Tag: Apple

Sunday Morning Reading

Summer is heading towards Fall and we’re on lake time this weekend. So a shorter list of things to share. As usual it’s a potpourri of topics and great writing. Enjoy!

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Mug shots were the talk of all the towns this week. David Todd McCarty takes a look at a bit of of mug shot shooting history in The Lost Art of Shooting Criminals.

Always fun to look back on the history of old school Chicago politics. Edward Robert McClelland takes just such a look back as he looks ahead in The Machine Has Given Way to Organizing.

This piece is a real pleasure from Natasha MH. Worth lingering over for more than two minutes. Check out A Two-Minute Pleasure.

In this world where the reliance on facts keeps diminishing Jonathan Taplin takes a look at How Musk, Thiel, Zuckerberg and Andresseen-Four Billionaire Techno-Oligarchs- Are Creating an Autocratic Reality.

And if Autumn is approaching so too is football. David. K. Li takes a look back at the Supreme Court case that changed the game (or rather the money behind the game), in Meet The Man Who Thinks He’s Screwed Up College Football With A Supreme Court Win.

An another harbinger of Fall is the build up and anticipation of new Apple gear. Jason Snell takes yet another look at the never ending debate surrounding the purpose of the iPad in Giving Up The iPad-only Travel Dream.

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here.

Apple’s Mixed Reality Reactions

As expected Apple unmasked its new mixed reality headset, now named Apple Vision Pro, at its annual World Wide Devleopers Conference this week. No surprise that the reactions have also been as expected with some giving new meaning to the old cliché about Apple’s reality distortion field and others being quite vocal with their negative reactions, especially as regards to that $3500 price point.

Apple Vision Pro

I’ve been following along with some of the bloggers and journalists who got to try the headset on, experience the 30-minute demo and I have complied a series of links to some of the reactions. Keep in mind the responses from those who got strapped in are somewhat akin to folks reacting to a trailer for a new film. Folks are responding to a canned demo, acknowledging that, and the fact that Apple has a lot of work to do before this thing debuts to the public supposedly early in 2024.

I’ll have more to say about it at some point in the future based on my thoughts to these reactions.

Matthew Panzarino in TechCrunch says  Yes, Apple Vision Pro Works and Yes, It’s Good.

Jason Snell of Six Colors goes Eyes (and head) on with the Apple Vision Pro.

Joanna Stern in the Wall Street Journal had two reactions after the demo. “Wow. Very Cool” and “Did I just do drugs?”

John Gruber says the price might be an impediment to owning one. But the experience is something you’ll want to set aside some time to try it out.

Krista Jones in Esquire says she knew you could do futuristic FaceTime, but what she found the most interesting -shocking even-was how it made her feel. 

Harry McCracken in Fast Company gives us three things he learned and three things he didn’t about the new gizmo.

Jason Hiner on ZDNet says Apple Vision Pro is far ahead of where he expected it to be.

David Pogue on Medium brings up a recurring theme I’m seeing among those writing about these first experiences that say the device felt heavy after using it a bit in the 30 minute demo.

Roman Loyola of MacWorld didn’t want to leave the demo.

And you might want to watch this video review of the experience from MKBHD. 

There’s plenty more out there if you’re interested. There will be more digital ink spilled on this between now and the products eventual release than you can imagine. Bottom line themes I see emerging:

1. Amazing technology

2. Expensive

3. Weight is still an issue

4. Apple has lots of work to do before this releases and even more in the years ahead. They’ve staked out a vision and have the bankroll to advance it. It will be interesting to follow.

Apple WWDC Thoughts

Beginning June 5 Apple kicks off its annual World Wide Developers Conference, (WWDC). Apple will introduce new versions of its operating systems for current devices, but all of the excitement is focused on Apple’s AR/VR headset and the operating system that will run the thing. Mixed reality, augmented reality, virtual reality… who knows. I’m sure whatever it will be will somewhat unreal. I’ll certainly be interested to see how Apple tries to make it real, but it’s from a very backseat perspective. I just don’t see myself as being in the market for this kind of device/experience.

Apple WWDC 2023 770x433 jpg

Let’s face it, the next period of time is going to be focused very much on the headset and what it offers. Even though whatever Apple announces is probably going to be a years long effort towards what the product will eventually become. How that interacts with the existing ecosystem will be much more interesting for me.

To be honest, I’m not expecting much from iOS or macOS or any of their siblings. And I’m not sure anyone should. For better or worse these operating systems are quite mature. Sure there will be some new things, but for my money I’d prefer to see Apple keep tidying things up. Refining and striving for consistency are higher priorities for me than whiz bang new features.

I don’t have many big “wishes” for what I’d like to see. But I do have a few minor ones that would make my time in the orchard a bit easier.

Notifications are still problematic. Especially on the Mac. For goodness sake give us a button that allows us to bulk dismiss notifications like we can on iOS.

Last year saw some syncing up of features in Apple Mail between iOS and Mac. Keep it up. Also, make Rules work better and more consistently.

It’s time for a Clipboard Manager in the operating systems.

Bring Automations to Shortcuts on macOS.

Get rid of the consistent inconsistency with iCloud.

Fix Siri. Just do it.

The App Stores make much money for Apple and developers. It’s supposed to be a showplace. Clean it up. It should also run more efficiently than it does.

I’m hoping there will be some clarity and cleaning up of Stage Manager given that it feels very much like a building block for the AR/VR vision.

That’s it. That’s my wish list. Whatever reality we end up in after Monday I hope some of the above gets addressed.

Bloomberg: Apple Working on Touchscreen Macs for 2025

Oh my.

Mark Gurman of Bloomberg has published a rumor that Apple is working on touchscreen Macs aiming at 2025. Already the socials are filling up with excitement, consternation and predictions. This rumor/news will launch a half-zillion blog posts and fill up hours of podcast time between now and whenever, if ever, Apple does this.

Apple, Inc is working on adding touch screens to its Mac computers, a move that would defy long-held company orthodoxy and embrace an approach that co-founder Steve Jobs once called “ergonomically terrible.”

Apple engineers are actively engaged in the project, indicating that the company is seriously considering producing touch-screen Macs for the first time, according to people familiar with the efforts. Still, a launch hasn’t been finalized and the plans could change.

Already those who don’t like iPads are are jumping on the doom wagon for that class of devices. There’s room for plenty of speculation on that, but if and when this comes to be I doubt very seriously we’ll see the iPad disappear. And while Gurman talks about this defying company orthodoxy I find it a little tough to swallow that Apple hasn’t had a touchscreen Mac or two floating around its design studios until now.

But I’m not going to play the prediction game on any of this. It’s time to sit back and enjoy the show regardless of what device you’re enjoying it on.

Tech Predictions for 2023

I thought I’d jot down a few tech predictions for 2023. So here we go.

There will be tech news in 2023. There will be grand promises and grander failures. It will be entertaining, a bit crazy, and ultimately meh as the latest in a round of bad bets come due or come closer to being so.

Apple will make a ton of money in 2023 even though some governments want to design products for them. Apple won’t have as easy a time of it as it has in recent years for a number of reasons including some self-inflicted wounds.

Artificial Intelligence will continue to be a dominant story until chat bots start writing most of the tech stories.

The Metaverse will further try to wriggle out of the pond with or without legs. With other companies jumping into the “let’s put an expensive, goofy-looking, headache inducing gizmo on your head” it will be one of the comic tech highlights of the next few years before this whole thing ends where it was always destined to: an enterprise play.

Cyrpto will continue to falter as the denizens of the latest refuge of scammers discover that they’ve sucked all the money they can from the available suckers. There certainly won’t be any Super Bowl commercials.

Streaming Entertainment will continue to figure out that they haven’t figured it out yet. Consolidation will begin in earnest, hopefully before the streamers cancel all of the shows.

Twitter. Who the hell knows. It’s owner sure doesn’t.

Mastodon and federated social networking will continue growing pains as it continues to grow and becomes less of a pain for new users to gain entry.

Humans. Humans will be the biggest tech story behind the stories that capture the headlines. The humans who create tech will continue to be in some form of tension with the humans who use it. Humans who do use tech will continue to look less and less for tech to solve their problems, understanding before tech creators that all tech solutions aren’t necessarily going to change the world.  At least until the tech creators understand that they need humans to talk to humans to help them solve the problems with the products they create. Or until the robots show up.