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Captivating the Creative Community with ‘Today at Apple’→

Michael Steeber of 9to5Mac writes about the increasing importance of ‘Today at Apple’ as a unique competitive strength for the company:

Would you go to a Photo Walk at a Microsoft store? Do you trust a Google retail employee to teach you how to draw? Is there a group of passionate musicians dedicated to Samsung platforms?

Apple has captivated the creative community for over 40 years, and many people across the world have done their life’s work with Apple products. This year’s “Behind the Mac” ad campaign perfectly encapsulates why people are excited about Today at Apple.

In-store sessions aren’t totally new. Apple stores have held workshops in one form or another since their introduction in 2001. But until Today at Apple, sessions were more focused on technical training and lacked the same creative spark.

Steeber’s point about other big tech companies is a great one. I wouldn’t look to any other tech giant for creative lessons in areas of music, photography, or drawing, and I don’t think any other average customer would either. But with Apple, the story’s different. The company has always held a special level of credibility among creators, and that remains true today.

I’ve never attended a Today at Apple session, but over time I’ve grown more and more intrigued by Apple’s major retail initiative. Unlike the intense scrutiny given to everything else Apple does, Today at Apple seems to receive very little attention from the world of tech journalism. Yet Apple clearly believes it’s on to something with Today at Apple, and it shows every time Angela Ahrendts or Tim Cook spend time at an event lauding the program.

It’s hard to care too much about Today at Apple when your closest Apple Store is far enough away to be an inconvenience, which is perhaps why I never seriously considered attending a session while living in the suburbs of Dallas. Now that I’m in the urban environment of New York City, however, with Apple Stores all around and in walking distance, the idea of popping in for a session to help sharpen my creative senses is really appealing. It doesn’t hurt that Apple’s latest retail store work is so visually stunning, making a great environment for learning.

Moving forward, I’m definitely eager to keep a close eye on Today at Apple.

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Jony Ive Reflects on the Design of the New iPad Pros, Apple Pencil, and MacBook Air in a New Interview→

Jony Ive, Apple’s Chief Design Officer, sat for an interview with David Phelan of The Independent to talk about designing Apple products in general and the new iPad Pros, Apple Pencil, and MacBook Air in particular.

On redesigning successful products Ive said:

Because when a product has been highly regarded there is often a desire from people to see it redesigned. I think one of the most important things is that you change something not to make it different but to make it better.

If you are making changes that are in the service of making something better, then you don’t need to convince people to fall in love with it again. Our sense of habit and familiarity with something is so developed, there is always that initial reaction that is more of a comment on something being different rather than necessarily better or worse. In my experience, if we try very hard to make material improvements, people quickly recognise those and make the sort of connection they had before with the product.

Ive also revealed that the original iPad was designed to be used primarily in a portrait orientation, while the new iPad Pros have no orientation:

So, in the new iPad Pro, one of the things we’ve been wanting to get to for a long time is a sense that the product is not oriented in a primary and then, therefore, in a secondary way.

The first iPad had a very clear orientation which was portrait. It had the ability to be used in landscape, I think very well, but it was pretty clear how the product was designed. And I think with the first iPad you had the sense that it was a product made up of distinct and somewhat separate components.

What I think marks the new iPad Pro as particularly special is it doesn’t have an orientation. It has speakers all the way around the perimeter. By getting rid of the Home Button and developing Face ID, the tablet is able to work in all of these different orientations.

On the Apple Pencil, Ive describes how its design abstracts away the underlying technical complexity to focus the user on the task at hand:

I think the way it just snaps onto the side, well, that’s a nice example of a sort of that magical feeling. It’s unexpected, we don’t quite understand how it’s working and even more incomprehensible is the fact that it’s also charging. You can see how that’s aligned with this idea that you can just pick the product up and use it without thought.

Actually, you’re using it with tremendous thought, but it’s based on what you want to be doing rather than wondering if you’re holding the tablet the right way up.

Phelan’s interview is full of many other wonderful insights and tidbits about the products Apple revealed earlier this week in New York and should be read in its entirety.

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Justin O’Beirne Evaluates Apple’s New Maps and How They Stack Up Against Google Maps→

Source: justinobeirne.com

Source: justinobeirne.com

Justin O’Beirne has written about the evolution of Apple Maps and how the app compares to Google Maps several times in the past, which we’ve covered on MacStories. In his most recent analysis, O’Beirne asks whether Apple’s new efforts to update Maps has closed the gap with Google Maps. Backed up by over 100 images comparing the two sets of map data, the answer appears to be a qualified yes. In some respects, Apple has caught up and even passed Google, but in other areas, it remains behind.

Apple also has a long way to go before its Maps update is complete. As O’Beirne notes, the currently-updated map data covers a small fraction of the globe consisting of Northern California and a slice of Nevada. However, those 48 California and 4 Nevada counties contain a lot of new details.

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Connected, Episode 216: The Honking Powers the Vehicles→

The MacBook Air and Mac mini are alive, and the iPad Pro has taken a big step forward, but progress seems to come with larger price tags. The guys dive into all the news, after Federico reviews New York City.

This week’s episode of Connected is all about Apple’s Brooklyn event and my first impressions of the new iPad Pro. You can listen here.

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Apple Q4 2018 Results: $62.9 Billion Revenue, 46.9 Million iPhones, 9.7 Million iPads Sold

Apple has just published its financial results for Q4 2018. The company posted revenue of $62.9 billion. Apple sold 9.7 million iPads, 46.9 million iPhones, and 5.3 million Macs during the quarter.

We’re thrilled to report Apple’s best June quarter ever, and our fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit revenue growth,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Our Q3 results were driven by continued strong sales of iPhone, Services and Wearables, and we are very excited about the products and services in our pipeline.

Estimates and Expectations for Q4 2018, and the Year-Ago Quarter (Q4 2017)

Apple’s revenue guidance for Q4 2018 fell between $60 billion and $62 billion, with gross margin estimated to be between 38% and 38.5%.

Going into today’s earnings call, The Motley Fool reports that:

For the fiscal fourth quarter, Apple is expecting revenue of $60 billion to $62 billion, which would represent year-over-year growth of 14% to 18%. The company is also calling for gross margin of 38% to 38.5%, and operating expenses of about $8 billion.

Analysts’ consensus estimates are calling for revenue of $61.48 billion, up 16.9% year over year and near the high end of Apple’s forecast; earnings per share are being pegged at $2.78, rising 34.3% compared to the prior-year quarter.

In the year-ago quarter (Q4 2017), Apple earned $52.58 billion in revenue. During that quarter Apple sold 46.7 million iPhones, 10.3 million iPads, and 5.4 million Macs.

Graphical Visualization

Below, we’ve compiled a graphical visualization of Apple’s Q4 2018 financial results.

After the break, more charts and commentary on Apple’s Q4 earnings on Twitter:

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HomeRun: Quickly Trigger HomeKit Scenes on Your Apple Watch

HomeRun is a simple, elegant utility for triggering HomeKit scenes from your Apple Watch. Through a combination of color and iconography, HomeRun developer Aaron Pearce, who is the creator of other excellent HomeKit apps like HomeCam and HomePass, creates an effective solution for accessing HomeKit scenes from your wrist. It’s a user-friendly approach that’s a fantastic alternative for HomeKit device users frustrated by Apple’s Home app.

Apple’s Home app is hard to use on the Apple Watch. First, when you open Home on the Watch, it’s not clear what you’re seeing. Home presents a series of card-like, monochrome scene and accessory buttons that you scroll through one or two at a time. Although the app doesn’t say so, these are the favorite scenes and accessories from the Home tab of the iOS app. That makes the list customizable, which is nice, but the app should do a better job identifying where the user is in relationship to the iOS app.

Second, although you can rearrange your Home favorites to reorder them on the Watch too, you can only see two scenes or one accessory at a time. Depending on how many favorites you have, that limits the Watch app’s utility because a long list of scenes and accessories requires a lot of swiping or scrolling with the Digital Crown.

HomeRun avoids this by eliminating text and relying on color and iconography to distinguish between scenes. The app is also limited to triggering scenes, reducing potential clutter further. The approach allows HomeRun to display up to 12 scenes on a single screen of a 44mm Apple Watch compared to the two scene buttons that Home can display. If you set up more than 12 scenes, they are accessible by scrolling.

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October 30 Roundup: All the Little Things

Today’s Apple event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Howard Gilman Opera House introduced new MacBook Air, Mac mini, and iPad Pro, but there were also a lot of small details revealed outside the keynote in press releases, on product webpages, and elsewhere. Below is a roundup of some of the most interesting details you may have missed.

The Event

iPad Pros

Apple Pencil

Macs

You can also follow all of our Apple event coverage through our October 30, 2018 hub, or subscribe to the dedicated October 30, 2018 RSS feed.

AppStories, Episode 85 – Personalizing Our iOS Setups→

On this week’s episode of AppStories, we talk about some of the ways we personalize and tweak our iOS setups, including wallpapers, widgets, control center, share sheets, app icons, and more.

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Pixelmator Photo Is Coming to the iPad Later This Year

I use Pixelmator Pro almost every day on my Mac. A lot of the time, that’s for simple edits to screenshots, but I also use it for more complex layered images and editing photos. I’ve enjoyed the iOS version a lot too, but with the introduction of Pixelmator Pro on the Mac, development of the iOS version slowed. I still use the iOS app, but it’s in need of an update, which is why I was so pleased to see Pixelmator Photo teased at today’s Apple event in New York.

Pixelmator Photo will be out later this year. The app, which was first mentioned when Pixelmator Pro launched almost a year ago, is an iPad-only photo editing app that appears to closely follow the design of the Mac app and include much of its functionality too. In addition to being highlighted during Apple’s keynote today, Pixelmator Photo was on the iPads in the hands-on area after the event where Federico had a chance to try the app for a short time and was impressed.

Pixelmator Photo's image editing UI (right) is very similar to Pixelmator Pro's on the Mac (left).

Pixelmator Photo’s image editing UI (right) is very similar to Pixelmator Pro’s on the Mac (left).

According to the Pixelmator team’s preview webpage, the app:

features a collection of nondestructive, desktop-class photo editing tools, a set of stunning, machine learning-enhanced film emulation presets, a magical Repair tool to remove unwanted objects from your photos, support for editing RAW images, and more.

Pixelmator says the app will include non-destructive color adjustments including Levels, Curves, Hue & Saturation, Selective Color, and Black & White as well as Repair and Cropping tools. The app will also support RAW image editing and the ML Fix feature recently introduced in the Mac app. Machine learning will also be used to simulate analog film with a set of presets and power cropping suggestions.

Apple showed that it’s committed to offering pro-level hardware in the iPad line with the new 11 and 12.9-inch iPad Pros today. Apps are the other half of the equation, and it’s encouraging to see Pixelmator Photos announced along with Adobe’s Photoshop, and other apps that will take advantage of Apple’s new hardware.

You can also follow all of our Apple event coverage through our October 30, 2018 hub, or subscribe to the dedicated October 30, 2018 RSS feed.