Back in 2013, I suggested the story of Steve Jobs would best be told as a 5-act opera, with the most crucial part of the story being Act III.

Act III: The NeXT / Pixar years. Includes an initial period of Jobs not knowing what he wants to do. Then the remarkable story of NeXT, which is essentially a repeat of his failure at Apple (brilliant at product and vision, terrible at keeping a company going). Steve initially continues to believe he had done everything right and the “bozos” had killed everything great about Apple. But this repeat failure at NeXT proves to Steve that it wasn’t just a matter of betrayal that led to the Apple failure. It forces Jobs to look at himself and actually learn something. Pixar is essential here as well, as it’s where Steve learns a great deal about how to work with artists and how to negotiate with media bosses, which is a key component of his later success. Pixar also struggles for several years before taking off with Toy Story. And that almost didn’t happen. Plus, during this time period, Jobs meets Laurene, starts a family, and reconciles with his first daughter. This is the climax of Jobs’ life, and probably the most interesting part of his story, as far as drama goes.

All of the books and movies about Jobs up until now have been focused on either the early years (Macintosh and Apple founding) or the later years (iMac, iPod, iPhone). They’ve completely missed the boat on the most critical part of the narrative.

Perhaps 30-40 years from now, I suggested, we’ll get more information about this critical period in his life.

Looks like that time arrived sooner than I expected.

Steve Jobs in Exile looks to be covering this exact period in the Jobs story. I have no idea how good it will be, but this is an insta-buy for me.

Let’s hope it doesn’t disappoint.

Is Vision Pro heavier than I wish it were? Of course. Is that a deal breaker? Not at all.

Personally, I feel the heat more than the weight of the device. My cheeks tend to get a bit flush after wearing Vision Pro for more than an hour or so.

A nice gent at the Apple Store in Boulder gave me a great tip when it comes to adjusting the head band. If you feel too much weight on your forehead, move the band up. If you feel too much on your cheeks, move it down. Basically, move the strap in the direction of the weight, and the balance will even out. Also, dial the strap in tight, but not too tight.

I’ve been using the Solo Knit band exclusively, by the way. Haven’t even tried the other band yet.

I’ve been wearing Vision Pro somewhere between 4-6 hours a day since I got it. And it feels fine to me. Obviously, it takes some getting used to. You are looking at video, not real life. And you are aware of that right away. It’s not that you are under the illusion you are looking at the real world. Move your eyes fast enough, and you’ll see the screen trying to catch up. But you do forget you aren’t looking at the real world pretty fast. And that’s the magic.

The first time you walk through your email window is a surreal experience.

Over all, wearing Vision Pro will be weirder for the people around you than it will be for you. People are constantly surprised I can see them, because they are so used to what they’ve seen of other headsets that really do take you out of the real world.

Vision Pro can take you out of the real world, via environments. But you can literally dial that in as you see fit. I find myself going back and forth according to context. When I’m on a plane, you’d better believe I’m dialing out the ugly seats, cabin, and other passengers in favor of Mt. Hood or the Moon. (Or the amazing empty theater in the TV app.) But when it comes time to take a drink, or I want to work with my laptop in visionOS, I dial it back to just the area directly in front of me, so I can see my keyboard and the side table with my glass on it.

(It did take me a minute to figure out how to take a drink of water without banging the glass into my device. Pro tip: lean your head and shoulders back a bit.)

How do I wear it for so long? What’s my secret? The same secret I’ve been using for looking at screens all day since the dawn of computers: frequent breaks. I get up, move around. Grab a drink of water. Go to the bathroom. Take a walk outside. All without the device. Yes, you can wear it on a walk, but don’t. Five minutes away from the device, looking at the real world again, and my cheeks cool back down, my eyes readjust, and I’m ready to go back in. It’s fairly straightforward.

Also, if you’re worried Vision Pro will make you nauseous or give you a headache: I was, too. Every VR headset I’ve ever tried made me dizzy in a matter of a few minutes. Vision Pro doesn’t. I’ve been told it’s the lack of latency. Whatever the reason, Vision Pro is the only headset I can wear and not get sick. So there’s that. I imagine there are some folks who will still not be able to adjust. Try it for yourself and see. All I know is I am definitely sensitive to such things, and I have no issues with Vision Pro.

Apps

All this hype about not having enough apps at launch was way overblown. There are relatively few native Vision apps at the moment. But there are thousands and thousands of iPad apps that work perfectly fine. Will they be better once they are redone for visionOS natively? Of course. But this doesn’t feel like iPhone apps on iPad. The graphics aren’t blown up or fuzzy in any way. You can resize them as needed. And with few exceptions, all the functions work perfectly. The team did an outstanding job of making iPad apps work seamlessly without much compromise.

The worst part of iOS apps on Vision Pro is how you launch them. Having to dig into the “Compatible apps” folder is a bit of a bummer. I suspect Apple can fix this pretty quick. (Along with allowing you to rearrange your home screen grid.)

As far as converting iPadOS apps, I took an app I’ve been working on in SwiftUI for iPhone, iPad, and macOS, and added native visionOS compatibility in Xcode. Had it working in ten minutes. Had it working well and looking proper in about an hour. This will not be hard for most SwiftUI apps. The biggest issue native apps face for visionOS is the size of the market. It’ll be a while before there are enough Vision Pro devices out there in the real world to make the effort worthwhile for larger companies. Especially with older apps with a lot of legacy code.

Speaking of larger companies—YouTube and Netflix not being available on visionOS is entirely on Google and Netflix. Their iPadOS apps would function just fine with zero effort, I’ve been told by people who would know. The decision to uncheck the compatibility checkbox is a political—not technological—one. I suspect they will change their tune in time.

If apps like Fantastical are any indication, porting to visionOS should be not only doable but doable within months, not years. Even for apps that have been a staple on iOS for a very long time.

visionOS

This is the best 1.0 Apple has ever shipped. It’s probably the best 1.0 anyone has ever shipped. Put it this way: visionOS already has Cut, Copy, and Paste. It has multiple window support. It has a file manager app. It has support for external keyboards and trackpads. It has full integration with iOS and macOS devices. All the things people have been complaining about iPadOS not being ready for proper productivity? visionOS already has all that settled. Imagine how much better it will be at 2.0.

Using your eyes as a pointing device is way more intuitive than you might imagine. Within seconds, I was getting around the OS like I had been doing it my entire life. There were a few things to learn, like how to force quit apps, shut down the device, and so on. But taking a screenshot on any device is always a matter of learning the magic keystroke.

Pro tip on typing: Don’t bother tapping keys on the virtual keyboard. Just look at the key, and then pinch. It’s so much faster. You don’t have to turn your head, either. Just move your eyes. I can already type more accurately on visionOS than I can on my iPhone. It’s a bit slow, but for anything beyond a passcode or a few words, an external keyboard is the way to go, anyway.

If you've been using Apple's built-in password manager, by the way, logging into to just about anything will be a breeze. The integration is excellent.

Audio

While I’m talking about visionOS, let me take a moment to shout out to the sound designers. As one would expect from Apple, the visionOS sound effects are delightful. And the spatial nature of the OS makes the sounds even more delightful. Where the sound is coming from is as important as the sound itself.

The built-in speakers are mind-boggling. But since I don’t want to disturb those around me, I’ve spent most of my time with Vision Pro using AirPods Pro. The spatial effect works perfectly and drives the point home that your work is now all around you, not just on a flat screen.

Personae

It’s pretty damn hard to get a Persona you can live with. At least it was for me. The problem is that Personae are so darn realistic, any little thing hits you immediately. For me, the capture of my actual facial features—eyes, nose, mouth, skin tone—were all flawless. Too flawless, in fact. I sort of wish it would smooth me out a bit, to be honest.

It’s my hair the Vision Pro can’t seem to figure out. For the first and only time in my life, I sort of wished I were bald or had a crew cut. If your hair is anything other than very short, it’s going to struggle to not make your hair look painted on your head.

The best tip I can give is to set Vision Pro on a high table (an adjustable standing desk is perfect for this) and face the device with your arms down, not holding the device with your own hands. Get your hair out of your face, even if that’s not how you’d normally wear it. Any hair in the facial region will just look flat.

All that seems to help. Along with having a light-colored, plain background, such as a white wall. I haven’t tried with a green screen. Maybe that would help, too?

Also, don’t create your Persona after having used Vision Pro for several minutes. You will get puffy cheeks and lines under your eyes from the device itself. Take a break, let your face recover, and then capture a new Persona.

For now, I can live with my Persona, but I will likely be recapturing it every once in a while until they can make it a bit better at handling hair.

Entertainment

If I lived alone, I would have gotten rid of my TV the day after I picked up Vision Pro. It’s simply the best way to watch movies, shows, etc. Period. Hands down. Game over.

It’s the only way to watch a 3D movie, as far as I’m concerned. As someone who always hated 3D movies in theaters, because the glasses always made the movie blurry and dim, I was blown away with 3D content on Vision Pro. Finally, I get why filmmakers were so excited about 3D. It actually works when you can project it properly.

(Apple's immersive video content is even more impressive. But five minutes of watching that lady highlining over a canyon was too much for a guy who has been afraid of falling from heights his entire life. Yikes)

Also, I’m very glad I took so many panoramic photos over the years. Even though I’ve never really seen any benefit to them on my iPhone or iPads. On visionOS, you finally understand the value. Magnificent to relive these memories.

Productivity

I have no interest in VR or AR for gaming. I get that’s where these sorts of devices have been used most up until now. But I also get this is why the entire category has remained a niche. Apple is looking to change that, clearly. Not only because the current price of the hardware dictates it (more on that in a bit) but because there just aren’t enough people out there who want to play VR games vs those who need to do daily Zoom meetings. VR gaming would never be a big enough market on its own for Apple to bother with it. And let’s face it; Apple would have a much bigger hill to climb trying to dominate in games.

That doesn't mean Vision Pro is no good for games, mind you. Just that it's so much more than that.

I say this carefully, because I don’t wish to offend. But if you haven’t used Vision Pro, you probably shouldn’t be writing about it. It really is a device that must be used to be understood. And I mean used for real work, not a just demo in a store.

The folks at the Apple Store will give you a great demo. Don’t get me wrong. I highly encourage folks who can make the trek to try it out there. But until you open your own apps around you and start doing some actual work, you won’t fully grasp the potential of the device. It is transformative. I don’t say that with any sort of hyperbole. I will literally never look at working on any computer the same way.

My Mac

visionOS is already pretty cool on its own. But everything gets that much better when I open my laptop and connect it to Vision Pro. Suddenly, all of Apple’s work on Continuity makes a lot more sense. I’ve tried several times opening my iPad next to my Mac in order to run Mail, Messages, etc. and leave my Mac screen for the specific productivity apps I’m currently running. But it was just never worth the hassle to do on a daily basis.

Since connecting to Vision Pro, my Mac now runs Xcode and the Adobe Suite exclusively. Everything else is done in visionOS. And it’s glorious.

Vision Pro, in other words, turns my Mac into a focused, dedicated productivity device. All the other stuff I need is nearby, in windows just out of view until I turn my head one way or the other.

The Mac window itself in visionOS is much better than having an external monitor  in several ways. For one, it can be moved anywhere I want it. Including just above my laptop monitor. (So I can avoid that whole geek neck thing.) I can resize it, move it up or down, closer or further away. Pretty much any way I want. All while my hands remain where they should be. It’s like having a wireless external monitor connected to a stand with unlimited adjustability. Except that doesn’t exist.

The biggest question mark I had about visionOS was how it would be to work with it day in and day out. Whatever fears I had about this melted away in seconds. The macOS window is clear. It’s as big as I want it to be. I started using it for fine-adjusting bezier curves in Illustrator, and I was immediately faster and more productive than ever I had been on my laptop alone.

Give me Xcode (or whatever Apple wants to call a visionOS version of it) and a native Adobe suite, and I think I can stop buying new Macs altogether.

I haven’t tried Adobe’s iPad apps on visionOS yet. I can only hope their versions of Illustrator and Photoshop are far enough along and ready to be ported over natively soon. That would be amazing.

Prior to getting Vision Pro, I was trying figure out whether Vision Pro will end up replacing my iPad or my Mac, if either, and it’s clear now it’s the Mac whose days would be numbered. For me, at least. Not anytime soon, mind you. I’m thinking it’ll be years, if it happens at all. But if I eventually go without a Mac, I would not be surprised. Traveling with Vision Pro and just a mouse and trackpad would be very nice.

Pricing

I always balk at the word “expensive” because it connotes not just that the price is high, but that’s it’s higher than it should be. Vision Pro is not expensive. Even Mark Zuckerberg admitted the price makes sense, given the hardware Apple is packing into this thing. My first Mac SE in 1986 cost more than Vision Pro did, in inflation-adjusted dollars. A Mac Pro or well equipped MacBook Pro would easily cost you the same or more.

There’s no question it is a chunk of change, though. More than many can currently afford. And whether or not you see it as being worth the price to you is entirely dependent on what role you see Vision Pro playing in your life.

If you think of Vision Pro as the world’s best way to watch movies, then yeah. It’s probably too high a price to pay.

If, like me, you see it as an entirely new way to be more productive when working, then the price is downright cheap. I paid less for Vision Pro than I did for my Apple Pro Display XDR, and I can use it while sitting on the couch.

The Future

The three biggest gripes people have with Vision Pro are price, size/weight, and battery life. These are three problems the tech world has been solving since the dawn of computing. Time will fix all three very easily. So it’s not a matter of whether Vision Pro will be successful. It’s just a matter of how long it takes for mass adoption. In a few short years, Spatial Computing will be a Fortune 100 company within Apple, just as Apple Watch is now.

You’re living in the future, whether you know it or not.

I remember the early 90s, when I was first considering getting a 5-string bass. 5-string had suddenly become very popular, thanks to Grunge and a lot of other popular music featuring those extra low notes the 5-string provided.

I was playing around with one in the store, and I got into a conversation with one of the employees.

“Do you think this is a fad? Will we all just go back to 4-string in a few years?” I asked.

“The way I see it, there’s nothing you can do with a 4-string you can’t do with a 5. So why go back to the limitation of the 4?”

I bought my first 5-string a few months later.

Nowadays, there are plenty of 4-string players around. But the 5 also is still used widely. And I’ve never considered giving up those extra low notes.

This is exactly how I feel about Apple’s Touch Bar. There’s nothing your non-Touch Bar Mac can do that I can’t do with my current laptop. So why would I want to give up my Touch Bar for a row of useless function keys I’d never use?

If I were Apple, I’d be doubling down on Touch Bar, not tearing it out in favor of plastic keys that can’t adapt to your needs.

I did this, even though:

• This is clearly a Mac meant to be a replacement for the entry-level 2-port model of the 13-inch Pro. Not the high-end 4-port model I am using to type this.
• A higher-end version (perhaps with the rumored smaller-bezel 14-inch screen) could be coming as soon as next spring.
• 16 GB of RAM max.
• Aren’t we supposed to avoid first-gen hardware?

Here’s why:

• This 13-inch Pro with M1 (if Apple’s bragging is to be believed) is going to outperform my maxed out 2020 Intel MacBook Pro 13-inch, anyway. Particularly at graphics.
• My battery life is likely to be close to double what I’m currently getting.
• I’m betting the better efficiency means the fans will kick into high speed less often.
• I’m betting the lower RAM ceiling doesn’t impact me as much as most people think.
• I’ve been buying first-gen Apple hardware for decades and have never regretted it.

All this, for a price that’s $700 cheaper than the Pro I currently own.

And in Silver, of course. Space Gray is so 2015.

This is but the first step in a long transition for the Mac. And it’s historic. My limited experience with the DTK over the summer has shown me that Apple Silicon is the real deal. Rosetta apps don’t feel like emulation. And given how easy porting to Apple Silicon is, most apps will be native very quickly, anyway.

If the more-expensive small Pro ends up getting announced next year, upgrading again is always an option.

Small price to pay for being on the cutting edge of the Mac’s evolution.

I don’t want a small phone that is also a “budget” phone, in other words. I want a top-of-the-line phone that happens to be small.

Now, I get the limitations of physics. I know a smaller phone is never going to get the same battery life as a large one. And I know it can never have as advanced a camera. I’ve always been willing to compromise on those two specific things, because I don’t believe in magic.

It’s been a long time since battery life was a major issue for me with my phone. And while I love taking pictures, the cameras on cell phones have been “good enough” for me for quite a while. Neither of these things is more important to me than reachability.

And so here we are in 2020, and Apple just announced the iPhone 12 mini. Since I avoid rumor sites, I had no idea this was coming. And I have to admit, I was completely unprepared. It’s been a long time since choosing a new iPhone was more than a matter of choosing a color for me. I fully expected to be ordering the smallest "Pro" phone they offered, even if it were a little bigger than my current 11 Pro.

For at least a few hours, I was truly torn about which phone to get.

But in the end, how could I not get the mini? There are exactly two sacrifices you make when getting this phone vs the new Pro: Battery life and camera. Everything else—from 5G, to the new Ceramic Shield glass, to the A14 Bionic, to FaceID, to OLED, to MagSafe—is pretty much the same.

The iPhone 12 Pro is basically 100% aimed at photographers and videographers at this point. While I’ve never needed to get a Pro, this year I finally don’t even want to get a Pro. It took me a few hours to realize that, but now that I have, I can’t wait to get my hands on the mini.

The new Apple Solo loops are not about the Watch. They are an operations experiment, to see how well Apple can manufacture at grand scale products that are more personal and customizable than ever before.

Some industries would laugh at this being a challenge. But tech companies are not used to this level of customization at all. And no company manufactures product at the scale of Apple at this point.

When Apple got into wearables with watches, they started out small. Two case sizes. Various bands you could bundle in or purchase separately. I think there were roughly 20 different SKUs at launch.

That already was far more customized to individuals than anything Apple had done before. (5 different colors of iPod were probably the closest they had come.)

Fast forward to a few years from now, when Apple starts delivering their next big wearable device. Glasses are the current rumor. Have you ever seen one style of glasses frames that looked good on everyone? You’d need dozens of different frame styles, in many different sizes, to even begin to reach mass market appeal. When I go to buy glasses, I try on at least five different frames before I find one I like, and that’s after I dismiss the obviously wrong ones. It’s hard enough to convince people who don’t need glasses to wear them. If the frames look terrible on me (Hello, Google) Apple is never going to reach the market scale they want.

Factor in prescription lenses for many of us, and you’re talking about a made-to-order product. Built at Apple scale. That’s never been done before by anyone.

Make no mistake: This will be the biggest operations challenge Apple has ever faced, by a long shot.

So, to help them get ready, we get baby steps. Individualized watch bands. In 9 different sizes. 7 different colors. Two styles (Braided and Sport). For 44 and 40 mm watches. It’s not nearly as much of a challenge as glasses will be, but it sure looks like a step in that direction.

In 2019.

That summer, I began work to add sleep data analysis to RECaf, a feature I had wanted since I conceived of the app. The timing seemed right. If Apple were going to be adding sleep tracking to Apple Watch as a first-party feature, I wanted to be right there, ready to take advantage of that sleep data as soon as Apple started its marketing.

Scientifically, it’s pretty well established that caffeine has some sort of impact on sleep for many people. (Not everyone, of course. I seem to be immune.) But most people I know can’t have coffee at night and then get a great night’s sleep. Taking the sleep data people record on their watches or phones and comparing it to the caffeine data being recorded in RECaf seemed so obvious.

This is at the heart of why we track these stats. We want to know how we as individuals respond to different stimuli. Maybe caffeine has no impact on your sleep, even though it does for many other people. Why not figure that out for yourself?

Shockingly, no other caffeine tracking apps seem to be doing this analysis. And very few sleep trackers do, either. This made it a perfect differentiating feature for RECaf.

But it was a hefty challenge. So much to learn. Sleep data is stored in a somewhat unintuitive way in HealthKit. And every sleep tracker seems to record data a bit differently. And then there was the challenge of how to display the data. How to compare it to your caffeine data. What were the most interesting conclusions I could draw? What would present the most value to my customers?

In the end, I settled on scatter charts (Shout out to Mike Selsky, not only for pointing out the appropriateness of scatter charts, but for writing the Swift code for generating the trend lines for me.) And I focused on a few basic data points. How much caffeine did you have vs. how much sleep did you get? How late was your last caffeine intake vs. how much sleep did you get? And finally, how long did it take you to fall asleep vs. how much caffeine you had, and how much time had passed between your last caffeine intake and going to bed?

The feature was close to being wrapped up and ready to go a year ago. It still had bugs that needed to be worked out. But I was on track to ship at least sometime in the fall of 2019.

Then Apple announced a new Series 5 Apple Watch—without a single mention of sleep tracking.

Still, there were plenty of third-party sleep trackers out there. Plenty of people interested, I’m sure, in how much caffeine was impacting their sleep. But the golden marketing opportunity seemed to be lost. I got super busy with other things, and before you knew it, those last few bugs never got fixed, and nothing ever shipped.

Fast forward to this June. WWDC. Apple finally announces a native sleep tracking app in the upcoming watchOS 7. Okay. Time to dust off the old sleep tracking code and work up a new release for this fall.

And so here we are. Almost a year to the weekend after I “finished” the feature. Sleep analysis is finally here in RECaf.

I could have waited for Apple’s announcement of this year’s new Watch series. I assume it will have some sort of hardware enhancement to make sleep tracking even better. But for the sake of all those folks who won’t or can’t upgrade their watches this year, I wanted to get the feature into a watchOS 6-compatible version, so they could enjoy it, too. (I plan to move RECaf to iOS 14 and watchOS 7 very shorty after iOS 14 ships.)

There are some other good new features in the latest RECaf version as well. Reordering of favorites. Logging hydration into HealthKit along with the caffeine entries. (Coffee and Tea are mostly water, after all.)

There are also a lot of under-the-hood enhancements in this version. A complete refactoring of the caffeine source model. Finally properly utilizing Apple’s Measurement API for conversions. More reliable Siri Shortcuts. Improved performance and reliability of statistical data presentation. And on and on. Combine. SwiftUI. All the buzzwords.

It’s a big release.

So check out RECaf today. The update is now available on the App Store.

There’s no question this online format gives more access to far more people. And that can only be a good thing. Whatever Apple does next year and in the years following, they should absolutely continue to make the show as accessible to as many people as possible. They should incorporate what they’ve learned this year into any future iteration of the show.

But then I’ve seen a number of people suggesting the live show is no longer needed at all. And I’m not so sure about that.

You know what didn’t happen for me for the first time this week while attending WWDC? I didn’t make a single new friend. My community grew by zero. Sure, I had plenty of FaceTime/Zoom/Messages interactions with friends whom I met over the years at the in person show. I even co-hosted a happy hour Zoom call with my podcast cohost Charles Perry. And at some of these online events, there were new faces to whom I could be introduced.

But if I had never been to a WWDC before, I would have spent the entire week alone. I would have had no one with whom to share this experience.

To me, that’s the bit that can’t be replaced. You can meet new friends online, of course. But do you get that same connection? Would I be comfortable texting people I chatted with for five minutes on Zoom a year from now? I don’t think so.

The fact remains that any live form of WWDC is not going to reach as many people as the online event. But why can’t we have both?

Given the expansion of AltConf (which had started popping up in cities all over the world prior to this year), more people than ever had an opportunity during WWDC week to interact with new people and make new connections. The live WWDC inspired other simultaneous live events.

Without a live WWDC, does a live AltConf still happen? I’m not sure.

I’ve been shouting from the rooftops about this for years, but it remains as true today as ever—we need more live gatherings in our community, not fewer. (Once we’re past this pandemic, of course.)

Some of us are just getting started on building connections. And even those of us who have a large group of lifelong friends in the community are always going to be better off expanding that group a bit more every year.

So while the prospect of never having a live WWDC again appeals to many developers (and my wallet), I’m hoping Apple doesn’t agree.

This privacy page in the HBO Max iOS app is a work of art.

Let’s start with how I navigated here. (Shout out to Dave Mark for making me aware of its existence in the first place.) Launch the app, tap on the account tab on the bottom right, then tap on the little gear icon at the top left, then tap on “Do not Sell My Personal Information” towards the bottom of the list.^[1]

Not the hardest page to find, but I’m willing to bet around 2% of HBO Max’s users will bother to dig this deep into their own account settings.

Next, the header: “For California Residents Only.” Does that mean this switch only applies to California residents? Since I live in Colorado, should I not bother with this switch, because they are going to sell my info anyway? Or are they saying they only sell the data of Californians in the first place?

“pursuant to the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)”

Translation: We’re only offering this option because those assholes in California made us do it.

If you’re feeling bored, go ahead and tap the “visit the Privacy Center” link. There, you will find a crystal clear explanation:

We do not sell personal information for monetary value, but we do sometimes transfer it to third parties as part of a mutually beneficial business relationship. Because of this, we refer to the sale of personal information as “data sharing.”

Funny, I’ve always defined “sharing” as willingly and knowingly giving someone something of mine. Giving away something that belongs to someone else is usually referred to as theft.

Let us know that you don’t want us to share this data with third parties any longer by submitting a request.  We’ll ask you to provide an email address.  Then we will search our systems to make sure you’re excluded from third-party data sharing based on that email address.  As to some third parties, we may only be able to honor your request if you are a California resident.

Translation: Let us know if you want us to stop helping others steal your information, and if you live in California, we may actually stop doing that. The rest of you can pound sand.

The switch is off by default, of course. And it’s greyed out, as if the designers of this app want you to think you can’t even tap on it. iOS native switches have a white tappable/draggable handle when in the “off” state. Warner went out of their way to make the handle black.

Finally, the footnote.^[2] “This change will take effect the next time you start the HBO Max app.”

In other words, now that you’ve flicked the switch, we’re going to immediately “share” your info before you get a chance to quit the app and restart it.

And here I was dumb enough to wonder why Warner didn’t want to offer HBO Max as an Apple TV Channel.

I love that they actually labeled the page that way, rather than calling it “Privacy Settings” or something less blatant. ↩︎

I tried to find the corresponding asterisk in the main body of the text, but there isn’t one. But now I’m just nitpicking. ↩︎

But then I made the mistake of lending my Magic Keyboard to Jessica in the middle of last year, and I never got it back.

So rather than picking up a new Magic Keyboard, I took the opportunity to pick up a Smart Folio keyboard, even though every time I had tried one in a store, I basically hated it.

Over time, I did get used to the strange feel of the keys. And not having to think about battery life or Bluetooth connection issues was nice. Overall, I never ended up loving that set up, but it got the job done.I knew whenever I moved on to another iPad I’d need to go keyboard shopping again.

Enter 2020, with its new line of iPads and a new Magic Keyboard made specifically for iPad. I knew immediately I would want to try this new keyboard and integrated trackpad out.

The new keyboard arrived via FedEx yesterday. So here are my initial impressions. Keep in mind that I have the iPad Pro 11-inch, so the corresponding keyboard is the smaller version:

• Wow, this thing is heavy. Seriously heavy. It needs to be heavy. I get that. Any lighter, and it would likely topple over under the weight of the iPad itself. But it makes the Magic Keyboard into an accessory I’ll lug around specifically when I want to write (as I am now) rather than one I carry with me most of the time.
• The weight also makes it slightly less advantageous to head out of the house with my iPad instead of my laptop. This smaller combo of 11-inch iPad and keyboard is still lighter than my MacBook Pro 13-inch, but not by much.
• The keys feel really good. I still think the new scissor switches have more travel than I would like, but I get that most people prefer the extra travel. So I’m okay with it. At least the keys are very sturdy. None of that sponginess from the old desktop Magic Keyboards. And precise.
• I love the backlight. Typing in the dark on an iPad is no longer a problem.
• I would like if there were a bit more of an angle of view. It’s way nicer than the old Smart Keyboard folio in terms of adjustability. But I’m a tall person. Being able to tilt back even further would be nice. (Maybe it wasn’t possible, due to it toppling over?)
• Connecting and disconnecting is a breeze. The magnets are that perfect balance of strong enough to not disconnect accidentally, vs easy enough to disconnect with one hand. I don’t think I have to worry about the iPad falling off as much as I thought I would.
• Typing on my lap is better than I thought it would be. Better than the Keyboard Folio, for sure.
• Opening with the iPad inside the case is a bit awkward, as the heavy side is on top instead of bottom. But closing the case is very nice. I’ve found I can push down in one motion to a certain point, and the iPad will come to a full close on its own. And I like that it clearly “snaps” shut.
• The keys are not full-sized, of course, so I still find myself, as I always have on iPad keyboards, typing with three fingers and thumb on each hand, rather than using both pinkies. I’ve gotten used to it by now, but I’m never going to be quite as fast on an iPad keyboard as I can be on my laptop. If I moved to the 13-inch iPad, this would not be an issue, of course.
• Speaking of larger iPads, typing on this as I am now, I can totally see Apple making a 15-inch iPad Pro. It would give them more room for a larger trackpad and better palm rests. And an even bigger screen would make for an even better drawing tablet. I’d be shocked if that doesn’t happen in the next few years.
• Now that I’m over the concept of having trackpad support on iPad, I have to say the implementation is pretty darn good. I always found having to reach up to the screen while using iPad in keyboard mode awkward. It’s amazing how fast you get used to using a trackpad on iOS. It feels way more natural than I would have expected. Having a trackpad that’s so small is weird, given how big trackpads have gotten on MacBooks lately. But it’s a very handy thing to have around.
• The super-dark grey is a very nice color. I picked up a Smart Folio (the keyboard-less version) in the new Cactus color, which is a nice lighter green color. It looks really cool with the Space Gray iPad. But this sleek all-dark look on the keyboard is also very nice.
• The rubbery material of the outer shell soaks up finger grease like nobody’s business. It’s going to be hard to keep this thing clean.
• I haven’t noticed any keyboard-shaped grease stains on my screen yet, from being toted around while closed in a bag. But this is my first full day. I suspect that will happen eventually.
• The USB charge-through port is a cool idea. But given reports of how slow charging is in that configuration, I figure I’ll stick with mostly charging via the iPad’s main port. I generally don’t use other USB accessories with my iPad, anyway.
• Not being able to flip the keyboard around back and use the iPad as a touch device while still connected is a bit of a bummer. But given how heavy it would be to hold and use standing up, I don’t think I would have left the keyboard connected for this purpose much, anyway.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with this keyboard. It’s not as nice as my laptop keyboard, of course, but it blows my Smart Keyboard folio out of the water. And the old Magic Keyboard/Canopy combo, frankly. This is as good as typing out long blog posts on an iPad has ever been. I look forward to using it more.

via Becky Hansmeyer

I hadn’t thought of that particular point before, but it’s obviously accurate. People in general are anxious and scared to death about the condition of the world and where it is headed, be it political divisions, global climate crisis, etc. And so that negativity naturally flows right into other aspects of their lives—namely the things they geek out about.

I love Curtis Herbert’s reaction to Becky’s piece on Twitter:

“I’m feeling pretty bummed about all the pessimism in my fav community.”

Same.

If Apple launched a gen1 iPhone today we’d hype but then rip it to shreds for the next 10months.

Apple hasn’t changed much, being hypercritical has become the toxic norm.https://t.co/9DF9A4SdIC

— Curtis Herbert (@parrots) February 2, 2020

He’s absolutely right. Apple could release technology as game-changing as iPhone today, and people would love it for about two weeks. Then the negativity would pour in immediately after. How do I know this? It already happened with Apple Watch. Apple created a device that literally saved me from a stroke just by wearing it. But what was the community’s reaction? “The icons in that little honeycomb are too hard to tap.”

The same thing will happen with Apple glasses. The car. Whatever else Apple does. The hate will drown out whatever faint praise anyone has the gall to post.

I think it’s time we face the fact that sure, Apple has changed. It’s gotten bigger. More corporate. More mistakes are falling through the cracks. But also, we’ve changed as a community. We’ve become ridiculously jaded. I can’t post anything remotely positive about Apple anymore without getting called a fanboy behind my back. Rene Ritchie can’t set the record straight with his patented brand of fighting FUD with a laundry list of reality without getting labeled a shill. We reward people for complaining, and we shame anyone who says anything positive.

But here’s the thing. I keep doing it anyway. Because every time I post an opinion that goes against the accepted conventional wisdom, along with the haters come two or three people who say “Hey thanks. I thought I was nuts for thinking Touch Bar is actually pretty cool.” Or, “I agree Apple Maps is actually better than Google Maps for my purposes.”

I still give Apple hell when I think they deserve it, but when they do something right, and people are still spewing bile, I try to offer an alternative opinion for those who are frankly tired of being told they are wrong for liking something.

And I get it, from a business perpsective. Apple hate gets a lot more clicks than praise. I can see that from my own posts. But at some point, you have to ask yourself, why am I still here, if everything I read bums me out, and everything I like gets shat upon daily?

I feel bad for people like Becky who have joined our community at a time when the only way to gain acceptance is to be a constant whiner. I doubt I would have stuck around long if it had been that way back in 1986 when I got my first Mac.

Even in Apple’s darkest hours during the 90s, people outside the community were the haters.

Obviously this is a very short first impression, obtained at those ridiculous Apple Store tables that seem to be the worst possible height for typing while standing. So I’ll clearly need more time to make a final judgement. But it didn’t take long to at least know that this is indeed a bit of a step backwards—in terms of feel—for me.

The best way I can describe the new keyboard is if you drew a line with the butterfly keyboard on one side and the wireless Magic Keyboard on the other, this new MacBook Pro keyboard would fall closer to the Magic Keyboard in feel than the butterfly. No surprise, then, people who hated the butterfly are dancing in the streets.

It’s not completely Magic Keyboard in feel, though. It does manage to avoid the sponginess of the Magic. The keys do feel much more precise. Press down from an off-center position, and the whole key does seem to fire pretty evenly. Not quite as good as the butterfly, but better than the Magic, for sure. That’s quite an engineering feat in a scissor switch.

It’s not a bad keyboard, by any stretch of the imagination. And it certainly tramples the old keyboard on the 2015 and prior models. But the extra travel makes me feel like I’m working harder than I should have to when I type. And the extra space between the keys looks and feels cheaper and older to me. My guess is most people looking at this machine side-by-side with one of the current 13-inch models would say the 13-inch is the newer model.

But looks aren’t everything, of course. I’m just gaining a new appreciation for the reasoning behind the butterfly’s aesthetic.

I have never had an issue with the virtual escape key, but since TouchBar doesn’t lose any functionality by bringing back the real key, I’m happy to see the real key return. Combine that with the space now between the edge of TouchBar and the power button, and it has a nice symmetry to it. No complaints about what’s going on at the top of this keyboard.

The inverted-T arrow keys, do, indeed, look old and janky compared to the full-sized keys on the butterfly. (I never thought it was that big a difference until looking at the two side-by-side again yesterday.) But this is a case where function over form is absolutely the right move. I’m thrilled to see the inverted-T back.

So increased travel, slightly less precision, and poorer looks, balanced against the return of inverted-T arrow keys and the assumption of better reliability. (I know that’s a big assumption. But everyone else seems to be giving Apple the benefit of the doubt on this, so I will, too.)

Overall, I think Apple made the right move. But there’s no doubt in my mind I’ll like the keyboard on my next MacBook Pro a little less.

But probably only a little.

But here’s the thing. Apple TV+ itself is not particularly important to Apple’s bottom line. And it doesn’t have to be for a long time.

Take a look at the TV app on your iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV. At first, when I saw the way Apple was mixing and matching all the content from available channels, iTunes rentals, purchases, and streaming services like Prime, I was annoyed. How am I supposed to find shows specific to certain sources in here? And more importantly, how can I tell the difference between what I already have access to with my existing subscriptions, and what is going to require a new subscription or a one-time payment?

And that’s the rub. You can’t easily get a screen with all the content you already have access to. Sure the library tab will show you movies and tv shows you’ve purchased on iTunes. But my HBO subscription? Prime? These are just mixed in with all the rest of the content. You can dig and find HBO specific pages, sure. But they are buried behind multiple layers of UI. And there’s a good reason for that.

The TV app is not an app. It’s a store. And Apple knows a thing or two about running stores. They know the more you walk in and hang out, the more likely you will spend some money while you are in there. If I see a new show that looks compelling from Showtime? I can subscribe right there in app. See a movie that I want to rent? Bam, one click of my remote, and I’m watching it. It’s a smorgasbord of impulse buys.

And Apple gets a cut of just about everything in there.

No wonder Apple is giving away a free year of Apple TV+ to people who purchase new hardware. Right now, they just need to drive people into the app. Apple could probably afford to make Apple TV+ a loss leader permanently, as long as the TV app continues to be the primary place you go to watch content. Sure, it’s important Apple creates some compelling shows to keep you coming. But they can afford to grow their Apple TV+ paying subscriber base relatively slowly. They can play the long game, as they are so good at doing. In the meantime, as long as a percentage of the massive installed user base rents a movie or two or subscribes to a channel every month, that revenue will easily outpace the measly $5 they might get from a couple of million TV+ subscribers in the first year or so.

Compare that to Netflix. Every time I open the Netflix app, I see nothing but content to which I already have access. Netflix will never make any more money with their app from me than what I’m already paying them monthly. And as new services take away non-exclusive content, Netflix is poised to become less—not more—valuable over time.

So while so many will want to focus on whether or not Apple is going to be able to sustain the budgets of multi-million dollar-per-episode shows, keep in mind that there’s a lot more money to be made here than a simple $5 a month subscription to Apple TV+.

TV+ is just one product on the shelf of a much larger store.

One issue I ran into while developing the UI for logging custom and favorite items in my RECaf watch app was the lack of any way in SwiftUI to pop back to the root of the navigation stack.

Here’s my scenario: You start with a list, showing items for Custom Entry and Favorites. Tap Favorites, and you are pushed to a list of your favorites. Tap one of the favorites, and you are presented with a confirmation screen, detailing what you are about to log. At the bottom are two buttons. One for completing the log, and the other for canceling.

Because SwiftUI has no function for getting back to the root, I had no way to pop the customer all the way back to the initial list after they canceled or logged. I was stuck hoping that Apple ends up adding this function sooner rather than later. I couldn’t ship this, knowing the customer would have to swipe right several times to get back to the home screen.

But then I remembered, my root SwiftUI view was inside a WKHostingController.

WKHostingController is just a WKInterfaceController that expects a SwiftUI body view. It still retains all the methods of WKInterfaceController, including awakeFromContext.

So what I did was set the hosting controller to listen for a notification indicating a reload was needed. Then, on my Cancel button and on my log confirmation button, I could post that same notification.

And sure enough, the navigation stack pops back to the root.

I’ve seen other workarounds that use more convoluted ways to get SwiftUI to go back one level in the hierarchy, or to dismiss a presented view. But for getting all the way down a long stack in one move, this is going to be my goto. At least until Apple gives us a proper way to pop to root.

Here’s the code for my hostingController:

import SwiftUI


final class NewEntryController: WKHostingController<NewEntry> {
    
    override func awake(withContext context: Any?) {
        NotificationCenter.default.addObserver(self, selector: #selector(reloadRoot(notification:)), name: Notification.Name(NotificationKeys.watchReloadNeeded), object: nil)
    }
    
    @objc func reloadRoot(notification: Notification) {
        self.popToRootController()
    }

    override var body: NewEntry {
        NewEntry()
    }

}

There are simply too many things that can’t be done on watchOS alone at this point, however. So for now, you’ll have to keep that phone app installed.

What’s missing?

• HealthKit queries on watchOS are limited to about 7 or 8 days worth of data. If RECaf does a sample query for all your caffeine, it will only get the last 8 days or so. I need 30 days to calculate your average caffeine intake. I need 60 days to figure out your most frequent sources and amounts and offer those for quick logging. For now I will have to continue calculating this on the phone and sending the data to the watch.
• You can’t subscribe to changes in HealthKit in the background. If you log some caffeine using your phone or with Siri, the watch will have no idea that log happened until the app is launched. That means I can’t update your complication without using direct messaging from the phone to the watch.
• No in-app purchase. You can’t subscribe to RECaf without launching it on your phone. There is no mechanism for purchasing on the watch at this point. I had planned to work around this by having you launch RECaf on your phone just once after installing. That would have been a terrible user experience, but I was willing to accept the trade off before I discovered the other limitations above.

This doesn’t mean RECaf won’t get some great improvements in watchOS 6. I’m working hard on a major update that will make the watch component of RECaf more independent. (You will be able to log all sources, not just your frequent items, for instance.) It just won’t be completely untethered from your phone just yet.

I’m sure Apple is aware of these restrictions and is planning on giving Apple Watch even more power in the coming years. But in the meantime, I suspect fewer apps than you might be hoping will be going fully independent in the short term.