponsored by: Shake – Bug, Feedback, and Crash Reporting Tool for Your Mobile App
This week on MacStories Unwind:
MacStories
- Apple’s September 14, 2021 Keynote: By the Numbers
- Apple Updates the iPad mini and 10.2” iPad
- Apple Watch Series 7: The MacStories Overview
- The New iPhone 13 Lineup: The MacStories Overview
- Replay Apple’s September 14, 2021 Keynote and Other Videos
- Apple Announces New iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watch Availability
- Shazam Crosses 1 Billion Songs Recognized from Control Center
- What Does It All Mean?: A Look at Judge Gonzalez Rogers’ Decision in the Epic Versus Apple Trial
Club MacStories
- MacStories Weekly
- A collection of John’s favorite Apple event moments
- Accessorizing the new iPad mini
- AppStories will be recorded live in the Club MacStories+ Discord community next Monday, September 20th at 5:30 PM Eastern
AppStories
Unwind
- John’s Pick:
- John’s Apple Music Playlist: 2021 Mix
AppStories, Episode 240 – A Look at the HomeKit and tvOS Updates Coming Soon→
This week on AppStories, we look at Apple’s evolving approach to the way HomeKit devices and entertainment features are incorporated into the company’s OSes.
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On AppStories+, Federico covers WidgetPod and Marvis Pro and John gives Federico Apple Maps homework and explains something fun he received in the mail.
We deliver AppStories+ to subscribers with bonus content, ad-free, and at a high bitrate early every week.
To learn more about the benefits included with an AppStories+ subscription, visit our Plans page, or read the AppStories+ FAQ.
Apple Event, September 14, 2021
Apple’s September 14, 2021 Keynote: By the Numbers
As usual, Apple sprinkled facts, figures, and statistics throughout the keynote today. Here are highlights of some of those metrics from the event, which was held online from Apple Park in Cupertino, California.
iPhone 13 Lineup
iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini
- 28% brighter display
- 800 nits outdoors
- 1200 nits peak brightness for HDR content
- The A15 Bionic has 15 billion transistors and 6 cores, 2 high-performance and 4 efficiency cores, making it 50% faster (than the competition)
- 4-core GPU that’s 30% faster
- 16-core Neural Engine that handles 15.8 trillion operations per second
- The Wide camera has a 12MP sensor, 1.7 µm pixels that gather 47% more light, a ƒ/1.6 aperture, a 7-element lens, and a 26mm focal length.
- The Ultra Wide lens has a 12MP, a ƒ/2.4 aperture, 13 mm focal length, 5-element lens, and 120-degree field of view
- The iPhone 13 mini gets 1.5 and the iPhone 13 gets 2.5 more hours of battery life than the iPhone 12 models they replace.
- Storage is available in 128 GB, 256 GB, and 512 GB
iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max
- 50% faster graphics
- 1000 nits peak outdoor brightness and 1200 nits peak brightness for HDR content
- 10 - 120 Hz screen refresh rate
- Telephoto camera has a 77mm focal length and 3x optical zoom
- Ultra Wide camera has ƒ/1.8 aperture, 6-element lens, and 92% better performance in low light
- Wide camera has ƒ/1.5 aperture, 1.9 µm pixels, and up to 2.2x improvement in low light
- The iPhone 13 Pro gets 1.5 and the iPhone 13 Pro Max gets 2.5 more hours of battery life than the iPhone 12 models they replace
- Storage is available in 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1 TB
- .25 mm thicker than the iPhone 12 Pro models and slightly heavier
iPads
iPad mini
- 40% faster CPU
- 80% faster GPU
- 8.3” display
- 500 nits of screen brightness
- 2x faster machine learning
- 10x faster data transfers with USB-C
- 5G delivers up to 3.5 Gbps download speeds under ideal conditions
- 12MP camera with ƒ/1.8 aperture
- 20W power adapter
- .31” shorter than the mini it replaces and very slightly lighter
10.2” iPad
- 20% faster
- 3x faster than the top-selling Chromebook
- 6x faster than the leading Android tablet
- 12MP camera with 122-degree field of view
Apple Watch
- 40% thinner borders
- Up to 70% brighter in low power mode
- WR50 water resistance
- 33% faster charging than Series 6
You can follow all of our September Apple event coverage through our September 2021 event hub, or subscribe to the dedicated RSS feed.
Apple Updates the iPad mini and 10.2” iPad
At today’s Apple event, the company unveiled updates to the iPad mini and the 10.2” iPad. The 10.2” version continues to serve as Apple’s entry-level iPad at the lowest price point of any iPad, while the mini takes a more pro-like turn compared to its predecessor.
iPad mini
The new iPad mini was my favorite announcement of today’s Apple event. In the 18 months since I wrote The Mighty mini: Adapting Apple’s Diminutive Tablet to Work and Play, I’ve heard from many MacStories readers who have the same affection for Apple’s most portable tablet that I do. However, the trouble was that that iPad, which was released about 2.5 years ago, came with a lot of compromises compared with any other iPad you could buy until today.