WWDC 14 and Apple's 2014: The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly
I wanted to get this out and done earlier but I spent most of the day in a car driving over 200 miles... so I had some extra time to roll this around in my head and decided to do a journal entry and link it on the varius sites. So let me begin with this...
For the first time in years I feel more hope with the future of Apple then I am worried about it. Dont get me wrong Apple was still horrible with messaging whenever it started talking about ecosystems, competition, or anything other then the future. However some core changes are coming to iOS that should have been addressed years ago are finally starting to get addressed. OS X seems to be mostly going away from the mistakes Windows 8 made that Mavericks started going down copying to much mobile instead of just integrating what made sense in use.
So briefly let me go over what jumps out at me. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
The Good:
- Applications and services under iOS can finally integrate into the system. This is the single greatest sin of iOS in the past. The OS essentially forced you to use Apple services and workflows or it would punish the user and developers by making it needlessly difficult or just outright refusing to allow your app to exist for its platform.
if this works as described you should soon be able to open a document in Word from within one of your dropbox folders... or send a image from your Google Drive account using the built in mail.app without having to bounce it around with jailbreak hacks or sticking with only service approved items.
- Widgets are coming back... apparently to both platforms. Though apparently now they will be integrated into a new today pane for OS X within the notifications center. Notifications center under OS X has been rather pointless, as has the today pane under iOS... it only works if you use Apple's first party applications and services which dont always work with all data sources. However since it will now be extendable and be able to be the target of third party applications I have high hopes for this.
- iCloud for the first time (aside from iPhoto sync) will be useful. Essentially Apple is now exposing the portions of the iCloud service it has been using itself. You can now store, retrive, overwrite, and delete actual files form iCloud as if it were a partition... and you can selectively open files stored inside as a virtual file system via iOS, OS X, and Windows. This is the first time you can actually use iCloud in your application if your a developer. Sure there are edge cases where you could before... but have you noticed almost no iOS or OS X apps used iCloud? I wonder why...
- Airdrop between iOS and OS X. About fucking time.
- Handoff sync between devices. This exists in both Windows and Google ecosystem products to varying degrees. Its good to see Apple show up with a cleaner implementation though it seems at this point to only work with Apple first party applications and workflows.
- Apple has implemented their own version of Google Voice for SMS & phone calls on their mac with iPhone. Nice to see them show up again even if it is late.
- Keyboard improvements but still no where near as good as what you can get on Android. They have announced third-party keyboard support but they havent said for sure if it will be system wide like Android or just app specific like some iOS apps are today... just easier to do then in iOS 7.x.
- Messages get a few new features... but there are a few big caveats.
- New Xcode, development tools, previewing, and some things long missing for developers. It seems like they are going almost Android Studio with some interesting code preview and better debugging tools.
- iOS 8 is adding wifi calling so you can make a cellphone call over wifi if your carrier supports it.
The Bad:
- OS X is getting translucency across a lot of surfaces... the exact thing Apple has in the past called childish and poor. For those that objected to the strange use of these and other elements in iOS 7 it looks like the new look is here to stay with only a little alteration to make it look less gaudy. I can already see in a few years where Apple skewers and makes fun of this design once more.
- I dont think they fixed Spotlight with multiple volumes searching. It just doesn't work reliably as a quick launcher or system of search when items are constantly appearing and disappearing over minutes as you let the algorithm discover and sort despite having indexes everywhere that should make it pointless.
- Safari is getting updates and some improvements but looks like it will still mostly be used much like IE back in the day to install another browser.
- Mail.app is getting tweaked and updated graphically but I dont see it fixing any of the basic usability issues and the horrible sync it has with some e-mail services.
- Instant hotspot is good if you have a corporate huge data plan or services that have less restrictive unlimited plans. For everyone (including those with modern unlimited plans) enjoy your overages. I am looking at your Verizon and AT&T personal or family plan users.
- I dont think they fixed the bugs with Messages. If you pull your sim out of your phone or switch away from an iPhone Messages will just drop the text message instead of falling back to SMS or MMS. This is a huge issue with millions of people with the potential of hitting tens of millions of people as the third world and china starts getting a taste of iOS and potentially move to something else once their contracts expire they have only been able to sign for the last year.
- They are now forcing uncompressed video and pictures for iCloud sync without increasing the free size. While they dropped the prices to reasonable levels they are still net screwing people over with this since it doesn't take much 720P or 8MP full resolution iPhone content from a single vacation day to flood those 5 free gigs. It may be 20 GB for 99 cents a month... but if you limit the free amount so that the majority of your customers are forced to buy extra every month just to use features they have all along its not good.
- Swift looks like a hybrid language more like a Java Script then a standard programing language. Its something entirely new everyone will have to learn since they optimized their compilers to focus on Swift code... so Objective-C may soon go the way as C support did with the introduction of Obj-C... that is there is less work by Apple to support and optimize for it with new technology and APIs down the line.
The ugly:
Apple needs to learn it HAS to stop talking about its competition. It ALWAYS ends in a disaster. Instead of being differentiation its executives cant help but end up ending up in a field of petty vindictiveness. It floods the viewer with large amounts of cooked facts and figures ignoring all context or even giving the most basic disclosures for the numbers its using.
Want an example?
Take Android marketshare. Apple doesn't use the same system it uses for iOS devices. It counts all devices sold that use the android code base worldwide that a third party source it has yet to disclose thinks are active. That means Kindle is an Android device, some ATMs are Android tablets, those cheap Chinese tablets that dont even include the Android Market? Yep all of those are Android. That would be like Apple talking about total macs sold and counting hackintoshs and Virtual Machines.
Need another?
Windows install base comparisons are another huge brick wall Apple cant resist but run into every keynote like our friend Wile E. Coyote. First it counts illegal copies of Windows XP running in china, India, and other markets... computers that might not even have Windows XP SP2 installed on them. Also know where else you can find tons of old Windows machines? Your ATM, many cash registers, and that ticketing machine before you get on your mass transit train. Simply put Windows is on a lot of things, so comparing your ecosystem that is almost entirely targeted at the end user and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) market is just pointless.
Windows 8 & 8.1 may be a mark of shame but guess what... those products are still more successful then any computer operating system you have ever in your life made.
Instead talk about your features, give great demos like your messages voice and video segment... hell even make jokes about how Marketing is a bunch of pot heads. You arent good talking about others. Differentiate by being different, not just bitching and moaning about how you are copied or how you would be so much better if you were in their place. Earn being their replacements and you may then have a shot at your dream.
so... whats coming down the line?
Mac refresh latter this year for the new Haswell CPU refresh and new chipset.
All new iPhone 6, step down of iPhone 5S, refocus of the semi-failed C line... new iPad... new iPod touch.
Aside from that dont expect much else. It seems like they are focused on refreshing products and updating them while putting all of their energy into new hardware for 2015 and new software for 2014.
iWatch for instance would be a 2015 thing at the earliest since they would apparently have to do a iOS 8.1 to add support. I dont have the code base for iOS 8 but from what I hear the signs of a quick release arent in the lists or blobs. Apple really sucks at cleaning up its .plists before releasing something.
For the first time in years I feel more hope with the future of Apple then I am worried about it. Dont get me wrong Apple was still horrible with messaging whenever it started talking about ecosystems, competition, or anything other then the future. However some core changes are coming to iOS that should have been addressed years ago are finally starting to get addressed. OS X seems to be mostly going away from the mistakes Windows 8 made that Mavericks started going down copying to much mobile instead of just integrating what made sense in use.
So briefly let me go over what jumps out at me. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
The Good:
- Applications and services under iOS can finally integrate into the system. This is the single greatest sin of iOS in the past. The OS essentially forced you to use Apple services and workflows or it would punish the user and developers by making it needlessly difficult or just outright refusing to allow your app to exist for its platform.
if this works as described you should soon be able to open a document in Word from within one of your dropbox folders... or send a image from your Google Drive account using the built in mail.app without having to bounce it around with jailbreak hacks or sticking with only service approved items.
- Widgets are coming back... apparently to both platforms. Though apparently now they will be integrated into a new today pane for OS X within the notifications center. Notifications center under OS X has been rather pointless, as has the today pane under iOS... it only works if you use Apple's first party applications and services which dont always work with all data sources. However since it will now be extendable and be able to be the target of third party applications I have high hopes for this.
- iCloud for the first time (aside from iPhoto sync) will be useful. Essentially Apple is now exposing the portions of the iCloud service it has been using itself. You can now store, retrive, overwrite, and delete actual files form iCloud as if it were a partition... and you can selectively open files stored inside as a virtual file system via iOS, OS X, and Windows. This is the first time you can actually use iCloud in your application if your a developer. Sure there are edge cases where you could before... but have you noticed almost no iOS or OS X apps used iCloud? I wonder why...
- Airdrop between iOS and OS X. About fucking time.
- Handoff sync between devices. This exists in both Windows and Google ecosystem products to varying degrees. Its good to see Apple show up with a cleaner implementation though it seems at this point to only work with Apple first party applications and workflows.
- Apple has implemented their own version of Google Voice for SMS & phone calls on their mac with iPhone. Nice to see them show up again even if it is late.
- Keyboard improvements but still no where near as good as what you can get on Android. They have announced third-party keyboard support but they havent said for sure if it will be system wide like Android or just app specific like some iOS apps are today... just easier to do then in iOS 7.x.
- Messages get a few new features... but there are a few big caveats.
- New Xcode, development tools, previewing, and some things long missing for developers. It seems like they are going almost Android Studio with some interesting code preview and better debugging tools.
- iOS 8 is adding wifi calling so you can make a cellphone call over wifi if your carrier supports it.
The Bad:
- OS X is getting translucency across a lot of surfaces... the exact thing Apple has in the past called childish and poor. For those that objected to the strange use of these and other elements in iOS 7 it looks like the new look is here to stay with only a little alteration to make it look less gaudy. I can already see in a few years where Apple skewers and makes fun of this design once more.
- I dont think they fixed Spotlight with multiple volumes searching. It just doesn't work reliably as a quick launcher or system of search when items are constantly appearing and disappearing over minutes as you let the algorithm discover and sort despite having indexes everywhere that should make it pointless.
- Safari is getting updates and some improvements but looks like it will still mostly be used much like IE back in the day to install another browser.
- Mail.app is getting tweaked and updated graphically but I dont see it fixing any of the basic usability issues and the horrible sync it has with some e-mail services.
- Instant hotspot is good if you have a corporate huge data plan or services that have less restrictive unlimited plans. For everyone (including those with modern unlimited plans) enjoy your overages. I am looking at your Verizon and AT&T personal or family plan users.
- I dont think they fixed the bugs with Messages. If you pull your sim out of your phone or switch away from an iPhone Messages will just drop the text message instead of falling back to SMS or MMS. This is a huge issue with millions of people with the potential of hitting tens of millions of people as the third world and china starts getting a taste of iOS and potentially move to something else once their contracts expire they have only been able to sign for the last year.
- They are now forcing uncompressed video and pictures for iCloud sync without increasing the free size. While they dropped the prices to reasonable levels they are still net screwing people over with this since it doesn't take much 720P or 8MP full resolution iPhone content from a single vacation day to flood those 5 free gigs. It may be 20 GB for 99 cents a month... but if you limit the free amount so that the majority of your customers are forced to buy extra every month just to use features they have all along its not good.
- Swift looks like a hybrid language more like a Java Script then a standard programing language. Its something entirely new everyone will have to learn since they optimized their compilers to focus on Swift code... so Objective-C may soon go the way as C support did with the introduction of Obj-C... that is there is less work by Apple to support and optimize for it with new technology and APIs down the line.
The ugly:
Apple needs to learn it HAS to stop talking about its competition. It ALWAYS ends in a disaster. Instead of being differentiation its executives cant help but end up ending up in a field of petty vindictiveness. It floods the viewer with large amounts of cooked facts and figures ignoring all context or even giving the most basic disclosures for the numbers its using.
Want an example?
Take Android marketshare. Apple doesn't use the same system it uses for iOS devices. It counts all devices sold that use the android code base worldwide that a third party source it has yet to disclose thinks are active. That means Kindle is an Android device, some ATMs are Android tablets, those cheap Chinese tablets that dont even include the Android Market? Yep all of those are Android. That would be like Apple talking about total macs sold and counting hackintoshs and Virtual Machines.
Need another?
Windows install base comparisons are another huge brick wall Apple cant resist but run into every keynote like our friend Wile E. Coyote. First it counts illegal copies of Windows XP running in china, India, and other markets... computers that might not even have Windows XP SP2 installed on them. Also know where else you can find tons of old Windows machines? Your ATM, many cash registers, and that ticketing machine before you get on your mass transit train. Simply put Windows is on a lot of things, so comparing your ecosystem that is almost entirely targeted at the end user and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) market is just pointless.
Windows 8 & 8.1 may be a mark of shame but guess what... those products are still more successful then any computer operating system you have ever in your life made.
Instead talk about your features, give great demos like your messages voice and video segment... hell even make jokes about how Marketing is a bunch of pot heads. You arent good talking about others. Differentiate by being different, not just bitching and moaning about how you are copied or how you would be so much better if you were in their place. Earn being their replacements and you may then have a shot at your dream.
so... whats coming down the line?
Mac refresh latter this year for the new Haswell CPU refresh and new chipset.
All new iPhone 6, step down of iPhone 5S, refocus of the semi-failed C line... new iPad... new iPod touch.
Aside from that dont expect much else. It seems like they are focused on refreshing products and updating them while putting all of their energy into new hardware for 2015 and new software for 2014.
iWatch for instance would be a 2015 thing at the earliest since they would apparently have to do a iOS 8.1 to add support. I dont have the code base for iOS 8 but from what I hear the signs of a quick release arent in the lists or blobs. Apple really sucks at cleaning up its .plists before releasing something.