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Blog

HomePod firmware: The things we know about Apples upcoming hard- and software so far

On July 27th, 2017 Apple erroneously released an OTA update for AudioAccessory1,1 – aka Apple HomePod. Developers like Steve Troughton-Smith, Guilherme Rambo or Avery Magnotti immediately dug into the firmware and soon thereafter found the first details Apple certainly didn’t want to be out in the open yet. Here’s a summary we know thanks to Apple and these developers:

I’m sure there are more details (I’ll try to add new ones them as they appear) but these are some of the most interesting ones.

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Blog

iPhone 8: Embrace the notch

There’ve been numerous iPhone 8 – or iPhone Pro or whatever you want to call it – leaks surrounding the recent release of the HomePod firmware. Now user interface designer Max Rudberg went ahed and created some mockups giving us some ideas how the upcoming iPhone UI could look like (current iPhone for comparison on the left):

Image: Max Rudberg

Given the leaked iPhone 8 glyph that shows the device and a distinct notch, I’d say Apple will embrace it (image 2 on the mockup). That said maybe it’ll change based on usage especially given a black OLED screen requires the least amount of power and the black looks actually black.

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Blog

Tesla Model 3 screen UI mockup

Scottish designer Andrew Goodlad went ahead and re-created the Tesla Model 3 screen for the web so you can have a look at it in case you’re not one of the few lucky ones who got the actual car yet.

After clicking around for a little bit the whole thing looks loaded with tiny details. The information density, just based on using it on a browser, feels way too high. I assume it’s a different story once you’re sitting in the actual car, using a bigger screen while actually interacting with it using your fingers. Maybe I’ll play with this mockup on a big iPad Pro in my car later on to get a slightly better impression.

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Blog

Adobe sinks final nail in Flash’s coffin

Adobe announces end of life for Adobe Flash:

Today, most browser vendors are integrating capabilities once provided by plugins directly into browsers and deprecating plugins.

Given this progress, and in collaboration with several of our technology partners – including Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla – Adobe is planning to end-of-life Flash. Specifically, we will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020 and encourage content creators to migrate any existing Flash content to these new open formats.

They finally realized it as well.

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Blog

Twitter removes its eggs

Twitter has just announced that it will be replacing the default egg avatar with a new more human shaped default profile photo.

We reviewed many variations of our figure, altering both the head and shoulders to feel more inclusive to all genders. When the shoulders were wider, the image felt overly masculine, so we decreased the width of the shoulders and adjusted the height of the figure. As a result of these iterations, we ended with a more gender-balanced figure. We chose grays because they feel temporary, generic, and universal. With that, we included a higher contrast color combination to make this image accessible for those with visual impairments. Because of its coloring, the new profile photo also gives less prominence to accounts with a default profile photo.

The news comes after yesterday’s change how replies work on Twitter.

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Howto

Adobe Lightroom: How to use user defined filters on your iPhone and iPad

Photoshop Lightroom on your iPhone and iPad does not support the native use of user defined (Smart) Filters. And unlike photos you aren’t able sync to them to your devices either. However there’s a trick to be able to use filters you have in Lightroom on your desktop on your smartphone and tablet.

Continue reading “Adobe Lightroom: How to use user defined filters on your iPhone and iPad”
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Linkblog

Apples 10,5″ iPad in numbers

Dan Provost on why Apple would release a 10.5″ iPad:

This new 10.5″ iPad would have the exact same resolution as the 12.9″ iPad Pro (2732 x 2048), but the same pixel density of the iPad mini (326 ppi instead of 264 ppi). Crunch the numbers, do a little Pythagorean Theorem, and you end up with a screen 10.5″ diagonal (10.47″ to be precise, but none of Apple’s stated screen sizes are exact). In terms of physcial dimensions, the width of this 10.5″ screen would be exactly the same as the height of the iPad mini screen.

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Linkblog

MacBook Pro battery life: Apple responds to Consumer Reports

Apple responded to iMore after finding some issues with their battery test setup:

„We appreciate the opportunity to work with Consumer Reports over the holidays to understand their battery test results,” Apple told iMore. „We learned that when testing battery life on Mac notebooks, Consumer Reports uses a hidden Safari setting for developing web sites which turns off the browser cache. This is not a setting used by customers and does not reflect real-world usage. Their use of this developer setting also triggered an obscure and intermittent bug reloading icons which created inconsistent results in their lab. After we asked Consumer Reports to run the same test using normal user settings, they told us their MacBook Pro systems consistently delivered the expected battery life. We have also fixed the bug uncovered in this test. This is the best pro notebook we’ve ever made, we respect Consumer Reports and we’re glad they decided to revisit their findings on the MacBook Pro.”

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Blog Linkblog

Nintendo has no additional content planned for Super Mario Run

Takashi Mochizuki for The Wall Street Journal:

The Mario game, on the other hand, gives players only one chance to pay—the $9.99 charge to advance to the game’s higher levels. A Nintendo spokesman said the company didn’t plan to release additional content, either free or paid.

Nintendo doing what it usually does best: deliver, but not without some annoying pitfalls. This is just one of them. Another one, just for Super Mario Run, is the way the DRM works. Thought about installing and playing the game while staying in a hotel with the all-too-common crappy Wi-Fi? Forget it.

Even if you thought: Hey, I can install the game somewhere on fast Wi-Fi and will be set. No, you’ll have to download another chunk after you started playing. But even after that the game constantly phones back home to make sure you don’t have an illegal copy. And even on a 16M connection this randomly results in an error message.

Then you get to pay 10 bucks to unlock all levels. Something many people managed to be unaware of – despite all the news before it launched – just judging by the reviews in the App Store. I wonder how people will react once they notice this game is instant abandonware?

And don’t get me started about the nowadays usual ignorance when it comes to push notifications:
https://twitter.com/panzer/status/810969592629579776

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Linkblog

Tim Cook vs. Bloomberg: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

Yesterday, Tim Cook: Don’t worry.
Today, Bloomberg: Do Worry:

In the Mac’s heyday, people working on new models could expect a lot of attention from Ive’s team. Once a week his people would meet with Mac engineers to discuss ongoing projects. Mac engineers brought prototypes to Ive’s studio for review, while his lieutenants would visit the Mac labs to look at early concepts. Those visits have become less frequent since the company began focusing more on more-valuable products like the iPhone and iPad, and the change became even more obvious after the design team’s leadership was shuffled last year, according to a person familiar with the situation.

In another sign that the company has prioritized the iPhone, Apple re-organized its software engineering department so there’s no longer a dedicated Mac operating system team. There is now just one team, and most of the engineers are iOS first, giving the people working on the iPhone and iPad more power.