Ryan Christoffel

684 posts on MacStories since November 2016

Ryan is an editor for MacStories and co-hosts the Adapt podcast on Relay FM. He most commonly works and plays on his iPad Pro and bears no regrets about moving on from the Mac. He and his wife live in New York City.

[email protected]

The Mac Pro Is Coming in 2019, Shaped by Apple’s New Pro Workflow Team→

In a follow up of sorts to last year’s Mac roundtable, Matthew Panazarino of TechCrunch was invited back to Apple HQ for an update on the long-awaited Mac Pro, which Apple shared will not launch until 2019:

“We want to be transparent and communicate openly with our pro community so we want them to know that the Mac Pro is a 2019 product. It’s not something for this year.”

Other than the 2019 date, the lone detail about the new Mac Pro was confirmation that it will be a modular system. Though what exactly that means, we still don’t know.

The other main interesting note from Panzarino’s report is that Apple has assembled a new internal Pro Workflow Team (not to be confused with the iOS app Workflow) which aims to guide and improve Apple’s pro-targeted products. The team is under the oversight of John Ternus, Apple’s VP of Hardware Engineering, and a great deal of its focus is learning the workflows of real pro users so it can optimize its hardware and software to make those workflows better. Panzarino writes:

To do that, Ternus says, they want their architects sitting with real customers to understand their actual flow and to see what they’re doing in real time. The challenge with that, unfortunately, is that though customers are typically very responsive when Apple comes calling, it’s not always easy to get what they want because they may be using proprietary content. John Powell, for instance, is a long-time logic user and he’s doing the new Star Wars Han Solo standalone flick. As you can imagine, taking those unreleased and highly secret compositions to Apple to play with them on their machines can be a sticking point.

So Apple decided to go a step further and just begin hiring these creatives directly into Apple. Some of them on a contract basis but many full time as well. These are award-winning artists and technicians that are brought in to shoot real projects (I saw a bunch of them walking by in Apple park toting kit for an outdoor shoot on premises while walking). They then put the hardware and software through their paces and point out sticking points that could cause frustration and friction among pro users.

This work has started in the specific areas of visual effects, video editing, 3D animation, and music production, and Apple plans to expand it out from there.

The efforts of the Pro Workflow Team serve to benefit all of Apple’s pro-related hardware and software, and even popular third-party software as well. It’s one way Apple is showing its commitment to serving professional users.

In the last year, Apple’s output for pro users seems to have made a complete turnaround. Back then we were wondering if the company had become content focusing on the average consumer and letting pros leave for other platforms. That’s certainly not the story anymore. With the iMac Pro, continued updates to Apple’s pro software, and now the forthcoming Mac Pro and the ongoing investment of the Pro Workflow Team, Apple is positioning itself again as a company committed to serving the pro market.

Permalink

The Shrinking App Store→

Sarah Perez, reporting for TechCrunch:

The App Store shrank for the first time in 2017, according to a new report from Appfigures. The report found the App Store lost 5 percent of its total apps over the course of the year, dropping from 2.2 million published iOS apps in the beginning of the year to 2.1 million by year-end.
…
Appfigures speculated the changes had to do with a combination of factors, including stricter enforcement of Apple’s review guidelines, along with a technical change requiring app developers to update their apps to the 64-bit architecture.

With the previously announced App Store cleanup and iOS 11’s 32-bit purge, it’s no surprise at all that the App Store shrank during the year. To the average user though, a store with 2.1 million apps is no different than one with 2.2 million. Plus, in theory the apps that remain are of a higher overall quality than what was removed, so this should turn out to be a net gain for users.

Another way users benefit: the App Store’s search engine has long had a reputation for being ineffective, so a smaller App Store should mean it’s easier to find what you’re looking for.

Permalink

Scanbot 7 Adds Customizable Filters, Document Merging, Improved Search, and New Themes

Scanbot 7 was released today, the latest update to the popular document scanning app for iOS. This is the first major version bump for Scanbot since Apple introduced its own scanning feature into the built-in Notes app, making it especially of interest. Every time Apple introduces a free app or feature that competes with existing third-party options, the impetus falls on those developers to prove their app’s continued value. Scanbot already offered a variety of features that Notes’ scanning doesn’t, but it adds to those in today’s update with a handful of thoughtful enhancements that make a great app even better.

In Scanbot 7, each of the app’s five color filters for scans can be tweaked to your exact preferences. There are sliders included to make three types of adjustments for each filter. On most filters, those options are Brightness, Color, and Contrast, and with the Gray filter they’re Brighter, Darker, and Color. Not every scan is the same; a good scan depends on the type of document being captured and your lighting conditions, so it’s great having more control over filters to make every scan look as good as possible.

A second new feature is the ability to merge multiple existing scans into a single PDF. This is done by hitting the checkmark in the top-right corner when browsing previous scans, then selecting multiple scans and hitting Merge. You’ll then be able to rearrange the page order of the soon-to-be-merged documents, and choose whether to replace the original documents altogether, or keep them intact post-merge. This kind of task can be accomplished in other apps, such as PDF Expert, but it’s nice to bring it in-app, especially in situations when you need to consolidate scans to send to someone else.

Search has been upgraded in Scanbot 7, with auto-complete suggestions that appear even before you’ve typed a single character. These make Scanbot’s search screen one of the best I’ve used in any app. Also added in today’s update are five new theme options, my favorite of which is High Contrast: it uses true black and white to provide beautiful contrast in the interface, especially on the iPhone X’s OLED display.

If you’re in the market for a scanning solution, and want more power and customizability that Apple Notes provides, Scanbot 7 makes the app a better option than ever. All its power features are easy to use, and the app is full of thoughtful design touches that make for a delightful experience.

Scanbot 7 is available on the App Store.

Apple to Offer Customers Greater Access to Their Personal Data Online→

Mark Gurman and Stephanie Bodoni report for Bloomberg on an upcoming change that will make it easier for some users to access the personal data Apple stores on them:

The iPhone maker said it will update its web page for managing Apple IDs in coming months to let users download a copy of all their data stored with the company. The site will also let customers correct personal information, temporarily deactivate their account, and completely delete it. The new privacy controls are designed to comply with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, which kicks in May 25, the Cupertino, California-based company said.
…
Apple’s new web-based privacy options will be released for users in Europe in early May, while the features will come to other countries later.

The report also notes that you could previously receive copies of your data, delete your account, and more by contacting Apple directly. So these options will not be entirely new, they’ll just be available on the web for the first time.

It’s unclear which countries outside Europe will receive these features. Hopefully in light of the recent Facebook data debacle, Apple will find it important to make these options available to all its users, regardless of where those users reside.

Permalink

Apple Introduces New Spring Colors for iPhone and iPad Accessories; Space Gray Mac Accessories Now Available

Alongside the launch of new Apple Watch bands, which were first previewed in a press release last week, Apple has also updated its lineup of iPhone and iPad accessories today following its Chicago event. The updates include new colors for the iPad Pro Smart Cover and Leather Sleeve, with similar new shades for iPhone cases. Also, in a surprise debut, the Space Gray Mac accessories that ship with the iMac Pro are also now available for separate purchase.

Read more

Apple Introduces New Schoolwork iPad App, Classroom for Mac, and ClassKit Framework for Developers

Education was the sole focus of today’s Apple event in Chicago, and a big part of that story was software: Apple introduced a brand new iPad app for teachers and students called Schoolwork, an upcoming Mac version of its existing iPad Classroom app, and it also launched a new ClassKit framework that enables third-party developers to integrate their educational apps with Apple’s own broader education system on iOS.

The new Schoolwork app, arriving in June, is meant to serve as a collaborative data-sharing environment for teachers and students. It enables teachers to make assignments in educational apps and track students’ progress on those assignments. In apps with collaboration features, teachers and students can work together on an assignment in real-time. Teachers can also use Schoolwork to send handouts to students. Because of its capabilities, Schoolwork is able to serve as a central schedule hub to keep students organized and on track.

The Mac version of Apple’s Classroom app will also launch in June, as a beta. It will serve the same functions as its existing iPad equivalent. Classroom differs from the new Schoolwork app in that it’s meant for instructors only, not students, and is used for general classroom management. The Classroom iPad app launched two years ago as a tool for school instructors to manage student devices and share files in bulk with the class, among other administrative functions, and it continues serving those purposes today.

With Schoolwork and Classroom, Apple now has a stronger student-teacher app ecosystem than before – but first-party apps weren’t the whole story Apple had to tell. To help further broaden the possibilities of Schoolwork and Classroom, third-party developers now have access to a new ClassKit framework, which will enable third-party educational apps to read and write information into the Schoolwork app, similar to how third-party health apps can use HealthKit to read and write data to Apple’s Health app. Apps can populate assignable content in the app, which teachers can then track the progress of. ClassKit is launching for developers as part of the forthcoming betas for Xcode 9.4 and iOS 11.4.

You can follow all of our Chicago education event coverage through our March 27th event hub, or subscribe to the dedicated March 27th event RSS feed.

Heart Rate Variability in Apple’s Health App, Explained→

One lesser known improvement to the Health app in iOS 11 was the addition of Heart Rate Variability data, which can be obtained in a variety of ways, including via the Apple Watch. According to Apple’s description in the Health app:

Heart Rate Variability (HRV) is a measure of the variation in the time interval between heart beats. Apple Watch calculates HRV by using the standard deviation of these beat-to-beat intervals measured by the heart rate sensor (also known as SDNN).

While that offers a basic explanation of this data type, Serenity Caldwell of iMore just completed a deep dive into exactly what HRV is, how tracking it can be beneficial, and Apple’s current methods of tracking it. She writes:

Apple currently records HRV averages in your iPhone’s Health app through Apple Watch readings (as well as any third-party apps that have chosen to write data to the repository). When you first put your Apple Watch on for the day, you’ll trigger an HRV morning reading; the wearable monitors your heartbeat steadily for one minute, then uses under-the-hood calculations* to come up with your HRV average, displayed as ms (milliseconds) in the Health app for iPhone.

Caldwell also shares recommendations for different apps that can be paired with additional tracking methods – such as third-party heart monitors or even just your iPhone’s camera – to obtain more extensive data than the Apple Watch provides with its daily readings.

If you’re interested at all in Heart Rate Variability, and what your iPhone or Apple Watch can do to track it, Caldwell’s write-up is a fantastic resource.

Permalink