iOS and iPadOS 13: The MacStories Review

Following years of a judicious union between platforms, it’s time for iPad to embark on its own journey.

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, design skills, photos and videos, and wisdom
  • Brian King, for bringing this review to life with his amazing animations and 3D graphics
  • Ryan Christoffel, for his superb editing skills and incredible patience
  • John Voorhees, a friend and amazing colleague
  • Alex Guyot, for his work at MacStories and help this summer
  • Zelda and Ginger, for keeping me company while I was writing the review
  • Brett Terpstra
  • Alessandro Vendruscolo, who made the web layout happen (again)
  • Simon Støvring, for helping me with JavaScript and saving me dozens of hours with Scriptable
  • Finn Voorhees, who wrote my custom image upload scripts
  • James Thomson
  • Myke Hurley
  • Stephen Hackett
  • iA Writer, Drafts, Working Copy, Timery, Shortcuts, and MindNode – 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 now iPadOS!) each summer fun
    – The Workflow team, for still staying hungry and foolish
  • @TiccisEspresso – more than ever, I couldn’t have done this without your daily assistance
  • Every Club MacStories member

And finally, every MacStories reader, for allowing me to keep doing what I love. Thank you.

    Austin Mann on the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro Cameras→

    Source: austinmann.com

    Source: austinmann.com

    Every year I look forward to Austin Mann taking the latest iPhones through their paces somewhere in the world. This year, Mann is on tour with cellist Yo-Yo Ma in China where he went out into the countryside to capture some stunning portraits and landscapes.

    Mann’s review covers the new Ultra Wide lens, Night Mode, Smart HDR improvements, and ability to capture outside the frame, along with wishes for additional improvements. Mann’s take on Night Mode:

    As long as I can remember, the top question I’ve received from iPhone photographers, beginners and pros alike, is How can I shoot better pictures in low light? This year’s addition of Night mode is the answer to the question. It’s easy to use, crazy powerful, and because it’s automatic it will completely change how everyone shoots on their iPhone.

    Mann confirms what seemed to be the case from the photos that Apple showed off last week at its event in Cupertino – Apple has implemented Night Mode in a way that doesn’t try to turn night into day:

    One thing I love about Apple’s approach to Night mode is the strategic balance of solving a technical problem while also caring deeply about artistic expression. When you look at the image above, it’s clear their team didn’t take the let’s-make-night-look-like-day approach, as some of their competitors have. Instead, it feels more like an embrace of what it actually is (night) while asking, “How do we capture the feel of this scene in a beautiful way?”

    How Apple accomplishes Night Mode is interesting. As Mann explains:

    From what I understand, the way Night mode actually works is the camera captures a bunch of short exposures and slightly longer exposures, checks them for sharpness, throws out the bad ones and blends the good ones. On a traditional dSLR/mirrorless camera, a 5 second exposure is one single, continuous recording of the light throughout the duration of the shutter so any movement (of subject or camera) is recorded.

    But with iPhone 11 Pro the rules are different… it’s not capturing one single continuous frame but blending a whole bunch of shots with variable lengths (some shorter exposures to freeze motion and longer shots to expose the shadows.) This means the subject can actually move during your exposure but still remain sharp.

    If you’ve been wondering about the new Ultra Wide camera on the new iPhones or the other new features of the camera app, be sure to check out Austin Mann’s full review for great technical and artistic insights about what Apple has accomplished with its new cameras as well as some absolutely fantastic examples of what they can do.

    Permalink

    Apple Watch Series 5 Review Roundup: All About the Always-on Display

    The Apple Watch Series 5 will go on sale this Friday, and the first reviews for the product are now being published. This year’s Watch update comes with a far shorter feature list than usual: it includes an always-on display, built-in compass, and expanded LTE bands that enable Emergency SOS even when traveling internationally. The prime focus of early reviews is, as expected, the Watch’s always-on display.

    Read more

    PCalc 3.9 Adds Dark Mode and the Latest Shortcuts Features, Expanding the App’s Automation Capabilities

    Last year when Siri shortcuts debuted on iOS 12, developer James Thomson added one of the first and best implementations for creating custom shortcuts with his calculator app PCalc. However, iOS 12 required PCalc to rely on the system clipboard as a means of passing inputs to calculations and then outputting the results, which added complexity to shortcuts that used PCalc actions. iOS and iPadOS 13 free PCalc of that constraint, and with the addition of parameter support and the conversational Siri shortcuts coming in iOS and iPadOS 13.1, PCalc’s automation features are vastly more powerful.

    Federico’s review of PCalc 3.8 featured a shortcut called PCalc Currencies, which is a terrific example of what a PCalc-based shortcut looked like in iOS 12. The shortcut coverts Euros to US Dollars and British Pounds. The first step is to pass the number of Euros to the shortcut from the system clipboard and then create a variable to store that value. Next, the shortcut uses PCalc’s conversion action to calculate the US Dollar equivalent, store it in a separate variable, and then do the same for pounds. The final step displays the results using each of the three currency variables. In total, the shortcut uses twelve actions, many of which involve moving data on and off the clipboard.

    PCalc Currencies for iOS 12 (left) and iOS 13 (right).

    PCalc Currencies for iOS 12 (left) and iOS 13 (right).

    With PCalc’s new Shortcuts actions, we can reduce the number of actions from twelve to just four. It’s a fantastic demonstration of the power that iOS and iPadOS 13 add to third-party shortcut actions and the reduction in complexity that can be achieved with even a relatively simple shortcut. Okay, let’s update Federico’s shortcut.

    Read more

    iPhone 11 and 11 Pro Review Roundup: The King of Cameras?

    Today the first reviews for the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro dropped, and they should inspire excitement in anyone planning to pick up a new iPhone later this week. Apple’s claims for massive battery life increases on the Pro models seem to have proven true, Face ID is better than before, and each device is more durable than before too, but the cameras are where this year’s iPhones truly shine. In years past the iPhone was the undisputed camera king, and with the 11 and 11 Pro Apple is building a compelling case why that’s true once more.

    Read more

    AppStories, Episode 129 – The Apps of Apple’s Fall Event→

    On this week’s episode of AppStories, we dive into the new and updated apps announced at Apple’s fall keynote including Compass, Camera, and the upcoming Apple Arcade game subscription service.

    Sponsored by:

    • Linode – High performance SSD Linux servers for all of your infrastructure needs. Get a $20 credit.
    • Setapp, from Macpaw – More than 100 powerful apps for your Mac.
    • Direct Mail – Create and send great looking email newsletters with Direct Mail, an easy-to-use email marketing app designed exclusively for the Mac.
    AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

    AppStories Episode 129 - The Apps of Apple’s Fall Event

    0:00
    37:48

    ↓

    AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

    Permalink

    Arcade Launches for Some iOS Beta Testers

    Earlier today, a series of reviews of Apple Arcade were published across the web and on YouTube. Shortly thereafter, Apple took the wraps off the service itself for at least a subset of people running the iOS 13 or 13.1 betas. Arcade doesn’t officially launch until September 19th, but it appears that Apple is using a slow roll-out to some beta testers to test the service and create buzz around the launch.

    The design of the Arcade tab is reminiscent of the App Store’s other tabs, although more space is reserved for spotlighting individual titles, and so far, there is little editorial content. It will be interesting to see how this mix evolves as more games become available and more editorial content is created. In addition to themed collections like ‘Start Your Adventure’ and ‘No Time to Blink,’ Arcade has a section dedicated to ‘New Arrivals,’ includes hint guides for three of the games and a button at the bottom of the view for accessing every game in the service.

    The activation of Arcade for some users coincided with a press release from Apple highlighting four games by smaller game studios: The Enchanted World, Patterned, Overland, and Card of Darkness. I haven’t had a chance to comb through the entire catalog yet, but there are a lot of great-looking games featured at launch that jumped out at me including:

    I’m looking forward to trying all of these as well as discovering new titles.

    As I said on AppStories this week, I’ve been cautiously optimistic and excited about Arcade. What I’ve seen of the new service in my brief time with it so far today is perfectly in line with what I hoped for. Apple seems to have struck a nice balance among many different categories of games, and with only about half of the 100+ titles that should be coming soon, that is an excellent start.

    Textastic: The Code Editor for Your iPad and iPhone [Sponsor]

    Textastic is the most complete and versatile code editor available for your iPad and iPhone. To start with, the app has syntax highlighting for more than 80 programming and markup languages. There’s everything from C to Objective-C, Swift, JavaScript, Python, YAML, HTML, CSS, and dozens more languages.

    Of course, Textastic is also compatible with Markdown. Not only can you write in Markdown, but you can preview Markdown with the app’s built in web server or Safari. Textastic is compatible with Sublime Text and Textmate syntax definitions too. You can even create your very own.

    Textastic goes well beyond the features of a classic editor though. You can manage remote file transfers with FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, Dropbox, and Google Drive and there’s a terrific, full-featured SSH terminal built right into the app. Because Textastic supports tabs, you can even have multiple files and SSH terminals open simultaneously.

    With robust search and replace that supports regular expressions, keyboard shortcuts that are customizable, and support for Git repositories using Working Copy, it’s one of the most powerful code editors you’ll find anywhere. Textastic is a great iOS citizen too, supporting the Files app, drag and drop, printing, iCloud Drive, Split View, and a whole lot more. Add to that a long history of development and support, and Textastic is an app you can use with confidence.

    To learn more about Textastic and what it can do for your code editing needs on iOS, visit textasticapp.com, then download a copy today. You’re going to love it.

    Our thanks to Textastic for sponsoring MacStories this week.

    Techmeme Ride Home, iPhone Event Debrief with John Voorhees of MacStories→

    On today’s weekend interview episode of Techmeme Ride Home, I was interviewed by Brian McCullough all about this week’s Apple event. We discussed the backlash against Apple events, how the company’s keynotes are evolving into something more than a showcase for iPhones, and then dove into all the new hardware and services announced.

    As always, it was a pleasure to dig into the details as well as the big-picture implications of the week’s news with McCullough. You can find the episode on Apple Podcasts.

    Permalink