Elk is a new app that aims to make currency conversion fast and simple. Designed for travelers, Elk is available on both Apple Watch and iPhone, and on both platforms it is extremely easy to use.
Posts tagged with "iPhone"
Elk: Currency Conversion on Your Wrist
Apple Announces iPhone 7 (PRODUCT)RED, New Watch Bands, and More
Alongside announcing a low-cost 9.7” iPad model, a new video app called Clips, and expanded language support for Swift Playgrounds, Apple has also introduced a special edition (PRODUCT)RED version of the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, new Apple Watch Bands, improved storage capacities for the iPhone SE, and some new cases for iPhone.
The Cases for (and Against) Apple Adopting USB-C on Future iPhones
Jason Snell, writing for Macworld on the possibility of Apple adopting USB-C on future iPhones:
But the Lightning paragraph–that’s the really puzzling one. At first parsing, it comes across as a flat-out statement that Apple is going to ditch Lightning for the USB-C connector currently found on the MacBook and MacBook Pro. But a second read highlights some of the details–power cord and other peripheral devices?–that make you wonder if this might be a misreading of a decision to replace the USB-A-based cords and power adapters that come in the iPhone box with USB-C models. (I’m also a bit baffled by how the Lightning connector is “original,” unless it means it’s like a Netflix Original.)
Still, the Wall Street Journal would appear to be a more visible and reputable source than an analyst or blog with some sources in Apple’s supply chain. It’s generally considered to be one of the places where Apple has itself tactically leaked information in the past. So let’s take a moment and consider this rumor seriously. What would drive Apple to kill the Lightning connector, and why would it keep it around?
I’ve been going back and forth on this since yesterday’s report on The Wall Street Journal. Like Jason, I see both positive aspects and downsides to replacing Lightning with USB-C on the iPhone, most of which I highlighted on Connected. Jason’s article perfectly encapsulates my thoughts and questions.
USB-C represents the dream of a single, small, reversible connector that works with every device, and it’s being adopted by the entire tech industry. USB-C isn’t as small as Lightning but it’s small enough. More importantly, it’d allow users to use one connector for everything; USB-A, while universal on desktop computers, never achieved ubiquity because it wasn’t suited for mobile devices. USB-C is.
Conversely, Lightning is under Apple’s control and Apple likes the idea of controlling their stack as much as possible (for many different reasons). A transition to USB-C would be costly for users in the short term, and it would be extremely perplexing the year after the iPhone 7 fully embraced Lightning.
Furthermore, unlike the transition from 30-pin to Lightning in 2012, Apple now has a richer, more lucrative ecosystem of accessories and devices based on Lightning, from AirPods and Apple Pencil to keyboards, mice, EarPods, game controllers, Siri remotes, and more. Moving away from Lightning means transitioning several product lines to a standard that Apple doesn’t own. It means additional inconsistency across the board.
Like I said, I’m not sure where I stand on this yet. These are discussions that Apple likely has already explored and settled internally. I’m leaning towards USB-C everywhere, but I’m afraid of transition costs and setting a precedent for future standards adopted by other companies (what if mini-USB-C comes out in two years?).
In the meantime, I know this: I’m upgrading to USB-C cables and accessories as much as I can (I just bought this charger and cable; the Nintendo Switch was a good excuse to start early) and I would love to have a USB-C port on the next iPad Pro. If there’s one place where Apple could start adopting peripherals typically used with PCs, that’d be the iPad.
Working from an iPhone
One of my goals in 2016 was to make working from my iPhone as efficient as possible. The desire to make this happen initially sprung from experiences raising a baby. My wife and I began foster parenting in July of 2015, and one of our foster children was AJ, a four-week-old baby boy. AJ ended up staying with us for about a year before returning to his birth mother, and in that year I learned that when raising a baby, there are frequently occasions when only one hand is available for computing. I would often have a hand tied up feeding AJ or carrying him around, and if I needed to get any work done during that time, my iPad Pro was no help. iPads are built for two-handed computing, while iPhones work great with one.
In addition to the motivation of being able to get work done with one hand, one of the things I’ve learned during the past couple years is that the best computer for work is the one you have with you. Despite the iPad Pro being more portable than most Macs, it still pales in portability compared to the iPhone. Because my iPad doesn’t travel with me everywhere, I need to be able to do anything on my iPhone that I can on my iPad.
Between my two current jobs, much of my work can be done while on the go – whether I’m waiting for an oil change to be completed, standing in a seemingly endless DMV line, or any similar scenario. In these short intervals of life, there are moments work can be done – which is where my iPhone comes in, because it’s with me wherever I go.
If and when a pressing work issue comes up, in many cases it can’t just be ignored until I get back to my desk; my iPhone needs to be capable of handling the task. Even if the issue isn’t time-sensitive, getting things done while I’m out makes the load lighter when I do get back to my desk.
I’ve grown extremely proficient in using my iPhone to get things done, and there are six key things I’ve identified that make that possible.
Tony Fadell Says Teams Did Not Compete to Design the iPhone→
The conventional wisdom is that two teams competed inside Apple to build the original iPhone. One team’s design was based on the iPod, and the other’s was based on the Mac OS X. Those stories resurfaced with the tenth anniversary of the iPhone’s unveiling and a video showing what appears to be a prototype click wheel-based iPhone interface.
Tony Fadell, who was a key player in the development of the iPod and iPhone, spoke to Nilay Patel of The Verge to dispell the accepted belief that separate teams competed to design the iPhone:
So there were two different types of prototypes. There’s one, a prototype for the UI team, and typically, because UI teams are using Director — back in the day — and quickly mocking things up on a screen. One team is doing it like it’s an iPod, and another team is doing it like it was a touchscreen. The teams were working together. So it wasn’t like there were two different people trying different things. And then there was the development board prototypes where we’d rewrite the UI on the hardware to try things like touchscreen and hardware buttons. So there were two tracks in hardware and software UI development running at all times. And so the thing that you’re seeing [in that video] was just what the UI guys were doing, devoid of any hardware, doing it on a Mac.
According to Fadell, what is seen in the video is a Mac app that was later ported to an iPhone.
Tony Fadell Reflects on the Development of the iPhone→
Before an iPhone was lost in a bar in San Francisco, there was Tony Fadell’s moment of panic:
He’d just got off a plane, felt his pockets, and… nothing.
“I was walking through every scenario thinking about what could happen,” he told me. None of them ended well.
After two hours, relief - thanks to the efforts of a search party that didn’t know what it was trying to find.
“It fell out of my pocket and it was lodged in between the seats!”
Fadell, who was a key player in the development of the iPod, was part of the team that developed the original iPhone. In an interview with the BBC, Fadell argues that the fact that Apple started development from the perspective of the iPod that was important to the iPhone’s success because:
While competitors like Microsoft were trying to shrink the PC into a phone, Apple was looking to grow the iPod into something more sophisticated.
At the same time, focusing on the iPod’s click wheel had its downsides too:
“We were turning it into a rotary phone from the sixties,” Fadell remembered. “We were like, ‘This doesn’t work! It’s too hard to use’.”
Fortunately, another group within Apple was working on a ping-pong table-sized touchscreen that they were able to shrink down to a size that could be used for the iPhone.
The BBC’s interview with Fadell is full of interesting anecdotes about the years leading to the announcement of the iPhone and is required reading for iPhone history buffs.
“The Best 1.0 in Tech History”→
Not only was it truly mind-blowing at the time, but in retrospect, so much of modern computing was invented for that first iPhone phone and revealed to the world for the first time in that hour. Just watch the software demos: most modern UI mechanics and behaviors, large and small, began that day.
When it shipped six months later, it was possibly the best 1.0 in tech history, followed by a decade of relentless hardware and software improvements with the highest success rate and fastest advancement of any product line I’ve ever seen.
Regardless of modern UI design trends, we’re still living in the era defined by the first iPhone.
Phil Schiller on How the iPhone Changed Apple→
Steven Levy, writing for Backchannel, interviewed Apple’s Phil Schiller for the tenth anniversary of the iPhone’s introduction:
“If it weren’t for iPod, I don’t know that there would ever be iPhone.” he says. “It introduced Apple to customers that were not typical Apple customers, so iPod went from being an accessory to Mac to becoming its own cultural momentum. During that time, Apple changed. Our marketing changed. We had silhouette ads with dancers and an iconic product with white headphones. We asked, “Well, if Apple can do this one thing different than all of its previous products, what else can Apple do?’”
In the story, Schiller also makes an interesting point about Siri and conversational interfaces after being asked about Alexa and competing voice assistants:
“That’s really important,” Schiller says, “and I’m so glad the team years ago set out to create Siri — I think we do more with that conversational interface that anyone else. Personally, I still think the best intelligent assistant is the one that’s with you all the time. Having my iPhone with me as the thing I speak to is better than something stuck in my kitchen or on a wall somewhere.”
[…]
“People are forgetting the value and importance of the display,” he says “Some of the greatest innovations on iPhone over the last ten years have been in display. Displays are not going to go away. We still like to take pictures and we need to look at them, and a disembodied voice is not going to show me what the picture is.”
10 Years Ago, the iPhone Redefined Mobile Computing
Steve Jobs’ introduction of the iPhone to the world 10 years ago was captivating:
today, we’re introducing three revolutionary products…. The first one: is a widescreen iPod with touch controls. The second: is a revolutionary mobile phone. And the third is a breakthrough Internet communications device.
So, three things: a widescreen iPod with touch controls; a revolutionary mobile phone; and a breakthrough Internet communications device. An iPod, a phone, and an Internet communicator. An iPod, a phone … are you getting it? These are not three separate devices, this is one device, and we are calling it iPhone.
In retrospect, it’s hard to believe just how cobbled together and buggy that demo iPhone was:
Only about a hundred iPhones even existed, all of them of varying quality. Some had noticeable gaps between the screen and the plastic edge; others had scuff marks on the screen. And the software that ran the phone was full of bugs.
Despite the unfinished state of the iPhone, the onstage demonstrations at Macworld Expo went smoothly. Jobs told the cheering crowd that the iPhone would be available in six months’ time in 4 and 8 GB models for $499 and $599 on a sole US carrier, Cingular. Jobs also revealed something that would have a much bigger impact on the iPhone’s long-term success: its operating system was built on a foundation of Mac OS X.