picomac

Yesterday morning there was a disturbance in the force in the Mac power user community.

Dear @TextExpander: I love you & have used you since “Textpander”, but there is no way in hell I’m paying $5/month.https://t.co/VSCh9LUseB

Usually, a major new version of TextExpander would set power users and automation geeks jumping for joy. But the new TextExpander is a subscription only "service", not a piece of software for purchase. Reactions skipped right past confusion to anger and a sense of betrayal. In the moment, I said:

Smile and TE's mentions are a cavalcade of loyal customers — not just average internet cheapskates — jumping ship.

These are the same people who usually react just as emotionally by yelling "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY" into their Twitter timelines when new software from their favorite indie developers drops. They mean that in the sense of a transaction, quid pro quo. TextExpander 6 is big on the quid (leaving your wallet) and a big zero on the quo. Apart from a new first-party sync service, not one single-user feature has been added to the Mac app. (Later in the day, a direct email from Smile to its customers touted "new app icon" as a feature. Seriously.)

This is not a question of TextExpander's value to me. I reject cries of "Hey TextExpander, you're not Photoshop." I work with text for a living, so in many ways TextExpander is my Photoshop. I want it to thrive. But why would I sign up for a subscription today that buys me nothing more than what's already on my hard drive? Where is even the promise of great new features on the horizon? It feels like Kickstarting a project that's already shipped. I'm not angry, I'm just confused.

Those who've defended Smile today have stood on the line that in a tough software economy, developers need to try new business models. Yes, they need to try good new business models, like patronage for Overcast or optional subscriptions for 1Password. Any subscription dollars earned by Smile are bound to be offset by the fact that more research was done on their competitors today than perhaps any day ever before. (I, for one, found that Typinator, which I used for over a year, has features TextExpander lacks — and you can bet I'm going to try them out.) And that's my lament: that a company I've been loyal to, whose product I rely on daily, has done something so obviously boneheaded. I hope I don't have to pay for it.

The iOS App Store has problems that run deeper than the software customers use to access it. But if there are any easy wins to be had in the quest to improve the App Store, they lie in the user experience dictated by iOS itself.

The App Store has one goal: connect users with the software they need. That's what makes developers and Apple money, split 70/30. At times, the store has almost completely fallen down in achieving its mission. Remember the immediate post–Flappy Bird era, when a search for anything whatsoever — not just games — would guarantee a Flappy clone showing up in the top five results?

There haven't been any obvious leaps forward in search result quality, but there has been one major innovation in search interaction: the introduction of universal Siri search on tvOS. The new paradigm is drill-down search, where successive queries to Siri filter results. This model is well suited to TV and film media, where there is well-maintained metadata across several dimensions: genre, year, actors, and reliable reviews. But when App Store search came to tvOS 9.2, it was of the simpler kind, just by keyword. Perhaps that level of detail doesn't exist on the smaller tvOS store. It also doesn't exist on the gigantic iOS store, but Apple should be mining it for iOS 10 and beyond.

There's already plenty of underlying data that could create useful search combinations that are currently impossible on iOS. What if you could ask Siri, "Show me puzzle games. Only the good ones. Only ones without in-app purchases." Currently, at best you can find a puzzle subgenre or look for apps featured by app editorial or hope that a collection of pay-once games has been curated — and that it doesn't disappear. My guess is that the average iOS user doesn't search in the App Store because they don't get anything back from it. Either you know to ask for an app by name (and even that's no guarantee) or you're stuck window shopping in the featured tab.

This is why this problem is called "discoverability" — not just "discovery" — there is literally no interface to access many great apps. Keeping interface minimal, by using Siri, would be a smart choice (only power users love an advanced search UI). It would also make for great 30-second demos akin to the classic iPhone advertising that kicked off the "There's an app for that" revolution.

And with any luck, it would only be the beginning. It's another level beyond to ask "Show me scanner apps. Only ones with an OCR feature. And iCloud support." App descriptions and reviews would have to be parsed — what's a feature, whose opinion makes an app good? But opinions are better than nothing. Anything that can recapture the interest and trust of App Store customers would be a huge win for everyone involved.

The introduction of CareKit at Apple's March event was a public reaffirmation of their commitment to improve public health. It was also a powerful statement that iOS devices are key to that mission. The Apple Watch and the M-series chips in modern iPhones have certainly made progress in raising public awareness of fitness goals like standing time and step counts. And the studies on Parkinson's disease made possible by ResearchKit are very impressive, even if they aren't garnering public attention in the same way.

This all paints a picture of iOS being a very wholesome platform, and of course that's how Apple would like us to see it. But eight years into its life, iOS is nothing without third-party software and the App Store ecosystem built around it. Criticism of the App Store is so commonplace that it's easy to dismiss as picking low-hanging fruit — but Apple has planted a whole orchard full of it.

"Gem packs! Get yer gem packs here!"

The one area of the App Store that seems most opposed to Apple's health efforts is the Top Grossing chart. I'm not the first to question whether Apple is proud of what dominates there: largely "free-to-play" games that attempt (and clearly succeed!) to extract In-App Purchase dollars at every turn. I don't want to label these games as evil — many are just the modern equivalent of pay-per-play arcade games, with the major difference being that you don't have to physically feel each quarter slip out of your hand forever. What troubles me are the apps that are thinly veiled gambling, with "casino" and "slots" right in the app titles.

Gambling addiction is a serious mental health issue. Estimates vary widely, but there are millions affected in the United States alone, and some of them must be the iOS device owners who push these apps up the charts. This is a major reason why simple elimination of the Top Grossing chart won't fix the App Store economy: it might alleviate the rich-get-richer problem among developers, but it would only mask the poor-get-poorer problem among some App Store consumers.

Apple should absolutely view this as a black mark on their health record. The only way to eliminate it is by strong enforcement against predatory apps in their marketplace. Yet they are encouraging some of the bad behavior, even featuring sales on IAPS of "gem packs", "gold", "orbs", and the like. Turning their backs on these lucrative apps means a decline in the value of Apple's 30% cut, but looking at their various *Kit efforts, it's clear that they are willing to take some of their war chest and devote it to the noble mission of improving the world. Just the same, the App Store is a worldwide force, a multi-billion dollar industry in its own right, and Apple should make certain that it is a humane one.

One thing missing from Apple's press event this week was a standard rundown of the numbers. Usually they're first up in any keynote, but instead we were treated to welcome, in-depth updates on Apple's environmental and personal health initiatives. But the numbers were interspersed, including figures on the contents of the App Stores.

In 2016, it seems pointless for Apple to cite the size of the iOS App Store — it's obviously huge, perhaps oversized. However, tvOS is a fledgling platform, and early numbers can tell the tale of platform growth. The App Store is the defining feature of tvOS over the prior generation Apple TV system software, and Tim Cook reiterated that.

Apps are the future of television, and this transition is well under way. … We have 5000 apps on the App Store.

Here's the problem with tvOS apps: there are lots of them already, and Sturgeon's Law applies. Several apps were trotted out as good tvOS citizens, including the March Madness app I made an initial review of last week. I thought I was pretty harsh on it after just a day's use, and that I might have to retract some of my comments. No, it's worse than I'd come to realize. First, the app is plain buggy — I've had to force quit it at least ten times. Second, its hallmark, tvOS exclusive feature of split screen live games is a failure. The feature didn't even properly surface until well after broadcasting began. Next, it turns out that many of the games (those on CBS on "real" TV) are banned from the tvOS app, even though they are available in iOS and can be AirPlayed. Finally, once two streams are playing, the inactive stream will often display a "commercial in progress" overlay even when that's not true, killing the entire split screen premise. If this is the peak of what tvOS offers, the transition is not well under way.

On the iPad side of things, sheer volume was brought out as a positive, as Phil Schiller attempted to launch a Switch to iPad campaign right there in Town Hall. (Hi, I'm an iPad. And I'm a PC.) He boasted:

There are now over 1 million apps in the App Store designed for iPad, and they work beautifully on iPad Pro.

This is supposed to be good news for users who are brand new to the Apple ecosystem. I can't see how it's not a barrier, at least without smarter app discovery. And existing iPad Pro users would beg to differ about those apps "working beautifully": many don't even look beautiful, with obviously scaled up interface elements, let alone supporting iOS 9's pro-oriented features.

App quality is a well-known problem to Apple observers. I hope these quotes are misplaced PR spin, and not a serious whitewashing of the fact that Apple has just released some great hardware…right into the steaming pit of their own App Stores.

iOS 9.3 arrived on Monday and I positively scrambled to install it. It's the first version of iOS that I've considered installing the beta of on my phone. I was after a single feature: Night Shift.

I've been a f.lux convert for years, and I can barely touch a Mac without it after sundown. For those who are averse to warming up their displays at night, I tell them to do what the domain name says: just get f.lux. Day 1 will be weird; Day 2 will be normal; and Day 3 you'll wonder how you ever lived.

I suppose the way I coped on the iPhone was because of its smaller screen size, but there were plenty of times that I noticed it straining my eyes late at night, even when making what compensations I could: dark mode in Tweetbot, sepia mode in the Kindle app. As I began to do more ebook reading, the bright blue luminosity of the iPhone screen was what convinced me to break down and purchase a hardware Kindle. When f.lux's attempts to get their app onto non-jailbroken devices were scuttled by Apple, I complained. Color temperature is a quality of life and accessibility issue, plain and simple.

Night Shift does everything it needs to, and offers appropriate settings including custom scheduling and color temperature. (I tend to keep my nighttime temperature a little cooler than the default, both in f.lux and Night Shift. In f.lux, I also warm up my daytime display by a couple hundred K; setting a custom daytime temperature isn't possible on iOS.) One feature I miss from f.lux is the option to set a slow transition between day and night modes. I find it jarring to have the temperature change like a switch was flipped at the moment the sun crosses the horizon.

One major shortcoming of Night Shift is its inexplicable incompatibility with Low Power Mode. Since iPhones are most likely to run out of juice late in the day, this restriction creates a direct conflict. While f.lux cautions that it can take CPU cycles (and power) during transitions, it essentially operates for free afterwards; I imagine the same is true for Night Shift. And there's every indication that Night Shift is a "display filter" like color inversion and similar accessibility settings, which stay on in Low Power Mode. My only guess is that the True Tone Display in the new iPad Pro relies on the same frameworks, and since it constantly updates based on ambient sensor data, it carries battery overhead. True Tone came as a total surprise, so this could be a late-add software misstep that should be fixed in 9.3.1.

Overall, Monday was great news for my eyes. Night Shift on my current phone and the promise of True Tone Display in future iPhones are no simple Sherlocking. iOS is going on beyond f.lux.

Apple had a big day on Monday. They pushed updates to all four of their operating systems and launched two major new products, the 4" iPhone SE and the 9.7" iPad Pro.

At first glance, both the SE and the "baby" Pro look like they're oriented towards the past — they both occupy the form factors of previous devices, the iPhone 5s and iPad Air 2, respectively. But looks aren't everything. The interiors of these new devices are what make them a confident, clarifying strategy for Apple's product lines in the future.

Leading up to previous iPhone and iPad announcements, the cynical question to ask has been "So what products will Apple keep selling today?" Two-, two-and-a-half, three-year-old devices sticking around to push retail prices down and margins up. Hardware that didn't hold up to contemporary software, and should have been labeled "BARGAIN BIN" to make even cost-conscious consumers wary.

Monday's announcements look like the end of the straggler strategy for iOS devices. There are now three categories of iPhone: small, medium, and large, all with comparable features. Any iPhone with "5" in the name is now gone from Apple's website. The 6, as opposed to 6s models, are still available — last year's model, on discount. It's hard to imagine that they will still be here when the iPhone 7 (in how many sizes?) arrives this fall.

The iPad line is similarly simplified: small, medium, and large, although with the option to go Pro or Air at the medium size. The only confusion is the persistence of both the Mini 2 and Mini 4. Phil Schiller presented it as somewhat simpler in his slides, by showing the Mini 2 to get that low "starting at" price. That has to change soon, as an A7 device makes little sense in 2016. But if the new Pro moves up average selling price for mid-size iPads, pushing the Mini 4 down to a sub-$300 price point will be an easy choice to make.

All of these product line realignments are "customer sat" moves: get people to pay what they want (or can) for iOS devices. It's incredibly promising that the new strategy for achieving this appears to be creating new, off-cycle products. As the sales numbers showed, it was mostly new customers who were getting Apple's oldest, worst products. Every release that Apple does now, both hardware and software, is moving quicker and becoming more fluid than ever before. If it's putting Apple's latest and greatest — or at least close to it — into more hands, it's a win for everyone involved.

There's been plenty of rumor about the iPad Pro line expanding and its screen size shrinking with Apple's latest product announcements today. Nobody seems to doubt that bringing some of the "Pro" features of the largest iPad to the "regular"-size model is a move in the right direction. What remains an open question is what having two parallel lines of iPads, Pro and consumer, means for the future of the platform.

To me, the biggest question is whether consumer iPads (likely with no postnominal modifier) will be defined by the presence of consumer-oriented features or solely by their lack of Pro features. Looking at the MacBooks Pro and non-Pro, it's clear that the computer simply known as MacBook is designed in its own right, prizing certain features like thinness and lightness over pro features, like greater computational power. So what does an iPad even more specifically designed for consumers look like? Cutting size and weight surely isn't the answer — the possible gains there are already down to tiny shavings of aluminum.

Not to cleave to the etymology too strongly, but perhaps the definition of a consumer iPad is one that is unapologetically for consumption. It's more possible than ever for primary media consumption, especially video, to take place on an iPad. However, it's up for debate whether it's a great video device, or even a replacement for a television in the home. There's a fundamental disconnect, though: the iPad screen is 4:3, while modern TVs and all the content designed for them is 16:9.

Apple has made special accommodations for content viewing in the past when the iPhone 5 got taller, hitting a nearly (but not perfect) 16:9 ratio. Have they really never even considered the possibility for an iPad? If my back-of-the-napkin math is right, at the current pixel density of the iPad Air 2, a 16:9 device would have a 9.1" screen and be about 10.4" on the long dimension, provided the bezels didn't shrink. Bump it up to a 10.6" diagonal and 11" on the long dimension, and it's big enough for a full-size Smart Keyboard cover, using the size of the Magic Keyboard as a guide. Heck, go ahead and make it a real Magic Keyboard. Wait, this great new content consumption device sounds a lot like a new MacBook, not an iPad at all. I've clearly figured this all wrong, but I hope that Apple has figured it right, so whatever the new iPad Consumer brings is not just a dumbed-down Pro, but exactly what its consumers need.

March Madness Live is the top featured app in the tvOS App Store in the US. It deserves to be, as the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament is arguably the biggest annual television event here apart from the Super Bowl. While the tournament is just getting underway, I've been trying the app during the preliminary "First Four" games, including cheering on my alma mater, the University of Michigan. (They won!)

Setup of the app was less than flawless. With the first game already in progress on Tuesday evening, the app told me to "Come back after the schedule has been announced." Digging into the app's settings screen and entering cable account credentials brought it to its senses, but I was never prompted for that info. Once the schedule appeared, video wouldn't play until I force quit the app, something that many tvOS users probably still don't know is an option. (Just like in iOS, double tap home and then swipe up.)

I was excited at the initial announcement of the app, which according to Recode promised "a new split-screen feature available exclusively through Apple TV". While there haven't been concurrent games yet, no evidence of such a feature exists. The app is largely a grid of thumbnails that lead to unadorned streams: hit menu, and you're back to the grid (and restarting your stream earns you another playthrough of the same 15-second preroll for an Android phone — two strikes for an Apple user trying to watch live sports).

Incessant branding in the app indicates partnership with HBO Now, which likely means that MLB TV's streaming engine underlies the app. The quality is good, and the streams are reliable once they begin…but there's just nothing else there. Even if CBS/Turner wants their apps to just be stopgaps when viewers are away from their "real" TVs, it would be a joke if their iOS offering was just a plain UICollectionView. Yes, tvOS is a lesser platform, probably one of the smallest they've developed for, but the lack of effort makes you wonder why they bothered at all, or if Apple encouraged them at any stage before App Editorial. Apple wants tvOS to be taken seriously, but if March Madness Live is the best that a well-funded corporate developer can manage for a high-profile event, it's clear that on the outside, the TV is still just Apple's "hobby".

Overcast by Marco Arment continues to be my favorite podcast app, and earlier this week it got some significant updates in version 2.5. I'm not sure if Overcast is my longest-used podcast app — I had long stints with both Instacast and Downcast — but if not, it certainly will be soon.

The number one reason I stick with Overcast and won't be lured by competitors is Smart Speed, which, according to the app, has saved me 105 hours of podcast listening time total. Smart Speed is unchanged in 2.5, but its companion feature, Voice Boost, has been improved: it now detects whether you're listening on the iPhone's built-in speaker and optimizes the sound quality accordingly. That's not how I do the vast majority of my podcast listening, but while making my morning coffee I like to put on a short podcast (usually the NPR News Summary or, on Mondays, Robot or Not).

The other new features are for those who've made an optional patron payment for Overcast. These include a new dark theme and the ability to upload files not attached to a podcast feed.

The dark mode is pleasant, although its color scheme made me think it was simply inverting the entire screen — and that's not far off for the interface elements! (Fun note: if you turn on "invert colors" in the iOS accessibility settings and then take a screenshot, the saved file is not inverted; I had to resort to Photoshop for the image included here.) As a matter of choosing a single theme for all times of day, I'm ambivalent, but a welcome refinement would be to add automatic switching between light and dark based on ambient light, as TweetBot and other apps do.

Overcast inverted

The more refined dark mode

On the other hand, file uploads — an admittedly niche feature — will make my life much easier as a podcast creator. For Simple Beep, my co-host Brian sends me the first edit of each show via Dropbox so I can do a full listen-through to check audio quality and compile shownotes. Overcast has been recalcitrant with Huffduffed Dropbox links in the past, sometimes to the point that I've had to fall back on other podcast clients. Now Overcast is the only tool I'll need, although the uploads feature operates solely via the web; I hope that in the future it will at least get basic document picker support within the app itself. Finally, it makes sense that uploads are patron-only, as Overcast will host up to 2GB of files for you, and hosting isn't free. Clarification on what happens to your uploads if your patronage lapses (each dollar amount corresponds to a number of months) would be welcome.

Overcast is still the leader on my phone and in my podcast analytics. You won't need Smart Speed for Picomac, but there are now even more reasons to use Overcast for this and every podcast you listen to.

It's been nine months since the Apple TV was allegedly delayed for lack of content deals, resulting in the top three most awkward keynote moments in WWDC history all happening in a row. I've had my own Apple TV for a couple months, and the number one thing about it that frustrates me is how to get my content of choice to appear on it.

My viewing habits may not be those of the average nerd, as I gravitate heavily towards live sports (of any type — I was watching curling last weekend). I'll also admit to being a "cord-borrower", as I have no cable TV subscription in my own name but mooch streaming services off of family members who do. Even in this situation, if the future of TV is apps, those apps simply haven't arrived.

I have a folder full of sports apps on my iPhone homescreen, and 7 of the 9 on the first page offer live streaming (yes, yes, I have a problem, I get it). Of those, only three have any presence on the Apple TV and only one, WatchESPN, is a rock-solid, enjoyable experience on tvOS. (One, the March Madness app is brand new to tvOS, and will only be put to the test in the coming days. More on that soon!) The worst culprit is beIN Sports, a typographically odd investment vehicle designed to make US-based soccer fans sad. They offer streaming on the web and iOS, but not tvOS. Unfortunately, their web streaming hasn't worked in months on any Mac I've tried and their iPad app crashes as soon as the stream begins. This leaves my tiny iPhone screen or spotty AirPlay to the TV, since like many poorly crafted iOS apps, they use a custom video player.

I suppose, in a sense, I'm doing it wrong. Second-tier cable sports networks are first and foremost cable networks, so to them the notion of getting their broadcasts to a full-size TV by any hardware other than a cable box is madness. But if there's that level of disconnect, how will Apple's vision of the future of TV ever come to fruition? Developing for tvOS is an investment of time and money, already an obstacle that companies who put together slapdash software won't want to overcome. Changing their fundamental assumptions about the conduit for consuming their programming may be simply too much, even if Apple manages to pull off miracles with the major networks.

The present of TV is still magical: I can watch Lazio, my favorite soccer team, playing live in Italy in HD, a complete impossibility when I first started following them ten years ago. But if you see me cheering them on with my iPhone on the armrest, plugged in to power, screen black but backlit to keep AirPlay alive, you'll know I'm still waiting for the future.